A fire in Manila in June 2025 left 67 families homeless and damaged a house used by a local church partner of the Evangelical Free Church of the Philippines (EFCP) and ReachGlobal for tutoring, food distribution, and Bible studies. The building was completely lost.
For a church plant already embedded in a vulnerable community, the fire was not simply a material setback — it was a test of whether the congregation's presence was rooted deeply enough to survive and respond. ReachGlobal Crisis Response mobilised support for both the immediate humanitarian needs and the ongoing ministry.
The Manila situation is part of a broader picture of free evangelical church planting in the Philippines that is learning to operate in contexts of poverty, disaster, and rapid urban change. The EFCP's approach — plant churches in underserved communities, develop local leaders, integrate mercy and proclamation — is increasingly how free evangelical mission is done in the Global South: not extraction to safer environments but deeper embedding in the places of greatest need.
The partnership between the EFCP, the EFCC, and ReachGlobal illustrates one of the distinctive strengths of the IFFEC family: smaller national federations can access global networks of prayer, personnel, and material support when crises arise, without surrendering their indigenous character or local leadership.
