Welcome to
Victory!
We are Victory, a church in the Philippines that exists to honor God and make disciples.
Honor God.
We desire to honor God in every area of life. Our starting point, goal, and motive is the honor of God. This is foundational for understanding why we do what we do. It is all about Him, not us.
Make Disciples.
We follow Jesus and help others follow Him. We make disciples by engaging culture and community, establishing biblical foundations, equipping believers to minister, and empowering disciples to make disciples.
In June 1984, Rice Broocks, Al Manamtam, and Steve and Deborah Murrell led a team of sixty-five American university students on a one-month summer mission trip in Manila’s University Belt. After two weeks of meetings at the Girl Scouts Auditorium on Padre Faura, the new church, consisting of about 150 high school and university students, moved into the basement of the Tandem Theater on Recto Avenue. From this original group of 150, Victory has planted churches across the Philippines and is now composed of thousands of students, professionals, and families. We have Victory group leaders who lead discipleship groups weekly in campuses, coffee shops, homes, and offices.
In 1994, Rice Broocks, Phil Bonasso, and Steve Murrell met in Manila, Philippines, to explore ways to cooperate in campus ministry, church planting, and world missions. This meeting resulted in the birthing of Every Nation, a worldwide church-planting movement with a vision to establish churches and campus ministries in every nation. Victory is a founding member of this global family.
Since its founding, Victory has sent Filipino campus missionaries and church planters to serve as cross-cultural missionaries to countries across the globe. Besides these long-term missionaries, Victory has also sent numerous teams for short-term missions to reach every campus and every nation.
Our core values express the good deposit we guard together. These are our essential values and help describe how we build our ministry.
LORDSHIP
We value obedience. Because Jesus is “King of kings and Lord of lords,” we believe that wholehearted submission to God’s will and His Word is the starting point of the Christian faith and the foundation of all spiritual growth. (Colossians 2:6)
EVANGELISM
We value lost people. Because God’s heart is to reach the lost, we seek to build churches primarily through evangelism, not transfer; through birth, not adoption. (John 3:16; Luke 19:10)
DISCIPLESHIP
We value spiritual growth. Because we are called to make disciples, our primary focus is ministering to people, not conducting meetings, facilitating programs, or building buildings. (Matthew 28:19,20)
LEADERSHIP
We value leadership development. Because we are called to develop future leaders who will serve in the church and in the community, we prioritize leadership development. We do this by deliberately creating opportunities for young potential leaders to develop their gifts, and empowering them through identification, instruction, impartation, and internship. (2 Timothy 2:2)
FAMILY
We value long-term relationships. Because the family is the foundation and validation of ministry, we refuse to sacrifice our marriages and our children on the altars of temporal success. And because we believe God has called us to be a spiritual family, we embrace community, reject the idea of disposable relationships, and choose to walk in love, respect, and unity. (Psalm 127:1,3; Ephesians 4:3)
Prologue
In addition to adhering to the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Chalcedonian Creed, Victory affirms and upholds the following articles of faith without reservation.
GOD
We believe in one God, creator and sustainer of all things. He is perfect and unchanging; completely loving, good, and holy; limitless in knowledge, power, and presence. God eternally exists in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; one in essence, having the same divine attributes and perfections, with each person fulfilling distinct roles. Gracious in his eternal purpose to redeem a people for himself, God is worthy of wholehearted love and worship.
SCRIPTURE
We believe God has spoken through human authors in the Scriptures, the sixty-six canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. The Bible is the only written, verbally inspired Word of God and is self attesting, unchanging, and without error in all it affirms. As God’s authoritative, infallible, and sufficient revelation for life, doctrine, and practice, the Bible is to be trusted and obeyed.
CREATION AND FALL
We believe God created all things, visible and invisible, out of nothing, and all very good. He sovereignly sustains and governs creation for his glory and the benefit of his creatures. God created humans in his image, male and female, to know, love, and glorify him in covenant relationship and to serve as stewards of the earth. The first man, Adam, sinned against God, resulting in alienation, death, guilt, shame, and a curse upon the earth. Separated from God and subject to his judgment, all humans have inherited a sinful nature from which they cannot save themselves.
JESUS
We believe in Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, incarnated for our redemption, born of the virgin Mary, fully God and fully man, one person in two natures. As our substitute, he lived a sinless life and willingly gave himself as a propitiatory and reconciling sacrifice for our sins on the cross. He died, was buried, rose bodily on the third day, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father as the only mediator between God and humanity. One day he will return again to judge the living and the dead.
GOSPEL
We believe the gospel is the good news that God became man in Jesus Christ to reconcile lost people to himself. He lived a perfect, sinless life on our behalf and died on the cross for our sins. He was buried, and on the third day rose from the dead, securing our redemption forever. Having triumphed over Satan and the forces of darkness, he ascended into heaven as Lord of all. Everyone who repents and believes in him receives forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
SALVATION
We believe that salvation, planned in eternity and promised throughout scripture, is God’s gracious act of rescue whereby he delivers lost and sinful people through faith in Christ’s redemptive work. Because of his great love, God makes people spiritually alive in Christ through regeneration by the Holy Spirit. By grace, God forgives and justifies people through faith, apart from works, conferring upon them all the benefits of union with Christ, including the gift of God’s righteousness, the indwelling Holy Spirit, and adoption into his family.
HOLY SPIRIT
We believe in God the Holy Spirit, giver and renewer of life, sent to guarantee our promised future. The Spirit convicts concerning sin, enlightens to the truth, awakens to repentance and faith, regenerates sinners, and unites believers to Christ, making them partakers of the divine nature. By the Spirit’s indwelling, Christians enjoy God’s presence and fellowship. By being filled with the Holy Spirit, Christians are divinely empowered for witness and ministry. As they bear the fruit of the Spirit and exercise spiritual gifts, believers edify the Church and bear witness to God’s kingdom.
MISSION
We believe God’s mission is to redeem a people for himself from every tribe, nation, and language and to restore creation for his glory. As the Father loved the world and sent his Son, and the Father and the Son sent the Spirit, the Triune God sends the Church into the world to proclaim the gospel, make disciples, and seek God’s justice and reconciliation in the world.
CHURCH
We believe in one holy, universal, and apostolic Church, the body of Christ of which Jesus is the head. As God’s holy people on mission, the visible Church is expressed in gathered communities where believers assemble to pray, worship, hear God’s word, receive the sacraments, and fellowship with one another. Through the ministry of his Spirit, faithful disciples, and biblically-qualified leaders, Christ builds and grows his Church.
SACRAMENTS
We believe that water baptism and communion are the two sacraments ordained by Christ, visible signs of God’s covenant of grace. Baptism is the sacrament of entrance into the Church by which believers publicly identify with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Communion is the sacrament whereby believers corporately remember Christ’s body given and his blood shed for their forgiveness. Sacraments are means of grace in which God is present, affirming his promises represented by the visible signs.
SANCTIFICATION
We believe that sanctification is the process, beginning at regeneration, whereby God conforms his people to the image of Christ through his Word and Spirit. By grace, Christians grow in holiness and love for God and others throughout their lives as they submit to Jesus, obey God’s word, and walk by the Spirit in fellowship with other disciples.
SECOND COMING
We believe that Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords, will return to earth bodily, in power and glory, at a time fixed by the Father and unknown to the church, to raise the dead and judge the world. He will clothe the righteous with immortal, glorious bodies, rewarding them according to their deeds. But the unrighteous, Satan, and the forces of darkness, he will punish with eternal destruction. God will consummate redemption and renew creation, and his people from every nation will enjoy, worship, and reign with him forever.
Victory is a founding member of Every Nation, a global movement that exists to honor God by establishing Christ-centered, Spirit-empowered, socially responsible churches and campus ministries in every nation.
You can visit everynation.org.ph to know more.
At Victory, we believe discipleship is a 24/7 lifestyle of following Jesus, and helping others do the same, and discipleship is most effective when it happens within a community. The relationships that can be built in church and a Victory group will help you continue in your walk with God.