Four years ago, the pandemic emptied our campuses overnight. Fellowships went quiet, chapters lost their leaders to graduation with no one left to hand the baton to, and our staff had to start over in fields that had gone fallow. Field staff have a phrase for what those four years of patient replanting are starting to produce: re-pioneering. Not steady growth across the board, but real, hard-won breakthroughs in some places, and patient, ongoing replanting in others. Here are the stories behind that word.
Kawayan Camp 2025 equipped 52 student-leaders from 39 universities and colleges.
From Revival to Outreach
Remember SVCF Diliman? Back in 2024, we told you about its remarkable turnaround — a chapter down to just three members and no longer an accredited organization by UP, brought back from the brink within a single year. By the time the school year closed, SVCF Diliman had not only regained its standing as an official university organization but had grown into two active Bible study groups. That growth never stopped. This year, SVCF Diliman’s own members joined their staff in meeting students from Ateneo de Manila University and Miriam College to rebuild the Katipunan Fellowship. Students who had nearly lost their own fellowship, now replanting their neighbor’s campus fellowship. It is, in miniature, our oldest and simplest conviction at work: students remain the best missionaries to other students.
The Harvest Years Are Starting to Show
In Cebu, staff have spent years investing in leadership training — DLTC, Regional Leadership Summits, Sibol Camp for high schoolers. This year, that investment is visibly converting into a new generation of students who can run their own Bible studies and disciple others, even with classes constantly disrupted by storms and shifting academic calendars. Metro Manila, meanwhile, added Our Lady of Fatima-Valenzuela to its list of new chapters this year, while beating three of its five discipleship targets outright. And in Caraga, the region grew to twenty-one chapters across four provinces, exceeded its target for new believers, and watched more than twenty students step forward to elect their own regional student leadership council.
By the Numbers
| Last Year’s Student Ministry, In Brief | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,928 students discipled |
136 Campus Fellowships |
1,030 Seekers Reached |
287 New Believers |
373 Leaders and Missioners |
We reached just over half of our original goal for new seekers this year — solid progress, not a finish line. Where we fell shortest was among college students juggling clinical rotations, online classes, and part-time jobs; where we exceeded expectations was among high schoolers, who showed up for Bible study with an eagerness their staff workers described as unmatched by any other group this year.
A Story Worth Telling at Your Next Gathering
Before joining ISCF, my faith was often tested by doubts, fears, and the pressures of student life… ISCF became a place where I felt accepted, encouraged, and strengthened spiritually. I will intentionally make time to listen to students who are struggling, offer help when someone feels left behind… knowing that no one should journey through campus life alone.
— Patrish Ann Galla, Grade 9, ISCF Eastern Samar National Comprehensive HS
“In Northern Mindanao, the Silab Christian Fellowship at Central Mindanao University — the region’s only fully student-led chapter — turned outward the moment disaster struck. When flooding hit Maramag, Bukidnon last September, Silab members organized and distributed food packs to affected residents, then showed up for the university’s tree-planting activity that same day. That rhythm of care didn’t end with the flood: this December, the chapter is planning gifts for campus utility workers as part of its annual outreach. For a chapter still rebuilding after the pandemic, still without an assigned staff worker of its own, choosing to serve the wider campus — not just its own members — is exactly the kind of student-initiated societal engagement we hope to see in all our campus fellowships.”
— Jonah Sinday, Northern Mindanao Regional Director
Where We Are Asking for Your Prayers
Three regions are leaning on volunteers far beyond what’s sustainable long-term. Southern Luzon, covering five provinces, has only one staff. Eastern Samar and Biliran will be held together by three volunteers now that their staff are on sabbatical leaves. Two senior staff in Southern Mindanao will also be on sabbatical or study leave next year, stretching an already thin team further. Pray for new staff to heed God’s call and pray that there will be more graduate volunteers in these areas.
Next year’s priorities, should the Lord provide: a national online resource hub for student leaders, printed small-group guides for chapters without reliable internet, and a deliberate push to reach international students in Metro Manila, Cebu, and Davao — building on a partnership in Cebu that already has a local church discipling fifty to seventy international students every week.