Rev. Ceejay Agbayani
Clergy, MCCQC
Spreading God's Word
By Kiki Tan
PUBLISHED: OCTOBER 2009

	Share |

In 1999, Oliver Andaya, his close friend, invited then Ceejay Agbayani to attend a Bible study of mostly gay and bisexual men somewhere in Diliman, Quezon City.  As it was during his “SM North EDSA ‘rampa’ days,” Agbayani was a big “skeptic with the idea – I have the Roman Catholic notion that Bible study is for Protestants, (plus) homosexuals reading the Bible is a little but shocking for me,” Agbayani recalls.  “I remember vividly saying to (Andaya): ‘Ano ito? Langis at tubig?  Hindi mo mapagsasama ang mga bakla at Bible study!’”

“At first, my real motivation to attend this meeting was that I hoping that I could meet a guy in the group to be my ‘jowa’ or ‘churva,’” Rev. Ceejay Agbayani admits.  It turned out that “I’d like the idea of (the fusion of) homosexuality and spirituality, so that, since then, I attended all of Metropolitan Community Church’s (MCC) activities – from the Pasig Bible study every Wednesday, Taft Bible study every Thursday, the Friday overnight prayer meetings, the Sunday worship services in Shalom Center in Manila, et cetera.  I was hooked."

Agbayani decided to attend, nonetheless, a Friday Bible study at the apartment rented by Gary Apolonio – but “at first, my real motivation to attend this meeting was that I hoping that I could meet a guy in the group to be my ‘jowa’ or ‘churva,’” he admits.  It turned out that “I’d like the idea of (the fusion of) homosexuality and spirituality, so that, since then, I attended all of Metropolitan Community Church’s (MCC) activities – from the Pasig Bible study every Wednesday, Taft Bible study every Thursday, the Friday overnight prayer meetings, the Sunday worship services in Shalom Center in Manila, et cetera.  I was hooked – I had to know more about this group because I felt very curious about its doctrines, beliefs, and what this church is all about.  I never missed any single Worship services of MCC.”

Under the helm of Rev. Edgar Mendoza, who was the MCC pastor then (after the retirement of Fr. Richard Mickley, OSAe, Ph.D., the one to establish MCC in the Philippines in 1991), Agbayani was able to experience his first Pride celebration in 2000, when “my attendance was an experience I never expected.  I was thrilled and happy to march with many gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender in Malate (in the City of Manila), and it boosted my morale that it is okay to gay and Christian.  At that time, I was very, very proud to be gay and happy.”

ANSWERING A CALL

In 2001, internal issues troubled the local MCC, which needed the Mother Church to intervene – the solution was the establishment of a five-member Interim Ministry Team, with Agbayani chosen as a member.  By December 2001, Agbayani became the Interim Pastoral Leader of MCC in Philippines (by the virtue given by then Rev. Judy Dahl, the minister who handled the MCC chapters outside the US).

In June 2002, “a clergy invited me to go on theological studies in the Union Theological Seminary, where, until March 2008, I studied Master of Divinity in Dasmarinas, Cavite, the oldest Protestant seminary run by the United Churches of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) and the United Methodist Church (UMC),” Agbayani recalls.

After completion of the course, “I actually became the first openly gay seminarian to graduate in this 102 year old seminary.  I was given the award of ‘The Bishop La Verne Mercado Award in Ecumenics.’”

On September 14, 2008, Agbayani was ordained by the Rev. Elder Ken Martin, an MCC elder serving Region 1, also known as the bishop, at the UCCP EDSA chapel during the second anniversary of MCC Quezon City (MCCQC).  He is now the second Filipino clergy ordained by the Universal Fellowship of MCC.

Interestingly, even if Agbayani’s baccalaureate degree is AB Political Science (“I could have been a lawyer or a teacher,” he says, considering that “I never thought to be a pastor of a church”), after finishing high school in 1990, “I actually entered the Order of Friar Minor Conventual, a Franciscan Order, in Novaliches, Quezon City for a year.  I decided to leave the seminary on November 7, 1991, because of my family – I wanted to focus on my family, to work and to have a lot of money for my family as we had financial problems.”

FINDING THE SOUL

“There are a lot of challenges (for MCC) – my personal ambition, and the mission and vision of the MCC,” Agbayani says.  “But I always say to myself, ‘What a profit of a man if he gains the whole world and losses his soul?’ I might not have a lot of money in my pocket but I have a lot lives that I’ve touched because of the ministry of MCC towards the homosexuals,” he says.

Among the biggest of the challenges that MCC is facing has to do with building the credibility of MCC as a church.  “A church like all mainstream churches,” Agbayani says.  “MCC has no physical church yet, and we are still renting a space for our Sunday worship services. This is not helped by the lack of funds, (what with) almost all members, but not all, not working; some are only students who want to have a group to identify with.”

	1 | 2