At the October 1988 DAWN Pastors' Conference, the DAWN Research Committee was constituted and given the task of surveying the Philippines for Protestant Churches. The survey was viewed to be beneficial to effectively equip the church for discipling the Philippines by the end of the century. The results of the massive nationwide survey were presented in 1991.

The Research Committee was tasked again to conduct another survey to assess the goals of DAWN 2000. This is the final update of churches in the country. The survey begun in 1999 and ended in the year 2000. The Committee has acquired a lot of information which will be a great help to church planters, denominational leaders and local pastors. Thus this is a report of this province.

SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY:

The Research Committee (Raffy Salonga, Emil Ybanez, Marilou Patrimonio of PCEC and Christopher Balaga, Rochelle Mae Lebrillo and Annie Belmonte of Philippine Challenge) coordinated the canvassing and processing of the information of the churches.

Since the 1990 listing of churches was available, the committee created a "lead sheet" of churches for every province with a provincial/municipal map that goes with it. The committee also acquired denominational directories of churches from government institutions, street maps and telephone directories. These are the least expensive way to find churches. But some of these directories or listing omit the most important piece of information: the church barangay. The only way to get a truly good picture of a geographic area is to go to that area with the purpose of finding all the churches.

To canvass 80 provinces, it was necessary to enlist the help of many volunteers. Between 1999 and December 2000, we recruited workers, provided them with questionnaires and conducted a day of orientation on how to conduct a survey for their provinces. The committee held training seminars and sent them out to scout the countryside for churches.

The enumerators/interviews encountered difficulties. Sometimes the barangay was too far away (too expensive) to go to personally. Sometimes peace and order situations prevented them from going. Pastors "won't cooperate and refuse to give information". In spite of these problems, the dedication of the interviewers has given us a picture of what God has been doing in the 25 year history of DAWN.

TABLE 1- PROVINCIAL SUMMARY

City/Municipality - Name of the towns in the Province.