Our Story

Beginnings
The Jesus Family Ministries of Butuan, Inc. (TJFM) began in late November 2005 through the efforts of Rosie Smith who organized a Sunday morning Bible study at her house, attended by Cely Ortega, Boy Radaza, Rosie’s friends and house helps. Edgar Garcia was invited to teach one Sunday; then he was asked to teach every Sunday from that point on. The Bible study continued in Rosie's house until July 2006. Then this Bible study group officially became a church in July 2006 when a Core Group was formed and the church later registered in the Securities and Exchange Commission.

On October 2006 the church moved out of Rosie's house to begin its life and development in its own place.

On May 2008 our first outreach was born. The Bonbon outreach began when Peth Manalac, who is from the USA, a friend of some of our church members, came to Butuan to share the Gospel with her relatives in Barangay Bonbon. She then endorsed them to our church. Through the hard work of our church workers and volunteers, this outreach became a local church last October 2009.  This outreach later became the TJFM Libertad church in 2014.

On August 2009 our second outreach was born when Marichu Garrison, a member of the Butuan church, got a burden to reach her family and relatives living in Barangay Taligaman. She and her husband, Tobey Garrison, a member of TJFM's pioneer Core Group, organized Saturday afternoon Bible studies for them.  After a while, they started coming to our Butuan church. So we fetched the people from Taligaman with our ministry vehicle on Sundays. Last July 2011 Taligaman finally became a local church and they started having their own Sunday afternoon services.

Within the period September 2012 to December 2018 TJFM broke the main Butuan congregation up into several congregations, each with their own pastors and leaders.  This is an intentional move for TJFM to be able to cater to different groups of people, enabling us to obey the Great Commission more effectively.  The Cebuano congregation was opened in October 2012.  The Evening congregation was opened in August 2016, and youth congregation (Youth Impact) was opened in October 2018.

At present 4 congregations worship in the main church center – English, Cebuano, Evening, and Youth Impact.

The congregations and outreaches were taught and empowered to reach people and initiate church planting efforts. By 2019 we have already opened TJFM churches in Brgy Libertad, San Vicente, Taligaman, Bugsukan, and Tagabaca. We look forward to new TJFM churches in the coming days as we continue in this mission of reaching people and planting churches.

In January 1, 2012, on its 6th year, through the Lord’s gracious and miraculous provision, TJFM finally moved to its own church building.

TJFM family has a vision for reaching people in our city, planting new churches wherever the Lord takes us, raising kingdom servants, helping the poor and needy, and to be involved meaningfully in world mission.