Ferdinand “Ferdie” Cabiling, a bishop at one in all the Philippines’ largest megachurches who ran across the Philippines to lift money for disadvantaged students, died April 1, the day after Easter. He was 58 years old.
Dubbed “the Running Pastor,” the moniker describes not only Cabiling’s epic race but how he lived his life and served as an evangelist. For 38 years, he was a vocational minister of Victory Christian Fellowship of the Philippines, which has nearly 150 locations within the country. The branch he led, Victory Metro Manila, averaged greater than 75,000 people each Sunday.
In the past two years, his focus was on teaching evangelism to Victory leaders. Every time he received a teaching invitation, his answer was at all times yes, said his assistant, Faye Bonifacio.
“He was a maximizer,” Bonifacio said, noting that Cabiling developed a habit of taking short naps while parked at a gas station between long drives. “Because he liked to drive, he did lots in a day.”
Hours before his death, Cabiling had visited a church member at a hospital an hour away from his hometown of Cuyapo before parking his automobile at a gas station, likely for a break before heading to his next destination. It was there that an attendant found his lifeless body and rushed him to the hospital he had just visited. Cabiling had died of a heart attack.
“He was a serious man of passion, motion, and conviction,” wrote Steve Murrell, the founding pastor of Victory, the flagship church for the charismatic-leaning Every Nation Churches and Ministries, which has churches and campus ministries in 82 countries, in an Instagram post. “For 40 years, he was an element of each major decision made by Victory leaders.”
Born on September 8, 1965, Cabiling lived within the rice-producing Central Luzon. His father was a farmer and his mother was a faculty teacher. One of six siblings, Cabiling grew up a “nominal” Seventh-day Adventist resulting from the influence of his mother’s faith, in accordance with his autobiography, Run: Endure the Pain, Keep the Faith, Finish Your Race. After graduating from a Catholic highschool, he moved 100 miles south to Manila to attend Adamson University, where his close relatives provided for his tuition and allowance. The plan was for him to turn into a civil engineer, work abroad, and support his parents.
Yet those plans modified during his sophomore 12 months in 1984, a 12 months marked by civil unrest against the primary Marcos presidency, when he attended an evangelistic crusade by the US-based Maranatha Campus Ministries led by Rice Broocks. That night, Broocks highlighted John 3, noting that unless an individual is born again, they can’t enter the dominion of God. “If you died tonight, where would you spend eternity?” Broocks asked the scholars.
“I felt like I used to be standing in front of a torrent of truth as he preached the gospel of Jesus Christ with unreserved passion and conviction,” Cabiling recalled in his book. He decided to present his life to Christ during that meeting.
Afterward, one in all the American missionaries invited him to be baptized at a pool within the hotel near where they were staying. Cabiling agreed, and the Americans lent shorts too big for him. He remembers “holding on for dear life to my shorts, lest I lose them within the waters of baptism.”
Days after, he was introduced to Murrell, who taught recent believers biblical foundations. When the short-term mission trip that had brought them to the Philippines ended, Murrell and his wife had decided to remain behind. Together with Cabiling and other college-aged recent believers, they began a church in 1984, initially called Maranatha Christian Fellowship. In 1991, they modified their name to Victory Christian Fellowship to emphasise Christ’s victory over death.
Arnie Suson, one in all the early Victory members who later became one in all the church’s pastors, said Cabiling was at all times assigned to do the altar call. Murrell would preach, after which the engineering student could be called to deliver a brief gospel presentation. “There was an evangelist inside him,” said Murrell.
After receiving his engineering degree, Cabiling decided to turn into a pastor at Victory. In 1991, he married one other early Victory member, Judy Pena, who became a campus minister. Together, they helped establish recent branches of Victory church.
“When we were starting, Ferdie was a diamond within the rough,” wrote Jun Escosar, a missiologist and Victory’s first paid staff member. “But you would see the regular growth and the eagerness to learn—not out of selfish ambition or to hunt a reputation for himself.” Victory’s former leadership pastor, Neil Perion, said it took years for the church to persuade Cabiling to be ordained a bishop at Victory, as he hated titles.
Victory grew quickly because the church focused on reaching Filipino students on the campus, with small group discipleship a vital component of their outreach strategy. These young Christians would invite other students, their siblings, and fogeys, adding to the church’s numbers until hundreds were gathering each Sunday in churches across the country.
Rico Ricafort met Cabiling as a sophomore in college. “You can have lots of guides but not many fathers,” Ricafort said during a memorial service for Cabiling.
Ricafort later became a Victory pastor and, along with Cabiling and several other student leaders, founded the campus ministry Youth on Fire in 1994, which spread to many colleges and universities across the Philippines. The late pastor was also instrumental in sharing the gospel to Ricafort’s parents and siblings.
Ria Llanto-Martin, a former campus minister who also met Cabiling when she was in college, described him as a “relational disciple-maker.” She remembers him spending lots of time with the scholars, obliging their requests to evangelise the gospel of their classes and being there for them during times of need.
“I used to be in my 20s when my dad passed away,” said Llanto-Martin. “He was one in all the primary people to be within the hospital with us within the ICU. And then he prayed for my dad.”
In 2015, Cabiling, who was an avid ultramarathon runner, decided to run 1,350 miles across all three major islands within the Philippine archipelago to lift around $36,000 for Real LIFE Foundation, a company he chaired that helps disadvantaged students. He aimed to run 31 miles a day for 44 days in celebration of his fiftieth birthday. Judy attributed his recent obsession to a midlife crisis.
At 2 a.m. on September 5, 2015, Cabiling began his run within the town of Maasim on the southernmost tip of Mindanao. He ran through dangerous areas on the island, including what’s now referred to as Davao de Oro, where insurgents have an energetic presence. He ran whilst his left ankle and foot began to swell to the purpose that he “could feel bursts of maximum pain with every step.” He said that on the ninth day, “I couldn’t force myself to stand up and proceed.”
“Nonetheless, I never entertained the considered quitting,” he wrote in his book. Cabiling’s solo race drew national headlines, as only six others had made the journey. When he arrived in Manila, a little bit past the halfway point, two outstanding Philippine broadcast journalists joined him as he covered the stretch of the historic Roxas Boulevard along Manila Bay. He became referred to as Philippines’ “Running Pastor.”
On October 26, 2015, he accomplished the last leg of his race in Aparri, a town on the northernmost fringe of Luzon island. In total, he exceeded his goal and raised $55,000, providing scholarships for greater than 200 students.
That single-minded focus could sometimes lead to friction. Murrell described Cabiling as having “humble boldness,” emphasizing that the majority who knew him have experienced that boldness. Several Victory leaders noted the late evangelist tended to be too strict and harsh or went overboard. Ricafort said that unlike those that correct others using the sandwich principle—sandwiching critiques with positive affirmations—his mentor served it “all pure meat.”
Serving the growing church and the campus ministry and equipping pastors and leaders on evangelism took up much of Cabiling’s time. He would preach at two events in two different provinces on the identical day while still making time to minister over the phone and even virtually.
Judy said that, at times, she and her husband would have “loving fellowship” (translation: conflicts) over his jam-packed schedule. “He at all times needed to do every thing inside sooner or later,” she said.
Now, looking back, she sees why: “God allotted only 58 years for him to live, so he didn’t waste any time.”
Cabiling is survived by Judy, his wife of 33 years; a daughter and a son; and two grandchildren.
