Renato Constantino believes he was destined to become a revolutionary from the start. “I came from a very poor family,” he says. “I experienced poverty and injustice firsthand—all the right ingredients to be a radical.”

In 1976, at the age of 21, he joined the New People’s Army, the military wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. “I rose from an ordinary soldier into a sensitive job,” he says. His assignment? Root out suspected government spies, what historians now call a brutal “witch hunt fueled by paranoia.” Hundreds lost their lives.

Some who died—either by gunshot or machete—were good friends of Constantino’s, men he had spent time with in the field. “Initially it was a choice job,” he says. “But later I felt like I am playing God. I am part of a team that decides who will live and who will die. That’s the time I called out, ‘Okay, if there is a God, please take me out of this place!’”

God heard him. In 1988, government troops nabbed him and took him to the Philippine National Police headquarters, where his arresting officer, Constabulary Major Baligi Tira, introduced him to Love Tira, then pastor of the Greenhills Christian Fellowship.

Over the next two years, Pastor Tira, the major’s brother, visited the imprisoned Constantino regularly. “I was suspicious,” Constantino says. “Oh, these people, they’re just using religion to solicit information from me or to break me down so that I would go to the other side.” But over time Constantino began to listen. “Their sincerity and their love propelled me to believe what they are saying,” he says.

Then Constantino, who was facing a life sentence in prison, read a book, Life Sentence by Charles W. Colson, and his conversion was complete. “Before, I devoted myself to communism, Leninism, and Marxism,” he says, “but I came to realize that I could serve my people better not out of hatred, but out of love.”

He decided to plead guilty. His case caught the attention of President Corazon Aquino, who released him “temporarily, pending further investigation,” into the custody of Greenhills Christian Fellowship. He was assigned to work as a community organizer in the Manila slums, and then allowed to get his master’s degree in community development. After that, he went to work as chief operating officer at  a paper mill equipment manufacturing company owned by a Greenhills member.

On November 30, 2006, a “super typhoon” (essentially a Category 4 hurricane) struck the central Philippines, causing huge mud slides on Mayon Volcano. Hundreds of people were killed; thousands were left homeless. Constantino soon quit his job to help build the Amore Purpose Driven Community for 218 families (each with at least five children) in the storm-ravaged Bicol region. His organizing guideline was based on Rick Warren’s PEACE Plan to eradicate poverty, disease, illiteracy, corruption, and spiritual emptiness using only volunteers. Since 2007, Saddleback Church’s satellite campus in San Clemente, California, has sent several PEACE mission teams to Amore for weeks at a time to help fund and grow the Amore project. The two communities are “adopting” each other in ministry.   

“Only God could orchestrate this kind of thing,” Constantino says with a laugh. The work is hard, but the former revolutionary, now 53, is happy. “I really find great fulfillment in what I am doing now,” he says. “But this is not my project. This is God’s project. Big time.”

Photo: courtesy of Renato Constantino