| “I truly enjoy this ministry,”
Cobbie writes, “we sing and perform, pray, reflect, and
worship with such enthusiasm and joy knowing that for a refreshing
change performance is not a grade point average.”
The ministry in spiritual formation has come after serving ten
years at the national offices of the UCCP with the program on
ecumenical partnerships and international relations. Cobbie reminisces,
“During those years, I was molded into a facilitator by
the many visiting mission study and work teams from all over the
world who taught me to appreciate the wisdom of the Asian proverb,
‘to hear is to forget, to see is to remember, but to feel
is to understand.’”
Learning through experience so as to reach the level of feeling
is now an integral part of Cobbie’s approach to education.
This principle led to the founding of the Ecumenical Interns in
Mutual Mission Program of the UCCP, which remains a valued program
of the UCCP. The years at the national offices of the UCCP were
also important for learning the responsibility of refining international
mission relationships to ensure that mission patterns between
the UCCP and its international partners would remain mutually
meaningful and relevant. Cobbie was instrumental in consolidating
and publishing the “Partnership in Mission” document
of the UCCP and remains a consultant to the UCCP’s Commission
on Church Unity and Union. As consultant, Cobbie has published
a study guide on Christian-Muslim relations in Mindanao entitled,
“The Mindanao Crisis: Just Another Chapter” and is
presently working (September 2003) on a revised expanded version
of the “Partnership in Mission” document for the UCCP.
As a mission co-worker having served in the Philippines since
1989, Cobbie has earned invitations to serve on the boards and
committees of organizations and institutions that are close to
his heart. “After a time,” he elaborates, “you
build up credibility and suddenly your ministry expands into a
constellation of initiatives from promoting indigenous music and
instruments to battling violence against women and children.”
Cobbie has been active with a local organization known as Gender
Watch Against Violence and Exploitation (GWAVE), whose efforts
have sought to end exploitation suffered by young Filipina women
and children. He is also involved with the Buglas Bamboo Institute
(BBI), which promotes the rediscovery of bamboo as an affordable,
reliable and appropriate natural material for housing, furniture,
crafts, and musical instruments. Cobbie serves on the board of
the Philippine International Forum (PIF), an organization of internationals
living in the Philippines whose aim is to support and educate
the international community about the Philippines. As local chairperson
of the organization Karapatan, he has worked to defend farmers
against mining corporations and the urban poor against unjust
treatment. “These involvements are both an opportunity to
expand the breadth of my ministry and enable me to bring my students
into situations of discipleship that cannot be learned in a classroom,”
explains Cobbie.
Cobbie came under the care of the Hudson River Presbytery in
1984 to pursue a desire to serve in ministry. He graduated from
Union Theological Seminary in New York City, earning a Master
of Divinity degree in 1987, with an emphasis on the study of world
religions. During his time as a seminary student, Cobbie spent
summers coordinating the Youth Global Village and the Volunteer
in Mission Program at Stony Point Center (a conference center
of the PCUSA))in New York. He was a seminary delegate to the former
USSR hosted by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1985, and then by
the Waldensian Church in Italy in 1986. After graduating from
seminary, Cobbie received an associate degree from the Graduate
School of Ecumenical Studies at Bossey, Switzerland. In 1988,
Cobbie joined the staff of the World Council of Churches in Geneva,
Switzerland and worked with the Preparatory Team of World Mission
and Evangelism Conference, which was held in San Antonio, Texas
in 1989.
In 1990, Cobbie was invited to the Philippines and began serving
in ministry with the United Church of Christ in the Philippines.
The UCCP, formed in 1948, is a union of several denominations
into which all mission work established by the Presbyterian Church
in the Philippines merged. To this day the Presbyterian heritage
and traditions remains a pillar of the UCCP and the PC(USA) is
a principal partner of the UCCP. “I have been deeply blessed
by the opportunities the PC(USA) has offered me to serve the Lord,”
Cobbie writes, “in all that I do, and into each new ministry
where God leads me, my presence brings to that place the presence
of the PC(USA).”
The son of Presbyterian missionaries, Jim and Louise Palm, Cobbie
lived in the Philippines for the first eighteen years of his life.
Birthday: May 20
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