Bo Sanchez: An Inspirational ‘Inspirational Speaker’

Bro. Bo Sanchez

Bro. Bo Sanchez with the author

Bo Sanchez hasn’t had the easiest life, though you wouldn’t know that by looking at him. His childhood was plagued on two occasions by heinous abuse, but he kept moving forward. His prayer groups grew in numbers exponentially, then the number of attendees stagnated at 2000, but he kept moving forward.

Moving forward has always been a major theme of Bo’s life, which is where his latest prayer group, affectionately known as ‘feast’, got its name. Spreading the Word and the love of God, was also a major theme of Bo’s life even from the age of thirteen, resulting in long work hours, ranging up to 16 hours a day. However, Bo believes that all these long hours over a span of 30 years have been naught but a privilege and honour. These long hours, as well as a zeal for God, allowed Bo to grow his follower base to over 35 000 people who have attended his feasts, the latest being the Kerygma Grand Feast.

The ‘Kerygma Grand Feast’ drew in people of all shapes, sizes, and age. What these people all had in common, however, was a need to spread the Word of God, as well as His love, which Bo cited as the true reason for the Church.

The Feast began with an energetic performance by a band of youths; asking the crowd to stand and wave little paper flags that had been provided. The entire crowd followed accordingly, with little to no people left sitting or not cheering.

After the musical number was through, the Archbishop Michael Miller himself took to the stage, giving a rousing speech on evangelization, and the lay people’s call to spread the Word, the theme being to ‘always be proposing, never imposing.’

Once his speech was concluded, Archbishop Michael Miller left the stage, and, after a brief interlude, the whole Church went dark, with a number of youths entering the stage to perform a skit. The skit itself was well choreographed, and relayed a message that; no matter how the rest of the world may treat the individual, if one has faith, they will be saved.

The skit ended after a few minutes, only to be replaced by a short video detailing the struggles of four exceptional people. Each of them went through a major struggle in life, from drug abuse, to physical disabilities that kept them from making their dreams manifest. However, they could move forward from their struggle through faith in Christ.

At long last, Brother Bo took the stage, and began his performance with a novena and a message to the crowd: Your mess is a message from God, here meaning that, whatever one’s struggles in life are, God is working to use this experience to make that person a better person. These struggles, as Bo describes, can make someone feel stuck in life, or going in circles: relating this issue to the 40-year long journey of the Israelites to the Promised Land, which, in reality should have taken only eleven days (which Bo used to comedic effect). After the introductions, Bo went on to elaborate on why being stuck happens, how God is working on that, as well as how problems never change, but the person does.

In all, the Kerygma Grand Feast was a surprisingly deep look at how people develop from their problems in life: in moving forward, and every Feast, Grand or not, is a delightful venture that one would be sorry to miss.