Introduction of Rev. Elmo D. Familiaran
Associate Regional Pastor and Area Minister

For the
Capital Association
Raritan Association
Watchung Association

Born and raised in the Philippines, the Reverend Elmo Familiaran comes from three generations of Filipino Baptists who were brought into the Baptist faith by American Baptist Foreign Mission Society missionaries. Both of his parents come from a long line of pastors, church leaders and pioneer church builders. At an early age he developed a passion for medicine and surgery and prepared himself for that vocation.

After earning a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (R.N.) degree in 1977 from the Riverside Medical Center in Bacolod City, Philippines, he was admitted to medical school in Manila. Two months before school opened he participated in the 1978 Baptist Youth World Congress which was held in Manila at that time. There he experienced a dramatic and life-changing call to ministry. He left for the United States in 1979 to study at the Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Chicago where he earned his Master of Divinity degree in 1983. While in Chicago, he also earned 5 quarters of Clinical Pastoral Education. After  extensive postgraduate studies in the department of religion at Temple University in Philadelphia from 1990-96, Elmo is currently a doctoral candidate at the New York Theological Seminary in New York City.

Throughout these past 26 years of pastoral, institutional and administrative ministry, Elmo has served on the General Board of ABCUSA and on numerous ecumenical, local, regional, and national denominational committees engaged in the ministry fields of cross-cultural work, denominational inclusiveness, professional standards, inter-faith relations, and community advocacy. He comes to us most recently from International Ministries, ABCUSA where he served as director for missionary recruitment from July 1997 until December 2003. His primary duties there revolved around the agency’s work of recruiting, screening, enabling, and training American Baptists for international missionary service. He gave primary oversight to the development and implementation of recruitment strategies and the “Search and Call” discernment process utilized by the agency in the selection of commissioned missionary personnel. He planned and facilitated the orientation and training program for new ABCUSA missionaries, and attended to their pastoral and spiritual care during this time of great transition as they prepared to move into cross-cultural life. He assisted the IM staff team, and worked with international and U.S. denominational partners of ABCUSA, in preparing and equipping new missionaries for deployment to their country of service.

Elmo served as a community and rural health nurse in the Philippines before moving to the United States. He was ordained in 1984 by North Shore Baptist Church in Chicago where he served a total of nine years – first as assistant pastor for the Filipino Fellowship, and later on as associate pastor for the entire congregation. Throughout that time he was part of a multicultural pastoral staff team that served 4 language groups – Japanese, Chinese, Hispanic, and English speaking. He has also served as hospital chaplain at Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove, Illinois. In 1989, he joined the Volunteer Activities/Church Relations department of the American Bible Society in New York City as the eastern region field staff until 1997. In that capacity he was responsible for the recruitment, training and support of volunteers across 17 eastern seaboard states.

Elmo returned to the Philippines in 1980, after his first year of seminary, to marry Maria Fe Magallanes. Elmo and Maria Fe live in Florence, New Jersey. They have two children: Gabriel, born in 1986, and Maria Elsie, born in 1987.