REV. DR. SADIRI JOY TIRA
March 23, 1956 – September 15, 2026

Rev. Dr. Sadiri Joy Tira was born on March 23, 1956, in General Santos, Philippines, to Victorino and Esther Tira. He was the fifth of six children, the second of three boys, and grew up in Tupi, South Cotabato. By family accounts, he was mischievous and regularly found himself in trouble, such as when he lit firecrackers behind the church podium on Christmas Eve, costing his father his role as chairman of the board.

Joy’s life began with serious illness. He was born with a serious liver condition and was expected to live only days, so his parents surrendered and dedicated him to God. It was the first of many times his family would see his life extended.

His given name was Sadiri, which his friends shortened to “Sad.” His mother rejected it: her son was not Sad; he was Joy. The nickname remained with him for the rest of his life.

Joy’s interest in the wider world began early. As a teenager, he attended the 13th World Scout Jamboree in Japan in 1971. In adulthood, he would travel extensively and later encourage his own children to “swim,” reminding them that the world was much bigger than their own pond. He often sent postcards home—not only to Lorajoy and Tony, but
also to other children in the church—encouraging them to see the world God had made.

EARLY LIFE AND CALLING

Joy studied Marine Engineering at FEATI University in Manila and became involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He also served in the youth leadership of the Church of Christ in San Paolo, Manila, where Joy was vice-president and a nursing student named Lulu was secretary.

That was how Joy and Lulu met. In 1973, they attended the first Asian Student Missionary Convention in Baguio City. When Rev. John Stott called students to offer themselves for missionary service, Joy and Lulu both responded. Their relationship became increasingly joined to a calling they believed they shared.

After completing his Marine Engineering studies, Joy joined Operation Mobilization (OM) aboard the MV Logos as one of its youngest crew members. Lulu remained in the Philippines for a time, teaching nursing at Far Eastern University and serving with Nurses Christian Fellowship.

During Joy’s early service with OM, his mother, Esther, became seriously ill. Upon receiving the news, Joy returned from Germany carrying flowers for her, but she passed away before he reached home. Before he had left for overseas, Esther had told him that if they did not see one another again, they would meet at “suppertime in heaven.”

Joy then faced a significant decision. He had a ticket to return to OM, while Caltex Philippines offered him the possibility of a career aboard a commercial ship. Lulu was also considering moving to the United States to work as a nurse.

Through prayer and conversations with family and their pastor, Joy and Lulu chose a shared life of Christian service. They cashed Joy’s return ticket to Germany to help pay for their simple wedding and married on May 5, 1977.

Joy then returned to university and left with a degree in industrial engineering. About two years later, they boarded the MV Logos together with their infant daughter, Lorajoy. Joy served as an engineer and Lulu as a nurse, while both participated in the ship’s ministries. They served without salaries and lived and worked alongside Christians from 21 nations and many Christian traditions.

Their experience aboard Logos convinced them of their need for more advanced theological training. They considered opportunities in New Zealand and Canada. Canadian Bible College and Canadian Theological Seminary in Regina, Saskatchewan, could receive them immediately. They chose the Canadian winter. In September 1981, Joy, Lulu and Lorajoy arrived in Canada.

They landed with very little. At the Calgary airport, the enormity of what they were attempting briefly overwhelmed Joy. Looking at the roughly one thousand dollars they had for tuition, rent, food and everything else, he threw the money down in frustration. Lulu picked up the cash and reminded him that it was enough for tomorrow. God could take care of the days after that.

Their years in Regina required that kind of trust. Friends and members of the Christian community provided furniture, food, meals and tuition assistance. Joy and Lulu kept a notebook recording what they received, from milk and eggs to school fees. Their son, Tony, was born in Regina while Joy was in seminary.

Joy completed a Master of Missiology at Canadian Theological Seminary. His theological education would eventually include a Master of Theological Studies from Edmonton Baptist Seminary, later Taylor Seminary; a Doctor of Ministry from Reformed Theological Seminary; and a Doctor of Missiology from Western Seminary.

Edmonton and First Filipino Alliance Church Joy’s studies brought the family to Millbourne Alliance Church in Edmonton, where Rev. Vergil Schmidt became an important pastoral mentor.

Joy built relationships with Filipinos by going where people already gathered. He visited basketball courts, played alongside young Filipino men, invited them for coffee and welcomed them into Bible study. Several came to faith and were baptized.

After his internship, Millbourne invited Joy to continue developing the Filipino work. The Filipino Alliance Christian Fellowship grew from that community and eventually became First Filipino Alliance Church (FFAC), formally organized in 1989, with Joy as its founding pastor.

FFAC became a place where young Filipino adults and families adjusting to life in Canada found friendship, belonging and practical help. Joy and Lulu opened their home, helped newcomers navigate unfamiliar systems, fed people and prayed with them.

Prayer was central to their life together. Joy and Lulu often gathered in the church sanctuary with their young children, Lorajoy and Tony, to pray and seek the Lord. Much of it happened privately, but their children and congregation saw it modelled. Lulu, in particular, was a woman of prayer.

That posture became especially visible when the young congregation sought to purchase the former St. Stephen’s United Church building. The asking price was approximately one million dollars, while their congregation could only offer roughly half that amount. They prayed, including through a 24-hour prayer gathering.

Many in the congregation were contract workers, domestic workers, students and young families. They gave what they could; some even offered the jewelry they were wearing, including wedding and graduation rings.

Despite higher competing bids, the United Church leaders accepted the Filipino congregation’s lower offer after witnessing their posture of prayer and their desire to continue using the property for God’s purposes. Enough was raised for the down payment, the rings were returned to their owners, and the mortgage was eventually paid in full.

Many young people connected with FFAC later attended seminary. Some became pastors and church planters who helped establish Filipino Alliance congregations elsewhere in Canada. Others served Christ in other ways locally and globally.

Joy often used the word “glocal” before it became more common around the turn of the millennium. For him, local and global mission belonged together. Edmonton could be a place where people were welcomed and formed, then served Christ wherever God placed them.

FFAC also contributed to the development of the Conference of Filipino Alliance Ministries (CFAM), initially formed to catalyze the missional engagement of Filipino Alliance churches.

After his pastoral ministry at FFAC, Joy provided missions consulting for the national office of The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada. His work increasingly moved from leading one local congregation toward helping churches and leaders think about mission across Canada and beyond.

FROM FILIPINO DIASPORA TO GLOBAL DIASPORA MISSION

Joy increasingly understood the global movement of Filipinos through a missional lens. The Philippines was—and remains—unusual in Asia as a predominantly Christian country, although evangelical Christians represented only a minority of the population. As Filipinos migrated for work, they entered communities where Christian witness was
limited.

Nurses entered hospitals. Caregivers and domestic workers entered homes. Engineers entered workplaces. Seafarers crossed international ports.

Joy did not see these Christians merely according to their occupations. They were already present in relationships and places where they could bear witness to the love of God.

A pivotal moment came through an international Christian leadership gathering in Jordan, where Joy encountered stories of Filipinos living overseas who were already doing exactly that.

In the late 1990s, he gathered Filipino Christian leaders from Oman, Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar for a consultation in Cyprus. There, the Filipino International Network (FIN) was conceived, with Joy serving as its chairman.

In 1998, he presented Scattered With a Divine Purpose: A Theological & Missiological Perspective on the Filipino Diaspora at an Asia Pacific Alliance conference in Taipei, Taiwan.

Over time, Joy recognized similar patterns among other migrating peoples. In an era of globalisation and mass migration, the movement of people was also reshaping the geography of Christian mission.

In 2004, Joy co-edited Scattered: The Filipino Global Presence with Luis Pantoja Jr. and Enoch Wan. Dr. Enoch Wan became an important mentor, helping Joy articulate what he had been observing among Filipinos on the move within the developing framework of diaspora missiology. Joy’s experience had given him the people, stories and questions; his work with Wan helped him develop the missiological language for what he was seeing.

In 2006, Taylor Seminary in Edmonton hosted a Global Diaspora Missiology Consultation, bringing scholars and practitioners together around the emerging field. Joy completed his Doctor of Missiology at Western Seminary in 2008, with research focused on Filipino Kingdom workers and diaspora missiology.

Joy did not claim that diaspora mission itself was new. Christians on the move had participated in God’s mission long before the terminology existed. His contribution was to help Christians recognise what was already happening, develop language for it, connect scholars and practitioners, and participate more intentionally.

Joy served as Lausanne’s first Senior Associate/Catalyst for Diasporas from 2007 to 2019, helping diaspora become formally recognized as an area of global mission. Around the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town in 2010, he was among the principal leaders who formed the Global Diaspora Network (GDN) and served as its founding chairperson from 2010 to 2015.

His ability to connect people became one of his most significant forms of leadership. He moved naturally among pastors, missionaries, scholars, denominational leaders, migrants and students, often bringing together people who needed to know one another.

FAMILY, FAITH AND THE MAN BEHIND THE WORK

Behind the public ministry was a more complicated and very human man. Joy was demanding, strong-willed, and could take up a lot of space. He wanted to be understood and was rarely afraid of an uncomfortable conversation. He also loved to joke, sometimes quoting Clint Eastwood—“make my day”—or singing, “Please release me, let me go.”

He often played devil’s advocate, especially with his children. He pushed them to explain what they believed, consider another perspective, and see the person behind the position. When Tony expressed a political opinion as a high school student, Joy challenged him that having an opinion was easy; meaningful change required
trusted authority. When Lorajoy sought graduate studies in Christian theology, he strongly encouraged her to apply to a grad school “outside our tradition in order to listen to the voices of brothers and sisters across history and from around the globe.”

He wanted Lorajoy and Tony to be lifelong learners—not just students. Education mattered, but learning also meant reading, travelling, listening to people, and being willing to reconsider what you thought you knew.

He also taught them that wanting or intending to do something was not the same as doing it, especially when it came to helping others. He called it “laway lang”—Tagalog for “it’s just saliva.” He said that “talk is cheap.” He taught them that it is easy to talk about caring, giving, or making a difference; what matters is actually doing
something.

He tried to live this way. Joy often said: “Earn as much as you can, save as much as you can, and give as much as you can.” He and Lulu opened their home and shared what they had. They housed newcomers and people in need, fed people, helped them settle in Canada, supported people preparing for examinations, made introductions and connected people to opportunities.

Joy fiercely advocated for people, especially those easily overlooked. His ambition was not only for himself; he deeply wanted others to flourish. He understood that people were broken and complicated, himself included, but tried to see them for who they were through the grace of God. He taught his children that God understood their human
experiences and read their tears.

Lulu shared both the calling and its cost. From their youth-group days in Manila through OM, immigration, church planting, global ministry, raising a family, and eventually years of illness and caregiving, they prayed and discerned major decisions together, travelled and taught together, welcomed people together, and served together.

Their children knew the person behind “Dr. Tira”: a father who could work too much, talk too long, and push too hard, but who wanted them to learn, think, travel, love God and genuinely care for people.

His grandchildren—Santiago, Isabel, Sophie and Bishop—became the central figures of the later years of his life.

THROUGH THE VALLEY

On July 3, 2020, Joy suffered a major hemorrhagic stroke. His family was called to the hospital and prepared for the possibility that he might not survive. He did, but the stroke left him with permanent paralysis in his left arm and dramatically changed his daily life.

For a man who had spent much of his life looking out airplane windows on his way somewhere in the world, the stroke “clipped his wings” and grounded him. His window to the world increasingly became the one in his room at his seniors’ residence. Where he had once sent postcards home from his travels, he now frequently sent family and friends pictures of the trees outside his bedroom window.

For the final sixteen months of his life, Joy was repeatedly in and out of hospital with an unresolved pancreatic infection and other complications. Periods at home were often interrupted by lengthy hospital stays.

In April 2026, his family was again called to say, “goodbye.” Joy became unresponsive, his vital signs deteriorated dramatically, his organs began failing, and his care order was changed to “comfort measures.” His family was told he might have only hours to live, so
his family gathered around him, prayed, and released him to God.

Hours later, Joy unexpectedly woke. His condition stabilized and treatment resumed. His family understood it as yet another time God had extended his life.

There was still great uncertainty about how much time remained. His family decided that if people were going to gather to celebrate his life (i.e.,at his life’s end), they wanted him there! On April 25, 2026, family, friends, and ministry partners gathered for his Living Celebration of Life—to worship, give thanks to God, and share testimony to His faithfulness while Joy could participate.

When he was eventually discharged, before leaving the hospital, he offered to pray for every doctor and nurse on his care team, one at a time.

In the final week of his life, Joy was hospitalised again, and once more his family was invited to say “goodbye.”

At 10:20 p.m. on September 15, 2026, Joy died peacefully, with his wife, Lulu, and his brother-in-law, Leani, beside him. He was 70 years old.

His family had been called to say goodbye more than once, and each time his life was extended, they received the additional days, months, and years as a gift. They are thankful for every extension of his life and every opportunity they were given to be together.

Joy is survived by his wife and lifelong partner, Lulu; his daughter, Lorajoy, and her husband, Dennis; his son, Tony, and his wife, Zen; and his grandchildren, Santiago, Isabel, Sophie and Bishop.

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Our family remembers a man who lived a big life and wanted others to see a bigger world too.

Through the heights of his life and through the valley, we saw the faithfulness of God.
Ultimately, that is the story we want to tell. Not how far Joy has travelled, who he knew, or what he accomplished, but that Jesus knew him, called him, walked with him through it all, and now welcomes him home.

We give thanks for Joy’s life, and even more, we give thanks to God who gave it.