World Missions & Evangelism, Inc.

I just returned from Honduras where David and Paul Watson encouraged and taught our church planting team. It was a highlight of the whole project this far. Our team of men and women and our missionaries were instructed and encouraged. I am very excited about what is happening and what is going to happen in 2009. The team has worked incredibly hard since last May. So far, we have drilled 5 wells and distributed needed vitamins for children and conducted inductive Bible studies in at least 36 villages or communities. This is in the 5 westernmost states of Honduras. The seed is being sown for a church planting movement that will transform the nation of Honduras. Now it is time for a break at this Christmastime. The team will be traveling to their homes in Eastern Honduras for family time, Keith and Juanita Travis will be traveling to south Mexico to visit her family, Dick and Pat Crowder are driving to the US, and Randy and Linda Travis, our strategy coordinators, will be flying h...

Here's news from the Honduras Church Planting Movement project. December 9 through 11 the team will get a special training session with David Watson. Bro Watson will be traveling to our base with his son, Paul, and with myself, David Parish. Our team really looks forward to this special time. Please keep it in prayer. The project is moving forward in a good way. Several have received Christ as Lord, or made new commitments to Him. We have conducted inductive Bible studies in 36 villages or communities. Several water wells have been dug as a blessing to families. Vitamins have been distributed to needy families, especially for children. We believe that the foundation for a church planting movement is being laid. Keep checking the blog for more info, and I will report again when I get back from Honduras.

The 3rd category (in my opinion) of critical elements in church planting movements could be called the Discipleship elements. Previous blogs have dealt with Spiritual elements (principles related to God's power) and Strategic elements (principles related to missionary practices). This category relates to principles concerning the discipling of people. This is in direct obedience to the Great Commission's command to "make disciples". Here is the list: 1. Household conversions, not just individual conversions 2. Making disciples, not converts 3. Obedience to the Word, not doctrine 4. Community of believers--forming believers into minimum practice groups that will become churches 5. Reaching out--missions 6. Reproducing--disciples/churches/groups--rapid incorporation of new believers that will reach out to all segments of society 7. Persecution--bold, fearless faith--suffering 8. Redeeming the local culture Obviously this division of the elements into these ...

We have talked about the Spiritual Critical elements of church planting movements in previous posts. We are using the list of critical elements for cpm as given in the appendix of Bob Roberts' book "The Multiplying Church" which he credits to our friend David Watson. I am reorganizing these elements into 3 categories to help the reader grasp the concepts easier. Previous articles have dealt with what I am calling Spiritual elements and include: 1. Passionate, extraordinary prayer 2. Authority of Scripture that leads to obedience 3. Authority of the Holy Spirit 4. Miracles 2 nd I want to list the ones that I would call the Strategic elements of cpm . These critical elements relate to the strategy that church planters and missionaries are using in church planting movement projects. These are practical, missiological concepts. Here is the list: 1. Intentional church planting 2. Local leadership-keeping foreigners out of the spotlight 3. Appropriate, abundant evangel...

To sum up the Spiritual Critical Elements of Church Planting Movements, let me focus on 2 scriptures. I call this the 1:8 Factor because it is based on 2 scriptures: Joshua 1:8 and Acts 1:8. Let's look at them from the NIV . Joshua 1:8-"Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful." Acts 1:8-"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." What is really needed spiritually to see a church planting movement? Many things are tools, but 2 absolutely necessary things to begin are the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. Of the 4 spiritual elements that we have discussed so far, this kind of sums it up. Prayer accesses the Word and the Spirit. Miracles flow from the Word and the Spirit. Authority resides in the Wor...

In the list of critical elements, number 6 is "Miracles". I must admit, I was surprised to find this as a critical element. Not because I doubted that miracles happen in church planting movements. Quite the contrary, from the stories I have heard, especially from India and West Africa, I knew that miracles are a regular occurrence in cpms . In fact, it was miracle stories that first gripped me to begin the change in our church planting paradigm 3 years ago. I was taking the Perspectives class, from the U. S. Center for World Missions, as an intensive class in June of 2005. (Incidentally, if you have never taken the Perspectives course, please go to Perspectives.org and find a class near you. It will be the most important next step in your preparation for mission ministry). On the 4 th day of the class (I think) the teacher was deeply involved in cpm ministry in West Africa and the miracle stories he told, including of resurrections from the dead, got my attention as did th...

First, a quick update on the Honduras team. The last couple of weeks have been very difficult because of weather in Honduras. Rain has come in massive amounts all across the country. Many homes have been evacuated and some people have died in the flooding. This is a not unfrequent problem in Honduras, because of the effect of the mountains and valleys geographically. Our team is safe, but has not been able to travel to our village areas because of the weather. Instead they are working on well drilling until travel becomes better. Please pray for the team for safety and success in the well drilling and for a quick return to the villages for inductive Bible studies in early November. Now, let's talk about the rain of the Holy Spirit. In fact let me introduce another critical element of church planting movements. Using the list from Bob Robert's book, as given in the first article for September on this blog, I am referring to the 14th critical element. It is, "The Au...

The 2nd critical element of a church planting movement is The Authority of Scripture that leads to Obedience. Remember that these are "critical elements". That means that as far as we know, no CPM is occurring that does not evidence all of these characteristics. These are not "steps" in a plan, nor should they be understood as "strategies". The critical elements are basically "descriptions" of what we are finding where God is at work multiplying His church in a variety of cultures worldwide. These CPMs are (to use David Garrison's definition) "rapid and multiplicative increase of indigenous churches planting churches within a given people group or population segment." When God began to bless His work with this kind of multiplication of churches in the 1990s, the missionary leaders tried to understand what was happening and began describing what was occurring. These descriptions are the critical elements. So please understand that th...

Let's get back to a discussion of the critical elements of a church planting movement. In August's 2 nd post and in September's 1st post, we began discussing this subject. A critical element of a church planting movement is a characteristic that seems to be present in every single cpm that is occurring in the world today. These were first identified in the late 1990s and continue to the present day. The latest most complete list in print is in the 1st appendix to Bob Roberts new book, "The Multiplying Church". The complete list was given in the 1st blog posting for September. Although, new critical elements have continually been identified since the late 90s, the 1st element has almost always been the same: Passionate, Extraordinary Prayer. Without exception, prayer has been critical in every cpm that we know of worldwide. This prayer has been practiced on many different levels. The leaders of the cpm are people who prioritize prayer. The movements ha...

Readers, here is an additional report concerning the Honduras church planting movement project. The previous blog updated the progress through the end of August. Here is the report for September and the advance plans for the coming weeks. In the last report, we told you that the team has had 75 inductive Bible studies. In the first 3 weeks of September, they have conducted an additional 118 inductive Bible studies for a total since July 23 of 193 inductive Bible studies. These studies have occurred in 36 villages or communities and have been with as few as 1 person or as many as 20 persons. The project has seen its first 2 conversions during the first 3 weeks of September and the team collectively travelled around 25,000 kilometers during those 3 weeks. Praise God for the beginning of fruit for the Kingdom of God. Please pray for more to become obedient disciples of Jesus Christ and for groups of disciples to be formed in all of these villages and communities. The team will now ...

On July 23, the Honduran church planting team began to deploy into the villages of Western Honduras. Here is a report on progress in the first month and a half. Within days, by entering the villages 2 by 2 and with a view to help communities, the team made numerous contacts of friendship. Looking for men and women of peace, that is people who would have an open heart to form a relationship of friendship, the team quickly established relationships with 22 different individuals or families. Within the first couple of weeks, 5 inductive Bible studies were held in homes. The teams engaged in a number of community building work including: Entering villages as vendors...selling a variety of goods. Giving children's vitamins to needy village children. Assessing a community's need for water and if needed offering well drilling. Through these kinds of access ministries, relationships have been built with a number of people in 5 states. Between July 23 and August 31 the team: 1. Cond...

In 1999, several missionaries who were seeing rapid multiplication of churches in their ministries, sat down together and began to compare notes on what God was doing. These rapid multiplying movements were named "church planting movements" and that title still applies. In the last blog posting, I gave some key definitions of church planting movements and the basic understanding in that post is the foundation of this article, so please read it before you read this one. At any rate, when those missionaries sat together, they identified elements that were common to the movements that they were involved with. They identified 10 characteristics that were in every cpm and 10 that were present in most cpms. This was published in the booklet, "Church Planting Movements" by David Garrison and later in a larger book by the same author with the same title (I highly recommend that you obtain these and read them). Later when I took cpm training with David Watson, he shared...

In this article I want to begin to explain some key concepts about "Church Planting Movements." I hope to both give key information and to help you understand my passion for CPM . There are two ways of looking at the "mission" of Christ. One is to see it as a general goal (the Great Commission) with a number of related, but separate, tasks that different people engage in and that somehow contribute to fulfilling the task. Some examples might be: Preaching Training leaders Building church buildings Christian schools Medical missions Food distribution Church planting Crusades Bible colleges In this view, the list of activities are all separate and equal activities which people would engage in based on gifts, interest or need. The other way would be to see a more specific goal, such as church planting or the development of church planting movements as the target and to see the other types of ministries as elements of that goal. This example would look more like a circ...

For Several weeks, since we started this blog, I have been giving a lot of "Big Picture" background on Church Planting Movements and how World Missions and Evangelism has gotten involved. Also, I have spent time on Big Goals in terms of finishing the task worldwide. Now, I want to focus on our specific project: a pilot C.P.M. project in Honduras, Central America. W.M.E.'s strategy coordinator is Randy Travis, a veteran missionary. Along with his wife, Linda, son, Keith, and daughter-in-law, Juanita, he is overseeing this project. This project has a goal of planting one hundred churches that will multiply into thousands and goes by the initials H.C.P.M.. The pictures and videos on this blog are from this project. Today, August 1, 2008, it has been twenty-four months since the inception of the H.C.P.M. project. Here is a timeline of what has been done to launch this project. September 2006: David Parish and Randy Travis take intensive training in C.P.M. principles from Davi...

"And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." -Matthew 24:14 Let me introduce a concept called "Project 2030." This is a time frame goal. The goal is to fulfil the basic requirement of Matthew 24:14 by the year 2030. Why 2030? There is a broad consensus that the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ took place in 30 AD. Also, of course, this was the year when He spoke the Great Commission, ascended to heaven and the Church was born at Pentecost. Thus, completing the task by 2030 would be finishing at exactly 2000 years following the commission and the giving of the Holy Spirit. Can it be done? The answer is: YES! With the work of the Holy Spirit. Is there a strategy to initiate? I suggest a UPG / CPM strategy. Focusing on Unreached People Groups and utilizing strategies that are birthing Church Planting Movements can be the strategy that achieves the goal. The Powe...

In my last blog I talked about the concept of winning the world in 1 generation. By suggesting such a concept, I am not downplaying the extent of the challenge. But church planting movement strategy is one of multiplication not addition, and this explains how it can be done. To begin with, let's do a simple exercise that is familiar to lots of people in some form. Keeping it simple (it usually starts with a penny and extends for 30 days) let me ask you whether you would rather have me give you 100 dollars per day for 21 days, or give you 1 dollar the first day and double it every day after for 21 days. If you choose the 100 per day option, in 21 days you will have 2100 dollars. If you choose the 1 dollar doubled option, in 21 days you will have more than 1 million dollars. That is addition versus multiplication. Let's make it about souls. If you are a world class personal evangelist and win a soul by witnessing every day for the next 10 years, at the end of that time y...

When I received the CPM training with David Watson, one of the most fascinating sessions was a presentation on how the Great Commission could be completed in one generation. Taking its lead from Matthew 24:14 and Matthew 24:34 the concept was that the task could be completed in one generation. In fact, the scripture may be predicting that that is precisely how it will be done. Such a concept seems far fetched to someone who is familiar with the level of task that remains. There are about 9600 Unreached People Groups by some of the latest calculations of experts. There are over 4 billion non-christian people. The sheer magnitude of the remaining task and the track record of the last 2000 years would suggest to many that a gradual multi generational approach is needed. But as we consider the problem, we see that as the earth's population is continuing to explode exponentially, the completion of the task must increase in speed that exceeds the population growth. Could it be done in on...

David Garrison's pamphlet "Church Planting Movements" had moved me and my agency and partners into a 7 year program of training church planters and deploying them in unreached areas. By 2008 we have planted over 200 churches. But we were not seeing the "Movement" aspect of the program. In June 2005 I took the Perspectives course and was introduced to one of the teachers who was personally acquainted with David Watson who had launched the CPM among a people group in India. This was described in Garrison's book. The CPM had been launched during 1991-1994, and by 2007 had resulted in nearly 3 million new believers and probably 40,000 churches. The perspectives teacher also told our class about a new CPM in west Africa where between February 2005 and January 2008 about 500 churches have been planted and 30,000 new believers have emerged, approximately 21,000 from Muslim backgrounds. WOW! Through this connection, I was enabled to spend a week being trained in C...

In my last post, I described my journey to receiving a vision for church planting internationally. After years of local church ministry, I was on my first short term mission trip in Honduras, when the burden for church planting crystallized in my life. When I returned from that trip, I got in contact with one of our mission agency's affiliated missionaries. His name is Randy Travis and he had been a part of WME since 1988. He had planted four churches in Honduras by that time and was also working in southern Mexico. Randy and I spent some time together while he was doing some itineration in May of 1994. From that time on, he and I became strategists together to understand and plan the most effective methods of church planting that we could find. This collaboration ultimately came to total fruition in September 2006, but that is a story for a little later. Meanwhile, Randy shared his research with me and over the next few years he helped educate me on cutting edge missiological insi...

To get started, I want to tell about my journey into involvement with church planting movements. Hopefully this will let my readers understand where I am coming from as well as help them discover the concepts of cpm as I did.I was born in the early 1960s to a committed christian couple. My parents were pastors of an evangelical church and I accepted the Lord as my personal savior at a very early age. From the beginning of my christian walk, I was very committed to the Lord and wanted to serve Him. While still a young person, I sensed a call to ministry and even began to preach whenever I would have an opportunity while I was still a teenager.In order to pursue my call to ministry, I went to Lee College in Cleveland, Tennessee, a christian liberal arts college. There I received great theological training and met my wife, Patty. We married during my senior year there.Although I loved the Lord and was enthusiastic about ministry, I really did not have a burden or vision for world missions...

Hello. My name is David Parish. Welcome to my blogspot about Church Planting Movements. In this blogspot, I will be sharing my thoughts and experiences concerning CPM. Let me begin by telling you a little about who I am. I am a "40 something" pastor of a missions-minded church. I also work with a missions agency and the mission program of a fellowship of churches. When I was a bible college student, over 20 years ago, God called me to be in missions. Finally 13 years ago, I launched out on my first short-term mission trip. It was on that mission trip to the Central American country of Honduras that a vision to help the kingdom of God advance through church planting gripped me. From that day, I started a journey that I am still on. We have planted over 200 churches in the last 7 years and our goals for the next several years is to plant thousands of churches world-wide. I will be posting here weekly (or as much as possible) about Church Planting Movements and the work that I ...