The Strategic Critical Elements

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

2nd 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 evangelism
4. Inside local leaders-worship in heart language
5. Coaching/mentoring/training (on-the-job training)
6. Outside leaders who model/equip/watch/leave
7. Self-supporting-not allowing money to be an issue or drive it at all

The strategic elements are principles that guide the work of the missionary and the church planting team in a cpm type project. For instance in WME's Honduras cpm project, our team is endeavoring to follow these missiological principles as we lay the foundation for what we hope God will bless to become a church planting movement there. How these principles are applied will be different in different locations and cultures. But they are all critical if a church planting movement actually takes place. Our strategies and methods will be many, but they will not violate these principles as we move forward. This is our goal as we work in this culture. Some of these principles are to guide us in the future, since our project is not far enough along to implement some parts. However if we understand these things going into the process it will help us not to make certain mistakes that are fatal to cpm.

So there are 4 Spiritual elements and 7 Strategic elements. Next time we'll look at the remainder of the 19 elements, the 8 Discipleship elements.

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