World Missions & Evangelism, Inc.

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...