In February 2009 a meeting was held of several urban church planting practitioners from nine urban centers ranging in population from three million to twenty-five million. The selection criterion for these cities was that more than one hundred churches had been planted to at least the third generation. The goal was to learn how these
Church planting is messy, because people are messy. Four nights of every week are spent training four different groups of church planters. All are in various stages with their newly forming house church groups. Anyone engaged in church planting will quickly find they are up against some messy situations. We usually approach the tough messy
Outside the office I once occupied in the International Mission Board’s headquarters in Richmond, Virginia hung a beautiful posterized photograph of a group of Maasai warriors clustered beneath an acacia tree on the savannahs of East Africa. It was not until I visited the Maasai plains in 1999 that I returned to my office to
Early in my missionary career, I investigated an emerging Church Planting Movement in West Africa. By the time I was able to interview one of the missionaries at the heart of the movement, the movement itself had already collapsed. “What happened?” I asked.
Church Planting Movements are fundamentally disciple-making movements. Discipleship here is defined as growing in Christlikeness over time. While discipleship begins immediately at conversion, and sometimes even before conversion, it continues for a lifetime: “Beloved, now we are the children of God, and it doth not yet appear what shall be, but we know that when
One of the most dynamic Church Planting Movements in the world today has taken place under the watchful eye of its overseer, Dr. Victor Choudhrie. Dr. Choudhrie is a retired septuagenarian oncologist from Madhya Pradesh, India. In an interview with Dr. Victor Choudhrie conducted in 2003, I tried to arrive at the average size of
Christians know the answer to this question. The good news is eternal salvation in Jesus Christ. But lost people don’t always get it. Many, perhaps most, of them don’t even understand the question. If they did they would jump at the simple offer of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. A good place
The contrast could not have been more vivid. Training a team of mission leaders several years ago in Europe, one of them made an astute observation. “David,” he said, “it’s 11 a.m. I bet if we These missionaries had no direct connection with the lost…. telephoned everyone of our missionaries right now, we would find
In Habakkuk 1:5, God said to his people: “Look to the nations, watch and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your day that you would not believe even if you were told.” More than 2,000 years ago, God was already instructing us to look to the nations – the peoples
I just returned last month from a very special meeting in Singapore. Assembled in a high-rise office building in the heart of Singapore’s ultra-modern financial district were 30-plus trainers, missionaries, and Church Planting Movement catalysts from all around the world. Participants arrived from Canada, South Africa, China, India, America, Switzerland, Thailand, Indonesia, Peru, New Zealand,
