When it first appeared in 1999, Dr. Victor Choudhrie’s Greet the Church in Your House ruffled more than a few feathers. Defenders of traditional church planting and mission models found the book’s ideas iconoclastic. Dr. Choudhrie’s book has now been revised and relaunched for the e-book generation.
I first met Dr. Choudhrie in 2002, while serving as a missionary in India. Even before that, though, I seemed to hear his name from everyone who was seeing multiplying movements of new churches in India. All roads to movements seemed to pass through Dr. Choudhrie’s influence. Victor and Bindu’s passion for the unreached and deep insights into Scriptural models for the Christian life, made them natural gurus for generations of young missionaries and local church planters who wanted to see fidelity to New Testame
nt patterns and the dynamism that accompanied it in their own ministries. The Choudhries did not disappoint.
Despite whatever grumblings accompanied Dr. Choudhrie’s Greet the Church in Your House many readers also found his ideas strangely familiar. Weren’t these the same images of church that emerged from the pages of the New Testament? Wasn’t this the vibrant life of faith promised by Christ and His apostles?
Though exegetical in nature, Choudhrie’s writings have never been limited to biblical exegesis. Dr. Choudhrie is also a pioneer church planter and mentor of church-planting movements. This on-the-ground experience keeps his ideas fresh and relevant to missionaries and church planters who need real-life applications to the biblical lessons they’ve learned all their life.
Choudhrie describes his training as a medical school model. Just as medical students are rigorously steeped in the doctrines of their profession, so too must today’s church planter master the faith handed down to the saints once for all. What makes Choudhrie’s training special, though, is its interpersonal mentoring in real life situations. Just as no medical student’s training is complete without practical skill development and mentoring by seasoned elders, so too with CPM practitioners.
It is small wonder that Dr. Choudhrie’s writings have inspired a new generation of pioneer missionaries and church planters to press on to the fulfillment of our Lord’s Great Commission.
You can look inside Victor Choudhrie’s book and/or buy it online in the Kindle store by clicking here.
