"But he had to go through Samaria." John 4:4

The world today is smaller than it has ever been.  Between modern transportation and communication technology alone, our ability to be heard is increasing daily.   In spite of these historically unmatched technologies, few can deny the delay in reaching the unreached in the name Jesus within our lifetime.  The reality of this delay suggests some sort of barrier between the church and the unreached people groups of the world.   Nevertheless, we live in a world of division, boundaries, and barriers, which make our hindrance of evangelism far from surprising.

We experience all kinds of barriers every single day.  From the people in front of us in the checkout line at the grocery store delaying us from leaving, to our pride delaying our forgiveness for the inattentive driver who proceeds to go below the speed limit in the passing lane.   Both delay and interruption are hardly avoidable in today's world.

Even Jesus, God incarnate, experienced delay and interruption.  We read about such events throughout the gospels.  Constantly, we encounter individuals interrupting Jesus' ministry for their own personal needs.   For example, when Mary and Martha summon Jesus with a hope of bringing Lazarus back to health (John 11), or when the woman who had been suffering hemorrhages for twelve years touched his cloak in one final attempt of being healed (Matthew 9:18-26).   The inconvenience of delay and interruption was an inevitable part of God's human experience through the life of Jesus.

We also encounter Jesus avoiding or overcoming such interruptions and delays. Specifically, in John 4:3-4: Jesus penetrates hostile Samaria in his route back to Galilee from Judea. Samaritans and Israelites were divided to say the least.   The heat and tension of their relationship can be compared to that of the relationship between the political left and right wings within the U.S. Because Samaria is a portion of land that splits the northern and southern portions of Israel directly down the center, Jews from the north visiting the south (and vice versa) would intentionally go around Samaria because of the heightened tension.   Jesus finds himself in this position in the beginning of John 4 as he decides to return to Galilee (north of Samaria) from Judea (south of Samaria).  Going around Samaria would delay his ministry yet out of his character he did not allow such an intentional detour to be an option as John 4:4 tells us, "But he had to go through Samaria" (emphasis added). 

So then, what is our delay in reaching the unreached world for Jesus? Better yet, identifying what the barriers are not may help in revealing our answer.  First, lack of transportation is not keeping us, thanks to God's gift of air travel and other means of modern transportation.  Second, the inability to communicate is not preventing our outreach due to ample missiological training available for our use along with communication technology such as satellite broadcast, internet and so forth.  From a western perspective, money certainly cannot be a barrier.   This fact is evident through all of our spiritual luxuries in the form of modern church buildings, thousands of Christian bookstores, Christian entertainment, etc.  So if God has blessed us with the ability to go, and be heard, what is lacking?   What is the delay?

I want to suggest that the delay is a result of attitude.  It seems as if, we have made reaching the unreached world in the name of Jesus an option.   This fact is evidence of a lack of compassion for the dying world.  Jesus' response does not indicate an attitude of option.  Jesus exhibits pure and holy compassion.   Such compassion should be manifest in the church with the taking on of the character of Christ.  If we are his body then we too should not have a choice but to reach out. Jesus did not have a choice but to enter a spiritually and physically militant zone for the sake of redeeming the lost.   The more we become slaves to righteousness, the less freedom we will have in choosing who we will evangelize. 

From every corner of the globe the reports are coming in. Only a few at first, but now more and more frequently, reinforcing one another with startling accounts of hundreds, thousands, and even ten thousands coming to faith in Christ, forming into churches and spreading their new found faith. In Southeast Asia over a four-year time span, among a population of 7 million people, the number of churches jumped from 3 to 550 and believers from 85 to 55,000. In North Africa an Arab Muslim cleric complained in a weekly Friday sermon that more then 10,000 Muslims living in the surrounding mountains had apostatized from Islam and had become Christians. A worker in Ethiopia commented, "It took us 30 years to plant four churches in this country. We've started 65 cell churches in the last nine months."

So what is a Church Planting Movement (CPM)? Is this something new or have they always been with us? What causes them? Are they all random events or do they share some common traits? A simple, concise definition of a CPM is a rapid and exponential increase in indigenous churches planting churches within a given people group or population segment. CPM's are more then merely "evangelism that results in churches." A CPM is more then a revival of pre-existing churches. The key with CPM's is that their cornerstone is churches rapidly reproducing themselves. They do not merely have incremental growth – adding a few churches every year or so. Instead they compound exponentially – two churches become four, four become sixteen, and on it goes. This kind of multiplication is only possible when new churches are being started by the churches themselves and not by professional church planters or workers.

So why is a CPM so important? Because they seem to hold the greatest potential for the largest number of lost individuals glorifying God by coming into new life in Christ and entering into communities of faith. We also find their key importance in that the vision of planting churches spreads from the message bearer into the churches themselves, so that by their own nature they are winning the lost and reproducing themselves. Message bearers are capable church planters, but will always be limited in number. Local church planters hold more promise because there is a larger pool of them available in a locale.

After surveying CPM's around the world, we found at least 10 elements present in every one of them. Any message bearer intent on seeing a Church Planting Movement should consider these 10 elements.

1.       Prayer

Prayer provides the first pillar in a coordinator's master plan for reaching his or her people group. By revealing from the beginning the source of his power in prayer, the message bearer effectively gives away the greatest resource he has at his disposal.

2.       Abundant Gospel Sowing

The law of the harvest applies well: "If you sow abundantly you will also reap abundantly. ". The converse of the law of the harvest is also true. Wherever governments or societal forces have managed to intimidate and stifle Christian witness, CPM's have been effectively eliminated.

3.       Intentional Church Planting

In every CPM someone implemented a strategy of deliberate church planting before the movement got underway. Churches don't just happen.

4.       Scriptural Authority

Even among non-literate people groups, the Bible has been the guiding source for doctrine, church polity, and life itself. It is and must be the rudder for all of church life and teaching and its authority unquestioned.

5.       Local Leadership

Message Bearers involved in CPM's often speak of the self-discipline required to mentor church planters rather then do the job of church planting themselves. This is not to say that the Message Bearer has not role in church planting. On the contrary, local church planters receive their best training by watching how the message bearer models participative Bible Studies and other ministry tools and activities.

6.       Lay Leadership

Lay leaders drive CPM’s. These are typically bi-vocational and come from the general profile of the people group being reached. As the movement unfolds, paid clergy often emerge. Dependence upon academically trained leaders means that the word will always face a leadership deficit.

7.       Cell or house Churches

The vast majority of CPM's are characterized by small, reproducible cell churches of 10-30 members meeting in homes or storefronts. Cell churches are linked to one another in some type of structured network. House churches are generally not organized under a single authority or hierarchy of authorities.

8.       Church Planting Churches

The first churches are usually planted by a message bearer. At some point, however, as the movement enters an exponential phase of reproduction, the churches themselves begin planting churches. In order for this to occur church members have to believe that reproduction is natural and that no external aids are needed to start a new church.

9.       Rapid Reproduction

Most church planters contend that rapid reproduction is vital to the movement itself. They report that when rapid reproduction slows down the CPM falters. Rapid reproduction communicates the urgency and importance of coming to faith in Christ.

10.   Healthy Churches

Church growth experts have written extensively about the marks of a church. Most agree that healthy churches should carry out the following five purposes: 1) Worship 2) Evangelistic and missionary activity 3) Education and Discipleship 4) Ministry 5) Fellowship. A number of church planters have pointed out that when these five health indicators are strong, the church can't help but grow.

* This article is used by permission from the booklet called "Church Planting Movements" by David Garrison and published by the IMB ( www.IMB.org)

Dr. David Garrison is a missionary and author of an exciting new book on Church Planting Movements entitled Church Planting Movements, how God is redeeming a lost world (Midlothian: WIGTake Resources, 2004), 364 pp. that can be purchased on-line at www.churchplantingmovements.com

Working over the past decade or more with the Urbana Student Missions Convention, I've encountered many ready-to-go-to-the-hard-places young followers of Jesus.   They leave the conference having taken interviews with groups like Pioneers or Frontiers or Overseas Missionary Fellowship, and they return home ready to take the next step towards service in China or North Africa or South Asia.

And then they share their intentions with their parents.  Some parents respond with joy; for devout Christian parents, hearing of their child's call into missions is an answer to years of prayer.   Other parents, however, are not so enthusiastic.  Some respond with direct opposition: "We didn't work hard to send you to college so that you could be a missionary."   Others choose the silent treatment, registering disapproval by ignoring the comments of their son or daughter.  Still others – often Christian parents who don't want to let go of their kids – try planting the seeds of rationalization in their college-age children: "But if you go to Med School and stay here to build a successful career, couldn't you support many others as missionaries?"

When you face this type of opposition, what do you do? Consider these principles as a foundation for your response:

First, be careful how you present your "call".  Your zeal-to-go might be seen by your Mom or Dad as just another of your wild ideas.   If you bring to your parent-child relationship a history of you being erratic or impulsive, you can expect your parents are going to respond negatively.  Perhaps you're wiser – at least at the outset – to share a sense of your life direction rather than some sense of final life decision.   If you come across to your parents as having some sort of radical "Jesus told me to go and I'm not listening to anyone else", you can expect that they might offer some opposition.