by Stan Park_s_

As we look around the world today, most dynamic Church Planting Movements (CPMs) begin in areas with poverty, crises, turmoil, persecution and few Christians. In contrast, in areas with peace, wealth, protection and many Christians, churches are often weak and in decline.

Why?

Crisis forces us to look to God. A lack of resources usually forces us to rely on God’s power rather than our programs. The presence of only a few Christians means that church tradition is not as powerful. This makes it more likely that the Bible will become the main source of our strategy and principles.

What can existing churches learn from these new movements of God? We can (and should) learn many lessons; some of the most important of them relate to leadership. In barren areas, we have to look for laborers in the harvest, as new believers rise up to lead the way in reaching their own unreached people groups.

In many ways, a CPM is actually a movement of multiplying and developing church leaders. What makes the difference between merely planting churches and seeing sustained movements of churches? Usually leadership development. No matter how many churches are planted, unless the cultural insiders become leaders, the churches will remain foreign. They will either reproduce slowly or stop growing when the initial leader(s) reach their limit.

Victor John is a leader of a massive CPM among the 100 million+ Bhojpuri speakers of North India, formerly known as the “graveyard of modern missions.” John points out that although the church has existed in India for almost 2000 years, dating to the Apostle Thomas, 91% of Indians still do not have access to the gospel! He believes this is mainly due to a lack of developing leaders.

John states that beginning in the 4th century, the early Eastern Church imported leaders from the East and used the Syriac language in worship which limited those who could lead to only Syriac speakers. The Catholics in the 16th century used the local language but would never have thought of having local leaders. Beginning in the 18th century, Protestants appointed local leaders but the training methods remained Western, and local leaders could not reproduce them. “The replacement of indigenous leaders was done with a major conflict of interest. No natives, nationals, or local-workers could ever be called leaders—this title was reserved for the whites only. These mission organizations focused on the replacement of existing leadership and not on movement or growth.”

All too often in churches today—whether on the mission field or at home—we focus on replacing existing leadership to keep the institution going, rather than focusing on midwifing God’s birth of new disciples and churches. Despite overwhelming evidence that new churches are far more effective in reaching lost people, many churches simply seek to grow larger instead of also starting new churches. Seminaries continue this pattern by reinforcing a mindset of managing existing churches instead of putting equal or greater emphasis on training students to start new churches. We choose to invest the vast majority of our time and resources in our own comfort, to the neglect of those headed for an eternity in hell. (Christians make up 33% of the world’s population, but receive 53% of the world’s annual income and spend 98% of it on themselves.)

As we look at modern CPMs, we can discern some clear principles for multiplying and developing leaders. Developing leaders starts at the beginning of ministry. The patterns used in evangelism, discipleship, and forming churches are developing leaders. These patterns set the stage for ongoing leadership development.

Vision: God-Sized

CPM catalysts start with believing that an entire unreached people group (UPG), city, region, and nation can and will be reached. Instead of asking: “What can I do?” they ask: “What must be done to see a movement started?” This keeps their focus and the focus of the new believers squarely on God. It forces them to rely on God to see the impossible happen. These initial outsiders play a crucial role in casting vision to possible partners who will join in the harvest work. Any foreign outsider must find a cultural near neighbor or inside believers who will rise up and lead the initial efforts to reach the group. As inside leaders emerge and multiply, they “catch” the same God-sized vision.  

Prayer: Foundation for Fruit (John 14:13-14)

One survey of effective church planters in a large CPM found them to be a very diverse group. But they had one main thing in common: they all spent at least two hours a day in prayer and had special weekly and monthly times of prayer and fasting with their teams. These were not paid ministers. They each had “normal” jobs but they knew that their fruit was tied to their prayer lives. This commitment to prayer by the planters gets passed on to the new believers.

Training: Everyone is Trained

One woman at an Indian CPM leaders’ training said, “I don’t know why they asked me to speak about church planting. I can’t read and I can’t write. All I can do is heal the sick and raise the dead and teach the Bible. I’ve only been able to plant about 100 churches.” Don’t we wish we were as “lowly” as she is?

In CPMs, everyone expects to be trained and to train others as soon as possible. In one country, when asked to train leaders, security concerns only allowed us to meet with 30 leaders. But each week this group trained another 150 people using the same biblical training materials.

Teaching: Training Manual is the Bible

One of the best ways to avoid unneeded burdens is to use the Bible as the training manual. CPM leaders develop other leaders by helping them depend on the Bible and the Holy Spirit, rather than on themselves. When new believers ask questions, the church planter usually answers, “What does the Bible say?” They then guide them to look at various Scriptures and not just their favorite proof-body. A foundational truth comes from John 6:45 (NIV): “’They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.” The church planter may occasionally exhort or give information, but his or her most common approach is to help new believers find the answers themselves. Making disciples, forming churches and developing leaders are all Bible-centered. This enables effective reproduction of disciples, churches, and leaders.

Obedience: Obedience-based, not Knowledge-based (John 14:15)

The biblical training in CPMs is powerful because it does not just focus on knowledge. Each person is expected to obey what he or she learns. Too many churches mainly focus on knowledge—leaders are those who have the most knowledge (i.e. education). Success is gathering more members and teaching them more information. In CPMs, the focus is not on how much you know, but on how much you obey. As groups study the Bible, they ask “How will I/we obey this?” The next time they meet, they answer “How did I/we obey?” Everyone is expected to obey, and leaders are identified as those who help others obey. Obeying God’s commands in the Bible is the fastest path for disciples and leaders to become mature.

Strategy: the Gospels and Acts Provide the Main Strategy and Models

Not only does the Bible contain commands, it also contains patterns and models. In the 1990’s, God led various people working among the unreached to focus on Luke 10 as a pattern for mission into new areas. Every CPM we know of uses a variation of this pattern of laborers going out two by two. They go seeking the person of peace who opens their home and oikos (family or group). They stay with this family as they share in truth and power, and they seek to bring the whole oikos to commitment to Jesus. Since this is a natural group (not a group of strangers gathered together), leadership is already present and just needs shaping instead of a wholesale transplant.

Empowerment: People Become Leaders by Leading

This sounds obvious but is often overlooked. One example of this occurs in the Discovery model of CPMs, where the interested oikos begins to study the Bible. A key series of questions is used to “make disciples” of those studying the story of God from Creation to Christ. In some of these CPMs, the outsider will never ask the questions. Instead he or she will meet separately to coach an insider(s) to ask the questions. The answers come from the Bible, but the question-asker(s) learns to facilitate the process of learning and obeying. We see an example of this in Training for Trainers (T4T). Each new disciple learns to share what they learn – by training others and thereby growing in ability to lead. The same principle applies in continuing to develop leaders: believers have an opportunity to practice and train far more quickly than in most traditional church settings.

Biblical Leadership: Standards from Scripture

As leaders emerge and are appointed, biblical standards are used, such as the requirements for new church leaders in Titus 1:5-9 and for established church leaders in 1 Timothy 3:1-7. The believers discover and apply roles and responsibilities from a thorough study of leadership passages. As they do this, they find various character elements and skills needed at each stage of the maturing church. They also avoid foreign extra-biblical standards or requirements for church leaders.

Unbiased: Focus on the Fruitful (Matthew 13:1-18)

Leaders are chosen, not based on their potential, personality, or style, but rather on their fruitfulness. When anyone asks CPM trainers how we know who will be fruitful when we first train people, we often laugh. We have no idea who will be fruitful. We train everybody and the “least likely” often become the most fruitful while the “most likely” often don’t do anything. Leaders become leaders by reaching people who become their followers. As these leaders emerge, more time is given to those who are more fruitful so they can produce more fruit. Special training weekends/weeks, annual training conferences, intensive training programs (often mobile) are some of the tools used to keep developing and equipping fruitful leaders. Then they in turn equip others.

Shared: Multiple Leaders (Acts 13:1)

In most CPMs, churches have multiple leaders to ensure more stability and to develop more leaders. This has the key advantage of allowing leaders to keep their existing jobs. This enables the movement to spread through ordinary believers, and avoid crippling dependence on outside funds to pay leaders. Multiple leaders can better manage leadership tasks. They also have greater wisdom together and mutual support. Peer learning and support between multiple churches also play important roles in helping individual leaders and churches thrive.

Churches: Focus on New Churches

Appointing and developing leaders enables the planting of new churches on a regular basis. And this happens naturally. As a new church starts and is full of passion for their new Lord, they are asked to repeat the pattern that led to their salvation. So they begin to look for lost persons in their networks and repeat the same process of evangelism and discipleship that they just experienced and were trained to reproduce. In this process they often realize that some leaders are gifted to focus inside the church (pastors, teachers, etc.) and some are gifted to focus outside (evangelists, prophets, apostles, etc.). The inside leaders learn to lead the church – to be and do all that a church should be (Acts 2:37-47) both inside and out. The outside leaders model and equip the whole church to reach new people.

Conclusion

What can we learn from God in these new movements he has birthed? Are we willing to let go of cherished cultural and denominational biases and use the Bible as our primary manual for birthing and developing leaders? If we follow biblical commands and patterns and avoid extra-biblical requirements for leaders we will see many more leaders emerge. We will see many, many more lost people reached. Are we willing to make this sacrifice for the sake of the lost and the glory of our Lord?

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