My Journey to CPM, part 3

David Garrison's pamphlet "Church Planting Movements" had moved me and my agency and partners into a 7 year program of training church planters and deploying them in unreached areas. By 2007 we have planted over 200 churches. But we were not seeing the "Movement" aspect of the program.

In June 2005 I took the Perspectives course and was introduced to one of the teachers who was personally acquainted with David Watson who had launched the CPM among a people group in India Garrison's book. The CPM had been launched during 1991-1994, and by this year (2007) has resulted in nearly 3 million new believers and probably 40,000 churches. The perspectives teacher also told our class about a new CPM in west Africa where between February 2005 and June 2007 about 460 churches have been planted and 30,000 new believers have emerged, approximately 21,000 from Muslim backgrounds. WOW!

Through this connection, I was enabled to spend a week being trained in CPM principles by David Watson in Dallas in September 2006. At this same training, Randy Travis, our Honduras missionary was in attendance and was revolutionized by this concept. Immediately after the Dallas training, myself and some team members traveled to west Africa to see the CPM there in person. We were overwhelmed with what God is doing there. In that particular CPM signs and wonders have abounded including 8 people raised from the dead. While there we met one of the persons who had been raised, and whose resurrection had led 2 Muslim villages to turn to Christ almost completely.

So my mission agency (WME) and I have been in a transitional phase since last September. We have exposed a number of our missionaries to the CPM principles that we have been learning. We have hosted a CPM conference for key leaders to be trained in these principles. This includes our key India leader (JPK) and our South African director of church planting (Tyrone Paul).

Our most ambitious transition activity is sending our Honduran church planting missionary, Randy Travis and his family to Honduras. They arrived in mid June and are laying the groundwork for a CPM project to be launched there in the next year and a half. This project known as Honduras Church Planting Movement (HCPM) is the official pilot CPM project for WME. Our hopes and prayers are that the project will become a CPM and that the lessons learned there will help us lead our agency into full transition toward CPM principles.

So this is the journey that I have been taking. I am not an expert on CPM, but I hope to become a knowledgeable facilitator of CPM in my sphere of influence. Keep reading my posts as I share what I am learning. I hope to hear from your perspective as we take this journey.