Chapter 2
CPMs Up Close
Other Emerging Movements
As we look around the world, we see other Church
Planting Movements emerging. Encouraging signs are appearing among the
Maasai of Tanzania and Kenya. Their very inaccessibility on the rugged
savannah lands of the Maasai Plain has limited missionary access to them.
Offering to construct church buildings or subsidize pastors means little
to these semi-nomadic people with their barter economy. Penetrating the
forbidding terrain, IMB missionaries have engaged the Maasai with the
gospel, placing their major emphasis on training Maasai church planters
and leaders.
The result has been rapid church growth among the
Maasai. Worship is filled with expressions of awe and power as Maasai look
to God for healing and personal direction. Chronological storying of the
Bible has evolved naturally into the Maasai singing of Bible stories.
Spontaneous clusters of Maasai men and women form choirs to sing the great
stories of the Old and New Testament. As the Maasai accompany their songs
with high vertical leaps into the air, there is little doubt that the
Maasai Church Planting Movement is deeply rooted and truly indigenous.
Other Church Planting Movements are surfacing every
few months: 30,000 believers in a Southeast Asian country, 100,000
believers swelling 800 new churches in eastern India; 20,000 coming to
Christ over a four-year period in one Chinese province; church starts
doubling in six months in one Western European country; 383 churches
starting in a single state in Brazil.
Missionaries are sharing these reports with each
other—and telling one another the means by which God is doing these
marvelous works. God is doing something remarkable. Let’s take a look at
what we’ve learned from these mighty works of God around the world.
Prayer
Needs
