what are the advantages of church planting movements over against ...

St Francis Magazine Vol 6, No 6 | December 2010
more easily leave the church than they could leave their family. We
provided occasional Biblical input, such as translated Scriptures, but little
else. We were truly outsiders. 65
These observations triggered a paradigm shift for the Lewises.
They wondered how missionaries might best facilitate similar IMs in
the future, and concluded:
We can begin by telling our Muslim friends that worshiping God in spirit
and truth does not require them to change religious systems…
Instead of trying to get believers from different communities to form a
lasting new group, we could, like Jesus, establish a church inside their
natural community. 66
In practice, then, if not in theory, Lewis ties IMs in Islamic contexts
to C5 methodology, for the feature which distinguishes C5 from
C4 is the believers’ retention of both cultural and religious Islamic
identity. 67
4 Comparison of CPMs and IMs
4.1 The basis difference
Evidently, CPMs and IMs are in many ways complementary. Common
to both, for example, are indigenous leaders, house-churches,
and contextualised worship. Moreover, many of CPMs’ other emphases,
such as “extraordinary prayer,” could also be reproduced within
IMs. Such overlap precludes a simple, point-for-point comparison
of CPMs and IMs.
Garrison and Lewis have, however, interacted with one another’s
work, and agree upon where the fundamental difference between the
two movements lies: in direct contradistinction to IMs, CPMs “make
65 Ibid. Emphasis original.
66 Ibid., p. 18. Emphasis original.
67 Timothy C. Tennent, ‘Followers of Jesus (Isa) in Islamic Mosques’, in IJFM 23.3
(2006), p. 112.
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St Francis Magazine is published by Interserve and Arab Vision