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

St Francis Magazine Vol 6, No 6 | December 2010
church is the major stumbling block that is preventing the unreached
from coming to Christ.” 41
2.3.8 Churches Planting Churches
It is the role of the churches, not the missionaries, to plant new churches.
Missionaries must relocate as soon as “their protégés” have
begun “to effectively reproduce what they have learned and experienced.”
42 This conscious “bias toward new church starts over
against enlarging older works is in sharp contrast with conventional
practice.” 43
2.3.9 Rapid Reproduction
Whereas “the more traditional view” is “that a church must first grow
large enough and mature enough to … begin a new work,” 44 CPMs
may “see a new church start every three to four months.” 45 One African
CPM, for example, deemed a church “unhealthy” if it “didn’t
reproduce itself after six months,” and “many” CPMs “will not allow
a home cell church to continue if it is unable to grow and multiply
after a year of existence.” 46
2.3.10 Healthy Churches
CPM churches display Rick Warren’s “five purposes in a healthy
church:” Fellowship, Discipleship, Ministry, Evangelism and Missions,
and Worship. 47 The “central elements” of “baptism” and “the
Lord’s Supper” are also present, and “other elements have been contextualised,
informed by Scripture, then adapted to each unique environment.”
48 New believers are grounded “in the fundamentals of the
41 Ibid., p. 246.
42 Ibid., p. 194.
43 Ibid., p. 231.
44 Ibid., p. 195.
45 Ibid., p. 195.
46 Ibid., p. 195.
47 Ibid., p. 197.
48 Ibid., p. 260.
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