Strategy

At a church planting congress in 1998, representatives of Latin American nations set the very ambitious goal of planting a total of 500,000 new Christian churches by the year 2010. Dawn Ministries has published a progress report on their web site, which shows that the target will be reached if the development continues at the current rate. The following is an extract of the church planting targets set by all nations at the 1998 congress:

Nation	Churches planted since 1992	Church-planting goals
Brazil	20,000	180,000
Argentina	4,000	28,000
Uruguay	1,000	2,000
Chile	2,000	20,000
Peru	11,000	40,000
Colombia	3,000	30,000
Venezuela	9,000	25,000
Panama	2,000	7,000
Mexico	8,000	50,000
Dominican Republic	4,000	12,000
Costa Rica	500	2,000
El Salvador	5,000	7,000
Guatemala	12,000	7,000
Cuba	6,000	6,000

Five nations have already reached their original target and set new national targets. Guatemala, the first Latin American nation to have a process based on the Dawn strategy following their initial Congress in 1984, reached the target of 7,000 new churches in only five years. They then set another target of a further 5,000 churches, which has also already been reached.

Guatemala: 42% to 72% evangelical
Recent data published by a secular research group in Guatemala shows that over 42% of the population are members of an evangelical church. A further 30% declare themselves to be sympathetic to the evangelical movement. Church leaders are currently discussing what their new goal should be.

Venezuela: 25,000 churches soon
For years, church growth in Venezuela was the lowest in the region, as was the percentage of evangelicals in the population. A Dawn Congress (Amanacer) was held in 1992, at which church leaders set the aim of growing from 4,900 to 12,000 churches in only 12 years. They went to work, and reached their target 4 years earlier than planned. Their new aim is 25,000 churches by the end of 2005.

Uruguay: from 30% atheist to 10%
In the small nation of Uruguay, 30% of the population considered themselves atheist in 1996. Between 1996 and 1999, 1,000 new churches were planted, three years faster than planned. In the meantime, only 10% of the population consider themselves atheists.

El Salvador: 37% evangelical
Church leaders in El Salvador set a target of 2,000 new churches and 30% of the population evangelical by 1990. Research showed that 37% of the population considered themselves evangelical in 1993, and that over 4,000 new churches had been planted.

Cuba: Target reached 'too early'
Following 30 years of Communism, Cuba had less than 800 churches, the same number as at the start of the Communist revolution. By 1998, Cuban Christians had already reached their aim of planting 5,000 new churches, most of which were house churches. That was two years before their target, 2000.

Source: Dawn Ministries

Recent research reveals that new churches have been planted in almost 50% of the villages in Punjab, a state in northern India. That is an almost unbelievable development. An ever-increasing number of Christian leaders are joining REACH PUNJAB 2007, which aims to plant a new Christian church in every Punjabi village. Besides such reports, we regularly hear news from India such as this:

• in the past three months alone, 1,500 people in Uttar Pradesh State have been saved, and almost 300 new house churches planted. This month, 125 people from Chandoli Block have been baptised. The people are being discipled intensely, and we have been able to train 500-600 people to plant churches through intense prayer, constant training and long-term mentoring;
• 3,758 people have been trained as leaders in Uttar Pradesh;
• 2,765 Muslims who now follow Jesus have been trained as leaders;
• In 2004, 1,997 people were trained for the harvest work in north-western India, making a total of 6,697. The number of people being trained each year grew by 43%;
• In central India, 8,748 men and 1,978 women were trained last year, making a total of 27,186. Annual increase: 65%
• There is a church-planting initiative in around 50 of New Delhi's Colonies (neighbourhoods). One network of 48 newly-planted churches totalling 600 baptised believers is led by 20 people, who are training another 30 new leaders...
• Sanjeev was a young taxi driver before he joined Operation Agape, where he started as a chauffeur. Something in him began to burn as he listened to the conversations in his car. He started praying for the Farukkabad District in Uttar Pradesh and began training a few young men. Since then, over 30 house churches have been planted, and a network of 18 churches formed, united in the vision to plant new churches in all of the district's 2,000 villages...
• Of the 10,000 women who attended training, many have become effective witnesses for Jesus and are directly involved in planting new churches in their surroundings. They were trained mainly by women trained by women to train other women...
• In central India, 200 women are trained as church planters every month, as well as two church planting trainers.

"The key to this historic explosive growth, besides the simply-reproducible house churches," explains Dr. Alex Abraham, one of the human motors in the northern Indian church planting movement, "is the consistent mentoring. This mentoring model tries to follow Jesus' and Paul's training model:

1. Jesus selected 12 disciples from up to 7,000 people who followed him;
2. He showed them a model of ministry,
3. corrected them,
4. prayed with them and held retreats with them,
5. sent them out as practical training, and discussed successes and failures with them,
6. spoke into their lives prophetically,
7. commissioned them and sent them to multiply the process.

The apostles also trained their "Timothys" (2. Tim. 2:2) by working multiplicatively, thinking in terms of several generations of disciples, finally handing the baton on to them, to be passed on to others. Paul (1^st generation) taught Timothy (2^nd generation), who taught reliable men (3^rd generation), who in turn taught others (4^th generation). This is a basic Biblical principle, as shown in the following table, published in the quarterly Operation Agape newsletter:

Leader	1st generation	2nd generation	Effect
Moses	Israel's elders	The people of Israel	A holy people
Moses	Joshua	Israel's soldiers	Taking the land
Deborah	Barak	Israel's army	Victory over the Canaanites
Eli	Samuel	Saul	Establishment of the Kingdom
Nathan	David	Solomon	The temple was built
Elijah	Elisha	King Jehoash	Worship reinstated
Mordecai	Esther	Jewish people	Genocide prevented
Jesus	The apostles	Elders	Rapid church growth
Aquila and Priscilla	Apollos		Solid Bible teaching
Paul	Timothy	Reliable men	Orderly growth

"A healthy, obedient church is like a plant which grows and endlessly multiplies itself" (Dr. George Patterson)

Source: Agape Voice, Dr. Alex Abraham, June 2005, e-mail AgapeLdh (at) aol.com

"Rick Warren, author of the top-selling book 'The Purpose Driven Life' and founder of the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, made a dramatic announcement on Sunday 17^th April 2005, the 25^th anniversary of the church's founding," reports Dan Wooding, founder of Assist Ministries. In front of 30,000 people in the Angel Stadium in Anaheim, he said that he believes in a revival movement in the 21^st Century. He spoke of a new reformation in Christianity and his vision for a global spiritual revival through the so-called PEACE Plan. Warren is convinced that this will lead to one billion Christians being mobilised for global mission by the year 2020. "This new Reformation," he says, "will predominantly happen through normal people in small groups."

President Bush excited, says Colson

It was the first time that friends and Christian leaders from the USA and abroad joined members of the Saddleback Church in such numbers. Visitors included Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, who brought greetings from his nation, and Gaddi Vasquez, Director of the Peace Corps, who read a message from President Bush. Chuck Colson, one of the Guests of Honour, commented "I knew President Nixon very well, who would have been excited by the idea of the PEACE Plan. I also know President Bush well enough to know that this is exactly the sort of thing he loves: people who stand up and do what needs to be done without waiting forever for the Government to address it..."

Facing the giant

Warren presented his PEACE Plan in detail. At the heart is a progressive vision for mobilising American Christians to help churches in Third World nations address the enormous problems against which even governments or the United Nations are helpless. Through a reformation of the entire missionary Christianity, the Christian church will be the only force capable of coordinating and driving the effort to meet the five greatest challenges facing the world: spiritual emptiness, selfish leadership, poverty, sickness and ignorance.

The five stones

Based on the story of David and Goliath, Warren explained that in his vision, hundreds of thousands of small groups will "attack these Goliaths with five stones, like David, who gathered five stones as he approached Goliath". These five stones are Planting churches, Equipping leaders, Assisting the poor, Caring for the sick, and Educating the next generation.

Millions of changed lives

Wooding reports that Warren, founder of the Purpose Driven movement, has already changed the lives of millions of people in 150 nations, through tens of thousands of Christian churches. In 1980, seven people met in Rick and Kay Warren's apartment. In the 25 years since then, the church has grown to around 20,000 members. Over 350,000 pastors and leaders from 120 nations have attended Purpose Driven seminars, and over 20,000 churches in 28 nations have held the '40 Days of Purpose' course.

Bestseller results in three missionary Trusts

The book "The Purpose Driven Life", published in 2002, sold 22 million copies - a world record for a non-fiction hardcover book. Warren and his wife have since founded three Trusts which channel 90% of the income from the books to world mission, including AIDS help in developing nations.

4,000 new believers over Easter 2005

A particular highlight of the celebrations on 17^th April were the baptisms in a large heated pool in front of the stadium. Warren had preached his basic "Purpose Driven Life" message in 12 Easter services attended by over 30,000 people, 4,000 of whom decided to follow Jesus, according to the report.

Source: Dan Wooding, Assist Ministries and www.saddleback.com