Strategic church planting in Latin America

nospam@example.com (Friday Fax) — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 12:31:00 +0200

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

"DAWN around the world"

nospam@example.com (Friday Fax) — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 15:06:00 +0200

That is the name of the new newsletter published by Dawn Ministries, a global church planting strategy group. "DAWN around the world" replaces the DAWN Report, which they published for many years. Some highlights from the current issue:

Openness in Africa

"Africa is more open for the gospel than it has ever been," reports DAWN Africa Coordinator Danie Vermeulen. "Thousands of Muslims are finding Christ, and some of the most exciting church planting movements are among Muslims. Civil wars, AIDS and political repression are other factors leading growing numbers to open for the gospel..."

Interest in God is growing in Europe

"Secular ideology has failed in Europe, and there is a new interest in religion and spirituality," says Dawn European Network Coordinator Reinhold Scharnowski. "This is starting to affect European culture; writers, artists and talk show guests are speaking increasingly about spirituality. Until recently, people thought that religion is what people believe before they discover science. That has been revealed as myth. The secular faith in progress itself, which was supposed to replace religion, has failed, as clearly shown by the growing church attendance in London. The Hillsong Fellowship, for example, started with an attendance of only 70, but the numbers double every year; the attendance has now reached 5,500, with 1,500 new believers in 2004 alone..."

Uruguay: church numbers doubled

"Recent research shows that the number of Christian churches and the number of new believers in Uruguay has doubled since 1998," reports Amaury Braga, Prayer Coordinator for DAWN in Latin America. "There were around 1,000 churches in 1998, after 150 years of evangelism. This realisation gave birth to a new phase; the churches began a dedicated campaign to mobilise prayer for effective church planting. Now, in 2005, the figures show that in a period of only seven years, not only has the number of churches doubled to over 2,000, but the number of Christians has doubled with it."

Source, and to order the free newsletter "DAWN around the world": Dawn Ministries, PO Box 690787, Orlando, FL 32869-0787, USA, tel. +1 (407) 370-9312, fax +1 (407) 226-8713, e-mail tedmolsen (at) aol.com

The Friday Fax - Uruguay

Strategic church planting in Latin America

"DAWN around the world"

Openness in Africa

Interest in God is growing in Europe

Uruguay: church numbers doubled