What is a church multiplication movement?

November 28, 2011

David Garrison, in the booklet he published for the International Missions’ Board of the Southern Baptist Convention carefully explains the strategy being employed in the two-thirds world to facilitate the spread of Christianity. Expectedly, this strategy is quite similar to the one used in during the rapid and organic explosion among Greco-Roman Gentiles in the book of Acts. This strategy is best defined as a church multiplication movement.

The principle of encouraging multiplication movements is a core value that drives the mission of ScatterUs Ministries. As an organization we are committed to: Empowering Church Multiplication Movements – For Jesus’ church to accomplish its goal of global evangelistic impact, church starting movements must be multiplied both geographically and culturally. These movements must be recognized as the valuable Kingdom assets that they really are.

While Christianity is burgeoning in the two thirds world, that is not the case in North America, or for that matter in much of the “developed” western world. In Latin America, one new church is planted every eight minutes. In Communist China, 37,500 people became followers of Jesus today. In Hindu India, 27,200 people became followers of Jesus today. In sub-Saharan Africa 17,000 people became followers of Jesus today.
We must learn how to contextualize the strategies used in the “missions field” to re-reach the West. The strategies being used in the two-thirds world focus on rapid church multiplication movements. We need to start thinking not just in terms of planting individual churches, but rather what can be done to start a multiplying movement.

BBC recently reported that all religion will be extinct in New Zealand within one generation. How soon will that be announced in Australia, Canada, or Great Britain? Over the past hundred years weekly church attendance in England has shifted from 90% of the population to only 10%. When will that “feat” be matched in the United States? Let’s pray that we learn how to treat the West as an actual missions field. Christians in the two-thirds world already feel forced to try and figure out how to reach our affluent continents themselves as their people immigrate here for work. Much more disturbingly, Muslims already see the great potential of a “mission field” here in the West. When will we begin to see this opportunity ourselves, and begin starting church planting movements in our own backyards?