Best Practices

1
Best Practices CPM Discussion Session

• Stateside Assignment Sessions
• November 2006 at ILC
• Prepared by Dr. Jim Slack of GRD

2
What We Have Learned FromPeople Group Growth
through On-Site CPM Assessments

• Common Characteristics
• Seen within 12 On-Site
• CPM Assessments
• International Learning Center Edition
• November 2006 Edition

3
Where Did This Summary of CPM Characteristics
Come From?

• Each of the items included in this presentation
  came from on-site, professionally researched, CPM
  assessments.
• A number of likely CPMs have been assessed
  through on-site interviews observations by a
  team of biblically and missiologically aware
  interviewers.
• In most cases, interviews were chosen through a
  use of random sampling methodology of members and
  pastors within the likely CPM. The interviewing
  of two members to one pastoral type leader was
  the usual interview selection approach.

4
Where Did This Summary of CPM Characteristics
Come From?

• 12 of the on-site assessments were found to match
  the definition of a Church Planting Movement.
  (Interview results were evaluated in light of the
  IMBs published booklet on Church Planting
  Movements.)
• This approach provides the reader of this
  information with the criteria used which should
  provide a base for understanding and discussing
  the evaluative statements made about the various
  CPMs.
• CPM Assessment interviews typically reach 7,000
  Excel pages of notes.
• The characteristics, to make this list, had to be
  evident in a significant majority (beyond 75) of
  the 12.

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• A CPM is the work of God. Each CPM had its own
  footprint.
• None of the assessed CPMs were found to be the
  result of human efforts that resulted from
  mechanically copying other strategies.
• Also, it was seen in the studies that a CPM can
  be thwarted, blocked, or the victim of ceilings
  placed on the movement due to poor practices,
  ill-timed good practices, or by not meeting that
  CPMs needs.
• Evidence exists that CPMs can be missed or
  short-circuited, or frozen in time due to poor
  practices even after it emerged as a full-blown
  CPM.

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Consistency in CPM Assessments

• Research of different CPMs over a period of
  years and in varied settings to be compared with
  each other, should follow the same research
  technology and process as much as possible.
• Research results from each CPM assessment, in
  order to be accurate and valid, should be
  evaluated and measured against the same basic
  principles or criteria.
• Thus, it is necessary for viewers of this
  module to include the definition of a CPM that
  was used in each assessment. A Church Planting
  Movement is a rapid and multiplicative increase
  of indigenous churches planting churches within a
  given people group or population segment.

7
Consistency in CPM Assessments

• This presentation is designed as an overview of
  the common, positive characteristics seen within
  the 12 on-site assessed CPMs.
• Therefore, the evaluation principles, or
  criteria, will not be provided. However, it is
  necessary to mention the churches planting
  churches item. For the teams, this meant that
  the churches started could be traced to the
  awareness, intent and involvement of someone, or
  someone's, from another local church. The
  someone could have been a pastor, a member, or
  members, who went out and was key in the
  emergence of a new church. At least 51 of the
  churches, old and new, should meet that criteria
  for the team to recognize it as being a CPM. The
  12 CPMs that led to the characteristics in this
  document qualified at a much higher percentage
  than 51.

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• The church planting model or strategy that was
  used which resulted in the first generation of an
  emerging CPM was found in the interviews to be a
  major issue in relation to the emergence of a
  CPM.
• Of greater concern it seems are the negative
  items that can easily block, put a ceiling on, or
  bring certain plateauing and decline to an
  emerging or existing CPM.
• Beyond these, when looking at all 12
  assessments there are common characteristics that
  appear in a majority of the CPMs. In this
  document, only 19 common and positive ones will
  be included.

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Nineteen (19) Common Characteristics within the
12 CPMs

• On-site prayers, coming from within the churches,
  which often was directed toward specific people
  in need, spiritually or physically, were common.
• Almost only within Islamic settings, but within
  every Islamic assessment, there were testimonies
  of pre-conversion dreams of Muslims that spoke
  to that person of Isa (Jesus Christ) as Messiah.
  Some dreams pointed the person to a way of
  hearing of Isa.
• The habitual care, and often sacrificial
  benevolent help, provided by believers within
  churches met the needs of fellow church members
  and the lost around them. This was a major
  characteristic in every Hindu CPM assessment and
  was common in the other CPMs. The testimony of
  healings were common.

10
Common Characteristics within the CPMs

• Believing, and even some not-yet converted church
  attendees, who, due to Gospel presentations they
  heard, were able and regularly did successfully
  answer persistent ethnic, cultural worldview
  questions of lost neighbors, family members,
  critics and persecutors that the Holy Spirit used
  to draw them to Christ and their church
  fellowship.
• Minimal outside presence and dependence on an
  outside presence was characteristic of third,
  fourth and successive generations of churches.
  (Where it was observed in successive generations,
  the movement tended to be slowing and hindered in
  its free flow and continuation.)

11
Common Characteristics within the CPMs

• Pastoral leaders in each assessed CPM were lay
  leaders who came from the locales where the
  churches were started. In none of the
  assessments were those conducting the interviews
  asked Where are we going to get leaders for our
  emerging churches?
• Most pastoral leaders fed and cared for their
  families through bi-vocational means with only a
  small percentage being full-time, paid pastors.
  Members in churches within the CPMs were found to
  be giving sacrificially and regularly to their
  pastors care. In none were the majority
  supported by their churches.

12
Common Characteristics within CPMs

• Believers testified of exciting and very
  meaningful worship sessions. Some were private
  while others were public. Believers in them
  commonly felt they belonged and that they were
  among friends, while at the same time speaking
  with concern of their own personal weaknesses and
  imperfections.
• Emerging and existing churches found their own
  pastor from their fellowship of believers, and
  personally testified that they recognized that
  person as their pastoral leader. Many churches
  recognized two or three persons as their group of
  pastors. Pastors tended to define themselves as
  a pastor-evangelist.

13
Common Characteristics within CPMs

• Churches emerged primarily from a believer who
  came seeking the Man of Peace, also from lay
  pastors from the church that started them, and
  from members of close churches whose burden for
  lost neighbors, lost family members, and even for
  their lost detractors, pushed them into authentic
  witnessing experiences. Only in a few cases was
  there common conversions and churches started as
  a result of canned personal or mass media
  presentations.

14
Common Characteristics within CPMs

• Witness and church planting, with rare
  exceptions, was conducted in the heart language
  of the people group that experienced the Church
  Planting Movement. (In fact, in some cases, the
  movement was not able to move beyond the people
  group because believers did not understand the
  other groups language or dialect of their own
  language.)
• Local, on-site training was more effective,
  pervasive and reproduced more in the succeeding
  generation/s than was training held outside the
  local setting. In persecuted settings, non-local
  training provided at more distant sites, brought
  its own types of dangers.

15
Common Characteristics within CPMs

• Indigenous church planting practices were a major
  contribution to the ability of churches within
  the CPM to multiply. This was especially true
  where initially non-indigenous practices
  transitioned to become indigenous soon after
  coming into being. Those tended to reproduce
  more often and sooner. (Indigeniety within the
  CPMs included financing themselves securing
  their own leaders from within their emerging
  church housing themselves according to the local
  style and at the level of the local economy
  extending themselves as a witness and as a church
  among the lost as a result of their own resources
  and spiritual awareness's.)
• Most pastoral leaders interviewed were either 1)
  the original Man of Peace, or 2) the lay person
  who came from a nearby church to start their
  church, or 3) persons chosen from within the
  emerging church group as they matured to be a
  church.

16
Common Characteristics within CPMs

• Throughout the interviews, members were aware
  that their group was a church and spoke of their
  group as being a church.
• Among the twelve CPMs, except for two of them,
  the church members recognized their pastor as the
  handler of the ordinances who did administer
  the ordinances. (Within the two who didnt,
  churches in that CPM was moving in that direction
  while in the other CPM the CPM churches wanted to
  do so but deferred to a long-existing
  institutional church pattern. Most of these said
  they could not wait long for the Convention to
  recognize their rights as churches.)

17
Common Characteristics within CPMs

• Within each of the CPMs, emerging churches
  housed their church, meeting in homes, offices,
  warehouses, barns, factories, schools, hospitals,
  health clinics, grain sheds, and other places.
  Some groups, mainly the Kekchi as they became
  churches, provided for themselves separate
  buildings for their churches. By contrast, a
  majority of the churches in the other CPMs tended
  to stay in the facilities they were in as they
  emerged to be a church. Very few of the CPMs
  used resources from outside the people group to
  provide housing for their worship events.

18
Common Characteristics within CPMs

• In persecuted settings, which included Islamic
  settings, most of the churches emerged with
  private (underground) worship sessions which
  tended to become public within four to six months
  of their recognizing themselves as a church. In
  most cases, it was their burden for the lost that
  brought them out and into public worship
  sessions.
• Throughout the 12 CPM assessments, the
  interviewers did not find continuing C-5
  situations. Most believers said they could not
  remain in their previous religion more than four
  to six months. Most could not understand why we
  would ask why they came out of their former
  religion. Their common answer was There is
  nothing there that I want to go back to. (This
  is the last of these characteristics.)

19
What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Among all of the characteristics observed
  within CPMs, the issue of the model used, or that
  exists, when planting churches is very
  significant.
• The church planting model, healthy or unhealthy,
  biblically sound or not biblically sound, using
  best practices or poor practices, that exists
  when a CPM emerges tends to become the permanent
  model of that CPM. If the model is good, the CPM
  tends to survive.

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End of the CPM Characteristics

• Prepared by Dr. Jim Slack
• IMB Field Assessments Consultations
• November 17, 2006 Edition

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CPM Stoppers or Ceiling Setters

• Securing pastors from outside the CPM, and for
  sure from outside the ethnic group
• Working in a language other than the colloquial
  language of the ethnic group.
• Using outside resources to provide land for
  churches provide buildings for the churches
  provide support for pastors meaning, providing
  resources that are not at an indigenous level of
  the ethne.

24
CPM Stoppers or Ceiling Setters

• Requiring local church baptisms to be conducted
  by official baptizers who live beyond the
  churches and who represent an institutional
  validating structure.
• Regularly taking pastoral leaders outside the
  geographic setting of his local church to be
  trained and validated. (This means reversing
  the on-site training characteristic.)

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Definition of church. The model defines church.
• Just any ole model wont do, and what results in
  a CPM in one setting among people groups wont
  necessarily result in the emergence of a CPM in
  other people groups.
• Indigeniety is a major concern?
• Minimize subsidy and move to an indigenous
  approach as soon as possible.
• Subsidy, if continued, will put a ceiling on
  growth that tends to become dependent on the
  subsidy.

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Indigeniety concerns continued
• Subsidy shapes the churches in its image
• Indigeniety includes outside finances
• Indigeniety includes the issue of outside
  personnel
• Indigeniety includes methods that are not natural
  or reproducible within the people group
• Indigeniety means natural or compatible with the
  local surroundings

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Infinitively reproducible. If a model is
  indigenous, it should be infinitively
  reproducible in all of its parts by (lay)
  believers in local churches. Again, in this case
  indigenous means in and of each local church.
• Seeks the resources from within the Harvest.
  Indigenous means that the resources are found and
  secured from within the harvest. This is even
  true when resources are available from outside
  the harvest. The model of reducibility is the
  issue.

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Close to indigeniety are language issues
  choices.
• The New Testament example and expectation is the
  use of the heart language (See Acts 2 and the
  Pentecost event)
• A critical missions discussion is between heart
  language or classical language. Gods language
  choice of giving us the New Testament was
  Koine, a street version of Greek. God did not
  choose Classical Greek.
• God chose the idiom of the heart language for His
  Gospel.
• Added to Scriptural examples is the fact that
  each persons worldview resides in their heart
  language idiom. Heart language use was in every
  CPM.

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There Is Now The Need For A Brief Interlude
Concerning Language

• In Old and New Testament Scripture laos and ta
  ethne are referenced at least 2000 times.
• A Ta ethne, defined also in Acts 2 as heart
  language is our norm. An illustration today is
• Asian is a Category, not a Ta Ethne
• Filipino is a Category, not a Ta Ethne
• Tagalog, Ilocano, Cebuano and 187 other groups
  are ta ethne people groups

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A Brief Interlude Concerning Language Continued

• West African is a Category Not A ta ethne
• Nigerian is a Category Not A ta ethne
• Yoruba is a ta ethne, as is
• Ibo, Hausa and 428 other Nigerian ta ethnes
• Hispanic is a Category Not A ta ethne
• Guatemalan is a Category Not A ta ethne
• Kekchi is a ta ethne

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Now, Back To What We Have Learned About CPMs

• CPM churches are praying churches.
• The prayer habits of churches within the CPMs we
  have assessed are phenomenal
• Most of the churches in every CPM we assessed had
  multiple prayer sessions each week. In every
  assessment, we were told of all-night prayer
  meetings
• CPMs exhibit a multiplication mindset. This
  workshop has already covered this topic.
• Churches planting new churches is the norm
• Church planting has become generational

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Now, Back To What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Close to use of the people groups heart language
  idiom is the provision of Scripture for use in
  engagement, evangelism, church planting,
  discipleship and leader mentoring.
• Lack of Scripture due to illiteracy is a major
  issue in all but one of the assessed CPMs.
• In many of the Islamic CPM settings, many of the
  Islamic converts had a memorized Quran, while
  immediately after becoming a believer, had no
  Christian Bible, mainly due to illiteracy.

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• For those in the USA who are praying for a CPM in
  their people group, Scripture heart language
  evangelization will also be an issue.
• Today, some of the CPMs face back-tracking in
  order to solve the orality-literacy problems by
  giving the believers an oral Bible until they
  have or can handle written Scripture.
• A lot of syncretism results from moving one
  language upthe Great Compromiseon the language
  tree. Leader accommodation, social correctness
  economics lurks here.

35
What We Have Learned About CPMs

• A Lay leadership model should be foundational.
• Lay leader models, styles, should follow New
  Testament and not historic, traditional patterns
  or models
• Church planting should move to churches planting
  churches as soon as possible

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Training and mentoring is a major issue in most
  of the CPMs.
• Those interviewed, members and pastors, in each
  of the CPMs said they needed more training.
• Assessors concluded in all but 2 of the CPMs,
  training of leaders was a serious need that could
  lead to weaknesses or plateauing if not provided.
• Training in most CPMs was seen to be very
  academic and not functional at lay understanding
  levels. Training in most was very literate when
  more oral methods were needed.

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Highly effective churches planting churches in
  the observed CPMs implies the following
• Finding and keying on the Man of Peace is the
  most common engagement practice seen within the 9
  assessed CPMs.
• Staying with the Man of Peace to the point of the
  gathering of a group the conversion of the Man
  of Peace and many in the group and the Man of
  Peace becoming the pastor of the group is common
  among most but not in every one.

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Highly effective churches planting churches in
  the observed CPMs implies the following
• If the Man of Peace does not convert and mature
  to be the pastor, the pastor is secured from
  within each emerging church
• Resistant to importing pastors from the outside,
  even from other sectors of the people group
• SC, Church Planter, does not pastor any of the
  churches, and especially any of the first ones.
  The only model is a local model.

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Highly effective churches planting churches in
  the observed CPMs implies the following
• Churches planting churches follow New Testament
  patterns, especially the four self items. We
  saw self-correcting where Scripture was
  available, possessed, understood used.
• The churches that operated according to
  congregational polity replicated themselves more
  easily, were the healthiest and solved problems
  with less failures than those where authority was
  in the pastor.

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Highly effective churches planting churches in
  the observed CPMs implies the following
• Within assessment interviews one could see the
  emergence of institutionalism and the slowing,
  plateauing and decline of the CPM where
  congregational practices were not maintained.
• In the CPMs, churches that were responsible for
  housing themselves presented few failures to
  house themselves effectively. The Kekchi have
  been the most efficient, to a flaw.

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Two concerns that have been common among
  traditional, institutional churches, but not
  among the assessed CPMs, have been
• How can we get enough pastors for our churches?
• How can we afford land and building for our
  churches?
• In healthy CPMs, ministry was consisted of and
  was described as functions and not programs.

42
What We Have Learned About CPMs

• The healthiest CPMs, meaning those with fewer
  ceilings, fewer plateaus, and fewer
  non-reproducing churches were those where the
  basic engagement, evangelism, church planting,
  initial discipleship and mentoring of leaders
  were in the initial models.
• When generational church planting occurs without
  all the basic ministry functions, it is too late
  to chase after them and add them.

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Within the CPMs that have been assessed,
  excellent worldview-oriented witnessing and
  ministry practices have been observed.
• The Camel method was commonly observed in the
  most productive Islamic CPM setting which
  underlined the value of identifying a peoples
  worldview. It was not seen in a second one.
• Effective means of housing the church was
  observed
• Indigenous music has been absent in most

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Most assessed CPMs have been in relational
  societies.
• Media in these relational settings has been
  personal rather than mass. Mass media was
  adjunct in a few of the CPMs
• The Jesus Film, the most famous Christian mass
  media evangelism tool, was not significantly in
  any of the assessed CPMs as their stated
  significant source of hearing or embracing Jesus
  as Lord

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• In persecuted CPM settings, most new church
  worship services were private. However, within
  most, they were public within 3-5 months.
• Generic, meaning copying a program, content,
  methods, or curriculum, from a different
  worldview, especially religious, setting was a
  major barrier to growth.
• The major result was syncretism
• The second issue was meaningless rituals

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Reversion, as learned in the interviews, to the
  believers former religion was minimal.
• When compared to people groups without CPMs,
  their reversion and backdoor percentages were
  very high
• Most responded with surprise that the
  interviewers would think they would want to go
  back to their old religion. They said, almost in
  unison, There is nothing there that we want to
  go back to.

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What We Have Learned About CPMs

• Reversion, as learned in the interviews, to the
  believers former religion was minimal.
• In persecuted settings, which was in 7 of the 9
  assessment settings, there few instances of
  members going back to their old religion.
• Exploring the issue of C-1 to C-5 relationships
  to the former religion, none responded in the
  interviews that they personally considered a C-4
  or C-5 relationship, even if they had the choice.
  Finding ways to stay in the old religion was a
  non-issue.

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What We Have Learned From CPM Assessments!

• Prepared by Dr. Jim Slack
• IMB, SBCs Strategy Group
• Leader of On-site CPM Assessments