Dangerous

1
Dangerous Short-Circuit Practices Concerning
Evangelization Creating an Environment for
Multiplication and a CPM to Occur

• Prepared by Dr. Jim Slack
• South America AGMs
• 2008

2
Dangerous, Short-Circuit Practices

• Accepting or feeling obligated to use any Best
  Practices methods and approaches that do not fit
  the cultural (worldview) and linguistic needs of
  the EPG you are evangelizing.
• Missionaries and volunteers involved in planting
  churches beyond the first generation (Growth can
  occur, but seldom CPM type growth)

3
Dangerous, Short-Circuit Practices

• Generic is deadly when not adapted in light of
  the worldview (especially the religious
  background) of the people group
• Missionaries and volunteers planting churches by
  any means other than reproducible, indigenous
  models and methods (Growth can occur but it
  almost always become dependent)

4
Dangerous, Short-Circuit Practices

• Going beyond the ethnic people group, and
  especially beyond the emerging church being
  planted or the churches planting them, to secure
  the new churches pastors and leaders
• Taking or sending leaders, and for sure members,
  beyond their normal areas of work, shopping,
  fellowship, worldview setting and personal
  financial means, for training,

5
Dangerous, Short-Circuit Practices

• Missionaries and volunteers using any language
  for evangelization other than the EPGs heart
  language
• Missionaries and volunteers using any
  evangelization, and especially teaching
  techniques, that are not indigenous and
  compatible with the EPGs evangelization
  potential. (This does not imply that such use
  wont work but that it will work at a level far
  less than more culturally compatible methods.)

6
Dangerous, Short-Circuit Practices

• Buying any land, bringing in any individuals to
  assist them in building buildings to house their
  churches, and/or assisting in securing any funds
  for use in paying pastors or workers salaries.
  It is not implied that this kind of assistance is
  wrong or sinful, but that it presents a model
  they cannot duplicate and ties the growth to a
  non-indigenous model.

7
Dangerous, Short-Circuit Practices

• Taking the initiative or supporting financially
  any development of any institutions or
  denominational structures in behalf of the EPGs
  churches. Here again, this is not seen as wrong
  or sinful, but a model that is not indigenous,
  that cannot be duplicated and that will divert
  attention away from impacting lostness.

8
Dangerous, Short-Circuit Practices

• Modeling or encouraging local leaders and members
  in their preaching, teaching or leading Bible
  studies in any language other than the EPGs
  heart language
• Providing any equipment for EPG leaders, emerging
  churches and churches planting churches that is
  not within their natural and economic reach

9
Dangerous, Short-Circuit Practices

• Occasions when form (structure and the
  operational rules of that structure) determines
  function rather than New Testament function
  determines form (structure)
• In other words, requiring any non-New Testament
  conditions for a group existing and being
  recognized as a New Testament church

10
Dangerous, Short-Circuit Practices

• Outsiders and at times insiders setting any
  numerical size as required size for being or
  recognizing a local church as a church
• Missionary involvement as a pastor or official
  leader in any local churches. This does not mean
  that missionaries will not be involved in first
  generation churches as the church planter.

11
Dangerous, Short-Circuit Practices

• The SC and/or EPG team members and volunteers
  should not lead any of the emerging churches in
  the EPG to affiliate with any other group of
  churches that teach and practice extra-biblical
  evangelization practices.
• Even forming or joining an association or a
  convention should be when the EPG churches choose
  to do so and not when the SC-led team tells them
  to do so.

12
Dangerous, Short-Circuit Practices

• Using as the initial and basic church planting
  model that of the traditional feeder cell group
  model that ties each cell to a mother church.
• A cell group approach that does not teach and
  encourage each cell to become its own local
  church
• A cell group approach that does not encourage
  cells that have organized as churches to
  recognize their own pastor and to grant their
  pastor the right to handle the ordinances in
  behalf of that local congregation.

13
Dangerous, Short-Circuit Practices

• Prepared by Dr. Jim Slack
• Based upon Historic Missiological Research from
  Many Sources
• Based also upon fifteen on-site CPM Assessments
  from 2000 to Present
• January 2008 Edition

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15
Church Planting Model Needed

• Believers in the churches mirror a cross-section
  of the EPGs demographics
• Typical new churches planted can and do fit
  within a typical home after which they divide and
  plant a new church in another home
• Emerging churches that get their leaders from
  within their own believers or from among those in
  the church that is planting them

16
Church Planting Model Needed

• Model that contains and practices viable and
  reproducible witness, discipleship and
  leader-mentoring activities in and through the
  church planting process
• Model that can be reproduced repeatedly by
  believers within the new churches being planted
  without outside support or assistance
• Model that can be reproduced by oral or literate,
  educated or uneducated believers

17
Church Planting Model Needed

• Model that is pitched to or based upon the most
  common demographic denominators of the EPG
• Evangelization presentation content engages and
  speaks to the EPGs common worldview barriers to
  the Gospel in the most tactful, Biblically based
  and reproducible ways