One is Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the start: an excellent no-nonsense work that can really inspire you to get up and get going. Although the book is aimed more at people who are launching tech companies, he makes it clear the principles can apply to anyone (including churches or, in my view, missions). The biggest value in the book was his section on “The Art of the Pitch.” (And yes, this is very applicable to missionaries. We pitch all the time. It’s called fundraising.) In this chapter among other things he talks about the 10/20/30 rule which most missionaries could really learn from: 10 slides, 20  minutes, 30 point font. I can’t tell you how many missionaries I’ve seen have really bad Powerpoint presentations that they stood up there for nearly an hour and read. Here’s a brief 2-minute clip of his presentation on this subject.

If you want to a presentation done well, you should watch Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth.” I don’t care whether you agree with Gore’s positions or not, I think every presenter should watch this movie simply to examine Gore’s presentation style, which is incredible, even if it does violate the 10/20/30 rule. Note the near complete absence of any text on Gore’s slides. When making your next presentation, see if you can create a Powerpoint that is nothing but illustrative photos with no more than 2 or 3 key words on each slide.

The second book I have been reading - skimming, mostly, at this point, but planning a deep read later - is Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits. You can read more about the book at http://www.forcesforgood.net. The book’s findings are interesting because they are very similar to swarming practices. The basic six practices of high-impact nonprofits are these:

1. Work with government and advocate for policy change
2. Harness market forces and see business as a powerful partner
3. Convert individual supporters into evangelists for the cause
4. Build and nurture nonprofit networks, treating other groups as allies
5. Adapt to the changing environment
6. Share leadership, empowering others to be forces for good.

An incredibly useful book whose lessons I’ll be integrating into my documentation on swarming. Here’s some other things I’ve run across with application for missions and missionaries who are trying to build networks:

Achieving Excellence is a wonderful ChangeThis manifesto that distills over 100,000 words of writing on business excellence into a simple collection of 6 key business strategies that apply to just about everyone: 1) vivid vision, 2) recruiting the best people, 3) a performance oriented culture, 4) robust communication, 5) a strong sense of urgency, and 6) extreme customer focus. These keys will help any organization “bootstrap” itself into existence (a chapter in Kawasaki’s Art of the Start, too).

Elegant Solutions (by Matthew May) is a great ChangeThis Manifesto on Toyota’s principles of lean manufacturing. This is incredibly important for anyone wanting to build an org that is highly adaptable and features continuous improvement. I cannot stress this enough. Continuous improvement is what made Toyota the most profitable car company in the world. It can make your mission the best in the world too. Read everything by May or Liker on Toyota and implement it in your own mission.

Purpose (by Nikos Mourkogiannis) is one of those documents that I compare to dry ice. It is such an incredible bundle of energy in one small PDF. If you are questioning the importance of purpose of your organization, Mourkogiannis will give you the answer.

These three documents taken together, if implemented, can bring incredible focus and flexibility to your mission. I’d recommend downloading all three. I’d also recommending buying the two books, but if you can’t, at least be sure to peruse Kawasaki’s blog and the Forces for Good website – there’s a lot of gold in those hills!

Missionaries may not take kindly to the suggestion that they are not sufficiently ‘vulnerable’ to the people. Setting up an ‘Alliance for Vulnerable Mission’ (see www.vulnerablemission.com…) is implying this. Is the Alliance condemning missionaries and cross-cultural workers of invulnerability?

An apparent contradiction in work in the ‘poor world’ such as Africa is that while the Bible advocates humility, Western Christians are seen as having, or being, the key to the solution of people’s problems. This through knowledge of a superior language, superior medical practice, superior education or technology, access to vast superior resources or even the superior power to lobby important political actors. The solutions that Westerners have to other people’s problems often seem to be urgently needed. The nationals of the countries being reached will go along with this urgency. They will often also acknowledge the superiority of the Western missionary. All this makes it hard to be ‘vulnerable’.

The reasons nationals, at least apparently, often agree with Western missionary superiority are many:

1. Whatever the missionary wants to do almost invariably involves money. Then various people stand to benefit regardless of the actual objectives of the activity concerned.

2. Because culturally it can be considered rude or offensive not to encourage someone in what they have set out to achieve.

3. In a world dominated by the West, Western missionaries are often in powerful influential positions.

4. (related to 2.) Financial and cultural dependence often obliges nationals to go along with a foreigner.

Western missionaries failure to be vulnerable is not by intent. They have the best of intentions. It is rather due to enormous pressure from all quarters, from home, field, nationals, missionary training college, etc., to urgently implement the ’superior’ product that they have in hand.

The superior product, be it medicine, theological education, dairy project, or whatever, is invariably formulated in the West and invariably operates in English or another European language.

Involvement in this superior product as a result makes it hard for missionaries to become a part of the local language community. Once the superior product is set up missionaries become the key people responsible for its success. They understand the superior product better than the locals because it is of ‘foreign’ design, so they usually have to be the ‘boss’. Missionaries are held accountable by donors for the success of their projects. Local people know it is in their interests not to keep the ‘boss’ too closely informed lest that should cause a problem with funding.

To avoid such dilemmas requires a denial of the inherent superiority of one’s own culture, language, people, procedures and so on, and a refusal to get caught up in providing urgent solutions to what are clearly long-term problems or issues.

A vulnerable missionary is not a bridge to the West for those hunting for dollars. A conscious refusal to solve problems using foreign money is required. Also, a refusal to communicate using international languages in favour of ‘doing things as locals do’, all this over an extended period.

My reader may object that a Westerner has by following the above erased the usefulness that he/she could have offered to a community. Indeed, in so far as foreignness is advantageous, to an extent a VM (vulnerable missionary) does this. Then he/she ends up on a level playing field with the locals, meaning that what they do, locals can also do, so it can be imitated. What marks out the VM from locals should, if anything, be their Christian faith, meaning that what they testify to is Christ, and not the superiority of Western ways.

As I follow the above guidelines, my own vulnerability arises from my refusal to jump in and solve people’s problems or to implement projects using resources of a non-indigenous origin. I am very slow to use foreign money or a foreign language to solve a problem. Conventional foreign-based avenues of operation are closed to me. I have to depend on the whim of local people to decide whether they will work with me, instead of paying them salaries or ’support’. I have to use the local language, as I have no choice but to work in local ways and link in with the local system.

Not using foreign resources to ease my task means that I run into all the obstacles that trouble local people, and more because my skin colour identifies me with ignorance.

Hence things can move incredibly slowly. But this means that what I do local people can imitate. It puts me constantly into a position of vulnerability where I need people’s freely offered help in order to ’succeed’. It means that I get constant practice in the local language.

My vulnerability to the local community arises from my being heavily dependent on them for what I do. I have also become vulnerable to Westerners, as I have allowed the foreign African ways to encroach on my heart and my mind. That is, I no longer stand entirely with the West looking over at Africa, so neither can I agree with all the West does or wants to do. Neither am I entirely with the Africans. I guess I am somewhere in-between.

(Note the above does not mean that I can operate without Western finding. I use outside funding for myself and a few children who I live with, but as minimally as possible for my other activities and especially Bible teaching and church ministry. The latter then remains independent of my finances.)

Vulnerable mission is like slogging one’s way through a jungle on foot, whereas conventional mission from the West can be flying over the jungle quickly to where one wants to go. The latter gets things done, and often quickly, but does not leave tracks that locals can subsequently follow.

For details of forthcoming vulnerable missions conferences, see www.vulnerablemission.com….

In reality, I think it is possible CPMs are happening. Part of the problem is that CPMs, and movements of any kind, are difficult to detect in the “day of small beginnings.” Just because it is difficult to detect them doesn’t mean they aren’t happening. Movements should be small when they start. Massive revivals are great for newsletters but bad for reproduction: the individual participants cannot reproduce them without a certain level of training, so they cannot multiply. A movement must proceed slow and small enough at each stage of reproduction so a sufficient number of participants can be rapidly trained to reproduce another “generation” of it.

And it’s not just the miniscule size that makes them difficult to see: we are also often looking at the wrong indicators. When we think of a church planting movement, we naturally look for churches that have been planted. Most CPM practitioners, however, aren’t looking for what we typically refer to as a church - a building or a large congregation of believers. Instead, they are thinking of small fellowships: house churches, typically, or regular meetings in a restaurant or some other place. In fact, Ethne talks less about CPM and more about Holistic Gospel Movements - the movement of the Gospel through a society that transforms lives. The point is to measure the rapid reproduction and multiplication of believers who regularly fellowship with each other for corporate worship and interpersonal support.

In this article, I am going to propose a few simple indicators you can monitor to identify a nascent CPM. I base these entirely on Garrison’s work, but I’m adding in some numbers to give you an idea of the scope you are hunting for. These are based on the idea that for church planting to make headway against the population, you only need to exceed the birth rate (which in most cases is not more than say 4% per annum–or 4 or 5 people per 100).

1. Are believers praying for their unbelieving friends? Are they praying in an organized way on a regular basis? Do they have specific people that they are praying for, and specific requests? Praying for others is a great way to get one’s eyes off one’s self. One way to measure this is to divide up any fellowship meeting into at least 4 parts: worship, pray for others, discipleship, fellowship. If you meet for 2 hours, then perhaps 15 to 30 minutes could be spent praying for the needs of seekers known to the fellowship’s members. This prayer is the first “step”–the movement of a movement.

2. Is the Gospel being shared regularly with nonbelievers? How much “mass gospel sowing” is your group doing? How much is being done by other missions around you? How much personal gospel sowing is being done by believers in your network? You can come up with a pretty rough back-of-the-napkin calculation of the number of offers being made. Remember, in reality, you need a *lot* of offers. You need to create an environment where the Gospel and the offering of the Gospel is like a fragrant aroma, so when a person is open to the Good News it will be readily available to them. No single offer is going to do it or single form of evangelism is going to do it–don’t let anyone tell you different. If they try, they’re just pushing their ministry. So figure out a rough estimate of the number of offers being made, and then compare it to the population. See if you can figure out a per-person, per-year average (e.g. total offers divided by total population). Is it less than 1?

3. Are you intentionally starting new fellowships? Do all the believers have the training and tools to start and sustain small fellowships? Are at least 2% of believers doing so? Do you know why fellowships die? Are you encouraging people who are part of a dead fellowship to start anew? If no one is starting a fellowship group, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t spread–and these fellowships don’t just spontaneously start and keep on going, typically.

4. Do people rely on the Bible as their authority? Are believers being trained to read the Bible for themselves, to interpret it for themselves, to discuss and with civility argue things out so they know what they believe? Can they make decisions about church structure, ministry outreaches, etc. if there are no foreigners around, based on what they read in the Bible? They may not know the verses off the top of their head–honestly, there’s a lot of verses *I* don’t know off the top of my head. On the other hand, if they know how to search out what the Bible has to say about a subject, they won’t need to search out what a foreigner has to say about it.

5. Are locals leading? Are fellowships being hosted and led by locals? Are they being mentored by locals? How big of a hole would there be if the foreigners pulled out? I have heard people say “these people just aren’t ready”: but if you get expelled, then they have to be ready. Our job is not to support local believers, holding their hands until we think they are ready. Our job is to constantly encourage people into making decisions they and we feel they are not ready to make, so that they learn *how* to make them. Besides, look at the Chinese church: after all the expatriates were kicked out, so many were sure the Chinese church would die — and that’s hardly the case. I would look for a high percentage of leaders to be locals, and keep shoving it toward 100%. If it’s anything less than 90% then there’s a problem to be looked at.

6. Is the local leadership mostly lay leadership? I would look for a high percentage of fellowship leaders to be lay leaders, and keep increasing that percentage. There is a place for professional training, but the scale of world evangelization means that a lot of unprofessional, unpaid, local, lay leadership is going to be required. We need hundreds of millions of fellowships, and there’s not enough seminaries in the world to train everyone, or enough time. So just scratch the idea that a fellowship host has to have a seminary degree. How do you help people maintain purity and correct theology? Accept that there’s going to be blunders and mistakes, that we aren’t saved by our proper theology, and that people need to be able to read the Bible for themselves and lovingly argue it out with each other. There are plenty of saints throughout history who have made mistakes, but Christianity is still here, alive and strong.

7. Are most fellowships not in official church buildings? For the Gospel to flow rapidly you have to remove every single barrier you can possibly remove. It has to be fluid, easy, discrete. It has to be a setting where seekers feel free to enter, to ask questions, to discuss, to argue. It has to be a trusted place of friendship. It has to not cost a lot to set up. If every church has to have a building to be considered a church, there’s not enough time and money for it to happen anytime soon. Push for over 90% of all fellowships to be in a non-official setting.

8. Are churches planting churches? Are at least 2% of existing fellowships training their members to plant new fellowships? If you’re waiting for some kind of organized church planter or denominationally led initiative, then you’re going to be waiting a long time for the completion of the Great Commission. Believers need to be trained, encouraged, and challenged to start new fellowships quickly. Remember, a fellowship is just a meeting of 2 or 3 or 4 believers in a non-traditional, easy setting where the Gospel can flow from life to life over relational lines.

9. Rapid reproduction. How long does it take to plant a new fellowship that plants another fellowship? That’s the “speed factor”: if it takes years, then it will be multiples of years. Consider the following standard “doubling” formula of the “each one plants one” idea:

2 - 4 - 8 - 16 - 32 - 64 - 128 - 256 - 512 - 1k -
2k - 4k - 8k - 16k - 32k - 65k - 131k - 262k - 524k - 1m
2m - 4m - 8m…

Now, if each fellowship consists of, say, 4 people, then 1m (1 million) fellowships equals just 4 million people. That’s great but a pittance in the midst of China or India. If each fellowship “generation” takes a year to establish, then it would take 9 years to get to 9,000 believers, and about 18 years to get to 4 million. How many to get to 1 billion? And in reality we know of course most churches do not plant a church every year.

This is why we need easily planted fellowships led by easily trained leaders that can be reproduced fast - no more than one year per new church plant. Even better, can each fellowship plant a new fellowship twice a year? four times a year? six times a year?

You can do this if you think of it this way: what is the fellowship supposed to do? Don’t add lots of things that aren’t necessary. In the words of software development, “resist feature creep.” Fellowships should exist for the sake of worship, outreach, discipleship and accountability. Starting a new fellowship simply means inviting new people to another location. If each fellowship is engineered so that, from the beginning, it is not trying to sustain itself but rather training fellowship-starters, it becomes much easier to launch new cells.

Eventually a saturation point will be reached and then you shift into a new phase. But that’s for another article, and that point won’t be reached for many “generations.”

10. Are fellowships healthy? There needs to be a standard for what a “healthy” fellowship is, and there needs to be a way of monitoring to make sure that fellowships are healthy. Because things spread via relationship, you need to check for 98% health of all fellowships. If fellowships are not healthy, they shouldn’t be reproducing, as they’ll just reproduce their problems. One suggestion for a healthy cell is one that regularly: 1) worships, 2) has evangelistic outreach, 3) educates and disciples its members, 4) ministers to its members and 5) provides fellowship for its members.

So, here’s the way to measure a CPM. If you have a network of 4 house groups, and they meet 7 or 8 out of these 10 indicators, and within a year those 4 house groups have started 3 new house groups - you probably have a movement. That’s it. Yes, it’s small. Yes, it’s not influential within the country and possibly not even the city. But in 9 years it could represent over 5,000 believers, and 9 years after that it could represent 4 million.

The CURRENT SIZE of a movement does not matter. In my view, there is no threshold size that says “this is a church planting movement.” The health of the network and how fast it reproduces itself is ALL that matters when you are considering how rapidly a region can be evangelized.

My suggestion: make a grid chart that lists these 10 factors as 10 columns, and the fellowship groups you have right now (or the proto-groups, centered on leaders) as the rows. For each row, in each column, leave the space blank if the factor isn’t present in that group. Put an “X” if it is. Put a single slash (”/” or “\”–half an X) if with just a bit of work it could be done. This is your “dashboard” or “status screen” or “diagnostic” or “check list.” Start working on the slashes, while at the same time picking some likely groups and working on the empty slots.

Don’t despise the day of small beginnings. Yes, there’s a lot to do, and yes, you’ll wish that TODAY was the day of harvest. But if you faithfully continue in the effort and the work, it may be that in 9 to 18 years you may see a significant harvest. The harvest itself is in God’s hands. All he asks us to do is to be faithful workers.

One final word: don’t let others make you despise the day of small beginnings. If they are in the midst of a harvest, it could be that they have built on the work of those before them (one plants, one waters, one harvests) or it could be that they are at the end of a long period of their own work. But rest assured, if someone tells you to “just use” this book or “just use” this sermon or “just use” this style or “just do it the way I have done it”–it’s probably not a good idea. My advice to you: go back to point #4 above and see how it lines up.

A review of world impacting movements will reveal that every movement (and the sub organizations within movements) consists of systems, strategies, and structures.  These three elements are universal and make up the overall logic of the movement.  The goal of missions movements is to complete the great commission.  Therefore, every missions movement should have systems, strategies and structures:

• that enable it to overcome all four barriers to world evangelization, and…
• that are aligned with the call of Christ to complete the great commission.  

This being the case, we should anticipate what some of those systems, strategies and structures (hereafter simply “structures”) might be. 

When we think of missions the structures that leap to mind are those of mission agencies. This is natural; nevertheless, I propose that some of the structures we need are actually businesses.  For example, we need for-profit wineskins that function as market systems.  These for-profit structures should be inherently missional and transformational but they should also serve as systems of finance that will fund themselves, while also creating additional revenue to fund other Kingdom efforts that are operationally essential but lack market viability. 

These other efforts are needed structures that exist within the will and purposes of God, but are not market viable.  They are what economists call a market failure: something (goods or services) that the market will not allocate efficiently (Justly, morally, etc.).  These market failures are the domain of governmental and non-governmental organizations (not-for-profit organizations), and are most often cost centers.  Examples of governmental public goods that we don’t want to see distributed on a market basis are bridge maintenance, policing and firefighting services.  These are in the realm of non-profit governmental structures.

Funding Flows

The chart above illustrates this reality for the great commission.  There are some kingdom systems that need to be not-for-profit (NFP).  The primary examples are proclamation systems, prayer and prophetic systems and hand-out systems.  There are clear biblical examples limiting the market distribution of these things.  Some examples are:

 The young prophet of Judah in 1Kings 13 – the background for this story is that Jeroboam was supporting corrupt mercenary prophets and priests who were would offer their “spiritual services” at a price.  The young man of God from Judah is commanded to go and prophecy judgment on these practices, but he is commanded not to eat any of Jeroboam’s bread, or in other words partake of the very thing that he is prophesying against.  He is ultimately tricked by a corrupt prophet to do this very thing, comes under judgment and is slain by a lion.

 Jesus and the money changers Mark 11 – The court of the gentiles is filled with corrupt moneychangers who take advantage (gouging) of gentiles and pilgrims who want to worship at the temple.  Jesus overthrows their tables and drives them out, proclaiming, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

Jesus’ sending of the 12  in Matthew 10 – With regards to ministry of preaching, healing, deliverance, etc. Jesus says, “Freely you have received, freely give.” He tells them to live by the generosity of those who receive the ministry.

Simon the Sorcerer in Acts 8 – Simon tries to cut a deal with Peter for distribution rights on the impartation of the Holy Spirit and Peter answers, “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money!”

There are other structures that can exist as either for-profit (FP) or not-for-profit wineskins, or as a blended model.  For example, training and equipping is typically done within a non-profit wine skin.  Nevertheless, there may be kinds of training (business or technical training, consulting, coaching) that could be done in a for-profit wineskin.  Discipleship training is better done in a non-profit setting: every believer should be equipped for ministry regardless of their ability to pay.  Primary schools are an example of a training structures that are also a hand-up system.  In the US we believe that primary education is a public good therefore we have free public education.  There are also, non-profit religious and non-religious schools, and for profit businesses that provide a primary education.

Thus far we have spoken primarily about organizations, but some of these systems can be organic, that is relational, non-hierarchical, ad-hoc in structure.  This is especially true of the not-for-profit wineskins that have proclamation functions.[1]  I am thinking in particular of the success of church planting movements. I have created the following quadrant diagram to illustrate this.  

Structure Quadrants

I recently attended a Friday morning discipleship meeting that is a good example of a “C” quadrant wineskin.  This meeting is a simple meeting of 6-12 local businessmen who get together and encourage each other in their walk with the Lord.  They usually read through a book together and one of the men volunteers each week to lead the discussion on that week’s chapter.  This group’s structure is well suited for its purposes.  They have little logistical complexity, an almost non-existent cost structure (no need for a revenue model), and low demands for leadership and subject matter experience.

I am fond of saying that forming a non-profit organization is like “creating another hungry mouth to feed.”  This is especially true of those that have logistical complexity, correspondingly high leadership demands and a cost intensive structure.  I think that a good rule of thumb is that a structures should only adopt a D quadrant structure when needed.  If the market can appropriately and efficiently provide a solution then let it. Adopt the simplest and most organic structure possible in meeting your objectives. 

An exciting area that needs more exploration is the potential for symbiotic relationships between for-profit enterprise systems and not-for-profit missional systems.  I think this is especially possible when one or the other has a relatively low level of complexity.  In other words, a pairing of a logistically intense business model with an organic model of church planting is attractive.  In contrast, the combination of a logistically intense business model with a traditional and also logistically intense church planting model would have the effect of pulling the whole thing apart (and the people involved).

Jason is a contributing editor with Momentum Magazine.  He serves as a missionary with Calvary International and works as a strategist with the Regent Center for Entrepreneurship in Virginia Beach.  He has written a book on business as mission titled Eden Inc.

“The redemptive genius of God is seen not so much in that He gathers His Church on Sunday but that He scatters it on Monday.”

– Dr. David Moore drawing from Jerry Cook.

Last week I had the privilege of being the guest lecturer in a doctoral class in a local seminary. I was there to speak about trends in world evangelization, but as is often the case, I got off the immediate subject and the class ended up in a discussion of transformation. I think the question that led us down this other path was, “How does a society go from full churches to single digit evangelicalism in one generation?” Well that led to a discussion of how such a negative trend could take place, and then onto a discussion of how believers can be activated to move the trend line in the opposite direction, and actually take ground.

I suggested that throughout the Bible and history, that when the institutions of society go haywire, we see God raising up prophets to speak truth to those institutions, and I went on to suggest that church should prepare believers to take on a prophetic role in life so that believers can prophesy (with words where necessary) to the institutions of society that they interact with (see A Transformation Paradigm, Momentum Magazine). I said, “Too often churches get sidetracked into trying to draw people into the activities of the church rather than empowering them to be effective Monday through Saturday.”

Well there were quite a few pastors in the class, so even though I thought I heard the sound of the ice cracking under my feet, I ventured further. I said that, “Too often pastors believe that Sunday morning 10AM is where it’s at.” Well this elicited quite a few questions, but I didn’t see anyone taking up stones, so I was encouraged (this was a wonderful group of people) and we went on to have a great class and a stimulating discussion of ways that a church can focus outwardly (Church Expanding) verses inwardly (Church Contracting).

	Church Contracting	Church Expanding
Resources and Energies	Inwardly focused	Externally focused
Corporate Gatherings	The main event	A Huddle (as in American Football). An opportunity for the Lord to call the play.
Appeal to Members	Attend the meetings get involved in church	Engage society get involved in community
Perception of non-clergy roles	Second class.	Other vocations dignified every believer seen as called of God.
Model Member	Works hard to support the ministries of the church.	Does the ministry of the church in the world (salt and light)
Perception of the World	Big Bad Wolf: Adversarial role	A harvest field
Message to the World	Shame on you!	Truth in Love
Strategic Stance	Defensive – try to hold ground	Missional – try to take ground

Ephesians chapter four gives what I consider to be one of the most apt descriptions of discipleship in the New Testament. It states that five fold servants (or four fold if you prefer) should use their gifts to equip God’s people to do the work of ministry.

I would like to suggest that the primary purpose of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers is to equip God’s people to be effective in their ministry to a lost world Monday through Saturday. Our primary metrics for effectiveness in these roles should be derived from scriptures like Ephesians four. Not merely from things like church attendance or the level of involvement that parishioners have in church programs.

I remember hearing the story of a pastor flying home from a conference. During the flight the lady in the seat next to him found out he was a pastor, so as they circled the city in preparation to landing, she asked, “Where is your church? Can we see it from here?” He thought for a minute, and then pointed to the smokestack of a factory and said, “Let me tell you about Bob, he came to the Lord three years ago,” and then he pointed to the hospital and said, “Let me tell you about Jane,” and then to the shipyards, and to the school, and to a farm on the edge of town, and so forth until the plane began its decent. You see this pastor understood where the action is really at.

I suppose I am writing about this because, I am concerned about the problem of a disengaged church, and I dream of a global church that is equipped along the lines of Ephesians four, with “each part doing its work.” This is of particular importance to those of us who are endeavoring to see the Kingdom extended and the Church planted among every kindred, nation, tongue and tribe. Important because it will have a direct bearing on the replicability and resilience of the churches planted.

We have all been troubled by situations around the world where the church has had significant numerical growth but natural and moral evil still abounds. Could this be because we have majored on missionary methods that focus on quantitative vs. qualitative measures of success? It appears that this approach can leave us with a mere Christian glaze on a worldly ham. I believe that a transformational model of mission will actually contribute positively to the resilience and longevity of Christian movements. I hope to pursue this vein in future blogs.

Jason is a contributing editor with Momentum Magazine. He serves as a missionary with Calvary International and works as a strategist with the Regent Center for Entrepreneurship in Virginia Beach. He has written a book on business as mission titled Eden Inc.

Here is the first bit of history, from 1900 to 1970:

This chart immediately shows us the dominance of Catholic Christianity in France in 1900: of 41 million people in the nation, some 40 million were part of the Catholic Church (and nearly another million were Protestants). Yet it also shows us the massive change in the 70 years to follow. The church remained virtually static in size: rising only because of demographic growth to just 42 million. Meanwhile France added another 8 million in population. Christianity lost 100,000 believers per year due to defections from its ranks. Athiesm, the nonreligious, and Islam were the main beneficiaries. Atheists grew from just 30,000 in 1900 to 1.5 million by 1970; the nonreligious, from 92,000 in 1900 to 4.5 million in 1970; and Muslims, from 50,000 in 1900 to 1.3 million in 1970. This was the period that was dominated by two World Wars, and we can see from the demographic data the enormous difference that made.

Now, let’s look at the period from 1970 to 2000:

In the 30 year period from 1970 to 2000, we see the church’s further decline. Now, the slower demographic growth is overtaken by the defections from the church, and it declines from 42 million to 41 million. Most of this decline is in the Catholic block; Independents made a startling gain: from 299,000 in 1970 to 1.4 million in 2000, going against the grain. Marginals, Orthodox, and Protestants too made gains, though not as spectacular as this. The numbers of nominal Christians–who claim on censuses to be Christian yet are not affiliated with any church–made some significant gains as well, although that is to be expected in this environment of increasing apathy. Meanwhile atheists and nonreligious doubled in numbers. But the biggest story here is the growth of the number of Muslims: from 1.3 million in 1900 to 4.9 million in 2000. By 2000 Muslims made up nearly 10% of France’s population. Is it any wonder that, with its economic straits and its huge minority Muslim population, France is very sensitive about issues related to Islam?

These two trends - the spectacular growth of Muslims and of Independent Christians - suggests a possible approach: can the independent churches be encouraged and equipped to reach out to Muslims? Very probably many of the Independent churches are minority churches - possibly led by Africans? - and would have a special affinity for the Muslims, many of whom are economic migrant workers.

Next, we move on to our future projection of 2000 to 2025:

This is a middle-of-the-road projection by the World Christian Database for 2025. There are several things to note about it. First, don’t forget the very small religious minorities. Buddhists numbered 500,000 in 2025, but they are growing steadily and will reach 600,000 by 2025 and possibly 800,000 (or more) by 2050. Chinese and Hindus are likewise growing.

In this scenario, the decline of Christianity has been nearly stabilized: the Catholic bloc continues to decline but the gains from Independents and Protestants, coupled with demographic growth, nearly equals the losses. Christianity remains steady at 41 million members. Muslims, on the other hand, are growing apace, from 5 million to 7 million. The nonreligious, too, are likely to increase from 9 million to 12 million. It’s not a bad scenario but its not great either; choosing a better scenario means equipping the church in France to reach out to apathetic Catholics who are abandoning the church, as well as the nonreligious and Muslims. Each of these three blocs will require significantly different, contextualized approaches.

Finally, our long-term future from 2025 to 2050:

Now, a twist on this series: knowing that France’s total population in 2025 is 65.7 million, and in 2050 is 68.2 million - how would you analyze this final projection to 2050? Why don’t you leave your thoughts and analysis in a comment below. If you’re involved in ministry to France, we’d love to hear a bit about what you do as well!

The first piece of software is the browser. You can use any browser, of course, but the tools I describe all come as plugins for Firefox. A plugin is a small piece of code that expands the functionality of a browser in a particular way. Plugins are generally very easy to install: you just go to the website specified, click “Install Plugin” (or whatever other button they use), and Firefox handles everything. Special note: I am remaining on Firefox 2. I did upgrade, temporarily, to Firefox 3, but due to great “glitchiness” I reverted within 2 or 3 days to Firefox 2.

Next, one needs to understand how social networking software works. Most applications use what I will loosely term “feeds.” Think of a feed as your personal newswire - your personal blog - a “stream of information” personalized for you. Using social software, you either (a) consume feeds from other people or (b) publish or your own. (Or, of course, both.) Each piece of software’s “feed” is a specially formatted file, typically in XML or RSS. You don’t really need to know the particulars of the format. The tools I am going to talk about know how to use these files. Just know that you can’t really view them easily in a normal browser–what we’re talking about is software that will fetch the feeds for you, put them altogether, organize them, and show them to you in a special window.

Ok. With that very basic piece of knowledge out of the way, the first tool I’d recommend signing up for is Friendfeed. Friendfeed allows you to take feeds from different services and put them together in one single, organized feed. What’s more, links that are shared on this feed can be commented on by you, and by others who can see your feed (you can choose to make it public). So others can comment on your comments. Since a picture’s worth a thousand words, take a look at my Feed: http://friendfeed.com/justinlong. You will see that I have taken feeds from several places - my Google Reader Shared Links, my blogs, etc. - and linked them here. As soon as I update *those* feeds, Friendfeed *automatically* updates. What’s more, I’m subscribed to other people’s feeds, and they to mine, so I can see *their* updates. But since its ordered chronologically (with newly-commented-on feeds showing up at the top), it’s pretty easy for me to keep track of what’s going on. Registration is free and easy. Its also pretty easy to add any feeds you may happen to have - although if you don’t have feeds, that’s ok. It’s also easy to find others’ feeds. You’ll see them on blogs, but you can also find them through friends. So, for example, if you subscribe to follow mine, and then you see someone else’s note on my feed, then you can subscribe to follow theirs… following the friend-relationship-links.

The next thing I did was to add my blogs to friendfeed. You do this by adding services through its control panel on the right hand side of your personal Friendfeed. If you don’t have a blog, don’t worry about it. If you do, I’d add it. Also, you can add other services - I have my twitter account, for example, although I barely every use it. I also have other things too.

Next up: Google Reader. Reader is an RSS-reader. Most news websites and blogs these days come with RSS feeds. You can subscribe to these in Google Reader, which will fetch the feeds and show you what’s new. You don’t have to go to hundreds of sites each day - you can have their RSS feeds brought to you, when they change. (I have several hundred feeds in my Reader, and I can keep up with the headlines and newsblurbs fairly easy). Reader is also free, as are the newsfeeds. (Of course.) Further, when you’re viewing an entry in Google Reader, you can “share with note” - you can add it to your Shared Items feed, along with your note about why the item is important. If you’ve linked your Google Reader Shared Items feed to your Friendfeed (as I have), this will automatically post into your Friendfeed. It’s your way of commenting on what other people are saying, and on news items of the day, and republishing it: your way of highlighting items that impact the unreached. My shared items feed is here although it’s much easier to simply follow my Friendfeed!

Third: del.icio.us. This is “social bookmarking.” It allows you to bookmark a link, but tag it with categories so you can find it again more easily. But, as you explore the service, there’s quite a bit more. You can create networks of other people who are bookmarking similar things to you, and see what they’ve uncovered. My feed is here. My feed is also linked to my Friendfeed.

Final tools for the day: shareaholic.com. This is a great new tool that I just stumbled on, as it hugely simplifies how you can share items you find on the web (particularly from pesky news sites, blogs, etc. that do not have RSS feeds). When you find something on the web that you want to share, you can just click the button on the toolbar and tell it where you want to post the link.

How to use these tools on behalf of the unreached

By setting up your own accounts and then subscribing to others who have a passion for the unreached, you can begin sharing things you’ve run across. Conversations can be built around tools like Friendfeed, where comments can be shared and added to. Further, Friendfeeds can be reposted in other places - blogs or personal pages. (I have reposted mine on my personal identity page and on Facebook). If those of us who were both missions-passionate and tech-savvy were to do this, we could begin connecting with each far more easily.

Interested? leave a comment - or subscribe to my friendfeed, so I can subscribe to yours !

* Natural - births minus deaths plus immigrants minus emigrants.
* Conversion - converts to a religion minus defectors
* Total - Natural plus Conversion
* Growth Rate - how fast a population segment is growing.

Let’s look at Afghanistan again. We will begin with the period from 1900 to 1970.