My Big Five early at DAWN

Go on a safari early at dawn, and big chance you see the African 'big five' - the elephant, buffalo, leopard, lion and rhino. These are the most dangerous animals to hunt. I didn't have time to go on a real safari in the Kruger Park, but the DAWN meeting had it's own highly dangerous species of saturation church planters. I expected a near death by Powerpoint, but most of the presentations were truly inspiring, and the people simply challenging. I can't reproduce all the stories I heard, but here is my personal Big Five:

1. Those crazy Indians

I hadn't realized India already passed the 1 billion population mark several years ago. A church planting strategist from Uttar Pradesh told me his province has 180 million inhabitants (12 times the Netherlands and a quarter of Europe). He provides leadership to a 'small' network of 'only' 934 house churches. Most other networks are running in the (tens of) thousands. A guy from the south runs a network of 300,000 intercessors that pray for the church planters. They face serious persecution from hindus and muslims, but have an amazing capacity to envision multiplicative church planting movements. What is their DNA? According to one of their leaders it is three things you won't easily find in the West: bold evangelism, intentional discipling of new believers, and casting the vision for pioneer church planting. God seems to like that, because the brother from Uttar Pradesh told me that every new church in his network starts with a miracle. First an Acts-type power encounter, then immediate church planting. The Indians are also very precise in their research, which is impressive. In the past five years they planted 62,698 new churches. In 2006 they envision to train 25,000 men, 6,000 women and 30,000 children in order to reach 20,000 villages. But hey, this is just one network in the north-west. In central India they will plant 200,000 new churches by the year 2010, and in Mumbai 100,000. Yes, those Indians are really crazy, fools for the Kingdom. They deserve the first place in this Big Five.

2. Mapping Africa by GPS

One of the big questions in saturation church planting processes is: how do you measure progress? The DAWN Africa team uses modern technology for that - they train researchers all over the continent to map the total number of churches in cities and nations by GPS (global positioning system). In this way they can map a city of one million inhabitants in just three days. It's also cost-effective; they mapped the whole nation of Sierra Leone for just 2500 dollar. And in Madagascar it's even adventurous: researchers are being dropped in the jungle by helicopter and picked up several weeks later. In this way they mapped hundreds of villages that the Madagascar government didn't even know existed. And in villages where they didn't find Christians, they preached the gospel and planted a church straight away. Talking about a pioneering spirit and efficiency. David Livingstone would be proud.

3. The 'organic' leadership solution

The organic church guys from North America broke the rules again: instead of a Powerpoint with numbers they took a collective time-out to model simple church - basically listening to Jesus and doing what He says. It touched me to see three ex-megapastors, one ex-normalpastor and a seminary professor do just that. No program, just Jesus. John White challenged us with what he calls 'the leadership solution', daily praying the Luke 10:2b prayer for laborers, together with a soul mate. Since he started doing this, and teaching this organic principle to other believers, God sent people on his way, one after the other, asking advice on how to plant churches, and he could simply coach them in doing that. This way, the simple church networks in the States are growing exponentially. While 530 simple churches were planned 'in faith' for 2005, they hit the 6,000 mark. While they intended to train 530 church planters in 2005, they saw 1,000 church planters trained in the first two months of 2006 alone. With this kind exponential growth (the current growth rate is 70%) they could reach their target of 4 million simple churches in North America (400,000 networks, 40,000 network coaches, 4,000 lead coaches) by the year 2018. Then they still have two years left to rest from their labors.

4. Keeping up with God

I already know it's impossible to keep up with God's worldwide wonders, but it's fun to try anyway. Former DAWN president Steve Steele gave a highly encouraging overview of things that were impossible ten years ago, and that are now happening. God is accellerating big time, and more than ever it's important to be informed and disseminate key information to our networks. One way of doing this is through Joel News International. I was able to present my thoughts on this, and talked with the Latin Americans about a translation into Spanish and Portuguese. Often Christian media are not bringing the news that really matters from a Kingdom point of view, and I believe we can and should change this. Who else will hear about half a billion hindus, half a billion buddhists and animists, and a quarter of a million muslims (realistic estimations) coming to Christ in the next ten years?

5. New hope for Europe

I'm glad I pushed the envelope to be in Joburg with our wider European team. We gave a confident presentation of our continent, showing that Europe offers in many ways a unique missional challenge. Reinhold gave the framework, Martin Robinson (Eurochurch) shared a perspective on the transition Europe is going through, Andreas gave the statistics, and I provided a quick overview of the new expressions of church we see popping up. Andrew had a separate presentation on the emerging generation, and David Toth, the new East Europe director, introduced his still embryonic team and priorities for the next five years. Compared to other continents Europe looks a bit bleak, but Reinhold reminded us of the Gideon principle. "When God wants to do something big, He starts with the weak and small. And isn't DAWN the smallest ministry with the biggest vision?" This explains why a relatively high percentage of the DAWN associates are married to a psychologist - you must be quite insane to even try to disciple a whole nation! :-)

Comments

[sarah]

Thanks for sharing! Inspiring and encouraging to see what God is up to in the nations!

[Roger Saner]

Hi Marc

Great meeting up with you in Joburg during the conference. I'll add the "The Dutch don't like queue's" to my growing repository of knowledge on the Netherlands!

Keep me informed with your travels around South Africa - and especially the things happening in Durban and Cape Town we spoke about.

Thanks :)

[Karen Hall]

Praise God for His Body...truely you have heard from our Father and are doing His Will. Being obedient to what He told you to do will be what our Father will be rewarding you for when you get to Heaven. Keep you eyes on Jesus. We love you in Christ...You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. John 15:16