Church Matters: Retrieving the Great Tradition

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Chur ch Mat ter s : Ret r i ev i ng the Great Trad i t i on

1. A multiplication strategy determines how a spiritual identity is formed, nourished, and rapidly multiplied .

2. Strategies for reproduction take full advantage of shared protocols, processes, and priorities in order that churches and their leaders can organize their efforts and combine their resources to fuel a coherent movement.

3. Without a strategy for multiplication, CPMs can stall or even die due to waste of resources, lack of coordination of efforts, and unwanted duplication of activities and structures.

4. “The children of mammon”: The world employs efficient strategies for multiplication in a number of ways, all designed to franchise, multiply, and replicate their efforts as efficiently, orderly, and cheaply as possible, cf. Luke 16.8 The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.

D. Case in Point: The Cambodian Church Planting Movement, Garrison, pp. 68ff.

1. Society racked by vicious, bloody, decades-long Vietnam war: South Vietnam fell in 1975, Cambodia surrendered to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime which in four years, an estimated 3.3 million of Cambodia’s population had been “murdered, starved, or driven from the country,” p. 69.

2. Since 1990 the Christian population in Cambodia has risen from 600 to more than 60,000, with the Baptists leading the way (i.e., in 2001 reported 220 churches with more than 10,000 members).