"Church Planting" - Today's Move Of God?
In the recent book "Megashift: Igniting Spiritual Power", author James H. Rutz documents thousands of miracles in numerous countries around the world. House churches are being born daily by the hundreds where Christian influence has never been recorded before. This unusual book documents scores of events that can only be of the Holy Spirit in this end time.
Reports keep coming to us from those we work with in India and Nepal. One Indian "Church Planter" in India has shared some of the marvelous and miraculous events in Pune, India. Pastor John Xavior tells us of one testimony from one of the Home Cells (House Church) that he and his wife Mary have planted within the last year.
He reports:
"Asha is born and brought up in a Muslim family. Her parents are staunch Muslims and believe in Mohammed i.e. Allah. They do not believe in idol worship and pray to God who is invisible. She got married to Chand at an early age and has 5 daughters,Reshma,Parvin, Nazma,Mairoon & Afsana and a son Gauis. Her husband sells vegetables and she does house chores to earn their living. Her elder daughter is married and has one child. Her son has left school as he is not interested in studies and was very much involved with worldly things. He would stay away from his home for days together roaming with his friends and enjoying life. Her other daughters are going to school except the third one who is also working to support the family."
"When we met Asha, she was completely disappointed and frustrated with life as she had many problems in her family. Satan had taken complete control of her family and was troubling them. There was no peace in the family and all the money they earned would go wasted some where or the other leaving them helpless and in debt. When her husband would go to get the vegetables from the market yard his legs use to pain unbearably making him stay at home so that he could not earn any living. The whole family slowly got affected with this evil spirit who did not allow them to earn their living. They all had pain in their legs below the knees. Her second daughter was in much trouble as the evil spirit would hurt her and she would find scratch marks on her face in the morning. When the wounds were about to heal again the evil spirit might scratch her. He also troubled her to the point that she had terrible stomach pain. The evil spirit threatened her that if she tells anyone about this he would kill her."
"We met this family when they were going thru this problem. We shared the gospel with them and told them to accept Jesus as their personal Savior to which in the beginning the mother refused. But after a month or so the whole family surrendered themselves to Jesus and Jesus set them free from all the bondages of the evil spirit."
"Now the family is happy. Her son is now at home and working and supporting the family. Her husband is also completely all right and his business is going on well. Her daughter has no problems now. They are all happy and have great faith in God. They attend Viman Nagar Home Cell (house church) and are active members."
John has reported a number of baptisms within the past year in the different house churches they have planted in this area.
We will be reporting other testimonies of the Lord's work as a result of house churches and house churches being planted as a result of the miracles of the Lord today.
House Church Planting and the training of present and future pastors for these efforts has been the primary focus of BLM for the past 2 years. These efforts have been yielding results beyond our wildest dreams. The India and Nepal workers report over 130 house churches being established within the past 12 months. We are all blessed to have been just a small part of these results through prayer support, teaching in classrooms and seminars, demonstrating what we taught and through financial support.
From Friday Fax 2005 issue 51, 30 December 29, 2005, we have extracted the following:
"Around the world in the course of the past decade, well over 100,000 churches have been planted according to an entirely new model, as described in the two most recent issues of the Friday Fax 2: house churches and regional apostolic networks. Baptist researcher Dr. Jim Slack has shown that all current and past effective long-term missionary models are house church movements - or at least were in their initial phases."
"In 2001, following two years of research in India funded by American Christian foundations, Dr. David Barrett discovered that investing in multiplicative organic house church movements has the highest RoI (Return on Investment). Traditional churches, with their astronomical running costs, can never win so many people to Christ and disciple them at such low cost."
"What did it cost to start these 100,000 churches? Churches with no building or parking lot, no paid pastor or youth leader, no overhead projector? Totaling the costs for all the travel required, seminars, training, research projects, equipping of the few key people and multipliers, plus emergency welfare assistance, we arrive at no more than US$ 30 million per year, or around US$ 300 million over the past decade."
"In comparison: traditional Christianity, with its countless programmes, mountains of paper, training, permanent evangelistic events, church buildings and maintenance costs, salaries of church employees and budgets for welfare and mission, cost an incredible US$ 286 billion per year, according to Dr. David Barrett, or US$ 2,860 billion over the decade. US$ 300 million is one ten thousandth of that sum! What would happen if Christians changed their giving habits over the next ten years, so that instead of 0.01%, 10% of Christian finances were invested in strategic multiplicative church planting movements? It would lead to a missionary explosion of incredible proportions."
The Friday Fax is originally published in German by Wolfgang Simson, and translated into English by Steven Bufton. This version © 2005 Steven Bufton. Permission is granted, however, to publish stories from the Friday Fax, provided these are correctly attributed to "The Friday Fax, www.bufton.net/fridayfax".
What an awesome privilege it is to be a part of the Kingdom of God during these end times. These are the days that the early prophets and the church fathers saw and longed to see fulfilled.
