|
Around the world, missionaries and local churches are confronted daily
with the enormity of the task of sharing the gospel with entire countries and
people groups. The greater Osaka area alone includes 22 million people, and only
0.26% of these attend church with an average church size of 39. If we dare to
hope in faith that even one third of the 22 million might one day be
church-going Christians, we need over 100,000 new churches. But
"professional" church planters in Japan are not even planting enough
churches to replace the ones that are closing! The planting of vast numbers of
new churches could only happen if thousands of new believers were enthused with
a desire to start new churches from the very beginning of their Christian walk -
it would have to be a movement of lay church planters, i.e. a CPM. Humanly
speaking, this is utterly impossible. But Scripture tells us that with God all
things are possible.
Indeed, in several corners of the world CPMs have already occurred, and there are
other reports of CPMs in progress among some people groups. In other
places, the idea of deliberately working to start a CPM is just beginning to
take hold. So far, the idea of a CPM for Osaka is just that - an idea that
we are committed to working toward. Will you join us in praying for a CPM in the
concrete jungle?
To learn more about CPMs, check out the following links:
|
