You’ve decided in your heart that you want to see God birth a Church-Planting Movement (CPM) in your community or people group. The question is: "How do I start?" Suppose that we’re sitting in a coffee shop and I hand you a napkin, saying, "Sketch out the path to a CPM." Would you know where to start? You must get onto a path that will possibly lead to a "movement", rather than one that won't. You must understand what that path looks like.
The challenge of the CPM path is the word movement. God starts Church-Planting Movements, not His servants. Yet He uses His servants to be the initiating agents in CPMs when they understand His ways and submit their ministry efforts completely to them.
Setting Your Ministry Sails to Catch the Wind of the Spirit
Think of it this way. As a sailor, I can work on all of the controllables: making sure my sails are up, the tiller is in the right position, the sails are trimmed correctly. But until the wind blows, my sailboat is dead in the water. The wind is the uncontrollable. Or if the wind is blowing, but I as a sailor fail to raise the sails or trim them to catch the wind, I go nowhere. In this case, the wind is blowing but I don't know how to move with the wind.
Jesus made this declaration: "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3:8 ESV).
The Spirit blows in ways we cannot forecast, but blow He does. The question is: "Is my ministry positioned to move the way He blows so that it can become a movement of God?" If our ministries don't cooperate with the Spirit's ways, we are tempted to say: "God no longer moves today as He did in older days!" Surely the testimony of dozens of CPMs around the world and upon every continent is that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." (Heb. 13:8 ESV).
The Heart and Four Fields: CPM Essentials on a Napkin
What are the essential elements (the controllables) that enable us to position our sails to move with the Spirit of God? Though expressed in many ways by CPM practitioners, what follows is a simple distillation of the basic CPM plan. I often draw this simple diagram on a napkin in a coffee shop for a friend. I use it to explain to him how we can cooperate with God for a movement. If you can't draw a basic CPM plan on a napkin, it's probably too complicated to live out personally and too complicated for others to reproduce.
HEART
Find God's HEART for your people and seek Him in faith for the fulfillment of His vision. A VISION exists by you and your team to do whatever it takes under God to see that all people have a chance to respond to the kingdom. You are seeking God's vision, not your own (Matt. 6:9-10; 28:18-20). A vision of this magnitude should result in multitudes of believers and thousands of churches.
Since this vision is so large, you must break it down into basic relational SEGMENTS to know how to start. Your goal is simple: plant reproducing mustard seed groups (Mt. 13:31-33) with the ability to reach that segment and beyond.
You know a movement has taken root in each segment when you can track at least four generations of believers and churches—G4—in that place (2 Tim. 2:2). CPMs are defined by at least 4th generation churches consistently emerging within a relatively short period of time (months and years, not decades).
To fulfill the vision, you have to start at the foundation by ABIDING IN CHRIST (Jn. 15:5). Those that bear fruit are those that abide. You do not get a CPM by abiding in Christ, but you don't get one if you don't. As we humble ourselves, we must cry out fervently to God in PRAYER to see His vision fulfilled (Lk. 10:2). Every Church-Planting Movement begins first as a prayer movement.
THE FOUR FIELDS
To fulfill the vision, you do your part in the divine-human partnership—five high value activities. Each must be done in a manner that is reproducible by new believers.
CENTER PLATFORM: REPRODUCING LEADERS
(Tit 1:5-9; Act 14:23). Some believers will prove themselves to be reproducing LEADERS appropriate for that stage of the work. CPMs are as much leadership multiplying movements as they are Church-Planting Movements.
THE ARROWS AND DEATH
Many believers will go on to REPEAT various parts of the four fields. The spiritual triggering effect is DEATH (John 12:24)—the willingness for believers to boldly persevere, even die, to see God's vision fulfilled. Until believers are willing to joyfully count the cost, this all remains theoretical.
Can you reproduce this drawing on a napkin with a friend?
Originally published in Mission Frontiers 35:4 (July/Aug 2013). Frontier Ventures. Shared with permission.
