Transcription
Hello, this is Introduction to Missions. I'm Professor Timothy Moore, and this is Unit 8, uh, where we begin to study the mechanics of missions and mission movements globally. And hopefully, uh, you as a student will gain more clarity about your role in the global mission of the Lord. Let's pray together.
Father God, thank you for time—time to look at what you are doing with this world that our Lord Jesus said you loved so much that you gave your only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. You love the world, Lord—every man, every woman, every boy and girl that exist. They exist as those created in the image of God, and Lord, they have an immortal soul, and you have a purpose for their lives. And so, Lord, help us to understand your Global Mission better and where, um, what our role is, what our personal assignment is in your Global Mission, whether it's across the street or around the world. Open our eyes to it, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
In particular, what we're going to be looking at uh today is um what's referred to as a DMM, which is a disciple-making movement, or a CPM, a church-planting movement. Within these two, um, these two mission uh initiatives, uh, what we're talking about is the exponential multiplication of followers of Jesus Christ that result in exponential multiplication of gatherings where groups of people are encouraged and equipped for life with Christ and being His light to the world. Okay. First, let's focus in on on just defining a DMM, a disciple-making movement.
A disciple-making movement can be described as a supernatural outpouring of God's spirit that leads to rapid multiplication, and that's the key phrase. It's rapid multiplication of obedient followers of Jesus, which we call disciples, within an unreached people group or a specific geographical area. And then the CPM, which is church-planting movement, is a rapid increase in the number of churches within a specific area or culture led by indigenous disciples. And I'm going to explain that word, at what we mean by that word, in myology—indigenous disciples—uh, which is basically people within that ethnicity and culture who assume responsibility for planting more churches among, among unreached people. And so, um, indigenous in myology is a combination of ethnicity and culture. What we mean by ethnicity is a person's personal ancestry, history, or family experience, and culture is broader than that; it is the value, the values, the beliefs, and the behaviors of of that um area. And so indigenous is a combination of both ethnicity and culture. And so in a church-planting movement, those indigenous people lead the church and assume responsibility for church multiplication.
And so I, I want us to, I do want us to focus scripturally on DMMs and CPMs. The book of Acts is the history book chronicling the birth of what we call DMMs and CPMs. Uh, it, it covers about a 40-year span of history and the early exponential expansion of the church through disciple-making. And so in the book of Acts, we see this exponential growth pattern, uh, that is both uh quantitative—it's numerical; there are numbers that are mentioned—it's qualitative because we get discipleship defined by the experience that the Believers were having in the book of Acts. And it's also geographical because it chronicles expansion. So it is quantitative, which is numerical; it's qualitative in reference to what a disciple actually is; and it's geographical; it, it, it, um, it, it's like a scribe is writing about how the church expanded exponentially in Acts 6, Acts 9, Acts 11, Acts 16.
The first church in Jerusalem had 120 disciples. There's 120 disciples in the upper room; it says that in Acts chapter 1, verse 15. And on the day of Pentecost, 3,000 people were added to the church in a single day. That's Acts 2:41-42. Soon after, just two chapters later, which was just a matter of of weeks—it couldn't have been more than a couple of months—uh, the membership, so to speak, of the Jerusalem Church was over 5,000. That's what it says in Acts 4:4. And then beyond Acts chapter 4, things are increasing so rapidly, so exponentially, that they stop giving specific figures and they just start talking in terms of multitudes and multiplication. So the words multitudes and multiplication are used several times in the book of Acts, uh, um, like uh 5:14, where it says multitudes of men and women were added; Acts 6:7, where it says the number of disciples multiplied greatly; and and then by the time we get to the to Acts chapter 8, we see that, um, that rapid increase and expansion and multiplication of the church happened through regions. And so, uh, in Acts 8, it's the regions of Judea and Samaria. And within a short, a relatively short period of time, the church becomes a movement of hundreds of thousands of people, and it impacts the entire known world.
This is the experience of the first-century church, and it's exactly what we, um, define in terms of DMM, disciple-making movements, and CPMs, church-planting movements. And so this is not something new; it is the experience of the church uh from its inception. The church was a disciple-making movement and a church-planting movement, and, and, and this continues to grow and expand for at least 150 years, and then it rapidly slows down. Um, why? Christianity grows exponentially, and uh, and you can't even track it; it's expanding so fast through the entire known world. And then, um, within a relatively short period of time, that grinds to—not to a halt, but it's certainly not exponential, and it's about commensurate to or equal to the population rate. So exponential expansion and then down to just the population rate, and that's not an expression of DMM or CPM. So what caused that?
The institutionalization of the church caused that. And here's what I mean by that. Um, within a couple hundred years, the church developed levels of hierarchy, um, and long and arduous training and credentialing requirements for those who lead any form of ministry. So they—multiple leadership positions that granted multiple humans in multiple positions authority in the church. So the concept of having a building—you have to have a building that is called a church; you have to have leadership that is highly and formally trained and credentialed to have a church—it ground the exponential expansion of the church to a halt. Well, uh, when I start talking like this, people know that I've—I teach at a Bible Institute; that I, I'm a visiting professor at several seminaries; I teach for this seminary; and, um, and so I've had people say, well, in, in teaching a seminary class on this subject, people say, aren't you the pastor of a church that meets in a building? Um, and and you teach for these institutions of higher learning; your mission agency that you're the executive director of has a pathway for students to receive ministry credentials. It seems like you're saying these things are wrong. And my response to that is, no, I'm not. Here's what I, here's what I am saying.
What I am saying is if we wait to serve God, if we wait to share our faith, if we wait to become disciple-makers, if we wait until we're credentialed to yield to the daily assignments of the Holy Spirit, if we wait to take the light and love of Jesus Christ across the street and around the world, we will never see the magnificent prevailing, multiplying power of the Gospel. That's Romans 1:16; it's the power of God to salvation for all who believe. We will not see that exponential multiplying power sweep countless multitudes into the Eternal Kingdom of God. We're just not going to see it if people have to wait and go through long and arduous training and credentialing to to do those things. We're just not going to see it. And I want to see it; I desperately want to see it, don't you?
So Jesus said in Matthew 24:14, "And the good news about the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it, and then the end will come." And He's talking about the end of the age, the end of this age, where, um, there's a ruling power in existence on planet Earth, um, called the god of this world—little g—the domain of darkness. And there's a curse on this world uh through our fall into sin, and and I talk about that extensively in Christian spirituality and the redeeming plan of God to bring us out of the domain of darkness and into the kingdom. Well, there's going to come a time when this evil age is over, and this evil age will not be over until that time where there is, um, there's a great Spiritual Awakening. If you look at the context of Matthew chapter 24, Jesus is talking about the things that happened before He returns, and He said—significant—and that may be an understatement—significant challenges and hardships, uh, some of which are called tribulation there, and some of which are called the Great Tribulation. And so there're going to be challenges and hardships, um, almost unimaginable. At the same time, though, there's going to be a great Spiritual Awakening. It will be the greatest Spiritual Awakening in the history of the world—the greatest Spiritual Awakening that will ever happen—happens before Jesus returns, and it happens strategically, intentionally, and collaboratively through what we call, what we refer to now as DMMs and CPMs, just like it happened in the book of Acts.
Um, and I believe—I don't know how long the period is that this, uh, that that encompasses this, uh, spiritual, ual Awakening before Jesus returns. The scripture says, "No man knows the day or the hour." I don't know how long it's going to take to do that, but what I do know as a mission strategist who studies the research of myologists—things have been happening since 1990 that have never happened in the history of the church or the history of the world in, in regard to DMMs and CPMs. It's happening right, right now. Okay.
In 1990, there were just a couple dozen known multiplicative movements that, um, that were intentionally started that multiplied to the fifth generation and beyond—just a handful. From 1990 to today, globally, that has increased to over 2,000 trackable DMMs and CPMs. And I have a chart in front of me that tells me where each of those are happening on planet Earth. That's never happened in the history of humanity. From 1990 until now, these CPMs and DMMs that have started have resulted in the planting of over 9 million new churches on planet Earth. It's never happened before. Now, from uh per capita, it happened in the first century, but there are more people coming to the Lord right now than ever in history.
Um, as I'm looking at this chart that shows me this graph, rather, that shows me where these things are happening, uh, the bulk of them, the vast majority of them—it looks to me, if I'm, I'm just doing a cursory reading of this—it looks to me like 85% are in Africa and Asia, and and then uh you have Europe, the Americas, the Pacific, and on and, um, and it's just a handful in, in each of those places. In North America right now, uh, United States, Canada—North America—there's 35 CPMs and DMMs. In South America—most of you students taking this course are, uh, you speak Portuguese; you're South American—and so South America has 30; North America has 35. That's not a lot; in fact, it's not enough for us to reach enough people to keep up with the population rate. And so we shut down over 10,000 churches in North America last year, and we only planted 4,500. And so we're losing more churches than we're starting in North America, and we're not keeping up with the population rate in t terms of evangelism. But that's not true in the rest of the world. In the rest of the world, the church is advancing exponentially, especially East Africa, Middle Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa, Western Africa, Eastern Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeastern Asia, Western Asia. And that's, that's that—around 88, 5%.
So I, I want to, I want to go back and look at the foundations and readiness. I think that that God, in His sovereignty, was doing some things with some catalytic people to get us ready for what's happening currently in terms of the global expansion of the church. And uh, the first person that I want to to mention is uh a man named R. Roland Allen. Roland Allen was an Anglican missionary in China, uh, around the turn of the century—eight, um, in, in—he was born in 1868, died in 1947—so early 1900s. He's in China, and he's an Anglican missionary, and he carried the instit—he tried to carry the institutionalized Church into unreached China, and and it was an abysmal failure. And he was, um, kicked out of the country in the Boxer Rebellion, and uh, and and so he got back, and out of that experience, he, um, he wrote a couple of books on, on the topic of missions that were revolutionary. And he decided, um, and rightly so, the institutionalized church was not going to reach the world—like we can't take this methodology and and reach the nations for Christ. And and he just spent some concerted time in prayer before God, and the Lord—imagine this—the Lord led him back to the book of Acts. And so he just, he looked at the book of Acts, and he looked at the early expansion of the church, and he said, "That's it; that's it. We, we don't have to have our institutionalized methodology; we just have to do it like they did it in the book of Acts," and that initial exponential expansion of the church. And so his, uh, his books were, um, called *Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours*, and then the second book was *The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It*. And uh, both of these books, he looks to the church in the book of Acts for the inspiration for modern missions, and and these books had impact, and people, people started to take note and try to apply these principles in terms of reaching the nations.
And if I was to, um, uh, distill the the primary concepts of of uh Allen's book—Allen's two uh primary concepts—I would say it would be, um, extraordinary prayer: Pray diligently; make disciples; enable those disciples to align with scripture and attune to the Holy Spirit; and then remove all permission barriers. And maybe I need to walk, walk through that a little bit. Um, everything begins and is built on prayer. God designed His Universe to run on prayer. Dr. J.D. Greear—I'm quoting him—he said, "God designed His Universe to run on prayer." Prayer is where it starts; it doesn't start with strategy; uh, it doesn't start with—it starts with prayer. And then the commitment to fulfill the Great Commission, which is to to help people become disciples and make disciples—help people become disciple-makers—and then for the to teach those people, to train those people, to align themselves with the word of God and attune themselves to the Holy Spirit—actively listen to the Holy Spirit. And then when, when, when Allen talked about removing uh what I call permission barriers, uh, he's just saying, "Get away from it; let the people lead the church. Don't, don't have the professional missionaries stay there and lead the church; do it like Paul did it." Paul goes in, connects, he shares the Gospel of grace, people come to Christ, he makes disciples, he teaches them how to align themselves with God's word, God's Spirit, and then Paul gets out of there, and he, he entrusts them to The Sovereign God, and he moves on. And uh, and when we look back at that, there are movements uh through regions—four specific regions—when the Apostle Paul was doing this that then launched missionaries uh to the entire known world.
So 60 years later after uh Ronald Allen, the, 60 years later, there was another mission strategist, uh, Dr. David Garrison, um, and Dr. Garrison, uh, he wrote a, he wrote a book—he wrote lots of books, but he wrote a book called *Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World*. And um, his PhD is from the University of Chicago, and he defined church-planting movement. So these terms get defined, uh, and kind of distilled by these men, and he's the one who said it's a rapidly multiplying indigenous, um, it's rapidly multiplying indigenous churches planting churches that sweep across a people group or a population segment, um, and it's signaled a breakthrough. It really did in Missionary church planting, especially, um, after the publication of Garrison's book. It became impossible to talk about missions without referencing church-planting movements. And so these movements were happening; he gave them the title, defined it—that's where that that phrase comes from, church-planting movements. And, um, and then, um, and he did something else. [Music] Um, Garrison identified, I believe, 10 elements to success of a disciple-making movement or a church-planting movement, and those 10 elements were: extraordinary prayer; strategic planning; abundant Gospel sowing; people of peace; obedience-based discipleship; very simple churches; the priesthood of all believers; and local leaders—ership development—local people leading the church. And so those are the 10 elements that he—and by successful, what he meant by successful is these things—someone plants a church; that church plants another church; those churches plant; and on and on, and and they get beyond the fifth generation. And so there's exponential uh church planting, and those 10 things were the things he identified were the the activities or the essential elements of those, um, of those movements. He also—he—there are three areas that Garrison spoke about. First was the essential elements, and then he talked about the observable qualities, um, and that's a little bit different, um, the observable qualities. And and Garrison was the first person to actually uh study movements globally around the world, um, and and he had, I believe, 24 case studies where he examined how the movement began, how it got to, got to where it was, and you know, how these tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands and even one CPM had several million people baptized and discipled, uh, what are the observable quality, qualities from the beginning in these things? And the first thing was worship in the heart language. And so if it was a a tribe that spoke the language of Roro, they were not expected to worship in English; they're worshipping in their heart language. Uh, there, there was a communal element to evangelism, um, people, people were thinking in terms of uh the concentric circles of their relationship, uh, meaning their friends, their relatives, their associates, their neighbors who did not know the Gospel of Jesus, and they got very intentional about, um, about taking the message of Jesus to those people. Um, there's very—the third quality was rapid involvement. And so new Believers and sometimes even Seekers who weren't yet Believers got involved in the life and ministry of the church.
Um, I implemented this in one church-planting movement that the Lord allowed me to start 20 years ago in terms of of people rapidly getting involved with the church. And I was asked to speak about it at Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. And, um, and when I, when I talked about—because we were seeing lots of people come to the Lord and lots of churches—new churches—uh, start—it was just north of Seattle, Washington. And, and, um, and so that's not the place where that typically happens, um, SE—north of Seattle—um, is not, you know, they, they're not known for being open to Christianity. In fact, when I, when I pulled into the town and I moved into that town, uh, the first license plate that I saw was uh—not license plate, excuse me—sticker—bumper sticker—said "Churches eat souls." And so, um, they just weren't very open to the idea of church, and yet we were seeing hundreds of people come to the Lord, and churches started. And so that's why my, my alma mater, Southwestern Seminary, "We want you to come and talk about this here." And so I met with their, with their missions class, and that was uh physically the largest seminary on Earth, so it—a very large class—everybody had to take it. And, uh, and they said, "You know, how are people coming to the Lord?" And I said, "Well, it's rapid involvement," uh, and so they said, "So you lead people to Jesus, and you take them through a training class; you teach them their spiritual gifts, and on and on and on." And I go, "No, no, uh, we have groups, um, we call the groups impact groups, and we meet specific needs and heal specific hurts in the community that we discover." And uh, and I told, told them, for instance, that, um, I sat down with a a school principal, um, uh, I'll just say his first name is—the school principal's name was Rob, but he was not a Believer; it was an elementary school. And I said, "Um, is there anything—are there any needs that the school has that a group of people, um, can just meet?" And he's like, "What's the catch?" And I said, "Well, we're, we're Christians, and we're not—we're committed to not preach at you or anybody else, uh, but we want to make our faith observable through serving our community." And uh, and it's a Bible verse. He said, "What Bible verse?" I said, "Matthew 5:16." And he's, obviously—"What does that say?"—totally unchurched man, unbeliever. And I said, "It, it's where Jesus said, 'Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.'" And I said, uh, "So I'm not going to say his last name, because uh, but I, I said, Principal Rob, um, there's, there's kind of two options uh when Christians are doing outreach: Either Christians can, can try to preach at you, or they can show their faith uh through loving acts of service." And I said, "Option A is preaching at you; option B is showing faith through loving acts of service." And I said, "Which option do you want?" He said, "I think I'll take option B." And I said, "So you don't have to let them know it's a church doing this, uh, you have faculty meeting, right?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Just tell your teachers and faculty and your faculty meeting that there's a group of people that just want to meet needs that may not be in the budget uh for the school, and come up with a list; email me that list, and we'll work out a schedule; we'll meet those needs." Well, he didn't do it quite that way, because uh I bought a house in that town, and it was on a cul-de-sac, and I didn't know any of my neighbors. And one of my neighbors, as I was getting my kids on the bus that week, uh, one of my neighbors walks over and he said, "Are you Timothy Moore?" And I said, "Yes." And he said, uh, uh, "My boss, Principal Rob, uh, said that you lead a group that's going to meet needs at our school. I teach at that school." And uh, I said, I said, "Yeah, yeah, we're, we're going to uh do our best to to look at that list that you have and meet those needs." And he said, "You know how he started that meeting? He said, 'I'm not a church person myself, but,' he said, 'we finally have a group of Christians doing what I think Jesus would, would do in a community.'" And that's an unchurched man that said that to the teachers. And so we got a list, and we went and did everything on that list, and it was so simple. There was a classroom that had a bookshelf with a power outlet behind it, and the teacher knew that there was a power outlet there, but, you know, she didn't know how to operate a sawzall and get to that power outlet. So one of our guys cut out a hole so she could get to the power outlet. They didn't have a coat rack in the library, so we just went, bought a coat rack, put it up in the library. And there was a door that had some graffiti on it; we painted the door. On and on and on—there's like 12 things on the list; we did 11 of them in half a day—like it's just knocked the list out. The only big thing on the list was that every classroom needed, um, what they needed—a classroom library. They had a library, but they wanted a bookshelf with age-appropriate reading material in every classroom, and that just wasn't in the budget. And so, um, I asked—I, I said, "We can do that; I believe we can do that; I believe we can put a classroom library in, in every room, and I believe we can get the community involved to do it." And so Principal Rob got really excited about it. And so on Easter, we had a family fun day at the school; we had inflatables; we had cotton candy and popcorn; and we had a dunk tank; and we had all these different things on the on the public school grounds, and we promoted it in the community; put it in the newspaper; every way that we could promote that.
And uh, and the the entry fee, the ticket to get in, was a was a list of books. So we wanted all these books, these classroom libraries, and the whole Community got involved. It was packed with I don't know how many people, but I would say at least a thousand people came to the school that day and brought books, and we were able to put classroom libraries in every single room. And that was before we had had the first church service; we we hadn't had any type of church service. I was a brand new church planter on the field, and after that day—oh, I got to back up into the best part of this—the people in the community found out that we were doing it, and they said, "Can we help?" And so I had people who had never stepped into a church that um, we did some—since it was going to be with kids—we we did do some background checks and things like that, but we had people that were running every uh every bouncy house, snow cone machine, popcorn machine—like all these different things were being run by people in the community. And uh, and there was a couple running the snow cone machine, Robin Carol, and they had never been to church before. And and so after the event, the people who are volunteering came, and we we just thanked them; we celebrated them helping us. And uh, and they all said, "When are you going to start your church services?" And um, and I I said, "Well, we don't have a place yet to accommodate everyone." The principal heard me saying that, and he goes, "Why don't you use our school?" And so Sunny Crest Elementary School auditorium is where we had our first service a couple of weeks later. And and Rob and Carol from the community who were using who were um who were giving out Snow Cones were the first people we baptized. They invited their their son and daughter-in-law and their two girls, and those were the next people we end up ended up baptizing. And that story, I could go on and on with those stories, and that's The Bridge Church. And and that church, The Bridge Church, expanded and grew and multiplied, and now there are several Bridge uh churches.
So these these elements of movement are not just out there; it's not just Africa; it's not just Asia; it's across the street. Um, we can do these things, this rapid involvement. Another quality was Fearless passion; another quality was conversion sacrifice. Um, in other words, there was a cultural price to pay in these movements; uh, people didn't understand; family didn't understand. That happened here in the Pacific Northwest. Um, there was a cultural price to pay for some of the people who gave their lives to Jesus. Um, um, on and on, there's several several elements, several qualities, and then he had a list of what we call movement killers. And so I want to deal with each one of those things uh individually and explain them a little uh in a in a in a fuller way uh so that you can you can see what drives uh spiritually and strategically these discipl-making movements and church plant movements. Because I believe that the same thing that's happening in Africa and Asia can happen in North America, South America, or any place on planet Earth, but there needs to be an extraordinary amount of prayer, and there needs to be a higher level of intentionality and people who understand what makes these movements work and what kills them. And we're going to look at that in our next unit.
So you want to take the gospel to the unreached? How do you do it? Aside from the logistics of moving to a new country, studying the culture, and learning the language, what is your strategy? How do you practically make disciples that make disciples and plant churches that plant churches in your unreached context? Perhaps you've heard the acronym CPM; it stands for church planting movement: a rapid exponential increase in the number of indigenous Believers and churches inside a people group that make new disciples and plant new churches. That's a simple definition, but starting a movement within an unreached people group is a puzzle that missionaries and missiologists have been working on since Christ commissioned his first disciples. In the late 1800s, a British missionary named Roland Allen planted the first seeds of modern movement thinking. He had become frustrated with the infrastructure and money required to port Western models of church into China. But by studying Paul's Ministry in the book of Acts, he realized that growth required new indigenous Believers to plant self-sufficient churches that multiplied themselves. American missionary George Patterson experienced the same Epiphany 60 years later when his traditional theological institution failed to produce meaningful results in Honduras. He, like Allan, returned to the New Testament and discovered similar principles. 40 years later, missiologist David Garrison studied more than 20 church planting movements on five continents in search of the universal elements to their success. He identified eight: extraordinary prayer, strategic planning, abundant gospel sowing, people of Peace, obedience-based discipleship, simple churches, the priesthood of all believers, and local leadership development. Unsurprisingly, those elements echoed the same principles Allan and Patterson had discovered in the pages of scripture. Established from the foundations of scripture and proven out in modern movements, the common threads discovered and codified by Allan, Patterson, and Garrison form the basis of church planting movement methodology. That's a lot of history in a three-letter acronym, but the story's thread doesn't end there.
Agreeing with the wisdom of these simple New Testament principles, practitioners began to package them together and develop specific tools with the goal of making them easier to learn, easier to transfer, and easier to implement. And while they tend to agree upon the same foundations, their practices segmented, and factions formed. Some camps emphasize abundant gospel sowing—sharing the good news of Jesus quickly with as many people as possible. Those who respond are discipled and gathered together into churches where the other principles are introduced. In this way, evangelism leads to discipleship. Other camps prefer a slower process where Seekers gather together as groups to discover God's word over a longer period of time, usually beginning in Genesis. Together, they study scripture with an emphasis on sharing and obedience with the hope that one day the entire group will believe and form a church. For them, discipleship leads to evangelism. So who's right? Imagine a large full-rigged ship during the age of sail. Those ships could be powered by well over a dozen sails. If you think of the ship as the gospel of the kingdom of God advancing across the seas to reach those who have never heard, the sails represent different methods of evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. There's a sail for each movement methodology, like DMM, t4t, No Place Left, Four Fields, and others. There are also sails for orality, storytelling, street preaching, or passing out tracts. And there are certainly other sails representing methods we have forgotten or haven't yet discovered. When the wind of God's spirit blows, which of those sails can catch it? All of them, of course. When the ship approaches different regions or cultures, perhaps one of the sails catches the wind best, but the ship still progresses. But when the ship advances because of one sail and not the other, is the captain frustrated because it's not his favorite sail? When one of the sails is stained by the carelessness of imperfect humans, does it stop catching the wind? Do the threads within competing sails argue amongst each other even as the ship pulls forward closer and closer to its goal? Of course not. And why should we? Thousands came to Faith before Patterson identified his principles; thousands came to Faith before Discovery Bible studies were developed; thousands thousand came to Faith before storytelling became an everyday practice or giant grids were drawn upon whiteboards or acronyms ruled the missions World. Thousands came to Faith because of street preaching, track scattering, evangelism explosion, and the saying, "God Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life"—strategies that some would scoff at today. Yet God's kingdom grew. We all agree that we need to go to lost people, share the gospel, disciple new Believers, gather Christ followers into churches, and raise up new leaders. We all agree that the early Church in the book of Acts was just the beginning of a movement that has expanded throughout the centuries and spread across the globe. We all want to be part of seeing God's kingdom growing and multiplying to all the people groups of the Earth. Let us sail together upon that ship, trim our sails, and participate as the spirit leads each of us until all have heard. So where is the spirit leading you? [Music]