Planting Churches Among the City's Poor - Volume 2

286 • P LANTING C HURCHES AMONG THE C ITY ’ S P OOR : V OLUME 2

4. A CPM is churches planting churches (church planters may start the first churches, but at some point the churches themselves reach a “tipping point” and a “movement” is launched), p. 22. 5. A CPM occurs within people groups or interrelated population segments (they involve the communication of the Gospel to people within shared language and ethnic boundaries), p. 23.

C. What CPMs are not

1. They are not revival or spiritual awakening, p. 23.

2. They are not just mass evangelism to the lost : they are, rather, church multiplying movements , p. 23.

3. They are not just people movements , i.e., mass conversion where great numbers of lost people respond to the gospel but don’t necessarily produce churches, p. 24.

4. They are not Church Growth Movements, p. 24.

a. Church growth movements tend to associate bigger churches with better churches; CPMs adhere to the principle that smaller is better , pp. 24-25. b. Church growth movements tend to direct missionaries to “responsive fields” at the expense of unreached and what may appear to be unresponsive fields, p. 25. c. Church growth movements advocate pouring resources (especially missionaries) into responsive harvest fields; in CPMs missionaries are dominant at first and less and less dominant while the new believers become the primary harvesters and leaders of the movement, p. 25. 5. They are not just a divine miracle , but CPMs recognize the vital role that Christians play in the success or failure of these movements, p. 26. 6. They are not a Western invention , that is, they didn’t originate in the West, nor are they limited to one type of culture or another, p. 26.