Lifeway Research, North American Mission Board

• Seventy-two percent of the people interviewed said they think the church is full of hypocrites.
• Seventy-one percent of the respondents said they believe Jesus makes a positive difference in a person’s life.
• Seventy-eight percent said they would ‘be willing to listen’ to someone who wanted to share what they believed about Christianity.
• Many unchurched people don’t have a biblical understanding about God and Jesus, the survey found.
  • Seventy-two percent of those surveyed said they believe God – a higher or supreme being – actually exists.
  • Forty-eight percent agree there is only one God as described in the Bible.
  • Sixty-one percent believe ‘the God of the Bible is no different from the gods or spiritual beings depicted by world religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc..
  • Sixty-six percent of adults ages 18-29 agree that Jesus died and came back to life, compared to 54 percent of adults 30 years and older.

source: www.namb.net

This should challenge us to walk across the room and develop relationships with those around us to point them to Christ.

So, what is a Church Planting Movement? A simple, concise definition of a Church Planting Movement (CPM) is a rapid and multiplicative increase of indigenous churches planting churches within a given people group or population segment.

There are several key components to this definition. The first is rapid. As a movement, a Church Planting Movement occurs with rapid increases in new church starts. Saturation church planting over decades and even centuries is good, but doesn’t qualify as a Church Planting Movement.

Secondly, there is an exponential increase. This means that the increase in churches is not simply incremental growth–adding a few churches every year or so. Instead, it compounds when two churches become four, and four churches become eight to ten, and so forth. Multiplicative growth is only possible when new churches are being started by the churches themselves–rather than by professional church planters or missionaries.

Finally, they are indigenous churches. This means they are generated from within rather than from without. This is not to say that the gospel is able to spring up intuitively within a people group. The gospel always enters a people group from the outside; this is the task of the missionary. However, in a Church Planting Movement the momentum quickly becomes indigenous so that the initiative and drive of the movement comes from within the people group rather than from outsiders.

If this definition isn’t enough, we might also clarify what a Church Planting Movement is not. A Church Planting Movement is more than “evangelism that results in churches.” Evangelism that results in churches is a part of a Church Planting Movement, but the “end-vision” is less extensive. A church planter might satisfy himself with the goal of planting a single church or even a handful of churches, but fail to see that it will take a movement of churches planting churches to reach an entire nation of people.

A Church Planting Movement is a rapid and
multiplicative increase of indigenous churches
planting churches within a given
people group or population segment.

A Church Planting Movement is also more than a revival of pre-existing churches. Revivals are highly desirable, but they’re not Church Planting Movements. Evangelistic crusades and witnessing programs may lead thousands to Christ, and that’s wonderful, but it isn’t the same as a Church Planting Movement. Church Planting Movements feature churches rapidly reproducing themselves.

Perhaps the closest thing to a Church Planting Movement, that still is not a Church Planting Movement, is when local church planters are trained and deployed to plant multiple churches among their own people. This is a highly productive method of spreading churches across a population segment or people group, but the momentum remains in the hands of a limited group of professional church planters rather than in the heart of each new church that is begun.

Finally, a Church Planting Movement is not an end in itself. The end of all of our efforts is for God to be glorified. This occurs whenever individuals enter into right relationship with Him through Jesus Christ. As they do, they are incorporated into churches which enable them to continue to grow in grace with other like-minded believers. Any time people come to new life in Jesus Christ, God is glorified. Any time a church is planted–no matter who does it–there are grounds for celebration.

So why is a Church Planting Movement so special? Because it seems to hold forth the greatest potential for the largest number of lost individuals glorifying God by coming into new life in Christ and entering into communities of faith.

However, a Church Planting Movement is not simply an increase in the number of churches, even though this also is positive. A Church Planting Movement occurs when the vision of churches planting churches spreads from the missionary and professional church planter into the churches themselves, so that by their very nature they are winning the lost and reproducing themselves.

Taken from: Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World by David Garrison

What is a people group? Click here to find out

Total number of people groups: 11,578

Number of unreached people groups: 6,513

Unreached people groups 100,000 or greater: 2,089

Unengaged, unreached people groups of 100,000 or greater: 593

For more information: www.peoplegroups.org

source: www.imb.org

In China, more than 30,000 believers are baptized every day.

A Church Planting Movement is a northern Chinese province sees 20,000 new believers and 500 new churches started in less than 5 years.

In Henan Province, Christianity exploded from less than a million to more than five million in only eight years.

Chinese Christians in Quig’an County of Heilongjiang Province plant 236 new churches in a single month.

In southern China, a Church Planting Movement produces more than 90,000 baptized believers in 920 house churches in eight years time.

In 2001, a newly emerging Church Planting Movement yields 48,000 new believers and 1,700 new churches in one year.

These statistics come from Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World by David Garrison

One goal of this blog and website is to inspire and educate our church on our community and the communities we hope to reach for Christ. This post will be an overview of our community. This information comes from a 2005 study by United Way. We hope that this information will help you to understand and pray for our community as we seek to reach out to it with the compassion of Christ. Feel free to comment and discuss this information.

Tarrant County is one of the most populated counties in the United States. In 2004, it was the 18th largest county in the nation.

The Hispanic community accounts for roughly 25 percent of the counties population.

11 percent of Tarrant County, or almost 175,000 individuals, live below the poverty line.

Poverty rates are disproportionate across racial and ethnic groups. 22 percent of the Hispanic population and 19 percent of the African-American population live below the poverty line. This is compared to the six percent of the white population that lives below the poverty line.

The number of homeless people in Tarrant County increased 20 percent from 2002 to 2004.

These are just a few of the statistics about our community. We will continually keep you updated on what is going on in our community, as well as the communities where we are involved in missions in the United States and around the world. Please be in prayer for our community and share this information with your family and small groups.

Missions at FRBC is changing. With what we learned from Project HOPE, and the focus on small groups, God is moving our church into a new stage of missions activity. As God teaches the Church in His word, we can never harbor the mentality that missions is to “pray, pay, and stay out of the way.” God is calling our church to stand up and plunge our hands into the messy mud of humanity. We are entering into a time of “hands-on” missions.First of all, I believe we need to have a clear understanding of why we do missions. Did you know that every day billions of people, from the child bathing in the street water in India to the single mom struggling to raise her children in Arlington, live in constant desperation? They have no hope for the future and no sense of God’s presence. God calls us to meet the “billions” where they are and to extend the scar-stricken hand of Christ to them. That calling is the Great Commission. “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded, and lo, I will be with you until the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20.

Our vision of missions at Fielder Road is to substantially contribute to the disciple-making of the billions. I believe this task will send our members into three mission fields; our personal mission field, our local mission field, and our global mission field.

Personal missions means intentionally sharing our faith within our relational web of influence. It is the task of “just walking across the room” and extending a hand of friendship to those far from Christ. When we seek opportunities to live out and speak the gospel to those outside the church in day to day living, we are fulfilling personal missions.

Local missions means getting involved locally in an effort to serve Arlington and the DFW area in order to honor the name of Christ and create an atmosphere of acceptability to the gospel. Going to Mission Arlington and adopting a family in need, or welcoming a refugee from an oppressed country into Arlington through Catholic Charities are examples of local missions.

Finally, global missions means taking the gospel to those outside of our region. Although not everyone can travel to a foreign country (we should, however, encourage the large majority to experience this at least once), every believer can be involved in supporting financially, prayerfully and vicariously through the context of his small group. A small group that adopts a church-planter in India and supports him, prays for him, and even visits him would be involved in global missions.

So your task is clear. You don’t have to reach the billions alone, but will you find your place to contribute? This website is designed to assist you in that process. Look around. God may just show you your place in the world!