For those of us city dwellers we know what it is like to travel with others on public transportation. It can be stressful especially if the group reaches more than a few. In an effort to keep the group together a natural leader arises, and out of a deep concern to keep the group together and safe, you’ll hear “This is us!” A proclamation that lets all in the common group know that this subway car is ours for the taking, and will eventually lead us to our common destination. Interestingly enough this phrase came up again and again on a recent trip to New York City.  Since we were living in Brooklyn we commuted to Manhattan daily by subway.  I found this phrase useful again and again, “This is us!” You’d hear when our train came, after we’ve been waiting possibly seeing 2-3 trains pass us before ours arrived.

One morning that week a friend of mine named Matan from Israel was rushing me to prepare myself for the day. As I brushed my teeth and my friend Dan fixed his hair, we heard Matan yell from the room, “This is us!”. Dan and I look at each other and turn our heads. Again we hear Matan proclaiming, “This is us!” I almost didn’t have the heart to ask Matan, “Matan, what did you say?” Matan got a sheepish look on his face. He explained, “Everytime our group is ready to move, to get on a subway, someone proclaims, ‘This is us!’ Does it not mean, ‘Let’s go’? Since his English far exceeded my Russian, or Hebrew I gave him as much grace as I could find. But after thinking about it, it must of made great sense to him to think that. Matan wanted to move us to mission together together. He was done with our passive hygienic care. So for that we made in grammatically correct the rest of the week to proclaim, “This is us!” When others in the group needed to be told, “Let us Go!”

Thanks for writing Sean.

As I (Mark) reflect on Sean’s story – and I remember times when I too have blurted out “This is us!” on the train approaching our stop, it strikes me what an interesting “reveal” that statement is for us as missional followers of Jesus.

Think about what that statement is doing.  When someone on a crowded train approaching a stop leans toward his pack of friends and says, “This is us,” he is telling them that we are about to embark on a journey together.  This journey is part of what defines “us” from “them” (the rest in the train car).  It prepares and rallies the group to go. It says ‘This is who we are, we are go-ers.’

Our identity as missional followers of Jesus is discovered “on the way” – we learn who we are by who we are traveling with, that our identity is wrapped up in our mission – and our community is those with whom we exit the train and begin our walk.  Sociologists call this communitas – and it will completely change any insular, stagnant back-biting community into a vibrant, creative, and dynamic family on the move.  When Jesus said, “(As you are going) into all the world, make disciples…” – he was saying in essence…

…”This is us!”

At the recent Exponential Conference, (the world’s America’s largest gathering of church planters) we heard David Garrison author of Church Planting Movements and global research maven talk about something he picked up from Indian church planters.  He did by simply showing us his hand, and I don’t mean deck of cards.

Holding up his hand, he gave us a simple acronym used to help Indian leaders reproduce leaders among the hundreds of thousands of churches being planted right now across that nation.  He learned it from others, and now I’ll pass it along to you.  (Who will you pass this on to?)

Hold up your hand, and starting with your thumb, spell out the word P-O-U-C-H.  Imagine a little pouch in the palm of your hand.  This is the descriptive (not necessarily prescriptive) list of elements seen in viral house churches spreading like wildfire among the persecuted peoples of India:

P- Participative Gatherings.

We let the Holy Spirit lead, and we all contribute.  No one person sucks up all the oxygen when we gather.  Everyone has a moment to offer what they’re learning from God.  1 Cor 14:26 says, “Well, my brothers and sisters, let’s summarize. When you meet together, one will sing, another will teach, another will tell some special revelation God has given, one will speak in tongues, and another will interpret what is said. But everything that is done must strengthen all of you.”

O - Obedience to Christ, radically

There must be a serious, all-in commitment from each person in the group to commit their full lives to Jesus, and to each other.  Nothing short of that will be sustainable, or reproducible for long.  Francis Chan told a story of how he went to China, and spoke with some of the persecuted church there, and when he described what we call church in America (1 hour a week event, many creature comforts, apathy, etc) at first they LAUGHED OUT LOUD – then they asked, “How did you get that picture of church, from this?” (as they held up their Bible) For them, it would be impossible to conceive of apathy in the Chinese church – why give up everything including your safety for nominal beliefs?

U – Unpaid Multiple Leaders

Tithes do go to pay for one leader (1 Cor 9:11), or maybe two, but the goal is to ask the leader not to feel responsible for all the teaching, all the evangelism, all the leadership of the larger church.  This leads to burnout.  Instead, segment the tasks and pass them out to multiple, unpaid leaders – this also gives more people a chance a leadership development.  These are not a bunch of volunteers passing out bulletins, these are tomorrow’s church leaders, today!

C – Cells of 20 Members or less

Groups made up of 20 adults or less allow the group size to live in that space where everyone knows they’re a part of something bigger, but that it is small enough to ask each person to contribute, thus developing an active, rather than passive church.  This is not your typical “small group” (read Neil Cole’s recent post for more on this).  This is a place where growing disciples come to celebrate and encourage, not to be transformed by a flashy worship service.

H – Home-centered

This is more than just a strategy to save your church money on rent.  It drives your church to be the family it already is!  When you meet in homes, it will ruin the segmentation you have created between your church life and your family life – and transformation will happen!  Another way to say this is that the home is the family.  These Cells (MESOs as we call them) can meet anywhere – but its never about the event; its about the family.  There is the hospitality of the home wherever they go.  It is the family metaphors that the Biblical writers used throughout Scripture that make the most sense – a King and a Kingdom, a Father and his children… this is what God is giving birth to here on earth!

Watching churches in India multiply like rabbits is a joy and it leads me to worship God, who is declaring his glory through these simple and ephemeral families of faith.

Today I want to focus briefly on David Garrison author of Church Planting Movements.  Garrison has spent years as a missionary in India, and now works to study and collect real-time data on CPMs (church planting movements) around the world.  CPMs as he defines them are a rapidly multiplying, unstoppable virus of churches being planted across a region and across social groups. Typically they become  a movement when 1000s of churches are being planted over just a few short years.

Now to the good stuff:

He spoke of 30 different movements he was aware of in the Middle East, where over 100,000+ Muslims had come to Christ in recent years (many of whom had seen an unknown man named Jesus appear to them in a dream).  In one part of India alone, over 130,000 churches have been planted in India in the last 10 years.  Similar movements are happening in the underground church in China, and across Africa.

When asked about a church planting movement in America, he said that most Americans are “not trying” to see a church planting movement happen here.

Though it saddens me, I agree with him.  For the most part, we still want to build bigger barns for ourselves – we prefer church “addition” rather than church multiplication.  For most of the Christian world (America only represents about 4% of the Christians on the planet) – it is about seeing God’s glory MULTIPLIED through countless churches.

Synthesizing decades of study of these movements – he describes 5 common elements in CPMs:

1. Effective entry strategy – connecting with folks far from Jesus in a contextually relevant way
2. Effective Gospel communication – simple (not simplistic) exchange of what the Gospel means for this culture
3. Effective Discipleship – Americans he said have inherited much from seminaries, but we must learn to become not only hearers but doers of God’s Word.
4. Effective church formation – the essence of a church is Christ himself, everything that forms must be from him
5. Long Term Leadership Development – when training leaders, think of those they will train, and those they too will train…think of your leader you are training like a lens into the future.  What kind of leaders will grow in this movement?

But that’s not what gets Garrison excited – he keeps his eyes on what truly matters – a CPM is not an end in itself- it is all about bringing God glory; and every healthy church planted is another chance to display “God on earth as he really is.”  We want to see God’s glory multiplied (as the waters cover the sea, Hab 2:14) – its not about the numbers, or making some list of CPM prescriptions (he spoke of CPMs in articulately descriptive terms alone), it is not even about “missional,” it is about the glory of God.

Next post I’ll go a little deeper into Garrison’s thoughts – and how we can begin to engage in a church planting movement of God here in America.