At the end of April, I had the privilege to attend a CPM training session for four days in Philadelphia. My mother interrogated me about my travels by airplane and city bus and whether I knew everything that I needed to know about how to get where I was going perfectly (yes I am a bit of a Mama's boy!). I replied that since I was only responsible for myself on this trip, that it would be a breeze. Even if I got lost, I'd just be lost, just me, no big deal!
CPM stands for Church Planting Movement. This is somewhat a misnomer as actually planting churches is not what we as foreign workers are trained to do. I learned that Jesus is sending us out, just as He did the 72 disciples as recorded in Luke 10, to find "persons of peace" whom He has prepared ahead of time to receive Him. They then are the "church planters", as they share their exciting, new found freedom and salvation with their circle of influence. As this happens, along with strategic Bible study in which obedience is stressed, disciples are made, and small fellowships (or churches) are formed which repeat this process until there is exponential multiplication of these fellowships becoming a "movement". This is not a formula of what to do as much as it is what God is doing and has been doing among unreached people groups all the way back to Luke 10! This is the same thing that occurred throughout the book of Acts and is occurring in a mighty way right now!
What we actually did during those four days of training, in addition to class room type learning, included: staying in a not so nice hotel, relying on public transportation, and eating in ethnic restaurants in small groups in the parts of town where immigrants and refugees live (all intentionally part of the experience). During these interactions with humanity, we practiced living a "Shema" lifestyle (from Deuteronomy 6), we were to weave references to God into our conversations as if we were searching for a "person of peace." We all had great interactions, Kingdom appointments. One of the days, my group stepped into a mosque and found a young man from Africa with whom we had a wonderful spiritual conversation. He is a God seeker, and knows the Quran very well. He believes that he has found the way to God, but is deceived. I pray that God will reveal to Him the Deity of Christ Jesus!
My favorite part of the trip was being around individuals like myself. By that I don't mean that we were the same age, gender, race, ethnic background, or stage of life (single or married, with or without children); I mean that we were all excited to be called to carry God's love and good news of salvation to the least reached. God is answering prayer and "sending out workers into His harvest field." (Luke 10:2) By this I mean foreigners like us and "persons of peace" as well. It is amazing what God is doing and even more amazing that He chooses to do it through His people!
If you want to read amazing stories about these kinds of movements that are happening recently, check out the book: "Miraculous Movements" by Jerry Trousdale, published this year (hot off the press!).
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