Western Europe Church Planting Movement (Pt. 2)

The first CPM in the modern West

One of my goals in making this Substack was to get some docs out of my Google Drive and onto a website where it could be more easily accessed. Below is one of those documents.

It’s a case study of the first Church Planting Movement in the modern West. I believe I got it from Steve Smith some years ago. I’ve copied it verbatim except for a few headings I added for clarity. I enjoy reading it every so often and hope you learn from it as I have.

It’s a lengthy case study, so I’ve broken it into two posts. This is part 2. Check out part one here.

Western Europe Case Study

90-Minute Regions

In the summer of 2010, when we prayed again, God made it very clear that we should make a big move and divide the country into 90-minute regions. The theory behind it was this: it’s normal for people in our country on a weekend to get in a car and go somewhere 90 minutes away. Maybe they go to a beach or to meet someone, or they go have coffee somewhere and return home. That’s what people do anyway.

Driving that distance for outreach would not be a major sacrifice; just refocusing their social behavior. So we started to communicate this at leadership meetings: we would like to go everywhere now – everywhere within a 90-minute drive of our existing work.

We told the leaders: “Instead of having your own house church meeting, take the whole house church. Go somewhere for 90 minutes. Pray and ask God where to go and just do it. If you just go there and pray for the town, it’s already a step forward. Just move in small steps. If you have a friend somewhere, get in the car, drive there, get to know him. If there’s a town festival, just get in the car and go there. See if you can get to know people.”

That plan really shaped the pattern of ministry around us amazingly. It became normal, very normal. At the same time we started to talk about the 90-minute regions, we felt God reminding us: we never wanted to be a movement just for our own country. Even in our first year, I often shared: “There will be people coming to Christ who will be discipled and go somewhere else. I would like our country to send out ten thousand missionaries.”

New Countries

So it was very clear: we should pray for different countries and we should challenge our people to pray and to look for God’s leading. So in 2012, we began to take steps beyond the 90-minute regions and we aimed to focus on Europe as a whole. We had started some house churches in one neighboring country, but it was not very effective. So we knew we had to relearn that as well.

One couple among our leadership team both independently heard God say, “Move to [a country next door].” Both had said back to God, “If you really want to see this happen, you’ll need to get through to my spouse.” It was very clear that couple was called. So we raised money and sent them officially into a nearby country with a full-time ministry approach (because back then we didn’t know better).

I never regretted it, because it was a step of obedience – not just for them, but also for us, to say “We prayed for Europe, and this is how God got us moving into that.” But coming back to 90-minute regions: that really shaped our faith that planting churches is possible everywhere.

No Hierarchy

At that time I was full-time and two or three others were full-time or part-time. We traveled a lot and whenever somebody showed up, we started to train them. I went to places on the fringe of the country in various directions – the places far away from everybody else. So I really traveled like crazy through those years.

I was trying to change to a more apostolic approach: “Let’s get it going.” And during that period I started to realize two main things. First, now a lot of people were coming in who had a Christian background – very different from our guys in the beginning who all had unchurched backgrounds. And some of my guys with unchurched backgrounds felt they didn’t know how to train those new people.

That was one major thing. It was really a clash of culture – not negative, but definitely a clash of culture. In one city, the key leader at that time had an unchurched background; he’s an amazing guy. But now suddenly Christian-background people showed up who also had a very clear vision for the city.

When I looked carefully at both of them, I knew it wouldn’t work to put them together. So I completely said goodbye to any hierarchical structure that I still had in the back of my mind. I concluded, “We cannot function in a hierarchical way. People have to be able to work together, wherever that puts them relationally. We can’t tell people they have to report to a certain leader. We have to find different ways to approach this.”

So I started a bigger meeting where I brought all those new pioneers together. At that time, we had about 100 house churches. At the joint festival in 2012, I think there were about 600 people. It started to feel different.

In late 2012, I heard the Holy Spirit say very clearly: “2014 is the last joint festival. After that it will get too big. It will become too complicated, and the whole leadership team would all have to go in a public and full-time role or it wouldn’t work anymore. So in one and a half years, you have to stop the joint festival.” When I communicated that, people were not happy about it. But they respected me enough so nobody got angry.

In 2013, in one of the meetings where I was sitting together with all those new pioneers, I got really rebuked by the Holy Spirit. Up until then everything had run according to my leadership style. I’m a very disciplined person. I get up very early in the morning, I pray, I make plans, I prepare stuff, I talk with people, and I travel a lot. And I had always assumed that’s how everybody functioned!

The Holy Spirit rebuked me for keeping Him out. I understood immediately what He meant. It was not that I had tried to calm the Holy Spirit down. But I had acted as if everybody had to listen to God the way I listen to God.

Starting from that meeting, God made it clear he wanted to speak to everybody. So for six months I stepped down. I discussed it with the leadership team and the apostolic team and asked another couple to take over. I still continued to lead the pioneering ministry. But for all the strategic decisions and meetings I stepped down so others could lead the meetings and reshape the atmosphere with much more joint prayer.

That was the situation from October 2013 to Pentecost 2014. And at that last joint festival, the atmosphere changed. There was much more freedom to listen to God, much more freedom to prepare meetings differently. There was much more freedom in what was taught and what was not taught.

More than 1000 people attended. That felt nice too. And at the end of the festival I felt like God was putting a medal on my chest. It was clear: things had changed. Up until today, if you show me a map of Europe, I can start crying when I think of all those places that are completely untouched. I knew that most of our people are not motivated like that.

So I expected God to say something new, like, “The 90-minute region’s done. Start going into all the European countries. I expected something new to come, but God was quiet. He didn’t say anything about a next step. The only thing I could envision was: “If we continue to grow like we have been, by Pentecost 2016, we should have about 500 house churches.” That was my projection.

But I didn’t know what to do with it. The work just kept growing. After 2014 we didn’t have joint festivals any more, but a lot of the house church clusters (networks of house churches) started their own festivals – sometimes with 200 people, sometimes with only 30 people – to have a big celebration together once a year.

I started a new training crew with about 15 young men who I thought were apostolically gifted. They were mostly in their early 20’s. I brought them together for a weekend once a quarter for what we called “apostolic multiplier training.” And I didn’t know really what to do with them.

I pretty much had only my own experience to know what to do. So the first year was rather bad. But in 2016 it got better and better. I had learned my lesson about giving space to the Holy Spirit. One of the things I’ve learned about recognizing apostolic leaders or teams: they are self-motivated. If not, nothing will ever happen.

We do mentor leaders and communicate and teach in joint meetings. But we don’t have joint meetings very often. It’s when I see somebody going into the next city and starting to send his own people out, that I know he is observing the pattern I have laid, because he’s self-motivated.

By Pentecost 2016 we counted about 520 house churches. By that time, the move outside our country had grown. We had started work in a Muslim-majority country. It is still slow but it is happening. We have started in three other European countries, in different directions.

Our most recent apostolic meeting was attended by 70 adults. I’m still doing pioneer work. To my surprise, in December 2015, God told me to start going into a fourth European country, but completely evangelizing. Not looking for Christians but starting from zero again. So last year I went with some others into that country and started from zero again. I don’t speak that language, so I have to find English-speaking people at universities and wherever I can.

Staying connected

People often ask me: “How do you stick together?” I tell them three major things. We don’t have a joint branding; they even use different names now. So that cannot be the reason.

But all the key leaders meet in apostolic meetings. The mentoring is really strong. It’s never as strong as I would like it to be, but it is strong. Anybody in the movement can tell you who their mentor is, and I don’t do one hour a week with all the guys I mentor any more. A lot of the guys I mentor don’t need it. But that has really helped to create strong relationships and friendships.

The second thing: we try to get people together. We encourage all the leadership teams (on all levels) to have regional days, networking meetings and festivals. But we don’t tell them how often to do those or what to do there. But it’s part of the DNA, to get people together, to help them to see a larger picture and learn from each other.

I tell the leaders: if you’re humble, you know that especially in a house church movement, you will multiply your own personality. Therefore you personally will not multiply a lot of other kingdom values, because you do not feel them strongly enough. So if you don’t get your people together with other believers, you will sooner or later become very narrow in what is happening behind you.

The third thing is that although we don’t have much central administration we establish what we call support modules. These are trainings that all the different house churches can send their people to. We have about eight different support modules right now, and they vary in quality.

One module is one week or one weekend trainings where they can learn to study the Bible theologically and philosophically. That was one of the first things we established. We also established three month programs where house churches that have problems with evangelism can ask stronger evangelists to come in and take them out on the street or wherever they want to go to practice sharing their faith. I want to make these support modules even stronger in the next couple of years than they are at present.

House church patterns

In the house churches, everybody is involved. I don’t feel it’s helpful in Western subcultures if the house church is open. We usually have one really closed meeting for the team. That’s where they pray and plan. And that’s where they start on a weekly level.

For everything else, like having another meeting to invite people, they decide what to do. We encourage the house churches to be small rather than large. If a group grows large, it becomes more complicated, and the leader has to be more capable. He has to be able to communicate with a lot of different people. So usually the team is four to six adults; definitely not larger.

Then they have three other people around them per team member. So the whole group gathering would be between nine and eighteen people. And on average they reach about three new people a week, so that’s quite a lot.

Persecution

In the early years we endured some persecution mainly from traditional churches. People came to Christ, and somebody would get worried because a person got baptized. So they would ask a cult investigation agency: “Who are these people? Are they listed as a cult or a recognized church?” But it was not that difficult. We very politely asked for an interview.

I was once invited to the annual gathering of the anti-cult experts from one of the traditional denominations. Two of our guys and I sat opposite 40-50 people interviewing us. It felt like a Roman inquisition. But we were polite and absolutely transparent.

We don’t have much administration, but if they had wanted they could have looked through our finances. We told them pretty much, “We understand you guys are important. There are evil people out there. If after this interview, you think we’re evil, that’s up to you.”

That seemed to satisfy them, and we haven’t had a problem with that recently. On a personal level, though, you always have persecution. I’ve seen people lose their jobs; I’ve seen parents burn Bibles. I’ve seen it all. And I’m not talking about the Muslim-majority country. I’m talking about here in our country.

Impacting traditional churches

We’ve had some limited success in impacting existing, established churches with buildings here in Europe. The issue is complex because the various denominations are very different from each other.

I did train one traditional pastor. First I trained his eldership, but that didn’t work. He would have had to change everything: his pattern of finance, his pattern of meetings and so on. But what we succeeded in is this: his young guys started to understand, “Church is not because we belong to this denomination. What’s important is the person who really helps me to live as his disciple. And if I move to another city, I will not go looking for another church. I will start a new house church there.”

So out of this traditional church they have started many house churches in different cities. I have not seen a complete change of a traditional church. I tell people: “Go and look for a group of people that is motivated to try something new. Don’t put pressure on anybody to change everything they have done for the last 30 or 40 years. Focus on those who are open to something different. Start a parallel approach; take them out, let them pioneer and see what the Lord will do. I still lack experience and also time to know if it could work in an entire pre-existing church here.

Cycles – describe any key cycles of training / training events / leadership meetings, evaluation, strategy planning, etc.

• Meeting with leaders for training once a quarter in one of the major cities

• Training for all at annual celebrations.

In the early days the festival looked much more Christian than the gatherings now. It had worship, teaching, time to pray and a lot of free time activities and workshops and so on. And usually baptisms.

Nowadays, if there are sessions, they look very different. The key issue would still be having avenues where they learn from each other. So nowadays even in the main sessions, you would see much less teaching, much more prayer, and much more interaction. And there would be a huge number of workshops, of platforms where people can meet together with different interests. They would all be there, and there would be a lot of fun too. A lot of fun.

• Support modules open to all believers in the movement

Roles of the outside catalysts

• Assistance and encouragement at the beginning

Roles of key inside leaders

• Vision-casting

• Much fasting and prayer

• Evangelism

• Setting patterns for house churches

• Listening to the Spirit and discerning future direction

• Training of early generations of leaders

• Establishing a stable leadership team for the whole country

• Identifying, training and launching apostolic leaders

Disappointments/Challenges

• Lack of mentors or fruitful patterns; needing to figure out everything by trial and error or the Spirit’s leading

• Major differences in perspective between unchurched and church background leaders

Statistical Information

• 2000 – a couple of baptisms

• 2001- started first generation groups in two or three other places in country

• 2003 – slow-down in growth

• 2004 – 12 or 13 house churches

• 2007 to 2010 – divided the country into eight regions, and pioneered in regions where we hadn’t started any house church yet

• 2008 – 200-250 people total

• 2012 – 100 house churches; about 600 people at festival

• 2014 – about 140 house churches; over 1000 people at festival

• 2016 – about 520 house churches

Future Plans

I’m currently in another conversation with Jesus. I told him my longing to take the gospel to the last subculture, not just of our country but all over the world. I asked him, “What should be the next step?” And I felt he asked me “What would you speak as a next benchmark?”

I said, “One thousand house churches would be manageable. Two thousand would be manageable; even five thousand doesn’t excite me. It will get there eventually. But ten thousand, I have no clue how to get there and what to do. Or what would be my role and how to do it.” So that’s what I communicated as the next benchmark.

Then I said, “But what’s my role?” What I got was, “You have done this process of seeing a group of new believers rising up, growing up to become an apostolic team. And at the time of the last joint festival there were about 140 house churches. So you have seen it grow and you didn’t stay there. You released the guys. How about if you do this process with 100 apostolic teams?”

So that’s what I want to see over the next couple of years. I would like to see 100 apostolic teams launching their own movements. If on average each movement had 100 house churches, that would be 10,000 house churches to start with. That is quite exciting.

Some apostolic teams among us have already started new apostolic teams. There are some (especially cross-culturally) where we’re still in the early stages. But that is the next major step, from what I can see.

There’s a story I tell a lot to convey my vision for the future. I would like to see on a playground in a small rural town, a young father talking with another young father and trying to share the gospel with him. And this other young father says, “Thank you very much for sharing, but I already came to Christ a year ago. And when they tell each other their stories, they realize, “Oh, my spiritual grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather and your spiritual grandfather’s grandfather’s, grandfather, were once sitting together in this apostolic multiplier training that I’m doing now.”

If God would bring that to pass, I would be happy.

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