Church Planting

If the Chinese church committed itself completely to mission it would be a great new force that could complete the Great Commission, a mission expert stated.

There are an estimated 100 million Christians in China, including members of the underground church, and the number is rapidly growing. Some have estimated that 30,000 people in China come to Christ every day, Dr. David Shibley, president of Global Advance, told The Christian Post Wednesday.

“I’ve seen it (mission movement) beginning in China and India,” said Shibley, whose organization focuses on empowering national leaders to plant churches among the unreached people groups. In India, an estimated 15,000 people are coming to Christ daily. more >>

The Presbyterian Church in America is pushing its "every church plant a church" campaign to help bring more people to Christ.

Launched this year by the denomination's domestic mission arm, Mission to North America, the thrust was designed to create a grassroots church-planting culture in the PCA.

"We’re not inventing any new methodology here but we’re crystallizing concepts we’ve clearly seen God use, and encouraging people to take more steps in this direction," said Fred Marsh, associate coordinator of MNA, in the denomination’s byFaith magazine. more >>

Top mission leaders attending an invitation-only conference in Tennessee on Tuesday began exchanging ideas and discussing how to complete the Great Commission.

The Finish Line summit is being hosted by the Billion Soul Network in partnership with the Church of God World Headquarters in Cleveland, Tenn., and the Island Wave Missions in Fiji. It aims to get key mission leaders to decide which unreached people groups they should focus efforts on first, and then how they will most effectively reach these groups.

“In the world, there are thousands of unreached people groups,” said James O. Davis, co-founder of Billion Soul Network, to The Christian Post. “When you look at that it almost seems overwhelming.” more >>

More than 1,200 African Christian leaders have gathered in Kampala, Uganda, for a church planting summit that aims to help attendees reach the collective goal of planting more than 200,000 churches over the next decade.

Key Christian leaders from Kenya, Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania are learning from successful church planting leaders how to duplicate their strategies in Africa as they convene for this week’s Billion Soul Leadership Summit.

“We have taken ownership of the Great Commission,” said Dr. Alex Mitala, chairman of the New Birth Fellowship of Uganda and co-chair of Global Mobilization. “The Lord has called us, no matter where we are in the world, to synergize our efforts together to help double the size of the Church.” more >>

Southern Baptist mission leaders have taken notice of the rapidly expanding Hispanic population in North America and are addressing ways to overcome cultural barriers to reach this group.

Among the many obstacles, the most prominent are a Catholic family background and the language barrier between generations of a Hispanic family living in the United States.

Although many Hispanics are not active participants of the Roman Catholic Church, they often face pressure from their families and friends when they engage in evangelical activities, writes Bobby S. Sena, a member of the Church Planting Staff at North American Mission Board, in a feature posted on the Web site ChurchPlantingVillage.net. more >>