The Greatest Experience of Equipping in 45 Years of Ministry

In 2004 I was a veteran church planting missionary. I had already led or participated in a dozen church planting projects. I had already been trained in church planting in Bible college, in seminary, in a 2-week church planting institute, and by a veteran church planting missionary. So when my friend Eric invited me to a DCPI training I accepted out of friendship, but I have to admit my expectations were not high. If only I’d known!

It turns out those three days marked an important turning point in my life. DCPI training was different from all the other training I’d received. “Wow,” I thought, “These guys have experienced the same things planting churches I experienced! They’ve ‘been there and done that!’ I should have had this training 15 years ago!” Filling out their evaluation form, I wrote, “DCPI's program is the most cross-cultural and comprehensive approach I've found.”

Back in the Philippines, I began using DCPI’s curriculum to train church planters in training events and in classrooms. When Carole and I left the Philippine mission field, we could think of no better move than to join the DCPI headquarters team.

Eric once told me my enthusiasm for DCPI did not surprise him, saying “Chris, I’ve found that those with the most church planting experience appreciate our material the most” So I guess I should have been prepared for the good response after training missionaries and representatives of Outreach to Asia Nationals last April. One of their China missionaries claimed “This training is the single most important training I have received since joining OTAN in 2002.” Another Kingdom leader topped that with, “The DCPI training was the greatest experience of equipping in 45 years of ministry.”

Thanks for joining us in such a dynamic ministry!

Multiplying Church Planters in Closed and Restricted-Access Countries

Please be praying for one of our training events next week. I will be part of a team going to Winchester, Virginia to teach Church Planting Essentials (CPE) to 35 missionaries serving with Outreach to Asia Nationals (OTAN). OTAN seeks to reach nations through nationals, by assisting nationals to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to their own people in countries where missionaries cannot live and work freely.

28 of the missionaries we are training will be further trained and certified to use DCPI curriculum to train church planters back in the countries where they work. This is how we multiply church planters around the world. I’m excited to contemplate what might happen as OTAN missionaries train church planters in China, Russia, Jordan, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Vietnam—the nations represented by the OTAN missionaries participating in next week’s training event. Our research into the impact of DCPI training in several countries leads us to hope that on average each church planter trained at a DCPI event will start more than two new churches within the next five years, and each of those churches on average will bring more than 45 people from the power of Satan to Christ within that same timeframe.

It gets better. Several OTAN missionaries have been trained even earlier by DCPI, and over the past few months they have already trained 130 church planters in India, Nepal, and China (think: over 350 new churches and over 16,000 new Christians within five years)! Two of these OTAN missionaries will be appointed as DCPI Master Trainers next week. This means they will be able to certify National leaders in closed and restricted-access countries to train church planters in their own languages and in their own countries!

The partnership between DCPI and OTAN is just one example of many such partnerships that exist right now around the world. Christians of all kinds are constantly brought together by God’s Spirit, united by common vision and passion. Please be praying for us next week, that we will be planting the seeds of some church planting movements.

Pray for DCPI World Zone Leaders

I had a terrific time meeting with several World Zone Coordinators and Regional Directors from Asia during DCPI’s Global Vision Summit in February. I’ve worked with R Jayakumar of India before, at training events in Thailand and India. “Jay” is a tireless Christian leader with a passion for saturating India with Christian churches. Several of the Indian leaders he coordinates have visions of planting tens of thousands of churches each! John Bond is a pastor in Australia. He has such a vision for expanding Christ’s kingdom that his church gives him four months each year to travel throughout the south Pacific to encourage and build up churches. Hendrick Vorster is a talented Christian leader originally from South Africa now living in Australia. He is a recognized expert in Church Growth with contacts around the world.

As you pray for me, I wish you would include Jay, John, and Hendrik in your prayers. These three men are constantly seeking ways to mobilize the church to shatter obstacles to Christ’s church, to train more Christian leaders, and to shine the light of Jesus’ love into the dark corners of the world. These are the people in Asia and Oceana with whom I work most closely to respond when Christians there feel, “I know God’s calling me to plant a church, but I don’t know how.”

In Bangkok, Chris McKinney and R. Jayakumar commissioned Arnold Pasion as Master Trainer for the Philippines.

While you’re at it, pray that God can raise up such a leader in China, and in South Korea, and in Southeast Asia. Our vision of equipping leaders to plant 5 million churches to reach the world for Christ isn’t really our vision—it’s God’s vision, shared with the leaders of DCPI, shared with pastors in Australia, shared with a Christian leader in India, shared with Christians across America—and ultimately, necessarily, shared with church planter after church planter around the world. Thanks for caring!