A new crew of harvesters reports for duty

Over the past two weeks, I've been training 30 people how to plant daughter churches using Dynamic Church Planting International's "Churches Planting Churches" curriculum. First was a training event at the International Christian College of Manila, followed by an event at Philippine College of Ministry, 6 hours north in Baguio City. Several days found me starting at 8:00 a.m. and teaching until 9:00 p.m. Far from being worn-out by all that teaching, I found that the interest and passion of the Christian leaders I was teaching stoked the fires within myself, and I can't wait to see how the Lord of church planting uses those 30 people in the weeks and months ahead.

Those learning ranged from 20 years old to 52 years old. They included Bible college students, pastors, campus ministers, professors, and Bible college administrators. In evaluating their learning experience, several spoke of being inspired revitalized in ministry. Jojo, a middle-aged administrator who has never been involved in planting a church, said, "The training is an eye-opener for churches not yet involved in church planting." He now plans to help plant a church.

Steve, who has been involved in planting 18 churches already, wrote, "This seminar was like a handful of seeds that has been sown in northern Luzon. It will surely bear fruit for the kingdom of God." He hopes to plant 1-2 churches just within the next 2 years.

Karol, a pastor who was first led by God to plant a church while still a student, has since planted two more. As a result of last week's daughter church-planting training, he now intends to plant a new church every 2-3 years. He said, "We are planning to plant a daughter church and attending this seminar effectively helps us pragmatically."

In addition to training people in planting daughter churches, I also spent a day at each location equipping teachers and church planters to train others in church planting. Two men were certified to use DCPI materials in training others to plant daughter churches, and 17 others completed the bulk of their training. In order to become certified, those 17 just need to be evaluated while actually teaching others. Fired-up for daughter church planting, several began making plans to train the leaders from a few sister churches in Baguio next month; the plan is for me to return there in a couple of weeks to observe their teaching and certify them as DCPI Trainers.

At times like this I get excited about what God can yet do through our work in the Philippines. During one of the sessions, we worked out on the white board the impact of one church our Baguio team planted in the mid 1990's. The church today is rather small, with about 30-40 people attending each Sunday. However, that church has two daughter churches, a granddaughter church, and a great-granddaughter church; combined, this family of churches sees about 340 Christians worshiping each Sunday--and those churches have led hundreds of people into saving relationships with Jesus.

I hope you're excited, too, as our partners in the ministry here. You can truly say that God has granted dozens of churches and many hundreds of lives won for God's kingdom as the fruit of that partnership.

Please be praying for the training event beginning April 12. This will be the first church planting training led by people I have taught to train church planters. Pray for them, and pray for the harvest fields into which they are being sent!

In Christ,

Chris B. McKinney

Dynamic Church Planting International: http://www.dcpi.org