CPM Essentials #5-#7 - Remove Resource Constraints

I've been away for a while. In the mean-time I had a great meeting with some of the staff at Westside and our India partners. It was a great day, and we made plans to train the key staff in India when I go in October. As it turns out, they our partners are already doing most of this. We pray God would use us to help them tweak a few things to multiply tens of thousands of believers into a million or more. Will you pray with me that God will make it happen?

The next essential elements of a CPM outlined in Garrison's book are local leadership, lay leadership, and cell churches. These logic behind these elements is easy to understand. They all remove resource constraints - constraints on money to pay leadership, constraints on money to build churches, and constraints outsiders to lead. If the goal is a multiplying movement of churches, we need to make sure that the churches can multiply themselves. Any kind of outside help, while potentially beneficial in the short-term, will destroy any potential for continual multiplication.

One speaker I was listening to, simply said "paid leadership and buildings kill CPM".

Another speaker once said, "I can get a worship band and build a building and get 1000 people to come together and listen to me speak, and every single one of them will leave thinking 'I could never do that!'".

I'm not going to list the many verses here mostly because I'm lazy and don't want to go find them, but these principles are demonstrated throughout the New Testament. House church is everywhere in there, and most leaders where unpaid - particularly the local leaders of a church.

As a side note, this also has interesting leadership development applications. In this model, paid leaders come out of lay-leadership. They reach a point of dedication and effectiveness that causes a group of people to decide to pay them and ask them to serve full-time. Imagine if our churches in the States followed this model. Instead of hiring a pastor search team to search out the seminary grads, we asked people within the church who have demonstrated leadership to step forward. The only church I know of that does it this way is Mosaic in LA. I've heard Erwin McManus (the leader there say) he tells people who are inquiring about jobs "OK, great - move here, find a job to support yourself, and then start volunteering at the church ... we'll see where it goes from there".

We must make things simple. Simple is good!