Challenge

Meeting the Challenge: Five Major Areas of Need

Discipling Unreached Peoples

An Unreached People Group (UPG) is designated as a people group where 2% or less profess Christian faith. Often these groups have no access to any kind of evangelical witness, such as a church, radio broadcast, printed materials (Bibles, magazines, tracts) and/or where 2% or less are believers. Sometimes the numbers of believers are just a small fraction of one percent. The reality is there are millions of people, especially in the 10/40 Window * who are living and dying without exposure to the Gospel.

NewGenerations International is especially interested in serving one specific category of very large and regionally influential unreached peoples. These groups are called Gateway People Clusters and they are strategically critical to evangelizing whole countries and regions of the world.

In one sub-region of Africa, NewGenerations International has set a goal to see a viable church planting movement among the 19 Gateway People Clusters of the region by 2011. These 19 groups include 136,000,000 people.

*The 10/40 Window is an area of the world that contains the largest population of non-christians, extending from 10 degrees to 40 degrees North of the equator.

Serving Great Human Need

Research indicates that the vast majority of the unreached peoples are also the poorest. The Human Development Index (HDI) is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standard of living for countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. According to the HDI, the majority of West and Central Africa falls in the lowest category.

How to Meet the Challenge –Prayer Ministry for Unreached Peoples

Foundational to any ministry seeking to be effective in reaching the unreached is prayer. NewGenerations International believes that all ministry efforts among unreached peoples must begin with and be sustained by prayer. This requires people praying for the ministry, for church planting teams, for new Christian leaders and church planters. This is a recognition that the expansion of God’s Kingdom is ultimately His work, and will reveal His glory among all the nations.

Intercessors are the tip of the spear in Church Planting Movements.

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Direct Church Planting

One way that NewGenerations International meets the challenge of reaching Unreached People Groups is through direct church planting efforts. Mass evangelism, and all other forms of impersonal evangelism historically fail to produce communities of Christ-Followers. Simple churches of obedient Christ-Followers are the foundation of any move of God in a region.

Sometimes NewGenerations International is involved through partner organizations in facilitating and resourcing direct church planting initiatives. This is usually in areas where there have never been church planting movements. One of the goals is to send experienced, mature church planters to launch a prototypical movement that demonstrates the potential of an unreached region to have a viable church planting movement. These movements have the secondary benefit of producing within a couple of years dozens of gifted and seasoned church planters that can then be loaned to other ministries or regions to repeat the process.

When a village is designated for church planting, intercessors begin praying over the area. A church planter is sent to find a Person of Peace—often a family whose hearts God has prepared to be a bridge into the community. The church planter will then stay with them and begin to share stories from Scripture, beginning with Creation. A process of discipling people, even before they fully understand what it means to be a follower of Jesus begins and eventually a church is planted. Usually these churches are based around two or three families or clans coming to faith. This minimizes isolation for new Believers.

As the church planter disciples members of the community with whom he or she is building relationships, the new church is birthed with the spiritual “DNA” to become a reproducing church.

Catalyzing Church Planting Movements Through Partnerships With Other Ministries

NewGenerations International also meets the challenge by acting as a catalyst for other ministries.

By sharing the vision of Church Planting Movements (CPMs), other ministries have the opportunity to learn about how God is moving through this methodology. Casting the vision for reproductive church planting is the first step, challenging listeners to envision the development of a movement in their own context. NewGenerations International then provides gifted and experienced trainers for multiple levels of mobilizing, training, and coaching these other ministries. NewGenerations International is also involved in the development of curriculum resources, in written and audio format, for church planters.

Within the first two years of launching these sorts of catalytic church planting initiatives several ministries in Africa have reported experiencing “breakthroughs” when they have implemented these principles in their own ministries.

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Church Planting Movements: The Goal of NewGenerations International

The ultimate goal of NewGenerations International is a Church Planting Movement in every Gateway People Cluster throughout the world. A Gateway People Cluster (GPC) is a people group with more than 1,000,000 people and influence over smaller people groups living around them.

The first strategic step towards the goal is the establishment of a CPM in each of the nineteen GPCs in West and Central Africa.

The Counter-Intuitive Nature of the Church Planting Movement

As NewGenerations International pursues the goal of a CPM in every Gateway People Cluster throughout the world, some revolutionary principles evolving which seem to run counter to the prevailing trends in missions today.

NewGenerations International and our partner ministries implementing CPMs in their contexts are learning the Counter-Intuitive Nature of Church Planting Movements: