church develops a mission group or cooperates with a mission organization with the specific goal of planting new churches. History has shown that churches often fail to conduct missions unless there is some mission group working toward such outreach. Garrison describes how a church planting movement occurred in a Latin American people group from 1989 through 1998. Foreign missionaries had laid the spiritual foundation for the churches by teaching members to rely on Scripture and to see themselves as priests (the concept of the priesthood of the believer. Then the government expelled the foreign missionaries. This forced the church to become indigenous. The church members then focused on prayer. They sang hymns in their heart language, not in the language of foreigners. Then an economic crisis prevented members from traveling far to their church, so they were forced to meet in small groups in homes (cell groups. Missionaries who had returned to assist, but not control the church, provided information on cell group models used in areas of the world. Meeting in small groups accelerated the growth of the church. A lay missionary school was developed and missionaries were sent throughout the country. In the south, the number of churches increased from 129 into in 1998. In the north, the number of churches increased from 95 into in 1998. The indigenous church grew ten times as fast in a decade as it had in the century before What made the difference Through prayer and stratagem, a church planting movement had occurred. Similar rapid-growth church planting movements have taken place in other countries. Let us examine ten elements that were present in all of the
