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At a church planting congress in 1998, representatives of Latin American nations set the very ambitious goal of planting a total of 500,000 new Christian churches by the year 2010. Dawn Ministries has published a progress report on their web site, which shows that the target will be reached if the development continues at the current rate. The following is an extract of the church planting targets set by all nations at the 1998 congress:

Nation	Churches planted since 1992	Church-planting goals
Brazil	20,000	180,000
Argentina	4,000	28,000
Uruguay	1,000	2,000
Chile	2,000	20,000
Peru	11,000	40,000
Colombia	3,000	30,000
Venezuela	9,000	25,000
Panama	2,000	7,000
Mexico	8,000	50,000
Dominican Republic	4,000	12,000
Costa Rica	500	2,000
El Salvador	5,000	7,000
Guatemala	12,000	7,000
Cuba	6,000	6,000

Five nations have already reached their original target and set new national targets. Guatemala, the first Latin American nation to have a process based on the Dawn strategy following their initial Congress in 1984, reached the target of 7,000 new churches in only five years. They then set another target of a further 5,000 churches, which has also already been reached.

Guatemala: 42% to 72% evangelical
Recent data published by a secular research group in Guatemala shows that over 42% of the population are members of an evangelical church. A further 30% declare themselves to be sympathetic to the evangelical movement. Church leaders are currently discussing what their new goal should be.

Venezuela: 25,000 churches soon
For years, church growth in Venezuela was the lowest in the region, as was the percentage of evangelicals in the population. A Dawn Congress (Amanacer) was held in 1992, at which church leaders set the aim of growing from 4,900 to 12,000 churches in only 12 years. They went to work, and reached their target 4 years earlier than planned. Their new aim is 25,000 churches by the end of 2005.

Uruguay: from 30% atheist to 10%
In the small nation of Uruguay, 30% of the population considered themselves atheist in 1996. Between 1996 and 1999, 1,000 new churches were planted, three years faster than planned. In the meantime, only 10% of the population consider themselves atheists.

El Salvador: 37% evangelical
Church leaders in El Salvador set a target of 2,000 new churches and 30% of the population evangelical by 1990. Research showed that 37% of the population considered themselves evangelical in 1993, and that over 4,000 new churches had been planted.

Cuba: Target reached 'too early'
Following 30 years of Communism, Cuba had less than 800 churches, the same number as at the start of the Communist revolution. By 1998, Cuban Christians had already reached their aim of planting 5,000 new churches, most of which were house churches. That was two years before their target, 2000.

Source: Dawn Ministries

That is the name of the new newsletter published by Dawn Ministries, a global church planting strategy group. "DAWN around the world" replaces the DAWN Report, which they published for many years. Some highlights from the current issue:

Openness in Africa

"Africa is more open for the gospel than it has ever been," reports DAWN Africa Coordinator Danie Vermeulen. "Thousands of Muslims are finding Christ, and some of the most exciting church planting movements are among Muslims. Civil wars, AIDS and political repression are other factors leading growing numbers to open for the gospel..."

Interest in God is growing in Europe

"Secular ideology has failed in Europe, and there is a new interest in religion and spirituality," says Dawn European Network Coordinator Reinhold Scharnowski. "This is starting to affect European culture; writers, artists and talk show guests are speaking increasingly about spirituality. Until recently, people thought that religion is what people believe before they discover science. That has been revealed as myth. The secular faith in progress itself, which was supposed to replace religion, has failed, as clearly shown by the growing church attendance in London. The Hillsong Fellowship, for example, started with an attendance of only 70, but the numbers double every year; the attendance has now reached 5,500, with 1,500 new believers in 2004 alone..."

Uruguay: church numbers doubled

"Recent research shows that the number of Christian churches and the number of new believers in Uruguay has doubled since 1998," reports Amaury Braga, Prayer Coordinator for DAWN in Latin America. "There were around 1,000 churches in 1998, after 150 years of evangelism. This realisation gave birth to a new phase; the churches began a dedicated campaign to mobilise prayer for effective church planting. Now, in 2005, the figures show that in a period of only seven years, not only has the number of churches doubled to over 2,000, but the number of Christians has doubled with it."

Source, and to order the free newsletter "DAWN around the world": Dawn Ministries, PO Box 690787, Orlando, FL 32869-0787, USA, tel. +1 (407) 370-9312, fax +1 (407) 226-8713, e-mail tedmolsen (at) aol.com

Some things only happen every couple of hundred years, others only every couple of thousand. This and the next Friday Fax are dedicated to one of these millennium events.
Fourteen centuries ago, Islam overran previously Christian nations such as Egypt and Tunesia. For the past thousand years, particularly since the barbarous "Christian" crusades and the development of un-Biblical westernised religious church traditions, Christians have found it difficult to win Muslims for the Gospel. Islam, with 1.4 billion adherents, is the world's second-largest religion after traditional Christianity which has proven resistant to the Biblical Gospel. As a young Christian, I heard only one message about Islam: "it is practically impossible to win Muslims for Christ" - a message from Hell, in my opinion, born out of centuries of pseudo-missionary frustration. Ineffective missionary methods, non-integrative churches and a fantastic lack of faith among top Christian leaders right up to the 1990's combined to create a climate of missionary unbelief. In 1982, only 2% of all Christian missionaries were working among Muslims - a ridiculously small proportion.

5,000 120,000 522,000

Yesterday, I ate lunch with three missionaries working among Muslims. One of them said "In the past two years, I've seen over 5,000 Muslims come to faith in Jesus in northern India. The work is growing so fast that the number will very likely soon pass 50,000. They meet in multipliable house churches, and ever more Mullahs are joining the movement..."
Another told "From our own experience and through other reliable sources, we know that in Bangladesh, 7,000 Muslims were baptised each month in 2003. They are radical followers of Jesus. In 2004, an incredible 120,000 joined them. Since 1997, the number of Muslims following Jesus has grown by 522,000." 522,000? That's more than the number of evangelical Christians in Switzerland, Austria and France together! Is that possible? What happened?
Baptist missiologist and author David Garrison says "More Muslims have come to Christ in the past two decades than at any other point in history. In North Africa, 16,000 Muslim Berbers turned to Jesus; in a central Asian republic, 4,000 Muslims have found Christ; 15,000 Kazakh Muslims found Christ in the past 15 years. In an appearance on Al Jazeera, Sheikh Ahmad Al Qataani, a leading teacher of Islamic clerics in Libya, said 'Every hour, 667 Muslims turn to Christianity, 16,000 every day, 6 million each year!' Those numbers are certainly exaggerated, but show that Islamic experts recognise what is happening: a massive missionary movement of Muslims to Christ."

A vision becomes reality

Let me use Kevin Greeson's story as an example of what's happening. Greeson is a Baptist missionary in southern Asia. In his book "Camel Training" published in 2004, he writes "In September 1997, I lay down on my hotel bed in Singapore, where I was attending missionary training. Before going to sleep, I saw a vision of thousands of Muslims in Bangladesh going to Hell. The vision's realism gripped me so strongly that I began to weep - for the first time in 22 years. The scene changed, though; the Muslims were given a new directive, were re-routed and went to Heaven. The next day, I was excited to hear that 30,000 US Christians had taken part in a prayer campaign for the people group among which I wanted to work, and that they had been praying the very hour I had my vision. My first years there as a missionary brought no fruit; after two years, we had gathered 23 women who worked weaving baskets for export to the West. Then we heard of Abdul (name changed).

Learning from Abdul

Abdul was a local church planter, and himself a saved Muslim - or Isahi (one who belongs to Isa/Jesus). In 1998, he had seen 50,000 Muslims baptised, and 8,000 churches planted by 2003. He was doing something differently, and we learned from him to do them differently too. We told the women to invite their husbands to a meeting; they all brought their husbands or fathers, and we explained verses from the Koran which speak of Jesus, showing him to be far more than just a prophet. They were excited and angry - excited, because they recognised the truth about Isa (Jesus), and angry about their Imams (islamic pastors), who had withheld the truth from them. Then we showed them the Jesus Film in their language. What then happened was unbelievable; the men insisted on meeting again the next day. For four days, they sat there and listened to the Gospel. They all turned to Jesus, and six new jamaats (house churches) were formed. Over the following 2 1/2 years, our team saw 4,500 Muslims baptised and 314 new churches started. Two years later, the number of churches had grown to over 800. The movement is still growing. What did we teach the Muslims which made them so open for Christ? It has something to do with a camel..."

When Muslims throw the Koran in the river

"One morning in May 1999, I read a report in Bangladeshi national newspaper, quoting a Member of Parliament who stood before his colleagues and asked 'What is happening to our religion? Muslims in the capital are throwing their Koran in the trash, and in one district, they even throw the Koran in the river.' What was going on? One day, an Imam held the Koran up in the Mosque, saying 'This book has done nothing to improve our lives.' Then he threw the book in the river. The congregation of around 4,000 men followed their leader's example, throwing their Korans in the river too."

What comes after resignation?

Kevin Greeson's report shows something of the inner erosion happening in Islam. But many adherents of other religions and religious subsystems are just as resigned. Just as traditional Constantine churchianity, Animism or Buddhism, the core of Islam does not help people live their lives, but generally just preserves the status quo of poverty, difficulties, uncertainty and illness for most and riches for a privileged minority. On top of all that, religion can only superficially answer the questions every person faces: why am I here, what am I supposed to be doing, where am I headed? The Bangladeshi Imam spoke for many in his recognition of the truth. In this phase of religious resignation, most people simply perform religious rites perfunctorily, outwardly going with the flow, inwardly questioning. Many Muslims, for example, wonder about Allah's secret 100th name...

The camel knows

Every Muslim knows that Allah has 99 names, and many know of a tradition which says that only a camel knows his 100th name. That name is 'Isa'! The Koran, the Muslims' holy book, does not answer the question directly, but gives enough clear hints. Many experienced missionaries start a conversation with Muslims with the words "I have discovered an amazing truth in the Koran, which gives hope of eternal life in paradise. Would you please read me Sure Al-Imran 3:42-55?"

The Koran teaches that Jesus knows the way to heaven

This Sure says three things about Isa (Jesus) which clearly lift him above the status of a prophet: Isa is holy (3:42-48), has power over death (49-54) and knows the way to heaven (55-56). This is a shock for many Muslims, because what does the Koran say about Mohammed? The surest answer is to say that Mohammed is what he said of himself; in Sure 46:9-10, he says "I am nothing new among prophets; I do not know what will become of me or my followers. I am just a voice of warning."
If Mohammed is nothing different or more than all the prophets before him, and did not claim to be the greatest prophet of all, did not know where he or his followers would go after death, and professes to simply be a voice of warning, the contrast with Jesus' statements about himself (for example John 6:47 and 14:1-7) could hardly be greater. If you then ask a Muslim "I want to go to heaven when I die. Which prophet can help me get there?", the result is often a process leading them to read the Injil (New Testament) and find Jesus. Information from the Koran (very important for Muslims) reveals Jesus to be clearly more than just a prophet, and endows him practically with saviour status. "The Koran does not contain enough light to show someone the way to salvation, but enough small candles to guide seekers the right way," says Greeson.

For God's sake, don't bring Muslims to church!

Greeson sees four aspects which are decisive in helping Muslims find Christ and remain in him:

1. Speak in a way that Muslims understand. 'Canaanite' language is as much a hindrance as calling yourself a Christian, which is so culturally and historically laden that Muslims understand "A person with Western culture, ungodly and immoral." The word 'Isahi' (follower of Isa) is far better.
2. Cultural conformity is not a hindrance, but builds important bridges. Paul became a Jew to the Jews, and a Greek to the Greek. Followers of Jesus must learn to overcome their fear of the unknown and foreign cultures through love.
3. Send out early. Where Muslims who become Isahis are taught and sent out early, they win others to Christ and plant new churches, thus starting a movement with church multiplication as one of its basic principles. Christians who do not understand this and claim that these things need significantly more time are a serious hindrance, and should be avoided.
4. "Please do not bring newly-saved Isahis to existing traditional churches!" advises Greeson. That tears them out of their cultural surroundings, and causes them to be rejected by their friends and family - exactly the people which a church planting movement should reach. A far better strategy is to start culturally relevant Jamaats (meetings). House churches provide an ideal structure. "So if Muslims do not come to church, we take the church to the Muslims!"

Source: Kevin Greeson, "Camel Training Manual". A summary of the CAMEL training is available.

Kingdom Ministries, a Swiss missions agency, assists in starting church planting movements, particularly in India. One of the key elements are local Christians involved in saturation (house) church planting. Kingdom Ministries regularly receives reports like this:

"In the name of Jesus, stand up and walk!" G. Singh used the words Peter spoke to the invalid. 66-year-old Mayadar rode a sort of trike from house to house, begging, and expected Singh to give him some coins. Singh, though, prayed with authority, and Mayadar was healed! He rose from his 'wheelchair' and could walk! He was baptised, and now leads other beggars to Christ.

Deliverance and church planting

37-year-old Iqbal, a Sikh, came to a Christian meeting. He was tormented by evil spirits, and had torn 15 suits in 20 days. He was delivered following intense prayer, and decided to follow Christ after listening attentively to God's Word. Last year, the church planter working in the region led 158 people to Christ and baptised them. There will soon be a church in every village in the region.

Source: Kingdom Ministries, Switzerland, tel. (+41) 33 439 3099

"Rick Warren, author of the top-selling book 'The Purpose Driven Life' and founder of the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, made a dramatic announcement on Sunday 17^th April 2005, the 25^th anniversary of the church's founding," reports Dan Wooding, founder of Assist Ministries. In front of 30,000 people in the Angel Stadium in Anaheim, he said that he believes in a revival movement in the 21^st Century. He spoke of a new reformation in Christianity and his vision for a global spiritual revival through the so-called PEACE Plan. Warren is convinced that this will lead to one billion Christians being mobilised for global mission by the year 2020. "This new Reformation," he says, "will predominantly happen through normal people in small groups."

President Bush excited, says Colson

It was the first time that friends and Christian leaders from the USA and abroad joined members of the Saddleback Church in such numbers. Visitors included Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, who brought greetings from his nation, and Gaddi Vasquez, Director of the Peace Corps, who read a message from President Bush. Chuck Colson, one of the Guests of Honour, commented "I knew President Nixon very well, who would have been excited by the idea of the PEACE Plan. I also know President Bush well enough to know that this is exactly the sort of thing he loves: people who stand up and do what needs to be done without waiting forever for the Government to address it..."

Facing the giant

Warren presented his PEACE Plan in detail. At the heart is a progressive vision for mobilising American Christians to help churches in Third World nations address the enormous problems against which even governments or the United Nations are helpless. Through a reformation of the entire missionary Christianity, the Christian church will be the only force capable of coordinating and driving the effort to meet the five greatest challenges facing the world: spiritual emptiness, selfish leadership, poverty, sickness and ignorance.

The five stones

Based on the story of David and Goliath, Warren explained that in his vision, hundreds of thousands of small groups will "attack these Goliaths with five stones, like David, who gathered five stones as he approached Goliath". These five stones are Planting churches, Equipping leaders, Assisting the poor, Caring for the sick, and Educating the next generation.

Millions of changed lives

Wooding reports that Warren, founder of the Purpose Driven movement, has already changed the lives of millions of people in 150 nations, through tens of thousands of Christian churches. In 1980, seven people met in Rick and Kay Warren's apartment. In the 25 years since then, the church has grown to around 20,000 members. Over 350,000 pastors and leaders from 120 nations have attended Purpose Driven seminars, and over 20,000 churches in 28 nations have held the '40 Days of Purpose' course.

Bestseller results in three missionary Trusts

The book "The Purpose Driven Life", published in 2002, sold 22 million copies - a world record for a non-fiction hardcover book. Warren and his wife have since founded three Trusts which channel 90% of the income from the books to world mission, including AIDS help in developing nations.

4,000 new believers over Easter 2005

A particular highlight of the celebrations on 17^th April were the baptisms in a large heated pool in front of the stadium. Warren had preached his basic "Purpose Driven Life" message in 12 Easter services attended by over 30,000 people, 4,000 of whom decided to follow Jesus, according to the report.

Source: Dan Wooding, Assist Ministries and www.saddleback.com