Can Church Planting Movements Emerge in the West? Case Studies of Three Church Planting Strategies in Western Australia

Over the past twenty years church organizations in the global West have looked on with awe, tinged with envy, at the rapid growth of church planting movements (CPMs) in the developing world. These CPMs have emerged while the West has been preoccupied with the growing tide of post modernism and secularism in their once Christian nations. These movements have been observed to be emerging on every continent with developing nations, from South America to Asia, Africa, and Europe, and often under significant persecution. For a movement to be defined as such, David Garrison suggests that it is one when there is a “rapid multiplication of indigenous churches that sweeps through a people group or population segment” (Garrison 2004:21). While it has been observed that there are numerously so-defined CPMs in places such as India and China, there are none that have been observed in the West. This is not due to a total lack of interest among Western Christians, for the zeal and for the desire to evangelize their home communities can be witnessed in the innumerable amount of time and money invested in trying to understand and develop the field of church growth. Garrison states that CPMs “reproduce rapidly” meaning that newly planted churches are starting new church plants themselves very quickly. Second, movements obtain a high level of “multiplicity” in their church plants. That is, they are not just adding new congregations, but that the new congregations are adding congregations, often multiple congregations at once. Third, the church plants are “indigenous,” meaning that the church has grown from within rather than being planted by an outsider. The churches look, act, and feel as though they are homegrown. Fourth,