Church Planting Movementas

Did you know that church planting movements are exploding all across the world? Christianity may be seen as old and dying to some in the West, but in almost every other part of the world people are coming to Christ by the thousands!

David Garrison, in his book, Church Planting Movements, reports that in some of the darkest places in the world - places that have seen poverty, famine, and the devastation of war - the Gospel of Jesus is spreading like wildfire. One such place is Cambodia. During one of Garrison's visits, he found himself in a rural village where 50 people crowd into a one room house, singing together the praises of God. This is just one of countless "house churches" that have sprung up all over the world. It's located in a village that lies along what was once was the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail, used by the communists to smuggle arms into South Vietnam.

Garrison noticed that the landscape had been dotted by ponds. One of the Cambodians explained that these ponds were bomb craters made during the Vietnam War. Then, referring to one of the craters now filled with water, Garrison writes that the man "paused to let the words sink in, and then smiled. 'Last Easter,' he said, ' we baptized 70 new believers in that pond.'" What once was a bomb is now a baptistery.

I don't know about you but that fires me up. Out of the ashes God brings new life, redemption, and hope to a people who have been through untold sorrow. Humanity, in all its wisdom and power, ultimately cannot stop the Spirit of God who Jesus describes as a wind that "blows wherever it pleases." (John 3:8) This is the same Spirit that lives inside each of us who have been born again to new life. He is capable of anything - there is nothing beyond his power or his imagination.

How does it strike you to know that the Spirit of God lives inside you? The same Spirit who hovered over the waters at the moment of creation and the one who the Bible says regenerates (i.e., brings us from death to life) hopeless sinners like you and me. Every day he is always looking to breathe new life into what has been written off, decayed, or destroyed.

Will you join me in expecting the Holy Spirit to work through us to bring new life, new breath, or new hope into someone in desperate need of it this week? Who knows, maybe he'll surprise you in a way you'd never expect. Maybe the "craters" that mark our town can be the very places where redemption takes place. Pray for it, look for it, and be ready to step up when the time comes.