Did you know that GROWTH is one of Team Expansion’s 7 great passions? This story from the field reflects our heart for churches.
Recently a worker in E. Asia was visiting nearby villages to pray and encourage the believers. He came to an area where one of his local friends had started a church.
Originally, seven family members were meeting together, but that church has now grown to more than 400 members from the neighborhood and surrounding villages.
Over 400 members of the village have joined the church!
In this heavily animistic culture where Christians are fiercely persecuted for their faith, this is amazing growth! The worker was curious how they were achieving this kind of outreach. Being well-trained in church-planting techniques, he assumed the leaders were using a specific evangelism program.
When he asked the leader about which method they were using, the leader looked at him with some confusion. He admitted that the growth was happening mostly through word of mouth.
Believers were simply telling their friends, who were telling their friends, and more and more people were coming to Christ together. The worker was amazed. There is no better method for church multiplication!
The Gospel was being spread simply through word of mouth!
Then he asked about the teaching. Was the Bible being systematically taught?
Again the response was surprising and encouraging. Yes, they were teaching through the Bible, but so many of the members were reading the Bible on their own that many meetings were used to sit down together and answer the questions that were naturally occurring from their studies.
Well, that sounds just about right.
