Church Planting Archives

Persons of Peace: How Do I Find Them?

This entry is part 15 of 15 in the series "Church planting". I understand that I need to look for “POPs” or Persons of Peace / Prepared Open People, but how do I find them? How would I recognize them? In our previous blog post, “Persons of Peace: 1. What are they?“, we discovered what Persons of Peace are. We learned why they were part of Jesus’ strategy for spreading the good news of the kingdom. We saw from biblical examples and modern stories that they can be unbelievers, pre-believers, new believers or established believers. They are local, well-networked people. God has prepared people of peace in very different ways – through sickness and a sense of need, through a sense of inadequacy or maybe through the change in their own lives. They reduce exponentially the amount of time it takes to penetrate a new area. This is because they… Read the whole post

March 3, 2025February 27, 2025

David North13 mins read

Church Planting, Missionary Roles, Evangelism, Gospel

Persons of Peace: What Are They?

This entry is part 14 of 15 in the series "Church planting". When we enter a new area, we often wonder, “Where do I start? I don’t know anyone here, and who am I to come into their world and start teaching them?” Jesus prepared his disciples for this by giving them a strategy When Jesus was sending out His 12 disciples on a missionary training trip in Matthew 10, and when He was sending out 72 of His followers on evangelism training in Luke 10, he gave them each some special instructions. This command was to be part of their strategy for reaching those areas. Jesus told them to find a “person of peace” (CSB) or “someone who promotes peace” (NIV).1 See Luke 10:5,6. In Matthew, Jesus calls them “worthy” people. Jesus told them they were to look for these kinds of people who would help them reach the… Read the whole post

February 17, 2025February 15, 2025

David North12 mins read

Church Planting, Evangelism

Connecting with the lost

This entry is part 3 of 15 in the series "Church planting". Starting in a new place “I’m new in this place. I don’t know anyone. Where do I begin?” How do we get started when we enter a new town or city? In this blog post, we will provide a few tools you may be able to use to get started in connecting with the local people. A couple of the tools are discovery questions to get to know the people and a brainstorming tool to help you determine how you can enter their world. It all starts with prayer When entering a new area, there is no question that we need to begin with prayer. After all, it is the Spirit who opens peoples’ hearts to understand their need for Christ. I had a prayer partner during my Bible College days, and we would pray, even back then,… Read the whole post

July 15, 2024July 12, 2024

David North7 mins read

Training, Church Planting, Disciple-making

The 3 Thirds Process: building in multiplication

This entry is part 12 of 15 in the series "Church planting". In our post on “Building Your Multiplication Process”, we mentioned that we intentionally built processes into our various group gatherings so that the believers will be constantly reminded and enabled to “pass it on” to others. Multiplication will be built into all our environments. One of the tools we mentioned was the “3 Thirds Process” developed by Ying Kai during his time in China. (See his book, T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution). Kai sought to build a church culture that would expect multiplication to happen. He also wanted to develop a system that would make it simple to pass on. To build this culture and this system, Ying Kay developed what he called the 3 Thirds process. Notice that this model is not a specific curriculum for the Bible portion of a Bible study. Rather, it is a well-rounded process used in… Read the whole post

July 8, 2024July 5, 2024

David North10 mins read

Church Planting, Disciple-making, DMM, Mentoring, Mission Methodologies

Multiplication Process Development in Ministry: Strategies and Tools

This entry is part 11 of 15 in the series "Church planting". The right materials and methods won’t result in multiplication unless we have developed an intentional process designed to multiply. A long process of learning I was speaking to a group of missionaries in Asia about developing a ministry of multiplying disciple-makers. I was telling them how we had developed a process in our church plant where we were making disciples who make disciples who make disciples. At that point, one of the missionaries asked me how long it took us to develop that process. I didn’t exactly know how to answer that question. After all, it was a cumulation of learning things over the years and of trying and developing methods and processes. Collecting the right tools During 33 years as a church planter, I was constantly looking for or modifying or developing materials to be more effective… Read the whole post

June 17, 2024June 12, 2024

David North5 mins read