Can Short-Term Teams Foster Long-Term Church-Planting Movements?: The Greatest Blessing Is to Train Others to Start Churches. January 01, 2012 by William Y. Smith The Greatest Blessing Is to Train Others to Start Churches As the overcrowded and under–maintained bus slowed to pick up a passenger on the rural Asian road, an older woman stepped out of the bushes. The bus struck her and knocked her 20 feet, killing her instantly. A small boy and girl, probably her grandchildren, fell on her body weeping. Sergeant was pained, but having spent years in less developed countries, had seen such accidents before. It wasn’t even that the bus driver spit on the body and cursed the grandmother for denting his bus.
Anger welled up inside him. This incident took place in 1991. How fast and momentous was the growth of this church-planting movement? According to David Garrison in his book, Church Planting Movements, Sergeant began with only three house churches numbering 85 members. What factors and actions led to that growth, and to the further exponential growth continuing to this day? The churches tended to be small. Mission Gifts. Missions, Misunderstood | Let's give the Commission back to the Church. Persecuted Countries. YOUME | One of a kind clothing for the community.