How does Every Community for Christ (ECC) make an
impact through our OMS partnerships? ECC ministries
and methods are being carried out in 50+ countries as we
seek to fulfill our ministry tagline, “One Faith Multiplied.”
Our goal is to provide planning, training, and ongoing support for our
partners to multiply disciples, leaders, and churches.
In Neil Cole’s book, Organic Church, he states, “Christianity is al-
ways just one generation away from extinction. If we fail to reproduce
ourselves and pass the torch of life into the hands of the next genera-
tion, Christianity will be over within just one generation. Yet, because
of the power of multiplication, we are also one generation away from
worldwide fulfillment of the Great Commission. The choice is ours.”
In many countries, the ability to send residential missionaries for
religious purposes is not possible. Nationalism is growing in a num-
ber of countries to have one national religion and to greatly hinder
evangelistic efforts from other religions. Our response in ECC is to
recruit, train, and deploy itinerant missionaries called church multi-
plication facilitators (CMF). These CMFs utilize six skills with their
assigned ministry partner: prayer, encouragement, vision casting,
training, coaching, and accountability.
With the increase of technology in developing nations, CMFs can
help arrange trainings and meetings in a country and maintain rela-
tionships without having to live in that country. One CMF stated, “My
last 10 years of ministry as an itinerant missionary have given me more
fulfillment than 30 years as a local pastor.” These cross-cultural roles
are having a major impact by sending experienced people to provide
leadership and training to those who have limited access.
In a visit to India last November, we were blessed to see how multi-
plication is having an impact in our leadership development for church
multiplication. Our India facilitator, Lawrence John (photo on page 8,)
took us out to villages to see recently started house churches. After
making these visits and providing encouragement to new believers,
he introduced us to four generations of church planters in his line of
accountability. We continue to be blessed to see the joy Lawrence
experiences by reaching those who have not heard of Jesus through
five generations of church planters.
In the past few years, ECC has also been challenged to help mobi-
lize the underutilized people in churches. ECC has joined with Dynamic
Women in Missions to train women from the West, who, in turn, train
women from other nations to be leaders in their own countries. This
outreach began in South Asia and has grown its impact to India,
Myanmar, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia. The train-
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