An Overview of
Village
Church
Planting
By Dean Davis, Senior Strategist,
OMS Global Ministries Department
Strategy
The training center is the basic unit of VCP outreach. An experienced
church planter who has some theological education
identifies, mentors, and trains 15 Christians who live
out their call to plant multiplying churches. They do this in
villages near the training center that do not have churches.
VCP training centers function under trees, tarps, and brush
arbors, as well as in church buildings. With traditional education,
students go to school. With VCP, school goes to the
students.
Each church planter learns through training and practical
work to meet and identify persons of peace in their respective
village. Persons of peace are men and women who are
hungry for God and who are connected to others in the village
(Luke 10:1–6). Assisted by the person of peace, the village church planter shares the Good News
and makes disciples in the village. Evangelism and discipleship lead to church planting and the development
of leaders, who start the process over again in neighboring villages.
Impact
Vision
To have a church in every African village by 2050
History and Scope
Village Church Planting (VCP) was developed by OMS South Africa as a part of the Into
Africa Project. That project trained Christians from all over Africa who were living in
South Africa in the late 1990s to make disciples of Jesus and plant churches. Now, VCP multiplies
disciples, leaders, and churches in 24 African countries from Senegal to Madagascar and from Ethiopia
to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Through VCP ministry, we have witnessed God heal the sick, cast out demons,
transform hearts as tens of thousands repent and believe the Good
News each year, deliver people from addiction, and bring peace to homes
that have not known peace. Villages are transformed. God is worshiped.
The Good News of the kingdom is proclaimed.
5