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Overcoming

The Enemy did not overlook all of this progress and growth. Beginning in November of 1994, our team and the fledgling church endured two solid months of unrelenting spiritual attacks: three cult groups targeted our city, the church was almost split, leaders fell into sin, some were demonized. Our team came close to  despairing and pulling out.

Finally, two sudden and unexplainable deaths rocked the missionary team and the church. My only son, Jedidiah, had been born on November 2nd. On the morning of Christmas Eve our apartment rang with screams when my wife discovered Jedidiah's cold and lifeless body - dead of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome at two months. We buried our boy and a piece of our hearts in the frozen soil on a cold wind-swept hillside outside of town. The next day a young girl in the church died of no known cause.

In response the believers and our team came together for 24 hours of prayer and fasting in our office apartment. At three in the morning, a breakthrough occurred and everyone knew it. The church has never been overwhelmed by an episode of spiritual warfare like that since.

Explosive Growth

One of the beauties of the cell church model was that, where other churches in Mongolia were sorely hindered by government harassment that usually took the form of evictions from Sunday meeting locations, the church being planted in Erdenet was largely unaffected by such moves - worship mainly took place in living rooms all over town! Growth was constantly taking place in the cells and going months without "celebration" services didn't slow things down. When the cells did gather, united in God's presence, the believers were encouraged, seeing their numbers continue to grow.

By early 1997, the celebration service had grown so that no building in the city could house the 750 people who would attend! So they held two services. Recently appointed Mongol pastor/elders lead their church made up of over 57 cell groups. A healthy multigenerational Mongol church had become a reality.

The Beginnings of a Church Planting Movement

Was this the mission breakthrough we had been looking for? To stop with a single church in a city of 70,000 and a country of 2.6 million would mean we'd have gained almost no ground in the task of discipling the Mongols as a people. Our goal had always been an indigenous movement of multiplying churches that would spread throughout the once spiritually barren land of Mongolia.

From the beginning we made it our aim to help the new leaders catch this vision. We taught them to treat their church as an organism rather than thinking of it as an organization. All healthy, living organisms grow and reproduce. The Mongols saw that their church should become a "mother church" giving birth to daughter churches and that could reproduce granddaughter churches. The local leaders presented the vision before their congregation: "God wants to work through our church to create  another new church!"

In 1993, the church sent teams of Mongol deacons to a town 60 kilometers away. They were commissioned to plant a daughter church and, the next year, an elder was sent to lead it. As fellow Mongolians it was easy for them to relate to the people in the new community. God blessed their efforts as they shared the gospel and discipled new believers. A daughter church was born, and soon, two of the new leaders got busy planting granddaughter churches - in other places that were even more remote from Erdenet.

The End of The Beginning

The work progressed to such an extent that in 1996, after just three years, our team realized we had reached an important landmark. Actually, we had been anticipating our "phase-out" from the beginning and had kept it in the forefront of all our plans and activities. But that bittersweet time had come.

We reported to our supporters: "We were blessed to hand over the authority in the church to the elders we had trained... this was the crowning moment for us." A special service was held on Easter Sunday, 1996. In the midst of worship and prayer the team followed the example of Paul's farewell to the Ephesian elders: "Now I commit you to God and to the word of His grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance...." Half of the missionary team left Mongolia that very day. The others remained through June as distant advisors while they finished secular teaching  contract commitments.

The newly independent Mongol church moved ahead in faith and action as the Holy Spirit led. At Christmas 1996, 101 new believers were baptized! On Easter 1997, the first anniversary of the "passing of the baton," 120 more were baptized.

The church is finding ways to bring blessing in Jesus' name to their city. One ongoing effort was initiated and is carried out by Mongol believers: Every day many of the city's cast-off street kids are offered food and clothing (not a small matter in frigid Mongolia). A prison ministry is also flourishing, as is a cell group among the garbage dump dwellers!

The movement continues. At last count, the mother church had given birth to 13 daughter churches in towns scattered across the province. The church they planted in Darhan, the second largest city in Mongolia, has over 100 in 11 cell groups and is quite unique in Mongolia because it has mostly families and older people as members. This young body has reproduced two granddaughter churches. A very satisfying report considering we started five years earlier with only teenage girls!

This movement has also begun to work cross-culturally, having planted a church among Erdenet's Russian population. Teams of Mongols have recently been sent to culturally distinct peoples in two other countries, to an unrelated animistic forest tribal people, as well as to several remote Mongolian provinces. A missionary training school has opened in Erdenet to train the church's emerging mission force. Some of the expatriate church planters have returned to lead the school, but exercise no authority in the indigenous church.

God seems to have made the spiritual soil of Mongolia especially fertile for church planting. The gospel continues to do its life giving and community-changing work. Churches continue to grow and reproduce. A conservative estimate states that the number of believers has grown from two in 1990 to over 10,000 believers in 1998. Given the zeal of the believers, Mongolia will eventually shift from a mission field to being a powerful mission force. As in a previous age, Mongols will again thunder off to the nations beyond their barren hills - this time under the leadership of the "Khan of Khans" - King Jesus!

Brian Hogan was part of a YWAM Church Planting team working in Mongolia. Brian is currently a church-planting trainer with YWAM Church Planting Coaches in Malta. Adapted from “Multiplying Churches Among Unreached Peoples Groups -Guiding Principles” by Kevin Sutter, YWAM Arcata CA. Email Brian at brian[at]cpcoaches[dot]com

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An incredible 15-minute video account of the planting of this church movement:

“ERDENET:  The Story of Jesus Assembly in Mongolia”

has been filmed and produced by Magnus Alphonce.

And now in CD-Rom (VCD and Media Player formats!! Come and visit our online store!

(English & Swedish PAL versions available also – email Magnus Alphonce for details.)