By Jennifer Johnson
It all began with a sermon.
Several years ago, Josh Howard, director of leadership training at Central India Christian Mission, was listening to a message called “Born to Reproduce” by Dawson Trotman, founder of The Navigators.
“He made a comment that it was possible for us to reach the entire world in 10 years,” Howard says. “I thought, There”s no way that”s true. So I got out my calculator and did the math. I realized that if every person reached one person every six months, in 15 years we could reach all of India”s 1.1 billion people. It put a dream in my heart.”
Students in India receive training as part of the IGNITE program that seeks to spread the Christian faith and plant churches.
Out of that dream, Howard created IGNITE, an online course that teaches Christians around the world how to share their faith and spark a disciple-making movement.
Some of the material in IGNITE references an earlier resource called “Training for Trainers,” which offers principles for reproduction and multiplication of churches. Other aspects of the course are based on the experiences and key learnings of Howard and his father-in-law, Ajai Lall, the CEO and director of CICM.
“We started our first group here in Damoh with 15 guys,” Howard says. “One man started eight house churches””in the first month. Then we began training our Bible college graduates and watched them start 400 house churches in the first two years. The people who have really learned these methods and put them into practice have seen unbelievable fruit for the kingdom.”
Howard and Lall have filmed the entire training and made it available online in six languages in hopes that individuals, small groups, and churches around the world will “ignite” their own multiplying evangelistic movements.
Howard also offers individual and group coaching to help leaders apply the teaching to their context and develop a plan. The individual coaching is one-on-one; the group coaching includes opportunities to share ideas and struggles with other members as well as bimonthly online learning opportunities from guest teachers like Dave Ferguson and Steve Addison.
“These principles will work anywhere in the world, because they”re God”s idea, not ours,” Howard says. “It”s so simple and doable, but the impact is amazing.”
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