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The movement is based on saturation church planting-providing a church in the appropriate language, cultural context and location for every five hundred to one thousand people in a country. When church leaders apply this strategy, they are “Discipling a Whole Nation,” as the namesake phrase describes.
In the past eleven years, the DAWN movement has extended from twenty-two to 155 countries, according to Dr. Stephen Steele, CEO of Dawn Ministries, an organization based in the United States that, with a full-time staff of seventeen, does the legwork in advancing the movement. “We’re here to be the catalyst, the strategist, to push the movement,” he explains.
Revealing new harvest fields. When news of the DAWN movement travels, national church leaders are often prompted to request the assistance of Dawn Ministries in their own countries. “We don’t go into a country unless we’re invited,” Steele makes plain.
To get the movement started, Dawn Ministries determines where the church is and is not located. The initial countrywide research can achieve its purpose quickly. “What we’re looking for is ‘Aha!’ information-something that the church didn’t know about itself,” he says.
Past facts and figures have often surprised national church leaders. In Zimbabwe, Dawn Ministries found that districts of 100,000 to 200,000 people were without a church. In India, it was discovered that ninety-eight percent of Protestant churches were reaching only 134 of over five thousand total people groups. In a certain US city, just one Hispanic evangelical church of forty members served a Hispanic population of about 26,000.
Steele quickly makes known the purpose of the fact-finding mission: “The research is not designed to say, ‘Shame on you.’ The research is designed to catalyze you to do something.”
Responsibility of the local church. Once Dawn Ministries has gathered compelling information and presented it to an assembly of a country’s church leaders, it is the responsibility of the national church to take action. In order for the DAWN strategy to be effective, Dawn Ministries instructs that at least sixty percent of a country’s churches must cooperate in saturation church planting.
In addition, the local church must place a high priority on prayer. Gary Edmonds, secretary general of the World Evangelical Alliance, notes that one of the primary strengths of the DAWN movement is the effort to “mobilize prayer focused on evangelism and saturation church planting so that a country is spiritually ripe and prepared.”
Dawn Ministries plays a significant part in initiating the DAWN movement in a country, but Steele defines the organiza-tion’s role as a servant to the church in accomplishing the final goal of discipleship. “It’s only always been the role of the local church to be the discipling vehicle.”
Steele further delimits the role of Dawn Ministries, saying, “We’re owned by the indigenous church. Dawn Ministries does not control any strategy.” And when it comes to placing labels on churches, he points out, “There is no single DAWN church.”
The Philippine beginning. DAWN was born out of the evaluations of Filipino church leaders in the mid-1970s. As they collectively looked at their country, they sought to measure how well they were responding to the Great Commission.
Noting gaps in the church landscape, Dawn Ministries Founder and American missionary to the Philippines Dr. James Montgomery pondered how much easier it would have been if Jesus had gone before them and reached every village. God led him to seek just that-to make the incarnate Christ known in every village through the presence of the church.
The Filipino leaders set a goal of fifty thousand churches by the end of the millennium. It was a measurable objective, and it targeted the unreached areas of their country. A successful model, the Philippine church surpassed its aim in the year 2000 and is now working on DAWN 2010: fifty thousand more churches by the end of the decade.
Beyond logic and tradition. In India, approximately 1,150 varied organizations are using the DAWN strategy. In addition, individuals are making the gospel known through simple acts.
Hetal*, for example, is an illiterate woman from a low caste who is reaching university-educated women with the gospel. She knows one verse by heart, John 3:16, so she carries a large Bible and asks students to read for themselves about the great love of God through Christ. In doing so, this gospel-bearer has broken all cultural norms to win scores of women to Christ and plant churches in a foreign environment.
“This isn’t logical; this is God,” Steele says. He emphasizes that this woman’s story, the power of God working in her, is not unique. “There are ten million stories-stories that take away the mystique that this is complex,” he maintains.
The DAWN movement seeks to give credibility to churches and church-planting methods that may be unconventional, non-traditional and informal.
“Hopefully, most organizations are coming to the realization that informal training is the way that the church is ultimately going to complete the Great Commission,” Steele says. The Pauline model of apprenticeship is practiced in countries where a formal theological degree is not a feasible option. Church leaders may have five to fifteen “Timothy” apprentices following them around.
Additionally, according to Steele, churches may be very traditional or meet in a house, under a tree, in pubs or in discotheques-reaching every nook and cranny.
“We can’t be satisfied with one or two percent saturation of a country. That means ninety-eight percent of the population will be eternally separated from God,” Steele asserts. Referring to Habakkuk 2:14, he believes that “if the glory of the Lord needs to cover the earth as water covers the seas,” then the presence of the church is needed in every corner of the world.
*A pseudonym.
Sara Joy Anderson is a freelance writer from Libertyville, Illinois.