I hope to see many of you at the cell symposium this month. If you receive this blog and will be coming to the event, I’d love to greet you during the symposium. One of the pastors I’m looking forward to meeting for the first time is Dion Robert, founder and pastor of the Works and Mission Baptist Church. If you’ll look at Dion Robert’s bio on the cell symposium website, it says,
“CWMI is a cell church that gathers over 185,000 in cell groups weekly.” Wow.

I’m thrilled that I will drive with Dion from Dallas to Waco. Ralph Neighbour wrote yesterday, “Jim Lassiter will pick you up at DFW and bring you down along with Dion Robert.” I’m going to pepper Dion with lots of questions because my knowledge of his church is dated. The last time I wrote about his church was nine years ago in an article entitled “Ten Largest Cell Churches.” I wrote:

The celebration event in the mother church attracts some 6,000 worshippers each Sunday. However, the Works and Mission Baptist Church has 56 local satellite churches in the capital city of Abidjan alone and many more throughout the country. A total of 18,000 cells (14,000 adult cells and about 4,000 children’s cells) form the basis of the church. There is one system of government and administration from the smallest cell in France to the Temple in Abidjan. All reports, accountability, etc. filter back to the mother church. The local churches are not independent. Each local church has exactly the same departmental structure and ultimately report back to Abidjan.  Les Brickman, who did his doctoral dissertation at Regent University on the Works and Mission Baptist Church says, “This church has experienced quantitative and qualitative growth since its inception in 1975. With over 150,000 members worldwide, it has proven to be successful in the context of both African and non-African culture, having planted churches in 34% of current African nations as well as in Europe and North America.”

If you’d like to find out more about Robert’s church, buy Les Brickman book entitled Preparing the 21st Century Church. As mentioned above, Brickman earned his doctoral degree studying this great church.

Comments?

Joel

p.s.: My daughter Sarah and I travel on Wednesday to Monterrey, Mexico to participate in the Cell Church Missions Network meeting. The goal of CCMN is to promote cell church missions in Latin America and beyond. Mario Vega, Ralph Neighbour, Ben Wong, and others will also be attending. I’ll tell you about it in next week’s blog.