About - One Mission Society

ABOUT US

VCP STORY

Village Church Planting (VCP) began in 2000 as the Into Africa project, launched by OMS South Africa. The key idea of the initiative was to train refugees from war-torn countries who had fled to South Africa to become church planters. When peace returned to their homelands, these leaders would return home and help launch church-planting movements among their own people.

That vision has continued to grow. Today, VCP equips indigenous African leaders to reach their own communities, multiply disciples, and establish churches that can continue reproducing for generations.

HOW VCP WORKS

VCP partners with indigenous denominations that subscribe to the Lausanne Covenant and the Apostles' Creed. Every church planted through VCP is affiliated with its partner denomination.

VCP provides a four-year training cycle with training materials currently available in nine African languages and three additional language translation projects underway.

VCP is intentionally focused on equipping and multiplying. VCP does not purchase plots of ground, erect buildings, or ordain pastors; that is the responsibility of VCP denominational partners.

VCP STORY

HOW VCP WORKS

BUILT TO MULTIPLY

VCP is based on the 4 Fields Evangelism Model, a generational church-planting movement. The "engine" that drives VCP is the training centers. Each center is led by one trainer. Trainers are typically selected in consultation with leaders of the partner denomination. VCP follows a cohort model with nominally 15 church planters in each training center.

The trainer mobilizes 15 church planters from surrounding villages to attend a 48-month church planting internship at the VCP training center. Trainers serve as teachers, mentors, and coaches to these first-generation church planters.

Church planters help new believers understand and apply New Testament stories that relate to each of the seven basic commands of Jesus. As disciples grow and multiply, church planters gather them into newly planted churches. In turn, these churches plant daughter churches to the fourth generation and beyond.

Every six months, the trainer helps church planters of all generations celebrate progress, evaluate church health, and plan for further multiplication using a church diagram with symbols based on the nine church activities described in Acts 2:42–47.