A simple, concise definition of a Church Planting Movement (CPM)
is a rapid and multiplicative increase of indigenous churches
planting churches within a given people group or population segment.
The first is rapid. As a movement, a Church
Planting Movement occurs with rapid increases in new church starts.
Saturation church planting over decades and even centuries is good,
but doesn’t qualify as a Church Planting Movement.
Secondly, there is a multiplicative increase. This
means that the increase in churches is not simply incremental
growth—adding a few churches every year or so. Instead, it compounds
with two churches becoming four, four churches becoming eight to 10
and so forth. Multiplicative increase is only possible when new
churches are being started by the churches themselves–rather than by
professional church planters or missionaries.
Finally, they are indigenous churches. This means
they are generated from within rather than from without. This is not
to say that the gospel is able to spring up intuitively within a
people group. The gospel always enters a people group from the
outside; this is the task of the missionary. However, in a Church
Planting Movement the momentum quickly becomes indigenous so that
the initiative and drive of the movement comes from within the
people group rather than from outsiders. [http://www.imb.org/CPM/Chapter1.htm]
