Antthara Yesu
When we first arrived in Mozambique, we tried what we refer to as "traditional church planting. This is where we of a different culture go into a new culture and try to replicate how we "do" church. In this context and in many others world-wide, the main way this looks is in building a church building. We won't go into the many reasons this proved to be a bad idea for us in this culture. Then God introduced us to a new method. As of 2009, our primary method to reach the Makhuwa-Meetto people has been the “Church Planting Movement.” It is basically a house-church system. The ultimate goal of this method is that evangelism and new house churches will be facilitated totally by the indigenous population, which frees the missionary to move to other unreached groups and start again.
Antthara Yesu is the name of the CPM churches. This phrase means “Followers of Jesus.” This name was chosen to differentiate these churches from the local Catholic churches. As in many countries, the people here assume if you're not Muslim, you're Catholic. To their minds being a “Christian” means one is Catholic and for 400 years, the Catholics have been the Muslims bitter enemy. They will not listen to anyone that they assume is a Catholic or a Christian.
You can read more about the CPM approach to world evangelization HERE or HERE. Mission Frontiers has some good articles HERE. And HERE'S A GOOD VIDEO about CPMs.