Converts are the basic building blocks in the foundation of a movement. It was the mass turning to Christ of three thousand and then five thousand new converts which launched the first church planting movement in the book of Acts. Nothing has changed. It would be wishful thinking that we could launch a church planting movement anywhere in the world without the new birth of multiplied thousands of new converts. Converts from Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or from an atheistic background will do best in a small group.
Small groups are much less threatening than the larger crowd in a congregation.
The cell can serve as a halfway house to the Christian culture of a congregation. One of the most powerful modern day illustrations of the strategic nature of the cell group approach to spreading the gospel is the Chinese Christian church under Communism, contrasted with the Christian church in the former Soviet Union. A primary reason for the dramatic church growth in China from roughly three million Christians in 1950 to the present number of seventy million, is the cell group movement. A cluster of cell groups or the decentralized church, has a much greater likelihood of survival in a hostile environment than the larger, more visible, institutional church. Government control of a cell-based church is next to impossible.