I have been blogging on Evangelii Nuntiandi for a week or so now and I have found that it in many ways portended trends in evangelical missions to the Muslim world. (I wish I could say the same for Catholic missions to the Muslim world, but I don't know of any Catholics in MENA who have expressed a desire to see Muslims converting, and I have talked with a good number of them.)
The first trend is at the end of EN21:
"All Christians are called to this witness, and in this way they can be real evangelizers. We are thinking especially of the responsibility incumbent on immigrants in the country that receives them."
In fact this does and has happened, more and more intentionally in recent years. In fact one might call it evangelistic emigration, where Christians from places in S. Asia and E. Asia emigrate to places like the Gulf States with the intention of spreading the Gospel and with the blessing of their churches. Often times this migrants are working in very humbles positions like construction or as maids or nannies, so their access to certain sectors of society are limited, which is a slight drawback.
The second trend is in EN 24:
Finally, the person who has been evangelized goes on to evangelize others. Here lies the test of truth, the touchstone of evangelization: it is unthinkable that a person should accept the Word and give himself to the kingdom without becoming a person who bears witness to it and proclaims it in his turn.
The name of this strategy that I have heard is "training the trainer," though though are other names. The traditional model in missions was to send out a pastor-missioner or a group of missionaries who would start a church and then run the church. A missioner could easily spend his entire career with one church which he had worked hard to found and then pastor. The drawback was that it just did not make a big impact. That is not to say that effective work will always make a big impact, but certainly it should some times.
So the idea came about: get a handful of solid converts, train them to pastor a church and send them to start their own churches. Build the replication of churches into the DNA of the community so that people at these new churches simply assume that it is normal that, should they move to a new town or should their church grow, that they should start a new church in their front yard or shop. These churches tend to be small, agile, and messy. Because they multiply so quickly it is nearly impossible for the original missionaries to enforce doctrinal orthodoxy on all of them. It is called a church planting movement, and if you want to know more about CPM's then just Google the term.
There has never been a successful CPM in an Arab Muslim country, though we have seen results in other Muslim regions. In any case, EN does not explicitly outline the CPM, but it does state the basic concept.
What is particularly fascinating is this question: could there be a Catholic CPM? Given that Holy Orders is a sacrament in the RC tradition is a very weighty matter, it seems risky to ordain someone who has been baptized for all of a few weeks, but that is in fact what happens in a CPM. On the other hand, since only a priest can preside over Communion, it seems like ordination would be needed fairly soon, with the reserved sacrament being used for a period of time. We should also remember that if there is no clergy present, any Christian can baptize a new convert.
Even then, it is difficult to see how a CPM could prosper within a clergy-centered tradition like Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
