I have observed these and other negative dynamics caused by outside salaries at the local church level in dozens of churches around that country.

No one pretends money has no role in ministry and the launching of many churches. However, the source of money and the way money is used will have a profound impact on what happens. Introducing outside funding to local churches for those churches to carry out their basic functions as a church will nearly always undermine movement.

Other movement catalysts around the world have reached similar conclusions, concerning some good ways and some bad ways to use outside money in catalyzing movements. David Hunt, based on his research and close connection to movements in Africa, points out that outside funding can easily introduce foreignness into a ministry. That, in turn, can undermine a movement and local ownership.

If the church receives support, either in the form of support for the local church planter or pastor, then the model of church carries a foreign element. Foreign funding of church buildings has meant the community received something they could not produce all by themselves. For the church to replicate this in the next community, it must wait for additional support from outside.²

A second example comes from Wayne Allen’s doctoral research on the impact of subsidizing national church workers in Indonesia. He concluded that “the growth of the national church plateaued or halted when the mission began to subsidize the national church workers.”³ This presents a sober warning to all who are serious about the multiplication of churches.

¹ Stout, Ken (2008). MA Thesis: Fostering Sustainability & Minimizing Dependency in Mission Finances. 1-2.
² Hunt, David F. (2009). Doctoral dissertation: A Revolution in Church Multiplication in East Africa: Transformational Leaders Develop a Self-Sustainable Model of Rapid Church Multiplication. 114
³ Allen, Wayne. “When the Mission Pays the Pastor.” Mission Frontiers, January-February1999.

The Watsons and Jerry Trousdale emphasize right methodology as well. Watsons qualify the significance of the methodological elements of the DMM approach: “This book focuses on the strategic elements you need to get a movement started. If you remove any of these elements, you won’t have a movement, period. You may have some growth, but you won’t experience a movement.” Watson regards the role of the external leader as critical, since he is the one who sparks the process of a movement (2011, 114). The main trait Watson highlights, a good character, is not verified as such by my research, but intersects strongly with Inspiring Personality, a trait verified in my research (exhibited by more than 80% of all catalysts interviewed), as well as some of the other traits: responsibility, dependability, and persistence. The relevance of character needs further study. Most of Watson’s competencies are either verified directly in this research (radical learning) or appear under competencies identified by this research, including the ability to develop potential beyond boundaries, the ability to delegate (empowering), and listening skills (personal consideration). Another competency identified by Watson, the ability to build teams, is very broad but encompasses a number of competencies identified by this research.  

Steve Smith likewise emphasized methodology; he presented a comprehensive, branded package by the name T4T. Smith made no explicit claim that his comprehensive methodology would guarantee a movement. The comprehensiveness of the approach, however, could easily leave the reader with that impression. For example, in a case study of an emerging movement, Smith described how he counseled the catalyst: “It wasn’t a CPM yet, but was getting close. As we listened, it was apparent that some elements of the T4T process were missing. We counseled him to incorporate the lessons from the next chapter.”  

In a separate publication, the only publication so far addressing exactly the topic of this study, Smith also considered the person of the pioneer leader. Based on multiple case studies of dozens of practitioners, Smith’s summary of the traits and competencies of effective catalysts was that “each of them possesses a healthy combination of a set of characteristics.” Most of those characteristics were verified by the empirical data of this present research. Among the traits and competencies verified fully are: knowledge of reproduction principles, knowledge of movements, knowledge of what catalyzes movement (all under movement knowledge), lifelong learning, faith, expectant prayer (expectant faith and fervent intercession), and mentoring. Several other traits and competencies suggested by Smith are included within traits verified by this present research, such as knowledge of the Bible (under Bible teaching), tenacity and perseverance (persistence), integrity and spiritual authenticity (inspiring personality), loving God (hunger for God), being led by God, having vision from God, and exercising faith (expectant faith), bold discipling (discipling), ruthless self-evaluation (innovation and radical learning), training (Bible teaching, discipling, and coaching), developing leaders (confidence in nationals, and coaching), and vision casting (inspiring of vision). Only a few traits suggested by Smith are not directly verified to be strongly exhibited by movement catalysts: passionate urgency, single-mindedness, and exercising accountability.  

The data of my research suggest that the effective catalyzing of movements is not tied to any particular methodology, though all employed reproductive movement approaches.  

Different effective catalysts employ different ministry approaches, both in terms of their movement methodology and in their approach to contextualization. A quarter of the catalysts participating in this study skipped the question about their ministry approach, which points to likely hesitation on their side to put their approach “into a box.” In addition, more than half of those who answered the question used the “Other” option to describe their ministry approach in their own words. Often the description given was a hybrid of two or more of the other approaches. This means that the approach of most effective catalysts in this study is a hybrid of more than one ministry approach, which they have adapted to the uniqueness of their context. The research does not support any claims that one specific ministry approach must be followed precisely to lead to a movement.  

Especially in our day, colonial history has made a Western passport and identity often a liability rather than an asset in direct evangelism to the unreached. The vast majority of the world’s UPGs (Unreached People Groups) have some negative history with Western imperialism and the connection of colonial oppression with Christian missions. Thus, whenever the gospel arrives as a “white man’s religion,” with a face reflecting the colonial face of Christendom, it meets immediate barriers of perception and cultural preservation. This dynamic strongly reinforces the importance of strategic approaches in which the face seen bringing good news to most UPGs matches the majority face of Jesus’ followers in our day. Most of Jesus’ followers in our time (since about 1980 ³ and increasingly so) are non-Western: majority Christians from the Majority World.

In recent decades, a new kingdom dynamic has burst on the scene of missiological awareness. Often described as “Church Planting Movements,” “Disciple Making Movements,” or “Kingdom Movements,” these rapidly reproducing movements feature disciples making disciples and churches planting churches in multiple streams to four or more generations. While confirming the high value of E2-E3 partnership, these movements have also opened highly valuable potential E3 roles that most missionaries and mission agencies have not yet realized.

For over a decade, I have met various people in the missiological community who have talked about rapidly multiplying Church Planting Movements. Until a few years ago, most of those familiar with the global situation thought there were perhaps as many as 100 active movements. In and around 2015, out of curiosity, I began collecting case studies and quantitative data on movements. This effort gathered steam in advance of meetings in 2017 to discuss the formation of what would become the 24:14 network. Several advocates encouraged others to share information beyond their own networks and movement(s) for the first time. I aggregated the data while adhering to the security and confidentiality requirements of each data submitter. By the time of the meetings, we had documented nearly 1,300 engagements and 600 movements. These totals were significantly more than what most expected, which inspired the meeting participants. The evidence of the geographic and ethnographic spread of movements throughout the world’s clusters and affinity blocks encouraged many that the possibility of “a movement team for every people and place” might become possible in the near future. Since that time, I have continued to collect and share updated data on movements around the world, in order to encourage practitioners and provide information on the remaining gaps. It should be obvious, but I want to state clearly: we gather data to document the total global numbers and regional trends and identify gaps. I do not claim credit for these movements. Further, much of what movements share with me is provided in confidence and is very sensitive. I lead this research effort and hold this movement data in trust for the 24:14 network. Obviously, various movements and teams do much of the research. Globally, a research team and a leadership team help make decisions on how to use and protect this data. We do not share or publish information below the regional level (e.g. at the country or people group level). We point interested people toward the various regional networks, which internally determine processes for connecting people and sharing information, based on the security requirements of the region’s situation.  

In “24:14 The War that Finally Ends,” Stan Parks and Steve Smith stated: “2025 is not the end. It is just the beginning of the end. We need CPM teams in every one of these 130,000 segments sacrificially committed to the war effort of spreading God’s kingdom through movements. Once a team is in place (between now and 2025) the fight has just begun to evangelize the lost and multiply disciples and churches to see a kingdom transformation of those communities.”  

For the sake of any who might have missed or misunderstood this, a year later, in the January-February 2019 issue of Mission Frontiers, Tim Martin and Stan Parks penned this among their answers to FAQ:

Are you setting 2025 as the year that all nations will be reached?

No, our goal is to engage every unreached people and place with an effective kingdom movement strategy by December 31, 2025. This means that a team (local or expat or combination) equipped in movement strategy will be on location in every unreached people and place. We make no claims about when the Great Commission task will be finished. That is God’s responsibility. He determines the fruitfulness of movements. (6)

1. Rhoda, the servant girl, had gone “out of [her] mind.” It was easier to malign the messenger than believe the message. When that explanation failed to suffice (because “she kept insisting”), the group consensus shifted to…  

2. an explanation neither you nor I would probably have considered: “It must be his angel.” Verse 15 informs us a plurality of the gathering (“they said…”) reached this interesting conclusion. This is probably in reference to a Jewish belief at that time that a person’s guardian angel took on their appearance. It probably signified that they thought Peter was dead and his guardian angel had come to deliver the news. 

I realized that we needed to shift to a ministry model that could rapidly reproduce disciples and churches among a UPG. I saw this as not just a theory or a wish, but a description of what God was actually doing among a number of UPGs around the world. Back in 2010, the best estimates claimed fewer than 100 Church Planting Movements (CPMs) globally. Now, in early 2019, the work of God’s Spirit and the sharing of known data has brought the number of recognized, consistent, fourth-generation movements to over 700. These movements are thriving in a wide variety of geographic locations and religious blocks. 

Applying a CPM-oriented strategy doesn’t guarantee “success”. God is the sovereign Lord of the harvest. He chooses what fruit will grow from our steps of obedience. A person could do everything “right” and never personally be part of launching a movement. But at this point we can undeniably say that some ministry approaches increase the likelihood of God bringing forth abundant harvest through a CPM. And some other ministry approaches consistently bring forth little (if any) fruit and actually hinder a larger harvest. 

As Robby Butler has shown in his article “Movements in Every Peoples: How Peoples Become Reached,” “The One-by-One Method” (reaching individuals and combining them in a single congregation where none existed) results in “a foreign, conglomerate church, alienated from the local peoples”. The alarming result is that “Extraction evangelism makes peoples more resistant. Extraction evangelism into conglomerate congregations hinders indigenous movements” (italics and bold font mine). Reaching numerous individuals among a UPG may feel like exciting progress, yet it is usually counterproductive. Research shows that this approach at best usually brings slower growth than population increase and at worst hardens much larger numbers toward the gospel.  

David and Paul Watson describe the important distinction between extraction evangelism and Disciple Making Movements. They write: “Extraction evangelism is ingrained in Western Christian culture. Yet extraction evangelism techniques create too many barriers to the gospel to result in Disciple Making Movements. Period. Extraction evangelism techniques even inoculate people against receiving the gospel. Disciple-making, on the other hand, is part of catalyzing Disciple Making Movements around the world. If Disciple Making Movements are our goal, we have to make the jump from extraction-evangelism thinking to disciple-making thinking. Extraction evangelism thinking focuses on reaching one person at a time. Disciple-making thinking focuses on reaching one family or community at a time….the minimum unit for disciple-making should be the household (family), affinity group, or community rather than the individual.

Dave: Speaking of persecution, what are some other challenges you’ve faced over the years?

Victor: One challenge was organizations with more traditional models wanting to grab a piece of the action. The Bhojpuri movement had a very difficult year in 2011. A lot of organizations came, then distracted and hired people. That created a lot of confusion and I got very discouraged. I thought, “Maybe this whole thing will die or disintegrate.” But the ministry continued and that challenge strengthened local leaders who remained as decision makers. They took more ownership of ministry within their area instead of working as evangelists under someone else. Whatever they knew they used. That’s when I started the saying, “If you know one thing, obey one thing; if you know two things, obey two things.” 

Another challenge was the low level of education among many of those being reached. Some people might wonder: “How can a person start a church and mature a church if they have very little knowledge?” But knowledge was not the key; it was obedience to Christ and willingness to really practice what little they knew. This was not people lining up to be hired for jobs; this was ordinary people obeying the Lord and seeing him bless their exercise of faith in everyday life. They know how to incarnate themselves and present Christ among a very hostile community.

A more recent challenge has arisen from the extent of the movement. The nation’s majority feel caught by surprise by what has been quietly multiplying in their midst. The Hindu militants thought that Christianity was only what they had seen for 200 years – a foreign import from the West, with visible structures and foreign patterns. Suddenly they’ve discovered that people are turning to Christ in ways that don’t turn them into Westerners. An article published last year quoted government minister Giriraj Singh blaming Christians for converting people “silently.” He said, “It is Christians who are doing maximum [sic] number of religious conversions in the country, that too silently.” I never thought I would live to hear that complaint.  

Given the overwhelming task of discipling people groups that often had millions of people, these early catalytic teams and their prayer partners went to God in desperate prayer. These teams became willing learners as God led them to put aside human tradition and search the New Testament for strategies of discipling and church planting. God began to use the dependence and humility of these servants to start “book of Acts-like movements” (Church Planting Movements) reproducing this faith and obedience with others. These new disciples and churches begin to transform their communities as the new Body of Christ lives out kingdom values.  

When consistent (multiple-stream) 4th generation reproduction of churches occurs, church planting has crossed a threshold to becoming a sustainable movement. While it may take years to begin, once a movement starts, we usually see this 4th generation threshold crossed within three to five years. Increasingly, CPMs are starting new CPMs within other people groups and population segments.  

The three of us—Stan Parks, Curtis Sergeant and Steve Smith—have the privilege of being connected directly or indirectly with leaders of most of the Church Planting Movements in the world. Curtis was one of the first pioneers used by God in these modern movements and Steve and Stan were part of the second wave that learned movement lessons from Curtis and other pioneer CPM catalysts. In a few instances we have personally helped catalyze a movement, but we mainly connect with movement leaders via prayer, training, coaching, learning, advising and networking. We love the brothers and sisters God is using to catalyze these movements and are highly committed to their work and well-being.  

From the outside, our personal styles and approaches appear quite different. From a first glance one might think our systems and methodologies are radically different. Sometimes various networks invite us in because they want greater emphasis on one CPM methodology over another. Yet in reality, we are committed to one overarching goal: that CPMs become sustained and saturate every people group and place of the world. We are convinced that CPMs are the only church planting approach whose fruit exceeds population growth. Because of our undying commitment to see God glorified through movements, our various styles and methods are actually built on the same CPM distinctives and are much more alike than they are different. This is because we all believe in biblical core components of movements that cannot be violated. We all adhere to these principles and employ various methodologies to cooperate with the Spirit and see the same principles bear fruit in different contexts.  

CPM networks and practitioners who realize this truth invite us and/or other CPM coaches around the world to assist them in their movements because we are 1) committed to the same biblical principles but 2) might bring a different perspective or flavor to help address some areas in which a movement may be stuck. This commitment to CPMs has also led us to form a larger coalition of practitioners who employ varied methods but are absolutely committed to the core distinctives of CPMs. 24:14 is a coalition of disciples from around the world, collaborating to see biblical kingdom movement engagements in every unreached people and place of the world by 2025.¹  

CPM practitioners, with their variety of methods, are still a subset of the larger church planting and missional world. It is time to unite CPM practitioners toward a common objective, as well as to help other ministers of the gospel know how to step into CPM ways of operating. The distinctives that unite the various streams of CPM methods are much stronger than the minor differences of praxis. The three of us started this journey when there were just a handful of movements. Now, with over 650 movements around the world, it is time to revisit the core elements which unite us all. It is very popular in today’s parlance for missional workers to claim they are using movement practices. Unfortunately, many of these workers are not committed to a few irreducible distinctives of CPM efforts. Those distinctives are as follows.  

¹ 24:14 was launched in 2017. For more information, see 2414now.net.

In the eighteenth century, John Wesley’s lay preachers both scandalized the religious establishment and brought salvation to huge numbers who would have otherwise never heard. The unflinching accountability of his small group “class meetings” cemented those preachers’ fruit into fellowships of growing disciples. Yet more than two centuries of zealous effort by “lay” preachers plus ordained preachers has still left us too far from the goal to “make disciples of all nations”. What if we find (as seems to be the case) that small groups inductively studying the Bible can sufficiently understand God’s message to become rooted and established in Christ? What if their mutual accountability leads to lifestyles of obedience and effective evangelism of the unreached? What if God’s Spirit is able to lead his people into all essential truth and raise up generations of leaders through life-on-life discipleship and on-the-job training by believers more mature in the faith? I propose that we do whatever we can to encourage such movements of advancing biblical faith. This would include not trying to pull multiplying house fellowships toward our own denominational structure or flavor of ministry.  

As I’ve sought to understand nay-sayers’ concerns about the validity of simple/house churches, the issues usually seem to boil down to one or more of the following:  

1. People are not baptized by an ordained person.  

2. The Lord’s Supper is not served or overseen by an ordained person.  

3. The fellowship is led by a person with no formal theological education.  

4. The group is not registered with or recognized by the national government.  

5. The group is not associated with any recognized Christian denomination.  

6. The group doesn’t have a formal written creedal statement.  

I don’t see the New Testament presenting any of these as an essential element of a God-pleasing church. From a NT perspective, they seem best viewed as “adiaphora”- actions neither mandated nor forbidden. (For more details, see my article “What is Church? From Surveying Scripture to Applying in Culture” in EMQ October 2011.) I don’t criticize a church that has or practices any of these things. But I believe Jesus stands strongly against those whose “teachings are merely human rules” (Mat. 15:9), and who use such rules to oppose other believers, thus hindering advance of his Kingdom. Can we agree that God intends us to use New Testament teaching as the standard for his church? Can we not attack, criticize or steal sheep from one another based on added patterns that our own group believes will be a helpful addition? Maybe that’s a radical idea. But when simple church can effectively accomplish God’s purposes, why not simple?

Aly had been visiting a community looking for a person of peace. When he met Kone he identified him as a person of peace. Kone was very friendly, welcoming and hospitable. After three visits, Aly realized that Kone was not a person of peace. They had some good conversations during which Aly tried to introduce spiritual topics, but Kone had no spiritual concern he wanted to discuss. His interest was only friendship with Aly.

Many people meet this kind of person and think they have found a person of peace. They will spend a lot of time with these people and won’t see anything happening that leads to making disciples. They become frustrated and conclude that DMM is not working.

The person of peace may have a good reputation, but not always. They often are hospitable, helpful, or friendly. But the most important characteristic that describes the person of peace is that she or he has personal spiritual concerns or questions. No matter their religious background, they usually have some spiritual dissatisfaction or questions. This dissatisfaction is caused by the fact that God is at work in their life, and the Father is preparing them to accept the gospel and become a catalyst to bridge the gospel into the community. 

In summary, the person of peace:

Is a non-Christian – Jesus sent his disciples into the harvest among non-saved people.
Has spiritual questions and is a seeker. Manifests that God is working through him or her.
Demonstrates that God has him or her to receive the gospel.
Their presence in the community means that Jesus is visiting that community; God is at work there.

Agali gave Disciple Making Movements training to a group of pastors in 2015. From those who took the DMM training, a pastor named Roba came to him and expressed serious doubts that existing churches could make this kind of change. Agali did not argue but challenged Roba to start the process in his community. Roba took the challenge and went to his community in search of a person of peace. The community was predominantly a Muslim community where the men like to gather in the public square in the afternoons to drink tea and to socialize. Roba went to the public square one afternoon. He greeted the men and offered to buy them tea telling them he had come to get to know them. He told them although he is a Christian and they are Muslims, they have been neighbors for a long time and as people who honor God maybe they should know each other better. The Muslims invited Roba to sit with them. As they were chatting together, Roba got an opportunity to tell them a story from the Bible. He told them the story of Zacchaeus. The men were attentively listening to the story and when he reached the part of the story when Jesus said “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a son of Abraham,” his listeners became more attentive when the name of Abraham was mentioned. After finishing drinking tea, and as they were parting they invited the pastor to come again with more stories.  

A few days later, Roba joined them again for tea. After the usual greetings and talking about current happenings in the community, Roba asked them if they remembered the story he had told them in his first visit. They told him they did. He asked them to repeat the story for him, which they did. After repeating the story, a lively discussion followed. One of them asked Roba if he believes that Jesus is God. Roba threw the question back to the men and asked them, “if Jesus in the story of Zacchaeus was able to give salvation to men, does this not show that Jesus could have divine attributes that are not found in men?”. Some of the men responded in agreement by nodding their heads.  

These meetings over tea became frequent and regular. In a natural progression of the relationships, many Discovery Bible Groups and churches were established among these Muslims, resulting in 32 small churches.  

Unintended Limiting Factor Leaders are expected to be fully trained before taking leadership responsibility.  

What some may hear us saying – DMM does not believe in formal training in Bible colleges, seminaries, or church leadership programs.  

What we meant to say An individual with no training at all can pray and fast and sense God leading her/him to where they will go make disciples who make disciples, and plant churches. But, formal training has a definite role. The best approach for formal training, however, is as workers are making disciples and planting churches. The greater their responsibility, and the more effective their efforts, the greater their need of more training. And, we must be aware that formal training will take on a different approach among oral learning cultures.  

My context is among Muslim people groups in Africa. DMM leaders here will watch an individual who is taking disciple making and church planting seriously. As they begin Discovery Groups and begin to plant churches they will say, “You need some more training.”. When churches reach the 3rd and 4th generation they will say, “You need some formal training.”. And, in cases where workers are coaching and mentoring others who are working cross-culturally, those workers have been sent to seminaries here in Africa for cross-cultural training. My observation is that there is more training, not less.  

DMM is not against formal training but does question the approach of doing all, or even most of the formal training before ministry has started. In many cases the Western model is to do all of our biblical, ministry, and cultural training before that individual has ever discipled anyone or planted a church.  

There are several significant disadvantages to this approach:

(1) Some candidates, faced with the daunting challenges and expense of “getting prepared” simply drop out;
(2) Being theologically, culturally, and linguistically trained, we can depend on what we know instead of the One who is to be known; and
(3) We create a professional class of Christians and the ordinary people leave the work to them, therefore disempowering most of the Body of Christ.  

Stephen was walking through a village, praying as he went. In conversations with residents, he learned they were being decimated by an outbreak of the swine flu. He began asking how many people were affected and how many had died. It was heartbreaking to hear of the loss of life, because he knew they did not have to suffer like this. A free vaccination was available from the government, but they knew nothing about it or how to get it. So, he met with the leaders and informed them about the vaccination. He helped them carefully document the number of people living in the village so that the right number of vaccinations could be sanctioned. The leaders sent a delegation with him to the proper authorities and got authorization for the vaccinations.  

“Why did you do this for us?” people began asking Stephen. One family immediately invited him into their home. He began a Discovery Bible Study with them. Soon, that Discovery Group became a new church. That family started another DBS in another place which also grew into a church. One of the new disciples from that church quickly started another group on their own. Within a short time, this grew to three generations of churches.  

Most churches are operating with a broken compass. They often think their job is to get more people into the church on Sunday and increase the income of the church. A church can be very successful at doing both and still be a complete failure at what Jesus has asked us to do. Jesus commanded us to go and make disciple-makers. This is the central purpose of every church and the standard by which we should judge success or failure of our efforts. If a church is not producing disciples who make disciples then there is something seriously wrong with that church and its ministry. A serious re-evaluation of their efforts is in order.  

The first paradigm shift for me was accepting the DNA principle that: “Whatever you do has to be reproducible by the people you train.” “Can they replicate this?” is an earth-shattering question to force yourself to answer. My four-year Bible degree and two Master’s degrees argued that you have to have a Bible Dictionary and a Concordance at a minimum, if you are going to really study the Bible. How can you equip people for ministry if you cannot train them to feed themselves spiritually? While I could argue they could all purchase a Concordance and Bible Dictionary, here in the U.S., what about people in churches where there was only one copy of the Bible for the whole church? God blew open my box by taking me to West Africa a few months before the first DMM training took place. 

The key to multi-generational growth is simple obedience to the Great Commission. Treat every new believer as a 100% priest, who has Christ’s authority and presence for the three tasks of the Great Commission- going (proclaiming the gospel), baptizing, and teaching them to obey all of Christ’s commands (beginning with the Great Commission itself). Every believer is a priest, who does every one of these tasks in order to disciple and plant churches among every kind of people. The key to generational growth is training the new believer as a priest, rather than as a student. As long as believers are discipled as 100% priests and they obey the Great Commission, generations of new believers and churches can follow indefinitely. Except for Christ’s Second Coming, only two realities stop the Great Commission: 1) The new believer doesn’t obey it, or 2) The person who led them to Christ doesn’t train and send them to obey it.  

Training the new believer-priest to abide in Christ and His Word while obeying the Great Commission connects the branch intimately to the Vine, guaranteeing increasing fruitfulness (Jn 15:1-8). Abiding in Christ through prayer, His Word and His works empowers the new believer to experience Christ intimately and powerfully as He accomplishes His work through them[cite: 46]. One of the greatest joys of experiencing an Acts-type generational church movement is seeing ordinary new believers become apostles, evangelists, prophets, pastors and teachers (Eph 4:11-12) as they grow in grace and come to maturity.  

Urban streams of new converts jumped from neighborhood to neighborhood and from factory to factory as believers changed jobs. The T4T training prepares new believers to be seeds so that when the church is scattered, whether by dangers or opportunities, new churches are planted.  

In the most recent survey of the Kais’ ministry, more than 1.7 million people have come to faith and been baptized. Every month trained workers start two thousand house churches and small groups in villages, urban high-rise apartments and factories. Over 140,000 churches have been started in what is currently the world’s fastest growing church planting movement.  

In other parts of the world, T4T has birthed new Church-Planting Movements within Hindu, Muslim and animist contexts among both literate and nonliterate peoples. T4T has also begun to bear fruit in the United States and Australia. Ying Kai’s strategy has been to aggressively train every willing local Christian in how to be more obedient in their spiritual life, how to effectively share their faith person to person, how to immediately follow up with new believers, and how to initiate reproducing groups which often become churches. Training, encouraging, and holding existing and new Christians accountable to become trainers of trainers has characterized this Church-Planting Movement. Ying’s story demonstrates the power of multiplication at work.

Seven churches in the Charlotte area, including DGCC, are engaged in a T4T experiment since late November, 2011. So far, there are 9 training groups among believers, 22 outreach groups (houses of peace) among unbelievers, and 43 people that have come to Christ in homes.  

Desiring God Community Church was planted in the University of North Carolina at Charlotte area nine years ago with an emphasis on going to the nations. They also made a concerted effort to reach out to international students. These values and practices paved the way for the introduction of T4T in 2011, paired with a vision for God to bring to salvation 100 people through their wit- ness in 2012 (sermon link).  

T4T is stretching DGCC in positive ways, and in particular, the calling for immediate application and obe- dience has been healthy. They have always emphasized that “walking in the light as He is in the light” requires a change of mind-set and not just a change in activity. However, the emphasis on immediate obedience has helped people to ask more regularly and quickly, “What does this teaching imply for me this week?”.  

Besides all the positive effects, there have also been some challenges in communicating and implementing T4T principles at DGCC:  

1. Some hear T4T simply as another evangelism or out- reach program. It must be reiterated that T4T is a pro- cess of exposing people to the Word in a simple format, encouraging all to commit to immediate obedience, and then holding them accountable for living it. T4T wraps up evangelism, discipleship, leadership develop- ment, and church planting in one continuous stream.  

2. DGCC has to continually reinforce the fact that T4T is a kingdom-building approach, not a church growth strategy. The idea that they could see many people come to Christ who then would not necessarily come Sundays or not even be involved in DGCC-needs regular repetition.  

3. A third challenge relates to how the T4T vision meshes with DGCC’s emphasis on the command to “preach the Word… with great patience teaching all doctrine.”. Under the T4T model, new disciples learn a handful of stories well enough to evangelize and disciple others, thereby living out obedience to the gospel. However, it follows that these new believers should also seek to know the God of the gospel better through a deepen- ing understanding of His character. DGCC knows that this is important and has worked extra hard to confirm that is happening among the new disciples.  

DGCC is excited about all these challenges and feels privileged to be part of this process. They don’t know what the gathering of new reproducing disciples into appropri- ate churches will look like, but they’re praying that God will give them the opportunity to meet those challenges.