Category: Mission Frontiers

Categories
Mission Frontiers

Movement Servants: Helping Movements Multiply

Movement Servants: Helping Movements Multiply

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers Nov/Dec 2022” 

by Dave Coles & Stan Parks –

As researchers have studied the amazing work of God in 1,965 Church Planting Movements¹ (as of this writing), bringing over 114 million people into God’s kingdom in this generation, they have discovered something surprising. Not only are movements the way God’s kingdom is growing fastest in our day, they are also the source from which most new movements are springing up. Only 10 to 20 percent of existing movements were started by an outside catalyst(s) finding an inside catalyst(s) and planting the first churches.

The vast majority of current movements-between 80 and 90 percent of them³-were started by believers from other (near-culture) movements. The metaphor of “hot coals” has often been used to envision taking embers from an existing fire to start a fire in a new location (rather than trying to start a fire from nothing). For example, the Bhojpuri movement in Northern India has started movements in at least eight other large language groups. Another family of movements in Southeast Asia has started work in over 50 UPGs and 17 countries.

This surprising reality has major implications for every person eager to see the Gospel reach all peoples as quickly as possible. Those seeking to catalyze movements have often aimed to focus not on “What can I do?” but rather on “What needs to be done?” This motto demands a fresh application as we consider the newly discovered information about how most movements are now starting. What “needs to be done” that can be accomplished by distant-culture workers? Actually, a great many things need to be done, but they vary from one movement to another, and sometimes from one year to another within any given movement. Distant-culture workers can play a vital role in strengthening and deepening a movement, and/or in assisting a movement to expand and catalyze fresh movements among other UPGs. The key lies in willingness to serve the actual needs being felt and expressed by the leaders of the movements. They don’t need outsiders showing up with their own plans and ideas. They want people humble enough and flexible enough to do whatever needs to be done.

The vast majority of current movements-between 80 and 90 percent of them-were started by believers from other (near-culture) movements

In some cases, this might involve a specialized skill, but more often it involves applying a basic-level skill in an area of need.

Possibilities include:

– Prayer and mobilizing prayer from outside the
– movement
– Communication efforts
– Job and business start-up training
– Computer and technical support
– Video and/or audio recording and/or editing Fundraising in ways that do not create dependency Social media help with creation and/or distribution Hosting vision trips for potential outside partners

– Administrative help
– Hosting and supervising outside interns
– Disaster response service and/or training and/or connections
– Medical service and equipping medical response within the movement
– Assisting with support, networking, or whatever else might be needed to help bring the Gospel where it has never been
– Assisting in Bible translation and distribution
– Anything and everything that is needed

In many cases, the movements cannot give a specific job description, as their needs keep changing. Or they may start with a specific need and job description, but circumstances change the needs. They want people who are willing to do whatever is needed. They value the relationship first and the task second. In other words, they want to become friends and co-laborers with brothers and sisters who they can trust, and the ministry roles and tasks will emerge from those relationships and the needs in the field.

One movement leader, discussing this movement servant role, said, “Westerners we talk to do not really want to do what we need. For instance, we would ask them not to go live in Afghanistan, but seek to reach Afghans in Europe and partner to raise prayer and funds and key outside connections for Afghan believers in Afghanistan. That has not been appealing to anybody we have talked to. They all want to go live in the country and be the frontline workers.”

“Westerners we talk to do not really want to do what we need.”

A third example comes from a Kingdom Business project where outsiders help movements identify near-culture gaps needing movements. They assist with business training, prayer and fundraising (only supplementing funds raised within the movements) as movement families relocate and re-start businesses to sustain them long-term in reaching the new group. This has already resulted in reaching many new unreached population segments. You can see a video from a Movement Servant couple describing their mindset at bit.ly/MServantVideo.
If you’re interested, please contact us via the form at bit.ly/MServant. We already have relationships with networks of movements-in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. We cannot guarantee connection, because even if you are willing, we will need to find a movement that is ready and able to receive you. And there will likely be some challenging dynamics, no matter how willing you are, such as language learning for some contexts. But we are glad to explore the possibilities!

Some current initiatives that have specific needs are:

– An English and French speaking administrator to help a family of movements
– Medical and logistical personnel to help medical teams support movements and respond to crises alongside movements
– Business development to help strengthen movements in doing business within their movement as well as using business to get to new areas Helping equip local researchers to find the gaps in their areas
– An international liaison to help a movement family relate to intercessors, partners, donors, etc.

Jesus said, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant (Matt. 20:26).

What if your best way to maximally reach the unreached involved an assortment of jobs, chosen and assigned by someone from another culture? Would you be willing to lay down your life and some of your preferences in order to play a role in rapid kingdom multiplication among the unreached? The movements are already moving, and you’re invited to play a part in increasing their growth.

¹ A CPM is the result of God’s work. God has used a variety of approaches to start CPMs, including DMM, T4T, Four Fields, etc. See http://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/2414-goal for Core Principles and Common Outcomes of a CPM approach.
² See “Global Movement Statistics” at https://2414now.net/resources.
³ This question was asked of movement leaders representing over 1,000 movements. They all gave answers in the range of 80-90%.
⁴ See “Movements Multiplying Movements: How the Bhojpuri CPM has Started Other Movements”: pages 185-188 in 24:14-A Testimony to All Peoples.

Dave Coles is an encourager and resourcer of Church Planting Movements among unreached groups, serving with Beyond. He has served among Muslims in Southeast Asia for 24 years. He has over a dozen articles published (under a pseudonym) on topics related to contextualization, reaching Muslims and the nature of the church.

Stan Parks, Ph.D. was a trainer and coach for a wide variety of CPMs around the world. He currently co-leads a global 2414 Coalition to start Church Planting Movement engagements in every Unreached People Group and place by 2025 (2414now. net). As part of the Ethne leadership team he helped various Ephesus teams seeking to start cascading CPMs in large UPG clusters. He is the VP of Global Strategies with Beyond (beyond.org).
Categories
Mission Frontiers

Movement Servants Needed

Movement Servants Needed

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers May/June 2021” 

by Dave Coles & Stan Parks –

What is the most strategic role you can imagine for a Jesus follower in the Western world who wants to see all peoples reached with the gospel as soon as possible?
 
Three hundred years ago, at the beginning of the modern Protestant missions movement ¹, most missionaries were sent from Europe and the USA. Western cultural norms were also exported, resulting in a common image of missions portrayed as a white man standing before a group of seated “natives,” holding a Bible and preaching a sermon to explain the good news of salvation in Christ. The fruitful response envisioned was an altar call in which large numbers of people raised their hands or otherwise indicated they wanted to follow Jesus. This paradigm can still occasionally be found in fund-raising appeals. And whether consciously or subconsciously, this picture still informs the interest of some missionaries and missionary funders: “How many people have you personally led to the Lord this year?” But we need to recognize that the Great Commission does not require us acting as the “hero.”

But we need to recognize that the Great Commission does not require us acting as the “hero.”

Over the centuries, examples of a different pattern were seen in the co-laboring of Adoniram Judson and the Karen leader Ko Tha Byu, Hudson Taylor and Chinese evangelists such as Xi Shengmo, and the missionary efforts of non-Westerners such as Sadhu Sundar Singh.

In most cases, the greatest number of people come to faith through the ministry of same-culture or near-culture workers. When E3 messengers in such partnerships report accurately on ministry fruit, they portray clearly that they play a role in the ministry, but it is their local partners who actually lead the most people to saving faith.

Sadly, in past centuries some opposed the empowerment and leadership of local missionaries and leaders. However, in recent decades, more and more missionaries have come to accept this pattern. They have understood that the most fruitful ministry among the unreached is usually done, not by a distant-culture (Western) worker trying to directly reach the unreached, but through partnership between near-culture Christians and distant-culture (Western) workers.

In E-Scale terminology, “E1 is reaching one’s own culture across the barrier of ‘church culture.’ E2 is cross- cultural evangelism into a similar, but different culture. E3 evangelism is taking the gospel to cultures very different from that of the messenger.” ² The most effective evangelism generally happens through messengers culturally closer to the culture of those hearing the message. Thus distant-culture workers maximize their effectiveness by partnership with believers culturally closer to those they hope to reach with the gospel.

The most effective evangelism generally happens through messengers culturally closer to the culture of those hearing the message.

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.

 

Not only are movements the way God’s kingdom is growing fastest in our day, they are also the source from which most new movements are springing up.

As researchers have studied the amazing work of God in 1,371 movements (as of this writing), bringing over 79 million people into God’s kingdom in this generation,” they have discovered something surprising. Not only are movements the way God’s kingdom is growing fastest in our day, they are also the source from which most new movements are springing up.

Only 10 to 20 percent of existing movements were started by an outside catalyst(s) finding an inside catalyst(s) and planting the first churches. The vast majority of current movements – between 80 and 90 percent of them 5— were started by believers from other (near-culture) movements. The metaphor of “hot coals” has often been used to envision taking embers from an existing fire to start a fire in a new location (rather than trying to start a fire from nothing). For example, the Bhojpuri movement in Northern India 6 has started movements in at least eight other large language groups. Another family of movements in Southeast Asia has started work in over 50 UPGs and 17 countries.


This surprising reality has major implications for every person eager to see more movements begun, in fact for everyone who desires to see the gospel reach all peoples as quickly as possible. 

 

Those wanting to catalyze movements have often aimed to focus not on “What can I do?” but rather on “What needs to be done?” This motto demands a fresh application as we consider the newly discovered information about how most movements are now starting. What “needs to be done” that can be accomplished by distant-culture workers?

Actually, a great many things need to be done, but they vary from one movement to another, and sometimes from one year to another within any given movement. Distant- culture workers can play a vital role in strengthening and deepening a movement, and/or in assisting a movement to expand and catalyze fresh movements among other UPGs. The key lies in willingness to serve the actual needs being felt and expressed by the leaders of the movements. They don’t need outsiders showing up with their own plans and ideas. They want people humble enough and flexible enough to do whatever needs to be done.

In some cases, this might involve a specialized skill, but more often it involves applying a basic-level skill in an area of need.

Possibilities include:

– Communication efforts

– Job and business start-up training Computer and technical support

– Video recording and/or editing

– Audio recording and/or editing

– Fundraising in ways that do not create dependency

– Social media help with creation and/or distribution Prayer & mobilizing prayer from outside the movement

– International networking

– Hosting vision trips for potential outside partners • Administration help

– Hosting and supervising outside interns

– Disaster response service and/or training and/or connections

– Medical service and equipping medical response within the movement

– Assisting with support, networking, or whatever else might be needed to help bring the gospel where it has never been

– Anything and everything that is needed

In many cases, the movements cannot give a specific job description, as their needs keep changing. Or they may start with a specific need and job description, but circumstances change the needs. They want people who are willing to do whatever is needed.They want people who are willing to do whatever is needed.

Or they may start with a specific need and job description, but circumstances change the needs. 

The ministry might not sound glamorous or important at first glance. And some candidates have expressed concern about the difficulty of raising funds for this type of support role. However, we need to examine our  assumptions. Do we assume that a new worker from the West has the experience or ability that warrants asking for an “important” role? Do we think it somehow diminishes us to serve in a support role for those better suited for the frontlines? Does it not make sense to learn about multiplication from people who have been a part of multiplying hundreds and often thousands of disciples and churches?

One movement leader, discussing this movement servant role, said, “Westerners we talk to do not really want to do what we need. For instance, we would ask them not to go live in Afghanistan but seek to reach Afghans in Europe and partner to raise prayer and funds and key outside connections for Afghan believers in Afghanistan. That has not been appealing to anybody we have talked to. They all want to go live in the country and be the frontline workers.”

Another movement leader said, “I have a hard time believing that Westerners would come in and submit to our leadership over the long term. In a few cases we have tried something like this; after a couple of years, they decide they know how to do it better than we do and they break away and use the appeal of excessive funding to take some of our leaders with them to work for them.”

For this reason we use the term Movement Servant. What movements most need are servant-hearted people. 

Some have encouraged us to use a “more appealing term” that would be easier to “sell to their supporters.” As if following Jesus’ example of not coming to “be served but to serve” is not appealing.
A Movement Servant will come alongside movement leaders to help expand the movement(s), assisting with a very wide range of ministry activities, depending on the ministry needs and the instructions of the movement leader(s). This will help increase the capacity of the movement to go further and faster, to become even more effective in advancing the movement(s) in which they are involved.


Consider, for example, the kingdom impact of working with a movement of 8,000 churches that has minimal computerization. They need help setting up a computer system for tracking church health and distribution, which will also help them know which peoples and places are still untouched by the gospel. This assistance brings the potential to reach tens of thousands more people and plant thousands more churches within a few years.
We can share a few examples of people serving movements. For one large family of movements, some translation experts currently supply help from the outside for movements translating Scripture. These movements are in areas that an outsider cannot enter due to political or religious realities, but the service of technical and translation experts has been invaluable to help those in that area do a church-based, computer aided, expert assisted translation process. These professional translators have had to allow God to change their paradigm from personally doing the translation to helping “amateurs” in the movement learn the skills and group processes that will produce an excellent translation.


In another movement with over 300,000 believers in a very large geographical area, some Westerners (who are not professionals) are helping with video editing. They work with movement leaders to produce short leadership training videos that can be shared from phone to phone.


A third example comes from a “kingdom business” project where outsiders help movements identify near-culture gaps needing movements. They assist with business training, prayer and fundraising (only supplementing funds raised within the movements) as movement families relocate and re-start businesses to sustain them long-term in reaching the new group. This has already resulted in reaching many new population segments.
As the apostle Peter described the glorious gospel revealed in Christ, he exclaimed: “Even angels long to look into these things.” (1 Pet. 1:12b) In recent decades, some gospel messengers and missiologists have felt echoes of that longing to look, when hearing reports of amazing things happening in Church Planting Movements. They’ve wished or asked to go visit a movement and see for themselves the amazing miracles and conversions being reported. But they’ve been told that for security reasons, it wouldn’t be wise for a person like them to show up in the midst of an indigenous movement among an UPG. Some indigenous movements do not want any Westerners visiting their movements (often related to the post-colonial reasons already mentioned). Other movements welcome a few trusted visitors, to interact with a limited portion of the ministry in certain locations.

Those welcomed in, count it a high privilege to see first- hand the Lord’s work in the movements they observe. 
The door to that privilege is now open for those willing to come as a servant, to do whatever a movement needs for its strengthening and expansion. Few people get this privilege: the opportunity to learn movement dynamics firsthand by serving in the midst of an actual movement. Movement dynamics are “better caught than taught.” This invitation welcomes servants. Way beyond reading a book or attending a training, a Movement Servant will gain experience in making disciples and learning from real-life multiplication.

What kind of people can fulfill the Movement Servant role?

The essential qualifications, skills and experience include:

– Follower of Jesus

– Trying to be a disciple-maker 7

– Advocate of CPM principles Good people skills 8

– Willing to submit to non-Western leadership

– Willing to learn local trade language (at an

– appropriate level)

– Willing to learn and be sensitive to a new local culture(s)

– Faithful to keep commitments and a person of honor and integrity

– Willing to do whatever they can to serve the expansion of God’s kingdom

This role is not for people looking to emulate the ministry of the Apostle Paul. This is for those willing to serve more like Barnabas, or even Epaphras. (Col. 1:7; 4:12)

Jesus said, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” (Matt. 20:26) What if the most effective thing you could do truly looked like being a servant? What if your best way to maximally reach the unreached involved an assortment of jobs, chosen and assigned by someone from another culture? Would you be willing to lay down your life and some of your preferences in order to play a role in rapid kingdom multiplication among the unreached? The movements are already moving, and you’re invited to play a part in increasing their growth. You might be called to go try to start a new movement(s). If so, the best way to do that could be to go learn from an existing movement. You may have thought starting from nothing was your best option in serving among the unreached. But now you can think and pray about hopping on board to increase multiplication where the action has already begun.

The movements are already moving, and you’re invited to play a part in increasing their growth.

If you’re interested, please contact us at [email protected]. We already have relationships with networks of movements – in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. We cannot guarantee connection, because even if you are willing, we will need to find a movement that is ready and able to receive you. And there will likely be some challenging dynamics no matter how willing you are.

But we will do everything we can to help you find a group who is looking for Movement Servants. We would love to facilitate the connection and help you find the right slot for someone with your gifting. Take a moment to thank God for what he is doing through movements in our day. Thank him for the spontaneous multiplication of movements planting other movements among the unreached. Then ask him what role he might want you to play. May the Lord guide you and use you for His glory, to the ends of the earth.

1 The Moravian church renewal in 1727 and resulting 100+ year prayer campaign and sending out of missionaries starting in 1732 laid the groundwork for William Carey, the Wesley family, and others who continued the modern missionary momentum.

2 Ralph Winter & Bruce Koch, “Finishing the Task: the Unreached Peoples Challenge,” in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, fourth edition, p. 532

3 According to World Christian Encyclopedia, 3rd edition, page 6.

5 This question was asked of movement leaders representing over 1,000 movements. They all gave answers in the range of 80-90%.

6 See “Movements Multiplying Movements: How the Bhojpuri CPM has Started Other Movements”: pages 185-188 in 24:14—A Testimony to All Peoples.

7 It is not required that this person have multiplication fruit, but they do need to be a faithful disciple and witness to lost people, seeking to make disciples. If they come from a traditional paradigm of building-based discipleship programs, we encourage them to get some basic training and practice in Church Planting Movements (CPM) in their home culture before they go to serve a movement.

8 A CPM is the result of God’s work. God has used a variety of ap- proaches to start CPMs, including DMM, T4T, Four Fields, etc. See http://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/2414-goal for Core Principles and Common Outcomes of a CPM approach.

Dave Coles is an encourager and resourcer of Church Planting Movements among unreached groups, serving with Beyond. He has served among Muslims in Southeast Asia for 24 years. He has over a dozen articles published (under a pseudonym) on topics related to contextualization, reaching Muslims and the nature of the church.

Stan Parks, Ph.D. was a trainer and coach for a wide variety of CPMs around the world. He currently co-leads a global 2414 Coalition to start Church Planting Movement engagements in every Unreached People Group and place by 2025 (2414now. net). As part of the Ethne leadership team he helped various Ephesus teams seeking to start cascading CPMs in large UPG clusters. He is the VP of Global Strategies with Beyond (beyond.org).
Categories
Mission Frontiers

1% of the World

1% of the World

1% of the World

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers Nov/Dec 2020 – PDF ” 

BY JUSTIN D. LONG

Justin Long is the Director of Global Research for Beyond. He has been a missionary researcher for over 25 years.

24:14 Goal

Movement engagements in every unreached people and place by 2025 (62 months)

For over 25 years, I have been involved in mission research, working mostly on the global documentation of unreached places, peoples and efforts to reach them. During that time, I have worked with a variety of projects, from the second edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia in the late 1990s to my current work documenting movements.  

For over a decade, I have met various people in the missiological community who have talked about rapidly multiplying Church Planting Movements.

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.  

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.

Families of Movements

The largest amount of movement data comes to me from various networks. We don’t just accept any report published on the web or delivered to me. Our network examines new reporting organizations to confirm their reliability. The movements whose data we trust and use have webs of accountability and reporting (see http:// www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/how-movements- count1 for a fuller discussion of the methodologies the various movements use). Some 53% of the disciples and churches in movements are in 36 “families” or networks of movements. Some are quite large, numbering in the millions; others are quite small, numbering a few thousand. Some are centered on specific regions of the world, while others are multi- regional and even multi-continental in scope. Nearly all the movement families, no matter how widely spread, have “concentrations of focus” on specific peoples or specific religions. Outside these concentrations, the methods they have developed seem less effective. Movements focused on former Muslim radicals, for example, are less effective among agnostic or secularized non-religious people.  

 

Global Totals   

Teams report their efforts by a specific place (country, province, city) and, typically, people group, people cluster or language. Some agencies, due to their security requirements, may only report activity in a specific country (e.g. Austria, Australia, or Armenia). Others might report activity among a specific language group or cluster (such as “Turks” or “Kurds” or “Chinese students”). Still others might report activity coded with Joshua Project’s people group ID codes (PEO1-3). We can count each “family’s” presence in a country as a single “national movement” akin to a denomination. This methodology is similar to how the World Christian Encyclopedia counts denominations: the Assemblies of God, or Southern Baptists, or Roman Catholics. Each count as “one denomination” in each country where they have congregations. Measured this way, we currently know of 516 national movements.  

All the reported data is aggregated and coded, then totaled to the regional level. This data is useful for telling us where gaps in effort likely exist. But to actually understand the scope, the “national movement” totals above may be more useful.  

As part of the 24:14 effort, all the organizations or movements report on their work using a scale, the CPM Continuum, which measures the level of activity of an existing team. This scale ranges from “1” (a single team just getting started) to “5” (a full movement), to “6” (local leadership) and “7” (movements that send workers to start new movements). We count engagements as a team or group of teams focused on starting a movement among a specific people group, cluster or language, at any level on the CPM Continuum (1 to 7). Counting this way, we know of 4,500 engagements.  

An engagement is counted as a movement when it consistently sees four generations of disciples gathered in churches, in multiple streams. Although not every movement has a minimum measure of total disciples, most use the 1,000 disciple minimum. Even if they don’t use that measure, four generations in multiple streams means a movement would normally be close to or greater than 1,000 disciples. Counting this way, we know of 1,369 movements.  

Once movements reach the four- generation threshold, they tend to grow consistently until they reach larger sizes (around 100,000 and into the millions). At this point they may plateau or shift into starting new movements (if they have not already begun doing so).

While many teams have engaged, failed to see anything start, and returned home (I do not track that data), once a movement reaches four generations, it rarely ends. I have found only 18 examples of such endings (which I have, in the past, referred to as “fizzles”). In each of these, the disciples in the movements have either transitioned into more traditional churches or gone on to start new movements. So even in the few cases where movements have ended, the growth has not been lost.   

Every movement involves numerous disciples and churches. Arriving at a total is somewhat complicated, given the differences in the ways various movements count. (I’ve also previously written about this in http://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/how-movements-count1) Based on what we’ve documented, movements currently include at least 77 million disciples in 4.8 million churches.  

More is happening than anyone knows; only God sees the full scope.

I need to emphasize our awareness that what we have documented so far is limited. Our numbers constitute the “floor,” not the “ceiling.” Some movements intentionally report smaller numbers than they have measured, in order to be more confident in their figures (given the human element of reporting). Most of the movements have patterns for double-checking their numbers. We are aware of some reports that we have not included in our numbers, because we haven’t been able to fully document them. We hear tantalizing rumors of growth that still await adequate documentation. More is happening than anyone knows; only God sees the full scope.  

Nevertheless, these numbers are inspiring:

– More than 1 out of 100 people in our world today are part of a rapidly-multiplying movement to Christ.  
– The number of house churches in movements exceeds the number of organized churches in all other denominations in the world’s Christian traditions.  
– The numbers of house churches and disciples are growing exponentially.  
– Some movements are starting to plant new movements, which we expect will lead to even more exponential growth.  

Some Movements are Big, but Most are Fairly Small

The average size of most individual movements (bounded by people cluster and country) is 56,000 people. Due to small disparities in the way movements report members, comparing some movements to other movements isn’t always “apples to apples.” However, generally speaking, most movements are in the size range of 1,000 to 10,000 people; a handful of movements are larger than one million members.  

A better approach is to look more broadly: within the 36 “families” of movements, just four families account for over one million people each. Another 10 account for over 100,000 each. The remaining 22 each account for fewer than 100,000 people.  

With 77 million people in 4.8 million churches, the average size of a house church is about 16. This seems to be a fairly common average in countries. However, some of the larger movements, in slightly more open countries, do see house groups grow into larger churches with as many as 200. Some smaller movements in more dangerous places see house churches as small as 3 or 4 (but they are connected to other churches in the movement through leadership).  

Movements Can be Found in all UN Regions

Unsurprisingly, most of the world’s movements are found in Asia: 45 in Central Asia, 51 in East Asia, 208 in South Asia, 154 in Southeast Asia, and 224 in West Asia. Together, these represent the vast majority of the disciples in movements: over 52 million. While this is an enormous number, it represents just slightly more than 1% of Asia’s total population of 4.8 billion. While I am pleased to see these enormous movements, I also recognize they are a drop in the bucket compared to the need.

The second largest grouping of movements is found in Africa: 155 in East Africa, 71 in Middle Africa, 110 in North Africa, 14 in South Africa, and 140 in West Africa. Together, these represent over 11 million disciples. These numbers make up slightly less than 1% of Africa’s total population of 1.26 billion.  

Europe has the third largest grouping of movements: 42 in Eastern Europe, 16 in Northern Europe, 33 in Southern Europe; 27 in Western Europe. Together, they have 2.6 million disciples. Many of these movements are among diaspora peoples. Very few of these movements are large; most are a few thousand disciples, with a few numbering over 10,000. All operate very much under the radar. They total about one-third of one percent of Europe’s total population of 742 million.  

South and Central America combined have a handful of movements: 5 in the Caribbean, 4 in Central America, 6 in South America. Together they comprise about a million disciples. This makes them about one-quarter of one percent of South and Central America’s total population of 693 million.  

North America has 31 movements, numbering in total less than half a million people. Most of the movements are very small groups among diaspora peoples. This constitutes about one-tenth of one percent of North America’s 382 million.  

Finally, there are a half-dozen movements in the Pacific, comprising about 70,000 people. This also makes up about one-tenth of one percent of the Pacific region’s 45 million people.  

Over half of 229 countries have movement engagements

While we don’t reveal specifics of engagements, we do note that out of 229 countries, 113 have no movements and 74 have no engagements. If we evaluate countries according to their “Stage of Christianity,” we can see that movements tend to occur at by far the highest percentages (86% to 95%) in countries that are less than a third Christian. However, half of countries between 32 and 90% Christian have movements, and there are even movements in 20% of the countries that are 90% (heavily cultural) Christian. Broadly speaking, movements have been shown to happen in every kind of place, but movement practitioners are inclined to work in largely non-Christian places.

Movements have mostly engaged Muslims and Hindus

It is somewhat challenging to estimate the number of disciples with a background in other religions. Many movements end up affecting more than one religious group, and it’s nearly impossible to know the distribution of focus. Nevertheless, I have estimated which movements are “majority focused” on a specific religion (e.g. Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism) and some order of magnitude differences can be seen.

Movements tend to concentrate in rural areas, but are expanding into urban ones

We’ve only just begun to fine tune the amount of information we have on where movements are engaging within specific countries, provinces, and districts. Most of what we know is very broad. It’s difficult to discern what percentage of movements are in urban areas, and what percentage are in rural areas.

By examining the historical data we have in the database and in the collected case studies, it appears the majority of movements began in rural areas and continue to operate mostly in those situations. Even when they are present in towns and cities, many of these areas have a rural flavor. Nevertheless, movements are more and more reporting intentionally engaging peoples in cities, and seeing fruit there. The idea that movement methodologies can’t work in cities is being challenged in many places. Movements like those among the Bhojpuri in India, other movements in India, a variety of movements in West and East Africa, and various movements in Eurasia are engaging many people groups and geographical areas within the major cities of those nations. Some of those cities have a more rural feel to them, but many are very large megacities. In addition, much of the work among Muslims is taking place in cities. At the same time, while the data is not comprehensive, it seems not many efforts focus on cities as a whole (versus focusing on specific peoples within certain cities). This is an area for development in the future.

Movements currently engage over 1,000 people groups and 2,000 languages

As with geographic locations, we are just beginning to gather good information on all the peoples and languages being engaged. From our limited data, we know of 1,140 people groups that are engaged, and 2,188 languages in different countries. This means that if Kazakh in Germany, Kazakhstan, and China were all engaged, it would count as “3” toward the total number of engagements. We also know of at least 255 provinces that have movement-focused teams. We have just recently started gathering this dataset so we expect this reported number to grow significantly as more data becomes available. Again, this data should be understood as the “floor,” not the “ceiling.”

Virtually all of the Joshua Project Affinity Blocs are engaged

We have a better view of people group engagement when we look more broadly. Joshua Project has categorized the world’s 16,000 people groups into 272 clusters, which in turn are grouped into 16 affinity blocs. Fifteen of the 16 have movements. The sixteenth is the Deaf, and while there are certainly deaf disciples in movements, as of this writing we don’t know of movements specifically engaging this group. The three affinity blocs with the greatest number of engagements are the Arab World, South Asian peoples, and Sub-Saharan peoples. The reason is fairly simple: people trying to start movements have worked the longest in these three blocs. Many movement efforts in other blocs have sprung out of the initial fruit in these blocs.

One-third of Joshua Project’s People Clusters are Engaged

Of Joshua Project’s 272 clusters, 93 are presently heavily engaged, meaning there are 10 or more teams working in the clusters. This doesn’t necessarily represent a fully adequate engagement yet, since many of these clusters number in the millions of people. Efforts in these locations should be undertaken in collaboration with existing field work, which in many places is being done by near-culture workers. There are, on the other hand, 123 clusters with fewer than five engagements among them. Of these, 57 clusters are less than 5% Christian. They include well-known clusters like the Afar, Beja, and Luri. Much work remains to be done.

Conclusion: Movements as a Focus for the Future of Missions

We have been gathering information about each movement’s beginning date and its growth in five-year increments. About half of all known movements have reported this data. This analysis has led us to the conclusion that the number of movements is currently growing incrementally, not exponentially.

However, the number of churches in these movements has been growing exponentially, as shown on this graph of growth over five-year increments:

Further, as movements begin focusing on sending out workers to start new movements, we anticipate seeing the first signs of exponential growth in numbers of movements in the next five years.

Rapidly multiplying movements to Christ have been sowing seed and steadily growing, out of the limelight, in the spiritually darkest places of the world for nearly three decades. While they remain a small percentage of the world, they are not insignificant. Disciples in movements make up 1% of our world’s population, and many movements have emerged in some of the most spiritually hungry regions. We know of 1,369 movements today, but another 2,000 teams are steadily and passionately working to catalyze movements in their own spheres. Within the next five to 10 years we could easily see the current 1% become 2% of the world, and almost certainly significantly more within specific areas of focus. Movements are not a passing fad but a significant topic for the future of our missiological discourse. There is much to be excited about, but still much to be learned. As the Body of Christ, we must continue to collaborate and refine our research in order to steward this knowledge responsibly.

Categories
Mission Frontiers

24:14 Goal

24:14 Goal

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers Sept/Oct 2018 – PDF ” 

by Stan Parks, Curtis Sergeant and Steve Smith

24:14 Goal

Movement engagements in every unreached people and place by 2025 (88 months)

Core CPM Distinctives

For the last 30 years, there has been a growing awareness and involvement in efforts to reach the world’s unreached people. Yet the population of those who have no access to the gospel has grown – from 1.8 billion with no access in the mid-1980s to 2.2 billion today.  

While many efforts to reach the unreached have occurred throughout Christian history, global efforts to identify and reach all remaining Unreached People Groups were launched in the late 1980s. In these efforts, some groups accepted a God-sized vision: to see an entire people group (ethne) discipled. They saw this vision in the Great Commission where Jesus commanded his disciples to make disciples of every ethne.  

 

A Church Planting Movement (CPM) is defined as the multiplication of disciples making disciples and leaders developing leaders, resulting in indigenous churches planting churches which begin to spread rapidly through a people group or population segment.

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.

CPM Distinctives    

 

A CPM approach is one in which:

1. There is awareness that only God can start movements, but disciples can follow biblical principles to pray, plant, and water the seeds that can lead to a “book of Acts” type multiplying movement(s).  

2. The focus is to make every follower of Christ a reproducing disciple rather than merely a convert.  

3. Patterns create frequent and regular accountability for lovingly obeying what the Lord is speaking to each person and for them to pass it on to others in a loving environment. This requires a participative small-group approach.  

4. Each disciple is equipped in comprehensive ways (such as interpreting and applying Scripture, a well-rounded prayer life, functioning as a part of the larger Body of Christ, and responding well to persecution/suffering) in order that they can function not merely as consumers, but as active agents of kingdom advance.  

5. Each disciple is given a vision both for reaching their relational network and for extending the kingdom to the ends of the earth with a prioritization on the darkest places (with a “no place left” mentality). They are equipped to minister and partner with others in the Body of Christ in both of these environments.  

6. Reproducing churches are intentionally formed as a part of the process of multiplying disciples. The intent in CPM approaches is that 1) disciples, 2) churches, 3) leaders and 4) movements can multiply endlessly by the power of the Spirit.  

7. The focus is on igniting movements of multiplying generations of churches. (The first churches started in a people group/population segment are generation one churches, which start generation two churches, which start generation three churches, which in turn start generation four churches, and so on.)  

8. Emphasis is not on the specific model of CPM/DMM used (e.g. T4T, Discovery [DBS], Zúme, 4 Fields, etc.) but on the underlying biblical principles of multiplying kingdom movements.  

9. A value is placed on radical evaluation and willingness to change and grow to make sure that each element of character, knowledge, disciple-making skills and relational skills are 1) biblical and 2) able to be emulated by other generations of disciples. This requires intentional simplicity as well. One way to look at it is that T4T, DMM (DBS), Zúme, and other related approaches are various processes using the same principles, and the common result is Church Planting Movements.  

Raising the Sails   

Obviously, none of the disciples and churches in these movements are perfect. Nor do we claim that certain steps and methodologies can guarantee a movement. Some movement practitioners use the “Sailboat Analogy” to describe the dynamic. You can be in a sailboat and have your sails up and ready, but unless the wind blows, you will not move very far. In the same way, unless the wind of the Holy Spirit blows, there will be no Church Planting Movement. On the other hand, if you don’t put up your sails, your boat will not move very far even in a strong wind. We have found through study of Scripture and learning from the Holy Spirit’s work around the world that there are ways we can be ready for multiplication (sails up) and other ways we can hinder multiplication (sails down). We don’t control the wind of the Spirit, but we can control our readiness to go as far and as fast as possible when He moves!  

One danger is that some want to argue “their CPM approach” is better than other CPM approaches. In reality none of these approaches are “owned” by any of the practitioners. All of them have come from a Spirit-led biblically-based learning and obedience process involving thousands of leaders refining and learning together. God is using an increasing number of customizations and hybrids between different CPM approaches. In fact, unless a movement approach is customized to the context, it is usually not very fruitful. Quite a few movements have started before their leaders had any exposure to the different approaches mentioned above. As one leader said, “Nobody taught us this — we just learned about movements from the Holy Spirit!” God loves variety. Each and every Church Planting Movement is beautifully unique.  

Common Outcomes

At the same time, we can identify common principles and results. Once a CPM has started – regardless of the approach used the resulting disciples and churches have very similar DNA with similar outward expressions.  

Praying-CPM is always accompanied by a prayer movement. Once a movement starts it is also marked by extraordinary prayer. Those coming to Christ are highly aware that only God can birth new disciples and churches. They are highly motivated to see God break through the darkness in the lives of their friends and neighbors.  

Scriptural-In CPMs, the Bible is taken very seriously. Everyone is expected to be a disciple and sharer of the Word, and to interpret and apply Scripture.  

Obeying-The churches are devoted to listening to God’s Word and obeying it individually and corporately. Obedience is expected and everyone is held accountable for it. Jesus told us that if we love Him, we must obey His commands.  

Indigenous The outsider looks for Persons of Peace and households of peace (Mt. 10, Mk 6, Lk. 9, 10) that God has prepared within a society. When these people and groups come to faith, they are immediately equipped to reach others. Since the insiders are the disciple-makers, the new churches can grow in ways that are both based on Scripture and adapted to the culture.  

Holistic-By focusing on obedience to Scripture, believers become eager to show God’s love to people. The disciples in these movements love those around them in practical ways, such as caring for widows and orphans, ministering to the ill and fighting oppression.  

Rapidly Reproducing-Just like the early church in Acts, these modern-day movements multiply rapidly. Every disciple and church is equipped to reproduce and taught to rely on the Holy Spirit to empower them. On average, churches in movements take about one year to reproduce another church, which often leads to doubling the number of disciples and churches every 9-18 months.  
As you contemplate your involvement with movements, ask yourself if you are committed to the distinctives of a CPM. We encourage you to collaborate with others having similar commitments, even if their particular methodology differs from yours. You will find that in the process, you learn from the strengths of each other’s methods, attitudes and approaches.  

To make the 24:14 commitment and join in seeing kingdom movement engagements in every unreached people and place by 2025, go to 2414now.net/commit.

Categories
Mission Frontiers

Beyond the Person of Peace

Beyond the Person of Peace

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers Nov/Dec 2017” 

by MUMIN ABDAL MASIH

I HAVE HEARD PEOPLE SAY THAT THEY have had a Disciple Making Movement training and implemented it, but are not seeing the results expected. Some even say it is not working for them at their place of ministry.

In 2005, when I had the training myself for the first time, I said the same thing: “This will not work where I am.”. But, when I decided to implement it, I saw, and keep seeing results anywhere the DMM principles are implemented.

I have spent time with people for which it is “not working.”. In every case, they don’t implement the whole system. They choose one or two principles and implemented them. They see some addition of new Christ followers, but not the multiplication and movement momentum they expected.

There are two things that people almost always choose to implement: the principles of Person of Peace and Discovery Bible Study. Even so, they often don’t fully or intentionally implement these principles.

This article is about implementing the principle of the “Person of Peace” in a way that it leads to multiplication and a movement. This principle is a key element in the process of Disciple Making Movements. But, to see it produce its full result, it must be implemented the right way.

This article is about implementing the principle of the “Person of Peace” in a way that it leads to multiplication and a movement.

Since the day we started the faith journey of disciple making 12 years ago, we are awed by God for the thousands of new churches that His Spirit has birthed, and the hundreds of thousands of people that have become Christ followers.  

Over these 12 years God was pleased to bless us with the planting of 7,571 churches with 185,358 new disciples. Fourteen generations is the largest level of multiplication we have yet seen in any single people group.  

It is our pleasure to share a few of the recent narratives of what God is doing and what His fingerprints look like in this region because He is worthy of much glory!  

For security reasons, we have used pseudonyms and have refrained from revealing locations. 

I. The concept

We find the concept of the “Person of Peace” in the instructions Jesus gave to his disciples when he sent them out in Matthew 10, Luke 9, and Luke 10. In essence, Jesus told his disciples that when they enter a community, their priority will be to look for and find the person of peace. If they find one, they should stay; if not, they should leave (Luke 10: 5-11).

The Person of Peace is very important in the process of Disciple Making Movements. Every DMM is a work of God, not man. If God is not yet raising up people of peace, there will be no movement. Remember, Jesus sent his disciples before him into places where he himself was about to go and then said “… The harvest truly [is] great, but the laborers [are] few; therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” (NKJV: Luke 10: 1-2).

The presence of the Person of Peace in a community is the proof that God is at work in that community. Not only that, that person is the doorway to the community and to the Kingdom harvest in that community. Usually he or she is also a harvester that will need to be coached and mentored into that role.

 

There are several examples of Persons of Peace in the New Testament, such as the Centurion (Luke 7:1-10), the Samaritan Woman (John 4:1-30), the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26-40), Cornelius (Acts 10:9-11:1), Lydia (Acts 16:13-15), and the Philippian Jailer (Acts 16:22-38).

II. Who is she/he?

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.

III. How to find the person of peace

Disciple makers find people of peace through a process of much prayer, providing some service or kindness in the community, and living out a gracious spiritual lifestyle (Deut. 6: 4-9). This article is too short to expand on this here.

Their presence in the community means that Jesus is visiting that community; God is at work there.

IV. After finding the person of peace, what is next?

Know that God is at work in the community and join Him. There is a harvest to be reaped. The person of peace is a seed… the harvest is beyond them. The person of peace has a social network of family, friends, and colleagues. And each of those have their own social network. And these social networks overlap. The person of peace is the doorway to all these social networks.

Lazare spent unfruitful years trying to plant churches among the Malinke people in a West Africa country. Then he had a DMM training. He started finding persons of peace in different communities. But each time he found one, in his excitement, he just led them to Christ and then went looking for more persons of peace. He missed the whole point of God’s strategic work. He was finding lots of persons of peace, but not planting any churches.

The best thing to do when one finds a person of peace is:

1. Focus on their social network in the community.

2. Don’t rush to lead them to Christ by themselves.

3. Have them invite members of their social networks.

4. Do Discovery Bible Studies with the group that the person of peace puts together.

V. Discovery Bible Study Group

The Discovery Bible Study is the tool to use to help the group to discover Christ and their need of him for salvation. The discipleship process starts with the DBS as the tool for that. This is discipling the group toward conversion.

The Discovery Group is also the tool to use to build the DNA of replication in the group. By the time the group makes a decision for Christ, they have learned the value of obedience to God, sharing everything they learned, and reproducing what they have experienced.

VI. A new church starts and reproduces

The Discovery Bible Study group moves from a discovery group to a new church when these new believers are baptized and start functioning as a church. The new church will require more coaching and mentoring to have its own leaders and start the same process elsewhere.

The person of peace is key in the process of Disciple Making Movement. But, for them to play their God given role in DMM, they must be intentionally coached and mentored into that role as described above.

Mumin Abdal Masih is a DMM catalyst. He was a Muslim and has the dream of seeing Muslims find Jesus and fall in love with Him.
Categories
Mission Frontiers

Disciple Making Movements in East Africa

Disciple Making Movements in East Africa

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers Nov/Dec 2017” 

by Dr. Aila Tasse

CITYTEAM INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES has been catalyzing Disciple Making Movement (DMM) in partnership with Lifeway Mission in eight countries in East Africa for the past twelve years.  

The eight countries in which Disciple Making Movements are developing are Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan and Sudan. 

In this region, the Lord has enabled us to engage 89 people groups and nine urban affinity groups.

Since the day we started the faith journey of disciple making 12 years ago, we are awed by God for the thousands of new churches that His Spirit has birthed, and the hundreds of thousands of people that have become Christ followers.  

Over these 12 years God was pleased to bless us with the planting of 7,571 churches with 185,358 new disciples. Fourteen generations is the largest level of multiplication we have yet seen in any single people group.  

It is our pleasure to share a few of the recent narratives of what God is doing and what His fingerprints look like in this region because He is worthy of much glory!  

For security reasons, we have used pseudonyms and have refrained from revealing locations. 

A Drunkard Becomes A Disciple Maker

Jarso is the leader of a stream that has planted 63 churches in two years among a least reached people group in East Africa. Four months ago Jarso was baptizing new Christ followers from that people group. Jillo, who was not a follower of Christ, was watching from a distance while Jarso was conducting the baptism. With a beer in his hand, Jillo observed the proceedings and began to make fun of the baptism prelimanaries. Before conducting the baptism, Jarso read the story about Jesus’ baptism and began to talk about it. Now within the hearing distance of the preaching, Jillo found himself deeply absorbed with what he heard. At the end of the story, he knew he needed to follow Jesus. Right away he decided to stop drinking and even threw away the half-finished bottle of beer he was holding. He went home early that evening. His wife was amazed to see him sober and empty handed because he usually brought home a couple of bottles to drink. His wife offered to bring him a bottle of beer which she had bought for him earlier in the day. Jillo shocked her by telling her that he had stopped drinking, and she should take the bottle back to the shop and get a refund. Jillo, who did not read or write, then asked his wife to bring the Bible that they had in the house and read for him the story of Jesus that Jarso had read at the baptismal ceremony. The wife came with the Bible and when she finished reading the story, Jillo shared with her what he had heard from Jarso. That evening, Jillo and his wife made a decision to follow Jesus. The next day, Jillo contacted Jarso who showed him how to do family Discovery Bible Study. From the next day onward, Jillo and his wife together with their children began to do a DBS every evening. Two weeks later, Jillo, his wife and some neighbors who joined their Discovery Bible Group were baptized. Jillo and his wife have continued this journey by facilitating the launch of eight more Discovery groups. 

Over these 12 years God was pleased to bless us with the planting of 7,571 churches with 185,358 new disciples

A DMM Skeptic Starts A Strong Movement of Disciple Making

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.  

A New Testament Rahab

Our church planter, Wario, met a young woman two years ago named Rahab. This woman was very beautiful, and when Wario first met her, she was, like her Bible namesake, a sex-worker. Wario began to tell her the story of Rahab from the Bible including the one quoted about her in Hebrews 11. He told her how the life of Rahab was transformed from a life of prostitution to a woman of faith and how she entered into the genealogical line of Jesus. Rahab had never read the Bible for herself. But she knew that in the Bible there was a woman who was called Rahab and that she had been a prostitute. This she had learned from various people who heard her name. But when she first heard the full story of Rahab from Wario, she was touched and asked Wario if she could be like the Rahab of the Bible. Wario said “yes” and offered to pray for her. In that process she was eventually delivered from demonic bondage. After that her life changed dramatically.  

She became a very strong follower of Christ and a disciple maker. She married a Christ follower and the couple became committed disciple makers. Over the last year they have planted six new churches in their community.  

New Wineskin For New Wine

When Pastor Kamau was invited to conduct a DMM training among a group of pastors from a particular district, he did not expect much to happen. They were skeptical because the people of the district were known as very nominal Christians and the existing churches had lots of strong church traditions that did not advance the gospel. Pastor Kamau saw little hope that the pastors of these churches would take up the challenge of Disciple Making Movements and apply them among their people. But happily, Pastor Kamau was proved to be mistaken. Just four months after the DMM training, that region had seen 98 new Discovery Groups, four generations deep in some streams.  

Pastor Ado shared that the DMM training which he took from Pastor Kamau changed his mindset. Ado reported that immediately after he took the DMM training, he replaced the Sunday preaching with Discovery Groups to see what would happen, if any of the people would report back about how they obeyed God. He relayed that his members reported renewed joy in their relationship with God and with each other. Some members reported being healed of sicknesses during the prayers of the Discovery Group.  

Pastor Ado says the members of his church were also coached to start Discovery Groups in their homes and in their neighborhoods and 42 more groups were started in just a few months. One Catholic lady by the name of Christy came to be a follower of Christ as a result of attending one of the Discovery Groups and she started another group which kept multiplying to the fourth generation. A Catholic church began to use Discovery Groups to read the Bible and discovered how to obey God’s Word.  

Pastor Jillo concludes his testimony that if the current trend continues, it is likely the whole district will be transformed through the gospel.

Dr. Aila Tasse founded Lifeway Mission International in Nairobi, Kenya, a ministry that has worked among the unreached for more than 25 years. Aila trains and coaches DMM in Africa and around the world He is Cityteam’s Regional Coordinator for East Africa.
Categories
Mission Frontiers

When Disciple Making Movements Are Misunderstood

When Disciple Making Movements Are Misunderstood

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers Nov/Dec 2017” 

by James Forlines

“WHAT YOU ARE TELLING ME IS THAT what we have always done has always been wrong.”. That is what a father of a friend of mine said to him when he tried to convince his father of a non-traditional way of doing church. This is one of the significant challenges of missional paradigm shifts. How do you make a shift in thinking, and encourage others to follow, while not dishonoring the past or being misunderstood?.  

Those of us who are advocates of Disciple Making Movements believe, often passionately, that traditional assumptions related to discipleship and church planting need to receive a fresh and prayerful analysis. We question whether we in the West have added aspects to church planting that unnecessarily slow down the process and make multiplication difficult and finishing the task seemingly impossible. We also believe that bifurcating evangelism and discipleship has resulted in many converts who are not obedient disciples. Our observation is that this approach has rarely led to multiple generations in church planting.  

As we communicate this, however, there are times when people may hear us saying things we are not saying, or perhaps we say things in a way which causes them to hear incorrectly. This article is meant to address some of the key potential communication challenges that we, as advocates of movements, need to clarify.  

The approach to this article will be to focus on six principles within DMM that release multiplication. For each of these we will juxtapose that principle against the Unintended Limiting Factor that seems to exist in many traditional models of discipleship and church planting. Next, we will identify the area where we DMM advocates might be misunderstood, and finally clarify what it is we really meant to say.  

Two caveats before we begin: First, though I have worked closely with many DMM advocates and practitioners around the world, this article is from my perspective of DMM. And, second, I do not mean to imply that accurate communication on these areas will eliminate areas of disagreement. In some cases they will probably still remain. Perhaps they need to.

This article is meant to address some of the key potential communication challenges that we, as advocates of movements, need to clarify.

Multiplication Release Principle #1

God uses ordinary and untrained people as disciple-makers who make disciple-makers and thereby become church planters.  

Unintended Limiting Factor Church planting and discipleship are formal processes and are best reserved for those approved, trained, and vetted by their church or denomination.  

What some may hear us saying – DMM does not believe in roles such a pastor, teacher, prophet, or ordination into the ministry.  

What we meant to say God can and will use ordinary people to be disciple-makers who make disciple-makers and therefore plant churches. This wave of people who are released will need coaching and encouragement from spiritual leaders who are willing to release them and coordinate and bless their efforts. There are biblical roles for overseers, shepherds, and elders though they make look different than what we have traditionally understood.  

Multiplication Release Principle #2 – People best become disciples of Jesus through personal and group discovery which focuses on obedience.

Unintended Limiting Factor Those who have received theological training should be the ones to teach people what they should know and believe.  

What some may hear us saying – DMM never believes in teaching, only discovery.  

What we meant to say The Holy Spirit of God can use the Word of God and create the people of God. It is that simple. Therefore, God can and does use the untrained to be disciple makers and church planters. There is very little explanation for the phenomenon that happened in the Thessalonian church (I Thessalonians 1:5-8 Paul was only with them for three weeks) apart from this. During the Reformation we got the priesthood of the believer half right, and we seem to be still working on the other half. The half we got right is that we do not need a priest to talk to God. The half we are still working on is that we also do not need a priest in order for God to speak to us.  

However, as people grow in Christ there are appropriate times where teaching can augment their continued discovery. It is good for them to know the history of the church and see how they and their people fit into a global and historical Church. It is helpful to know historical backgrounds of the Bible and hear how others have lived out the teachings of Jesus.  

Care, however, has to be exercised in the early stages. Our early intervention of teaching can thwart the essential personal and group development of the disciples’ capacity to hear directly from God and obey Him. The result can be a knowledge-based approach which stunts true biblical discipleship and makes the individual and group to be dependent on a teacher. The disciples, realizing they do not have the skills and biblical knowledge of their teacher, conclude that their responsibility is just to sit and continue to learn. This often turns into a lifetime habit. This ecclesiastical sterilization stops generational multiplication right in its tracks.  

In a DMM approach ordinary people learn to hear from God and obey. Because it was simple, and led by the Holy Spirit with them, they are able to help other ordinary people to hear and obey and the process continues unabated.  

In a DMM approach ordinary people learn to hear from God and obey.

Multiplication Release Principle #3 – Leadership training is best done as ordinary people are serving and true spiritual giftedness and capacities emerge.  

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.  

Multiplication Release Principle #4 Disciple making is the goal. This leads to multiple-generational church planting. This is the potency in the process of “going.”.

Unintended Limiting Factor – “Church planting” is the goal. This is defined as people gathering in some larger group setting, often in some sort of building.  

What some may hear us saying DMM advocates believe that we should do away with attractional-model churches.  

What we meant to say – Most of us have attended still attend, or have meaningful partnerships with attractional-model churches. As some have pointed out, elephant churches do have the size and capacity to accomplish very needed objectives. It would be disruptive, and counter-productive to Kingdom advancement, to suggest that attractional model churches are the impediment.  

It is important, however, to ask critical questions. Is the current model the only one needed as we move forward?. Is it possible that our current model encourages attendance without discipleship?. What do we do with the growing percentage of people who are not responding to this approach, even in the West?.  

Can it scale, globally, to reach the 80 million more people on the planet in 2017 and 2.5 billion more by 2050?.  

The Church of the first three centuries adequately passed the faith along, generation to generation, while penetrating to the core of the Roman Empire. This was all done as they were going and obedient disciples were willing to give their lives. In today’s world where persecution is a reality, there is often no other option anyway. However, even in places where it is possible it is legitimate to question whether it (i.e. the attractional model) is the only way, or even the best way to engage lostness and see multiple generations of churches.  

The Church of the first three centuries adequately passed the faith along, generation to generation, while penetrating to the core of the Roman Empire.

Multiplication Release Principle #5 – Prayer and fasting precedes any movement.

Unintended Limiting Factor – We have a reliance on strategic plans, training, research analysis and human resources that can be brought to the equation

What some may hear us saying – DMM does not believe in strategic planning.  

What we meant to say – Of course, everyone believes in prayer. And, to varying degrees, it is a part of our daily lives. I have accompanied numerous groups to observe DMM in very difficult contexts. The number one comment during debriefing (and this happens every single time) is, “I thought we were praying, but this experience has shown me how they, as a result of prayer and fasting, are able to hear from God and follow His leading.”.  

Fasting and the sequence of prayer in our planning is the urgent matter. When we pray and fast first our spiritual sensitivity is increased and our strategies and initiatives become aligned with God’s purposes. He reveals Himself to us. We join Him in what He is already doing. Too often in the West we meet collectively and develop a strategic plan, with good intentions, and a lot of effort. But, does this come after an extensive season of prayer and fasting where God revealed Himself and His plan?. Far too often in my own experience I have worked hard on a strategic plan and then asked for God’s blessings on it. This vital lesson has been the most impactful for me personally with DMM. Strategic plans are great when they have come to us from Him, as we are diligently seeking His face.  

Multiplication Release Principle #6 – The church is the people, and they can meet anywhere.

Unintended Limiting Factor – To be a “real” church you must have a building.  

What some may hear us saying DMM is opposed to churches having buildings.  

“The Church of the first three centuries adequately passed the faith along, generation to generation while penetrating to the core of the Roman Empire. This was all done as they were going and obedient disciples were willing to give their lives.”.  

What we meant to say We are called to be disciple-makers who make disciple-makers. If every local body of believers must have a building it will slow the process of church planting down, if by no other means than finances. However, buildings will be a reality for many churches in many cultures.  

Our goal as disciple-makers should be to cultivate the vine and only build the trellis as the vine is growing and needs support. Because buildings do put a governor on movements we would encourage that this be done spontaneously by those who are in this discipling process, not from the outside. Even then, it will at that point slow down the generational expansion. Realistically, however, such has always been the case as movements become institutionalized.  

Conclusion

Across the world we are seeing movements emerge and gain momentum. Perhaps this is the 4th era of modern missions. Paradigm shifts create tension, but I trust that our communication will be seasoned with grace. May we conclude with Paul, that the most important thing is that Christ is preached. And because of this [we] rejoice” (Philippians 1:16)

James is the Executive Director of Final Command Ministries. He is married to Anita. They have 3 children and 5 grandchildren. He has a B.A. from Welch College and an M.A.G.L. (Master of Arts in Global Leadership) with an emphasis in Islamic Studies from Fuller School of Intercultural Studies. Part of his studies were done at the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut, Lebanon. He has taught at numerous colleges and seminaries in the US and Africa. Final Command is currently facilitating Disciple Making Movements among Muslim people groups in Africa through partnerships with African indigenous organizations in Senegal, Mauritania, Morocco, Mali, Niger, Chad, and the Extrerne North of Cameroon.

Categories
Mission Frontiers

Spirit-Led First Steps Birth Movements with Essential DNA

Spirit-Led First Steps Birth Movements with Essential DNA

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers Nov/Dec 2017” 

by Allen W. and James R.

VIJAY’S PRAYER WALKING JOURNEY LED him to a town where he was not known. He went there because the people were part of an unreached group that he wanted very much to see reached. But as he walked around, he got nothing but unfriendly stares. “Who are you?” challenged the man at the shop where he stopped for his morning tea. “Why did you come here?”.  

As an outsider and stranger, Vijay faced a delicate situation. What he did next could make the difference between an open door into this community or a closed one. A well-trained, Spirit-led response could cause the word to spread quickly that this stranger is “okay.”.  

In southern Asia, it is rare to experience friendly and open acceptance in new communities.

DNA begins with the first steps.

Whether or not he realizes it, a catalyst’s first steps in a new community have even deeper significance. They set the pattern of health for the future church he hopes to start. The very DNA of future churches begins with what the disciple maker does in his first days. Those beginning steps leave a mark on every church in the movement for years to come. Will future disciples be known for reflecting the compassion of Jesus? Will they bring transformation? Will they replicate? Will the movement be sustainable?.  

Catalysts of Disciple Making Movements (DMM) face Vijay’s situation all the time. In southern Asia, it is rare to experience friendly and open acceptance in new communities. Disciple makers have only one chance to make good first impressions. But what is the best way to do that through an expensive social project, or through a host of Jesus followers who have eyes to see what Jesus sees and a commitment to respond like He did?.  

Personal, spontaneous and locally relevant

Traditional approaches to entering a new community frequently involve predetermined programs. They often depend on outside resources and systems that require paying and sustaining workers and activities. These tactics often do result in birthing a church. But they are seen as impersonal and new churches end up with serious flaws in their DNA. Vital elements of disciple making must be taught or “grafted” in later when the church is well established.  

Well trained Disciple makers who follow biblical patterns, are better able to demonstrate compassion in ways that are uniquely meaningful and relevant to each community. They learn to do things that do not require costly programs. These disciples are deeply in love with God, and thoroughly familiar with and obedient to His ways. They begin by seeking His guidance through prayer for every new community.  

When Catalysts introduce DNA that reflects this lifestyle, new Discovery Bibles Studies launch and lead to birthing of new churches. They become known for their lifestyle of love, compassion, power and truth modeled after Jesus. New disciples see that they have the resources to start new groups, leading to multiplication to the 3rd and 4th generations.

Three stories illustrate the difference this makes in an unreached area.

“You don’t have to suffer like this.”
“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Matthew 9:36

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.  

 

Compassion as a lifestyle is a key characteristic of Jesus’ disciples.  

 

“In the complex world we live in, the way forward requires a host of disciples who live and operate with eyes wide open and the conviction that God will use them to make a difference.”  

Ordinary people demonstrate compassion as a part of their daily lives. Stephen was not seen as a representative of an organization. He simply showed genuine concern. He knew of a resource that could help, and he made the connection.  

How can I help?
“Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals. Luke 10:4  

According to Jesus’ instructions, Samuel took no extra money with him as he began visiting a village of about 150 homes. As usual, no one would speak to him, but he prayed for a way to connect with these people.  

He noticed children running around, uncared for and undisciplined. He learned these were children of working parents who had no time or skills to help them with their school work. The public school they attended did not offer to help them learn how to study and prepare for exams. So, they were left unattended for most of the afternoon.  

Samuel was prompted through prayer to tutor them himself. There was a large tree in the center of the village where he offered to meet and tutor these children. He began with five and soon grew to fifteen. After study time, he would share Bible stories, teaching them to be good and to obey their parents.  

The parents began seeing changes in their children. One couple observed what he was doing and invited him into their home, eventually telling him of problems in their marriage[cite: 50]. Soon Samuel was sharing Bible stories with the whole family. He would ask what they learned from the stories and what they would do about it. This group began to grow. Then the ninth-grade daughter started another group with five of her friends. Then mom and dad started another group in the community where they worked.  

Going into a community without any resources to share is counter-intuitive. It is more common to bring something from outside. This traditional approach focuses on helping the community with something they cannot do for themselves. However, good intentions are often interpreted as “buying” the right to be listened to, a common assumption in most of Asia. There is hardly anything more damaging to the start of a movement than to perpetuate an approach that leads to this misunderstanding.  

Going into a community without any resources to share is counter-intuitive.

Determined not to be a burden

“You remember, brothers, our labor and toil: We worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.” – 1 Thessalonians 2:9  

Dileep found another way to serve the community. He got a job selling newspapers. This way, he was no burden to the community and had a way to get to know people. At one house on his delivery route, a man named Ravi would come out to pay for his paper. One day, it wasn’t Ravi, but his wife, who came out of the house. “Where is your husband?” he asked. She explained, “He hasn’t been well for two weeks. We even took him to the hospital for treatment, but he is not getting better.”.  

Dileep asked, “May I come in and talk with him?”. So, Dileep visited with Ravi, hearing all about his problems and sharing the story of God’s creation of the world and care for mankind. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I will pray to God that He might heal your sickness.”.  

The next morning, Ravi was feeling better. This led to regular visits by Dileep and more stories from the Bible. The visits then became a discovery group of seven. Very soon, one of the seven started another group of five.  

Dileep’s creativity led to both personal income and an ongoing avenue of connection. Once a relationship was established, all he had to do was continue what he had been doing. Sustainability can’t be an afterthought. A program can run out of resources, but a life of self-sacrifice is a continuing testimony to God’s grace.  

Personal, relevant and ongoing

Three disciple makers found that a personal commitment to see needs and to meaningfully love their neighbors in response bore lasting fruit. In one case, the disciple maker saw the problem and helped the community avail itself of a government resource. In another, he used a personal resource – his own time and effort to tutor children. And in the third, he found a job to sustain himself and be available without being a burden.  

All three were trained and mentored to operationalize principles from the Scriptures, turning them to practical action steps that achieve strategic impact. In the complex world we live in, the way forward requires a host of disciples who live and operate with eyes wide open and the conviction that God will use them to make a difference. The result is the birthing of new gatherings with this same DNA imbedded in them from the very beginning. There is a remarkable difference in the vital characteristics of movements that start this way. 

Allen W. has dedicated the last 25 years to developing movements in southern Asia. James R. heads a partnering ministry in the region. He and his team have been developing a movement among a highly unreached social group in one country for the past five years.

 

Categories
Mission Frontiers

Cutting Loose the Anchors That Keep Us from Movements

Cutting Loose the Anchors That Keep Us from Movements

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers Nov/Dec 2017” 

by Rick Wood EDITOR OF MF

I AM SURE IT IS NO SURPRISE to our regular readers that I believe that Church Planting Movements are the biblical means, modeled by Jesus and Paul, whereby Jesus followers can become disciple-makers who make disciple-makers and plant reproducing churches. It must be our goal to foster these movements in every people so every person has access to the gospel. This is exactly what the new global 24:14 Coalition seeks to accomplish. See the Kingdom Kernels column by Steve Smith and Stan Parks in the Sept.-Oct. 2017 issue of MF for more information on this. And don’t miss Steve Smith’s latest column in this issue starting on page 40.  

These rapidly growing movements are now an increasing reality around the world with over 600 documented examples of Church Planting Movements where Jesus followers really are making disciple-makers generation after generation. In this issue we have provided story after story of how Church-Planting Movement methods, frequently referred to as Disciple-Making Movements, are transforming lives and equipping ordinary people to be disciple-makers.   

But this is not typically how ministry has been done, both in churches and on the mission field. Making the transition to employing CPM principles can be difficult. But as our lead article by Doug Lucas demonstrates, when these simple methods are employed, they lead to amazing results (see pg. 6). Doug Lucas did not start out as a true believer in the CPM methodology, but the experience of the organization he leads, Team Expansion, has been one of marvelous transformation and growing fruitfulness. See the various charts and graphs in this article to see how God has blessed their efforts far beyond what they expected.   

Many have looked upon these CPMs/ DMMs with disbelief and suspicion, wondering, “How can these movements grow so rapidly while the church is stagnant or in decline in the U.S., Europe and other places?”. The answer rests with what we have not done equip average people to make disciples along with all the extra-biblical things the Church has added to gospel ministry that have slowed our progress.   

Like a speedboat loaded down with too much gear and too many anchors, the Church is on the verge of sinking in too many places. Forward progress is often unthinkable survival is the critical issue. But if we could loose this “speedboat” from all that is hindering it, then rapid progress could once again be possible. The key is to return to what is truly biblical and empower average people as the royal priesthood that they are to become entrepreneurs of new ministry-living on mission with God to make disciples. Here are a few “anchors” to consider dumping overboard.   

The key is to return to what is truly biblical and empower average people as the royal priesthood that they are to become entrepreneurs of new ministry

Anchor #1: Traditional Structures-The Captain Rules

We probably have all heard of churches where the focus is on serving the pastor’s vision of ministry and the programs he has initiated rather than on equipping and releasing every willing believer to live on mission with God as a disciple maker and church planter. Many pastors have a very traditional view of ministry that does not include the training of the congregation for active disciple making. Under these kinds of structures the average person is encouraged to be a passive listener/ follower rather than an active initiator of new ministry. The pastor can actually feel threatened by people who want to express their leadership gifts in starting new outreach efforts. People who want to establish multiplying groups or churches may be seen as a dangerous virus to control or eliminate rather than entrepreneurs of ministry that should be supported and encouraged.  

One characteristic of Church-Planting Movements is that they are designed to be engines of leadership development as each person is encouraged to make disciples and establish new groups. 

Anchor #2: Restrictive Religious Practices and Doctrines

Since the time of the Apostle Paul when he employed simple, biblical and reproducible models of ministry in making disciples and planting churches, the church has added a lot of things to church ministry that are not simple, biblical or reproducible by the average person. These practices prevent movements from developing. I could make a list of things the Church typically does that limit growth and I would have people defending each of those particular practices. At whatever point CPM practices differ from what your church typically does, you will need to ask yourself, “Is this truly an essential biblical practice or simply a non-essential thing and is it worth stifling the growth of disciple-makers and the planting of reproducing churches in order to keep doing it.  

Is this truly an essential biblical practice or simply a non-essential thing and is it worth stifling the growth of disciple-makers?

Anchor #3: A Broken Compass

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.  

A Once Vibrant Church- Planting Movement Is Now “Dead in the Water”

During the latter half of the 18th Century a Church-Planting Movement developed in England often referred to as the Methodist Movement. They had home group meetings that they called “class meetings.” In these groups people came to faith in Jesus, learned to read by reading the Bible and singing hymns. They got off alcohol and left all sorts of sins behind. Their lives improved dramatically. It enabled hundreds of thousands of people to get better jobs, move into the middle class and provide adequate food and housing for their families for the first time. As people matured in these groups, they could become leaders or itinerant preachers. It was an organic process of leadership development that spread rapidly and literally transformed England. You can read more about John Wesley’s Church-Planting Movement in the Sept.- Oct. 2011 issue of MF starting on page 6.  

Someone in this amazing movement decided to “improve on the simple, biblical and reproducible methods of Methodism that had been working so well, thereby adding some “anchors” to their “speedboat.” First, they stopped requiring attendance at the “class meetings” which had proven so effective in helping to transform the lives of thousands. They began to rely on the impersonal Sunday morning sermon and worship service to do all the work of discipleship.  

Secondly, they decided to require seminary education in order to be ordained into ministry in the Methodist church- another “anchor” added. No longer could a faithful and obedient follower of Jesus become a minister of the gospel from out of the “class meetings.” This killed the engine of leadership development within Methodism as relatively few could afford to leave work and family to obtain an expensive seminary education.  

There is nothing wrong with having well- educated pastors, but as Ralph Winter demonstrated in the 20th Century, there are far better ways to provide this education than to force people to leave their homes and ministries. Most churches today have added the same “anchors” that the Methodist Movement did with similar results churches that are “dead in the water.”. They are going nowhere. They may still be “afloat” and there may still be lots of activity on the “boat,” but there is no movement and no clear destination. They seem to think that their purpose for existing is to maintain the boat.  

The simple fact is that it does not have to be this way. Movements are possible- there are now over 600 documented cases of CPMs. People all over the world are learning to apply CPM/DMM principles and seeing movements develop as a result. Perhaps it is time for you to rethink the way ministry has always been done and cut loose some anchors that you have collected along the way. You might be surprised by a movement.

Movements are possible- there are now over 600 documented cases of CPMs.

Categories
Mission Frontiers

Can They Do It?

Can They Do It?

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers Nov/Dec 2017” 

by John King 

While Ephesians was probably my favorite epistle from which to preach and teach, this section convicted me that my training had been inadequate and even misguided. How do you do something differently when it is all you have seen?  

Paul writes:

He [Jesus] gave some as apostles,

and some as prophets,

and some as evangelists,

and some as pastors and teachers,

for the equipping of the saints for the work of service,

to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. (NASB, formatting mine, JKK.)  

Apostles are the “sent ones” who are commissioned to impart Kingdom culture on earth as in heaven, especially in the places where the gospel has never been heard.

Are You Equipping the Ordinary?

Apostles are the “sent ones” who are commissioned to impart Kingdom culture on earth as in heaven, especially in the places where the gospel has never been heard. These are the Kingdom workers who are the tip of the spear, the ones going to the nations which will not issue missionary visas. Prophets communicate heaven’s vision here on earth. They help people imagine “What will our community look like when God’s will is done here?” Business, education and entertainment will all be transformed as God’s vision becomes our goal! Evangelists share the good news with the passion of Jesus wherever they live, work and play. Gifted with an overflowing desire to see everyone know and love Jesus, those infused with this grace gift cannot refrain from talking about God’s love for everyone. Pastor/teachers build divine community by training people in relational skills. Here “family” becomes the healing motif for many of the broken places in our lives and our neighborhoods. Evidence of their work will show in reconciliation and shifted priorities.  

But Paul is not primarily focused on these “grace gifts” (whether they are fourfold or fivefold)! His major concern is that all these gifts sare used “for the equipping of the saints” enabling them to do the work of ministry. The purpose for these equipping gifts is to build up the body so that all reflect the character of Jesus and we look, act and sound like our heavenly Father! We become men and women of honesty and integrity. We use our speech to build people up rather than tear them down. We work rather than cut corners and steal from others. We forgive as freely as we have tasted God’s forgiveness. We all become servants who minister with compassion and proclaim the Kingdom, like Jesus did (Ephesians 4:14-32).  

Movement Paradigms

While people who function with apostolic authority are absolutely essential to pioneer missionary breakthroughs, the prophetic, evangelistic and pastoral must follow quickly if the Kingdom culture of heaven is to transform a village, town or region of a city. To see a movement among a people group, all of these grace gifts must be utilized to produce the character of Christ within every disciple, family of disciples and friendship group of disciples. The Preacher/Master Teacher model which has been so deeply ingrained in the North American church does not easily replicate, though. It requires a long time, expensive education and slowly gained experience which becomes a governor slowing the growth rate to a crawl. But that was my existence!  

Disciple Making Movements (DMM) especially focus on the apostolic. Core DNA centers around bringing the reign of Christ into reality especially where his name has not yet been heard. More of what the Western church has been doing will not bring us into the obedience called for in the Great Commission. Making disciples of all the nations was honestly not on my radar. I had accepted too small a role in the Kingdom-maturing some of those who had come to follow Jesus, but how can we follow him if we are not making disciples?  

Making disciples of all the nations was honestly not on my radar.

The Replication Paradigm

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 Discovery Paradigm

Discovery became the answer. How do we get people to slow down and really listen to what the Word says? How do we get them to answer basic questions which go a bit farther than general reading comprehension, but not too much further? Many of my earliest attempts were far too complicated and demanded too much technology, but that nagging question kept popping back in my brain: “Can they replicate this?” Of the sixty I attempted to train in a simple inductive Bible study process, five could not read and write. How do you make the Word and Discovery accessible to oral learners, too?  

Disciple Making Movements actually demand catalysts who learn to hear from God and apply what they discover to their life in concrete actions appropriate obedience. Legalism is applying a list of rules someone else gives us. Obedience is being responsive to God’s directions. Equipping the body requires us to become coaches more than great players. Good coaching models incredible trust in the Holy Spirit. It acknowledges that God produces better outcomes than the coach can. It believes the resources are in the harvest. The Kingdom advancing force will arise from God’s harvest field, if we will disciple the body to do disciple making in the Jesus style.  

How do we get people to slow down and really listen to what the Word says?

The Coaching Paradigm  

Training entails learning skills. How do you coach a Person of Peace to facilitate a Discovery Group consisting of her friends among the travelling soccer team parents? What questions will you consistently use with her till she has confidence facilitating? When is she ready to facilitate a group with ongoing coaching? When does she need less of your presence? Coaching and good training work well together, but in the DMM world much of our training is intentionally done to find the few who are willing to be coached. Most in the Western Church are not willing to be coached. Even those who become willing often require many exposures to critical principles and experiences of experimenting with Discovery processes.  

Finding a Person of Peace becomes the greatest hook to “reel in” those of us who have been “captured” by Movement thinking. “Taste and see…” may be the opening invitation. Seeing the joyful transformation in the life of a Person of Peace following a Discovery path is intoxicating. Helping ordinary people experience breakthrough in making disciples gives me great joy! It far surpasses the fulfillment of having a Christian say week after week: “Great sermon! I never heard it put that way before!”  

Multiplication Goes Where We Cannot  

My first efforts to disciple disciple-makers came in the Rutherford County Jail which is just a few miles from my home in Murfreesboro. While I could only visit with any single inmate for two 45 minute sessions a week, he was spending 24-7 with more than 50 guys in his pod and twice a day, Seven days a week he could meet with guys from an adjoining pod in the exercise room. Training him to facilitate a discovery study offered far more capacity to bring the gospel to the jail. Three years after he was released I was working with the 17th different facilitator of a group study which had been continuously taking place. As friends in Africa heard about this group, they were able to gain even more access to prisons and jails. Many more were discipled to faith and on to maturity.  

You know you are using better strategies when you find out that a Chinese girl at a university in the U.S. is facilitating a Discovery process with her mom in Inner Mongolia via Skype. While the daughter was not a believer at that time, she valued what was happening in her heart enough to replicate it with someone she loved. Recently the girl came to faith-we are praying her mom does, too. I cannot help but wonder if there may be others back in China who are close to the kingdom, also.  

Floyd McClung has said, “Apostolic people take the church to the world; they don’t wait for the world to come to the church.” We need apostolic people to reach the large percentage of Americans who will not come to our churches. We also need prophetic, evangelistic and pastoral workers joining hands with the apostolic to equip the body to grow up into the fullness of Christ!  

Are the people you are discipling able to disciple others to become disciple makers. Disciple making movements are multi-generational or they are not truly movements!  

John Kenneth King serves as Global Coach for Final Command Ministries. Since leading an inductive Bible study training in West Africa (November 2005), his passion is to train people in simple study approaches which produce obedience-based disciple making. He has participated in Disciple Making Movement trainings on four continents.  

John directed the production of the Engage! Africa video series and co-created the Engage! course with Terry Neu. He also serves on the board of Directors of Final Command Ministries.  

Categories
Mission Frontiers

Fostering Multigenerational Movements by Equipping Believer-Priests

Fostering Multigenerational Movements by Equipping Believer-Priests

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers Mar/April 2014” 

by Mike Shipman

Mike Shipman is a Church Planting Movement training specialist who lives with his wife and children in Asia. Having experienced firsthand a multiplying movement of new believers and churches among his Muslim unreached people group, Mike trains others to implement productive, field-proven methods. Mike’s greatest joy is seeing those he trains experience increased fruitfulness as they abide in Christ and do His works (John 14:12).

In Jull/Aug 2013 MF reported on the Any-3 model of evangelism adapted for Muslim contexts from Jesus’ example in John 4.

What follows is a complementary insight from this same movement among Muslims.

I moved from traditional church ministry to pursuing a generational church movement in Jan. 2005. A desire to reach the lost and an honest look at how the first-century world was discipled in reproducing churches inspired us to “Re-en-ACT” our approach to the Great Commission. As a result we’ve had approximately 1000 generational groups and churches started in our people group, and by our friends using basically the same approach we’re using. We live outside our people group, but I have personally led two to faith who have started generational church streams. Also, a volunteer team I was with led another person to faith who started a large generational stream. As a result, my primary role shifted from evangelism to training.  

Discipling these new believers as partner-priests rather than students has fostered generational growth. A 2010 study of our movement showed that more than one third of all groups and churches were G4 and beyond (four or more generations beyond the church planting team). The percentage of G4+ groups and churches has probably increased since that time. At least one church is G10.  

Any-3 (Anyone, Anywhere, Any Time)

We focus on training disciples to abide in Christ in order to disciple the world through reproducing churches. In everything we model, we assist the new local believers to begin doing themselves as soon as possible. While abiding in Christ, we boldly and relationally seek to lead people to faith using the Any-3 (Anyone, Anywhere, Any Time) approach. We teach them obedience in immediate baptism, following the pattern in Acts. And we teach them obedience in multiplying while they are being discipled. This results in groups started and temporarily led by the new believer until the churches appoint leaders (Titus 1:5). Most groups efficiently become churches.  

Routine worship occurs at least weekly in the 3/3rds process of T4T. This encourages believers in obeying all of Christ’s commands and becoming complete in Christ. Discipleship naturally occurs as believers study and apply the Word together, with goals and accountability for obedience. Once churches form, our attention is given to developing the churches and equipping the leaders in a reproducing way. Leaders of churches receive on the job training through bi-weekly meetings, led by teachers from the local networks. These meetings focus on accountability (going) and a deeper lesson (growing). Leadership training is the key to sustaining multi-generational growth and going deeper in the Word. Going further and growing deeper must be accomplished simultaneously in leadership development to insure a healthy growing movement.

The key to multi-generational growth is simple obedience to the Great Commission.

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.  

I smile as I recall the faces of ordinary people who have become outstanding believer-priests since surrendering themselves to Christ.

I know several octogenarians with a godly ambition to live the remainder of their lives in holiness, with great zeal to see their Savior glorified. When they came to faith, they were stained by past sins and had wasted the majority of their lives. Now, they live with relentless zeal for Christ and the spread of the gospel, willing to die for Him if called upon to do so. They have started house church networks which are leading hundreds of others to Christ. Their lives and the lives of their families reflect Christ’s character, and when they speak they are filled with the wisdom of God.  

Since changing to an Acts-type church planting paradigm, we have experienced God’s power in many Acts-type miracles. But the believers are quick to remind us, “It’s about the gospel, not the miracles.”. Seeing the gospel flow from person to person, and churches multiplying from house to house, glorifies Christ in the 21st century in the same way that the works of Acts glorified Him in the 1st century.  

 

1 Shipman, Mike. Anyone, Anywhere, Any Time: Lead Muslims to Christ Now! WIGtake Resources, 2013. (See summary in the in the Jul/Aug 2013 issue of Mission Frontiers.).
2 Smith, Steve and Kai, Yang. T4T: A Discipleship Re Revolution. WIGtake Resources, 2011. (Using the 3/3rds process of T4T instills multiplication in the new believers’ and churches’ DNA from the beginning. We now have more than 10,000 professing believers, some of whom are likely G15+.).
3 Network teachers are selected from each network of churches, who are trained centrally by leaders from the movement.

Categories
Mission Frontiers

Ying Kai & the Power of Multiplication

Ying Kai & the Power of Multiplication

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers May/June 2013” 

by YING & GRACE ΚΑΙ

Ying and Grace Kai are from Taiwan. For a number of years they served as missionaries in Hong Kong. Every year they started a new church and led about thirty people to Christ. In 2000 a Hong Kong business man challenged Ying with the needs of an unreached region in Asia for security reasons we’ll call “Nandong.”

Taken from What Jesus Started by Steve Addison. Copyright(c) 2012 by Steve Addison. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com. *For more information on the book, T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution by Steve Smith with Ying Kai see ad on page 31.  

“Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times. Mark 4:8

Ying was reluctant.

He knew about the reputation of Nandong’s authoritarian government. So the businessman took Ying and Grace on a tour of the region. Later Ying recalled his reactions:

As we rode the train, we passed many factories. The man told us about every factory we passed. He would say, “This factory has 3,000 workers. I know the owner. He hopes that someone will come to share the gospel, but we cannot find anyone who will come.”.  

The biggest factory we passed has 70,000 people. When we saw all the lost people of these factories, God opened our eyes and our minds. I realized, “These people need the gospel.”

Ying was called by God to reach the twenty million people in this rapidly growing urban center where each day thousands of new migrant workers arrive looking for work and a better life.

Ying knew that he would have to do things differently to reach Nandong. He knew that merely adding disciples and churches would not be enough; he had to tap into the power of multiplication. As Ying prayed, God gave him three insights for those who are called to make disciples:  

– Go, not come. The Great Commission does not say we are to invite people to come to us. It says we are to go. We must go where the lost are and train new believers to go also to the lost into factories, homes, shops, and neighborhoods.

– Everyone, not some. We must make disciples of all, not just a few. We typically choose whom we want to share the gospel with, trying to prejudge who might accept it. But God said to share with everyone. We cannot predict who will believe and whom God will use to birth a movement.  

– Make disciples and trainers, not passive church members. Jesus wants true disciples who obey his commands-including the commands to witness to others and train new believers to do the same. Every disciple must be a trainer.  

Ying the church planter and pastor became Ying the trainer and catalyst for Church- Planting Movements.

He called his process of making disciples “Training for Trainers” (T4T). “Trainer” conveys the idea of someone who both grows in his loving obedience to Jesus and passes on what he learns to others through witness and training.  

The T4T process trains believers to share the gospel and make disciples in a reproducible way. The discipleship training process includes new group and church formation along with leadership development.  

Ying and Grace began by training one class of thirty believers. They taught the trainees that each of them had a unique story to tell of how they met Jesus. They trained them to tell their story and helped them to identify five people they would share with in the following week. The next week seventeen of the thirty trainees reported sharing their story, and one farmer had shared with eleven people. The following week Ying raised the level of accountability and allowed only those who were sharing their story to continue with the training. Two months later, the trainees had started twenty small groups. After six months there were 327 small groups and 4,000 newly baptized believers scattered across seventeen towns. Within twelve months, there were 908 house churches with more than 12,000 new Christians. One old farmer who had never before planted a church started twelve house churches in two months and 110 in the first year. He began every day reading his Bible from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. Then he worked in the fields until 5 p.m., at which point he went home for dinner and family time. At 7 p.m. he went back out again, and he worked in “God’s fields” until midnight. In another town a 67-year-old woman became a Christian and in one year led more than sixty families to become believers. In another example, Ying lost touch with a Christian factory worker he had trained. After six months, he learned that the worker had been transferred to another large factory with ten thousand workers. During those six months, the worker had started seventy small groups and seen ten generations of reproduction (churches planting churches).  

By the year 2003, Ying and Grace were training 300 to 400 believers each month. As the Kais trained them to be trainers of trainers, they found that many would witness, some would start new groups, and a smaller number would go on to train their new group members to repeat the process. Hundreds and then thousands began to come to faith.  

Immediately after coming to faith, new believers were equipped and held accountable to witness to relatives, neighbors and close friends. These new believers were taught to train and follow up with those they led to Christ. The trainers learned simple, reproducible Bible lessons and taught them to new believers who were encouraged to form into new churches.  

Immediately after coming to faith, new believers were equipped and held accountable to witness to relatives, neighbors and close friends.

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.

At the heart of this amazing movement is a simple process for training disciples. When trainees meet, their time is divided roughly into thirds

They spend time focusing on each of these three areas.

1 – LOOK BACK

– Pastoral care. Trainees ask each other, “How are you doing?” and take time to minister to one another’s needs in prayer, biblical counseling and encouragement.  

– Informal worship. Trainees praise God in a culturally appropriate and reproducible way. It could be prayer or singing, with or without an instrument or mp3 player. Some groups read the Psalms out loud.  

– Accountability. Trainees share in mutual loving accountability about how they have been following Jesus (obeying the previous meeting’s Bible lesson) and being fishers of men (witnessing to and training others) since the last meeting.  
– Vision casting. Trainees are reminded what God has designed them to become and what he plans to do through them.  

2 – LOOK UP

– Trainees receive enough biblical content to obey and pass on to others. After a series of six basic discipleship lessons, participants learn how to do inductive Bible study by asking the following questions: What does it say? What can I obey? What will I share with others?.  

3 – LOOK FORWARD

– Practice. Trainees spend time practicing what they have learned, gaining confidence and competence to pass it on to others.  

– Goals and prayer. Trainees set goals for how to obey the lesson and to take the next steps in witnessing and training others; then they recommission each other through prayer.  

Categories
Mission Frontiers

How to Adapt Churches in Churched Cultures for CPMs

How to Adapt Churches in Churched Cultures for CPMs

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers July/Aug 2012” 

by Jeff Sundell and Mike Wiseman Floyd

THREE STORIES FROM NORTH CAROLINA

The buried treasure of equipping existing churches with evangelism/discipleship tools, like Train- ing for Trainers (T4T), is that we may wake the sleeping giant. Every community has an endowment of thousands of believers who, if they have read the New Testament, probably want their church to look more like the book of Acts. People given tools to share the gospel and make disciples for the first time are thrilled to go and do it. The common practice of attracting people to a building for a large meeting, rather than seeking people far from God where they are, impedes the Western church (and many others around the world) from becoming a Church-Planting Movement (CPM). But the North American church is a luxury liner making full steam on a course plotted with full financial backing and a wealth of tradition. Notwithstanding an iceberg-type crisis, why worry?. Bill Bright said that only about 2% of American evangelicals regularly share their faith, and Alan Hirsch says that 60% of Americans say they would never go to any church, but these facts have not broken the hearts or changed the tactics of enough American Christians. We normally focus on growing the church, not primarily on reaching the lost or transforming communities. Some- how we believe that Sunday church attendance will make disciples and transform lives, and we are half-convinced that true loving community can be rooted in a one-hour meeting of 50 to 10,000 people. It seems that we have confidence in the ministries and gifts of our staff, but not of those in our congregations. Even small-group disciple- ship meetings tend to funnel back towards the aims of the mother churches, which generally follow the expecta- tions above. We need to stop measuring our success by conversions, bap- tisms, and especially weekly attendance. Instead we should measure success by tracking multiple generations of believers whose lives are transformed by the gospel, and who are committed to change their communities in Jesus’ name

Can CPMs change the heading of the North American church? Read these stories of everyday church leaders taking a risk to do so.

Element Church, Alexander Mills, NC: Neal Perry

Element is a progressive, informal church plant where it is common to see a man in a suit next to a guy with tat- toos all the way up his arms. But Element has committed to start 100 simple church plants in homes of lost people. Since adopting T4T-based CPM methods, they have begun 17 groups in homes, and at least 5 of them have reproduced other groups. These groups have led 17 new believers to Christ, and baptized 14 of them in homes.  

Rickey, whose story is like a highlight film of great plays from CPM discipleship in our area, came to Christ through the simple church ministry of Element. In the summer of 2011, Rickey was hooked on a drug marketed as “bath salts,” but which is actually some form of meth- amphetamine. One night, Rickey was in a speed-induced rage, throwing furniture and yelling at his wife, when his mother called the county sheriff. After a fist fight with three deputies, during which they attempted to shoot him, Rickey ended up in the county jail. The day he was bailed out, Rickey went to visit the grave side of his friend and mentor, Randy. He found himself crying out to Randy: “Are you in heaven? Is there another life? Answer me if there is!”. As he stayed, tears streaming down his face, he felt himself pushed down to his knees, just asking God to show up. As he drove away from the grave, he saw Shane’s truck pass him, going home. Shane’s and Rickey’s daugh- ters had become best friends, and Rickey wanted what Shane had: stability, happiness at home, faith in God. He followed Shane home and shared his heart. Shane didn’t want to take credit for what he had; he knew he was in a daily battle, and wasn’t fighting alone. What impressed Rickey was that Shane talked about struggles, failures, successes, and being committed to the long haul, with God, his wife, kids, job, and neighbors. Rickey committed himself that day to follow Jesus, repented of the way he had been living, and took a whole new life-course.  

Shane did not ask Rickey to recite the sinner’s prayer and then leave him at the altar of the church in the care of others. Shane asked Rickey if he could come to his home once a week for the next few months to bring the teachings of Jesus and the community of God’s people to share with his whole family. This was the way of evangelism/discipleship that Shane’s pastor, Neal, had been leading in their church for a couple of years, inspired by Training for Trainers and the adaptations of it that Jeff Sundell had brought back from missions in Nepal and shared with Neal and a group of others. It was at least a year-long commitment for both of them and their families. Now Rickey is teaching that group, along with Shane and some others, and their home group has bounded to over twenty. On the night of the Duke-UNC basketball face-off, Rickey’s and Shane’s daughters were piled together in a bean-bag chair, wearing dueling Duke and Carolina pajamas. They have a lot more to share now that both their dads are leading their families in the way God intended.

First Baptist Spindale, Spindale, NC: Andy Evans

Only a few years ago, First Baptist would run 35-45 on Sundays. Now they regularly have 120 or more. 80% of those people came from home conversions and are still in T4T-based groups. One meeting in a trailer park baptized 26 people in September 2011, and 9 more in October.  

First Baptist Spindale had a traditional background. Their strategy for reaching the lost was always attractional: “you need to come here, and we will teach you how to adapt to our culture.”. It had been program-driven and mainte- nance-minded since the beginning. The methods that may have worked in the 1950’s now bear little, if any, fruit. In 2009, this church began to intentionally shift their ap- proach, realizing that Jesus created a multiplicative, men- toring-based ministry. The first step towards change began in a seedy, run-down motel. Someone was willing to allow their room, #114, to be used as a meeting place once a week and thus began Church 114. For approximately 9 months, they saw genuine fruit among what was clearly an unreached crowd. The motel was transient; attendees came and went, but they saw real spiritual hunger expressed and satisfied. There was a real spirit of liberty present in the meetings and there were no traditions to battle.  

One of the weaknesses of this method was the lack of continuity inherent in the lifestyles of the crowd. Many disappeared after a few weeks, never to be seen again. Obviously, this made long term discipleship difficult at best, though it still seemed more Jesus-focused than the average Sunday morning church service. Taking what they learned from 114, they began to train leaders in how to press deeper into their community. They taught them how to flexibly structure meetings in homes using the 1/3−1/3−1/3 concept in T4T (Training for Trainers). Now, they have groups meeting in trailer parks, homes, and backyards.  

One of the biggest challenges is to avoid letting success in drawing people through attractional appeal displace kingdom outreach. We might just be duplicating Sunday morning on Tuesday night in some- one’s living room. Instilling accountability to the gospel without using heavy-handed control is crucial. We feel we can walk this out by keeping our eyes on what DNA is transmitted to new believers, but also trusting the work of the Holy Spirit in our leaders. That is a faith risk we continue to take daily.  

 

We feel we can walk this out by keeping our eyes on what DNA is transmitted to new believers

Desiring God Community Church (DGCC), Charlotte, NC: Coty Pinckney

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.  

 

Conclusion-So what are we all learning from this?

Good

It is effective and biblical to start churches with the lost, not believers.  

Churches that adopt CPM ap- proaches outstrip conventional churches in conver- sions, baptisms, and new members.  

Adopting a CPM approach allows many new believ- ers to share their stories and Jesus’ story in a powerful way, gathering more new believers from their social network.  

Some of this sharing results in multiple generations of disciple-making church-planting networks.  

People reaching out using T4T are excited how open unbelievers are to allow evangelistic/discipling meet- ings in their homes.  

New believers using CPM methods in the States and new believers trained by missionaries overseas are experiencing the same basic training.  

Some of this sharing results in multiple generations of disciple-making church-planting networks.

 

Bad

Meetings started by traditional churches, even with new believers, tend to revert to the attractional mode, drawing people to one home or meeting rather than sending people out.  

It is a challenge for existing churches to stay the course towards a true CPM.  

Another challenge is that many existing believers are simply unwilling to commit the time to reach out to their friends and family with the gospel.  

Sometimes in the T4T process, new disciples are impacted negatively by media, friends and even family.  

Because of this, church planters and trainers must invest at least 1-3 years in discipling, and even more time with emerging leaders.  
T4T is not 6 lessons and then set people loose, but a mentoring process that requires commitment.  

Ugly:

Winning lost people with all their addictions, social problems, and moral quandaries results in messy situations for discipleship.  

Some traditional churches might not be accustomed to having to “deal with dirty sheep.”.  

These kinds of churches can take comfort that the very same challenges were faced by the believers as recorded in the Gospels and Epistles. 

Categories
Mission Frontiers

It’s Huge: Five Lessons the American Church Is Learning from CPMs

It’s Huge: Five Lessons the American Church Is Learning from CPMs

– Originally posted in “Mission Frontiers July/Aug 2012” 

by Carol Davis

News of Church-Planting Movements (CPMs) hap-
pening around the world has been a wake up call
for many American church leaders to reexamine,
reframe and retool. Others have simply dismissed rapid mul-
tiplication of churches as impossible to happen in the U.S.
Tim Martin, Mission Pastor at WoodsEdge Community
Church in Houston expresses what many church leaders
describe when they hear of and are amazed by all that
God is doing through these movements around the world.
“I think it’s starting to bounce back to America, causing
us to radically rethink our whole paradigm of church and
mission. I now believe there can be much more, and there
must be more.”.  

The speed of movements, the depth of discipleship and com-
mitments of the emerging leaders, frequently cause pastors
in the West to pause. This is because CPMs tend to create
a questioning dissonance with our contemporary models,
experience and traditions about what it means to be “church.”.
“It has forced me back to the Scripture for my understand-
ing of ‘church,” said John Lo, pastor at Epicentre Church
in Pasadena, CA.. “The re-framed concepts learned from
CPMs have been ‘buge’ for me,” he emphasized.  

Those who have chosen this journey express that, for the
church in America, it has been an explosion of HOPE for
a different future. Five lessons were most often mentioned
as the important shifts taking place for them.  

Five lessons were most often mentioned
as the important shifts taking place for them.

COME & GO

The shift from inviting
unbelievers to come to our programs and
building to sending believers into their world.
Jesus said that the fields are ready for harvest. To live
in this reality, the way of thinking has to intentionally
change from “Come” to “Go.”. God always asks Chris-
tians to go to those without him; never the lost to come to
church or into Christian space. When this shift in think-
ing happens, church members start to identify and pray
specifically for those in their world who don’t yet know
Him. This is because the idea of “going” becomes embed-
ded into church life. Similarly, church leaders are much
more intentional about training believers to tell their own
story and God’s story in simple, short and compelling
ways. Frequently, they will use the Creation to Christ story, a 10-15 minute overview of the Bible starting in creation and culminating in Christ. In many cases programming schedules have been radically altered to release their people to “go” more often, and with greater intentionality.  

John Lo thinks of “Come” structures as the Old Testa-
ment temple where people gathered and the professionals
served. “But Jesus said, my body is the temple; and then the temple started walking around. Jesus gave his body instructions to ‘Go’ in Matt. 9. 37-38; Matt. 28.19-20 and Acts 1.8.”. Linda Bergquist, church planter catalyst and mentor in the San Francisco area observed, “Jesus did not assign the 70 as a core group for a new come structure, but instead sent them decentralized by twos.”[cite: 22, 23].  

 

GROUP CONVERSIONS:

The shift to
multiplying groups of disciples not just
individual disciples.

Kevin Johnson, mission pastor at Antioch Community
Church in Waco, Texas says, “We had to get back to oikos:
households; life on life.”. In CPMs around the world, the
Kingdom is established in a relationally-connected group
and then spreads group to group. The Scripture refers to
each of these groups as a household. The Greek word for
household is oikos, and includes a circle of influence, not
just immediate family.  

The promise of Acts 11:14 and 16:31 is that networked
groups will come to faith. The key is to not extract an
individual from his or her oikos when there is spiritual
hunger, but to disciple the group together into faith. This
is in contrast to what has been the general U.S. pattern.
Typically, we see individuals come to faith and then we
disciple them individually, and sometimes not very well if
at all[cite: 25]. In many CPMs the early phases of discipleship often
happen before faith, as the unbelieving group meets and
explores what it actually means to follow Christ. Or, the
early discipleship happens post-conversion but as a group
of connected individuals walking down the same path
together. These individuals do not have to be family. In
many CPMs these groups are the relationships that fit the
context-workmates, classmates, members of the same extra-curricular avocation.  

 

The promise of Acts 11:14 and 16:31 is that networked groups will come to faith.

COUNTING GENERATIONS

The shift to
count and do whatever it takes to regularly
and quickly get to the 4th generation and
beyond of disciples, groups and churches
(II Tim. 2.2).
The process of getting quickly to the next generation of
disciples, leaders and groups is well established where
Church-Planting Movements are taking place. One
helpful tool has been the three-thirds format for group
meetings, where caring, infusion of vision, mutual loving
accountability, learning the Word, goal setting, practice
and prayer are integrated into a seamless and regular pro-
cess. Each week members of the group live in life-on-life
accountability to love the Lord unconditionally and pur-
sue His Commission in reaching and loving others. This
process is described in T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution.
A key focus for the group is to win and train the next
generation of disciples who will repeat the process.  

Amazingly, this process is not just fruitful overseas.
Where the principles and process of generational growth
are applied in small group meetings and leadership
development, it has similar outcomes in the U.S.³. The
values-imprint on the new believer is another make-or-
break element in getting to the next generation. Rather
than take a new believer to a “come” meeting where they
sit and listen, their new life in Christ must start in a very
different way. The individual should be is encouraged
to start a group in his/her oikos. They should be where
they are taught to study and obey God’s Word and they
should be equipped to immediately pray for and witness
to those they know. When this approach is successful,
group members are given the vision, tools and the time
to practice, along with loving encouragement, to win the
next generation.  

This leads to a second critical factor which is the continual
vision for reproduction of the next generation. Each mem-
ber and each group strives to be a parent, grandparent and
great grandparent. One effective CPM catalyst in the
U.S. describes it this way: “I evaluate my disciple-making
not by my disciples, but by my disciples’ disciples.”. All
along the way the groups celebrate each new generation.
What we envision, measure and celebrate determines
the outcome.  

REPRODUCIBILITY

The shift from lengthy
training, policy-driven structures and more
academic materials, to simplicity and the
reproducibility of means, methods, tools and
structures.
Equipping and training is best accomplished by model-
ing with simple tools. Easy-to-learn and obey lessons in
the hands of new believers, allows them to do what they
have just seen done by a mentor. When they are equipped
simply, they disciple those they lead to faith in the same
manner, often with only a few moments of encourage-
ment and clarification.  

Kevin Johnson says, “We’ve had to learn to just keep it
simple, simple, simple in the Antioch community. Our lessons are now simple; our evangelism tools are simple. We’ve had to create an environment where there can be many different expressions of small group and where people are released quickly to be more evangelistic and apostolic.”.  

Simple does not mean simplistic – reduc-
ing truth beyond its core essence. Rather it
means taking deep truths and applications
and learning and expressing them in a way
that an average new believer can obey and
pass on to others. A trait of every CPM in
the world is the use of one simple method
for evangelism, discipleship and church
planting. While many methods could
suffice, using a multiplicity of methods con-
fuses new believers. Instead, using just one
appropriate and reproducible method
enables an explosion of growth as new believers, led by
the Spirit, are able to serve as ministers to others.  

“It (CPMs) has forced me back to the Scripture for my understanding of ‘church.”
John Lo, pastor at Epicentre Church in Pasadena, CA.  

CPMs are teaching us that discipleship can
and should result in a rapid maturing process,
but this can only come through keeping
discipleship obedience-based. Believers must
be mutually expected to obey, encouraged
to obey and held accountable to obey in the
spirit of Hebrews 10:24-25.  

 

CPMs are teaching us that discipleship can
and should result in a rapid maturing process

OBEDIENCE-BASED LEARNING

The shift
from teaching for knowledge of what the
Word says- to teaching and accountability
for obedience to what the Word says.
This has been one of the lessons learned from CPMs that
states the obvious. “Of course we are to teach for obedi-
ence,” and many wonder how we missed this for so long?.
It’s in the Great Commission: Not “teaching them all
that I have commanded,” but “teaching them to obey all
that I have commanded.” (Matt. 28:20). It’s only in the
putting off the old and putting on Christ, as believers
apply His Word, that we find quickly transformed and
strengthened lives.  

George Patterson reminds us that when we keep teach-
ing after believers quit obeying, we are actually teaching
them that it’s okay to study and not obey; or to pick and choose what we want to obey. In this process of disciple-
ship, we are heaping on judgment, as we will all give an
account one day for what we know and have not obeyed.
Transformed lives are the fuel to ignite movements. Trans-
formed lives legitimize that Jesus can change things, and
nobody needs a God who cannot act in power on their be-
half. Transformed lives become change agents themselves.  

As the shifts in understanding and values take
place, changes have begun. Christians are now
getting out of the building as well as out of
their comfort zones. There is deep rejoicing
that we are seeing more and speedier conver-
sions, new groups and intentional church
planting than previously experienced. As church leaders embrace these ideas, they
tend to start conversations about how to learn from one another and work out the cultural nu-
ances involved. Several common themes tend to consis-
tently emerge in such discussion. The first is that even
when new groups begin with positive momentum, they often find that cultural gravity pulls them back into the old way of thinking[cite: 54, 66]. People revert to inviting the lost or new believers to “come” to existing Christian meetings. Jeff Sun-dell, a CPM catalyst in North Carolina says, “This is a killer for generational growth.”. In our U.S. culture, it takes a while to re-condition even new believers to move away from the “come” mentality to the “go” mentality.  

Another issue is that sometimes we don’t stay with the
emerging leadership long enough to regularly see them
through to the point of generational multiplication. In
our U.S. mentality to finish the next program, we “finish”
our set of discipleship lessons with this first generation
group but then abandon them once it is over. We must
learn from CPMs overseas to stay with groups for a year
or two to help them birth new groups that birth new
groups. We must keep our eyes on the end-vision not
simply the short-term discipleship.  

The lessons from CPMs for the U.S. church are huge.
The reexamination has taken us back to the Scripture for
both principles and practice. However, the reframing and
retooling continues to be a little bit messy. Let us persist
with the reframing and the retooling until this way of life
becomes the new normal.f  

 

1. See http://t4tonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/2-Creation-to-Christ-Story.pdf for an example. An animated C2C story will soon be available in short video-segmented downloads for multiple platforms in multiple languages.  
2. T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution by Steve Smith with Ying Kai, WIGTake Resources, 2011. Available from www.ChurchPlantingMovements.com or on Kindle download from Amazon.  

3. For example, see the article in this issue on three examples from North Carolina, p. 21.  

4. For more, see Jeff’s article in this issue of Mission Frontiers.