Disciple Making Movements – Part 2

CONTINUED FROM PART 1 (POSTED ON JUNE 28, 2022)

David Watson was one of those with Garrison in the development of the term Church Planting Movements. David was at this point in the story with Cityteam (a ministry to under-resourced people mainly in California) and played a crucial role in training many indigenous leaders in a particular strategy that came out of the Bhojpuri movement in northern India. 

That strategy used a method of reading the Bible to discover what God was saying and built an obedience-based culture in these groups. People were asked to commit to a particular action in the coming days that would be an act of obedience to God speaking to them through the portion of the Bible read in the group. They were also encouraged to share with their relatives and close friends what they were learning in their Bible reading group.

New Generations (Cityteam spun off their International team in 2018 now known as New Generations) amassed an impressive group of indigenous organizations worldwide but especially across sub-Saharan Africa that were trained in this new way to reach previously unreached populations. Again, the results reported after a few years of application of this methodology were “Acts” like. Hundreds of thousands of previously unreached populations were becoming disciples (people growing in obedience to all of Jesus’ command) who quickly shared their allegiance to Jesus so that disciples were making disciples.

While achieving impressive Great Commission results the New Generations tribe grew weary of those who “co-opted” the label, Church Planting Movements, making it mean anything they wanted. This perceived abuse of the name coupled with the growing popularity in the west of this new approach to seeing people discipled to allegiance in Jesus gave birth to a new way to describe what was taking place.

The term disciple making movements, described for them, is what started the process. While Garrison was describing the result – planting churches – the New Generations tribe preferred to describe the process – disciple making. Multiplying churches was the result. It is not clear who first said, “When you make disciples, you always get churches, but when you plant churches you don’t always get disciples’” but this phrase brings clarity to the two terms, start with making disciples, and you get churches.

There were other strategies, some with labels like T4T popularized by Ying Kai and Steve Smith and G12 led by César Castellanosand others without tags that had led to Church Planting Movements. The New Generation team attempted to use the label Disciple Making Movements for their strategy of discovery focused, obedience based multiplicative disciple making.

In summary, Church Planting Movements are the effect while Disciple Making Movements are the cause and they are in harmony when properly understood. The necessity of this discussion resides in the fact that these two terms began and vie for the label applied to any movement of the gospel no matter the extent of it. Because few know this history, the terms Church Planting or Disciple Making “movement” are often applied to anything that looks exciting, out of the ordinary and portends significant numbers.

Enough of a history lesson, on to the promise: a definition of Disciple Making Movements.

We now want to discuss definitions of disciple making movements. Is there a basic definition of a Disciple Making Movement? Various definitions already exist:

These dimensions are vital to any definition of a DMM because inherent in these dimensions is multiplication in the three dimensions. For the good news of Jesus to go wide, deep and long there must be multiplication of disciple makers at its core. We might think of it this way, or can your disciples’ disciples make disciples without you present? 

Planning for multiple generations of disciples challenges our methodologies. Methods must be simple enough to be repeatable, so they instill a multiplication DNA as a primal instinct in new disciples. Any definition of a Disciple Making Movement must include multiplication at every level. 

The definition of a Disciple Making Movement should be viewed from two vantage points, early on and fully developed. Using a modified understanding of the language in the Four Disciplines of Execution, we might think of lead measures, what causes movement and lag measures, how do I know if I have one. Our lead measure might focus on Brown’s three dimensions turned into questions. This set of questions allows us to test our methods and see if we have the makings of a movement and to adjust our practices accordingly. 

As much as we resist bringing metrics into ministry, it is instructive to use a template of multiple generations as Paul encouraged Timothy (II Timothy 2:2). Practitioners will report that once you reach four generations, you know that you have multiplication DNA embedded in every generation because replication can take place without it being dependent on a personality. 

It is also important to think in terms of multiple streams as well. The idea of multiple streams of disciple makers demonstrates the exponential character of disciple making. A simple, repeatable methodology that multiplies in different streams, magnifies the power of the Spirit through the Word of God and reduces the probability of results caused by human effort alone. 

So, in summary, I recommend the following definition. 

A disciple making movement exists when churches plant churches