One of the most amazing stories of impressive church growth has been documented in the book by Jerry Trousdale called Miraculous Movements. Utilizing a methodology called Disciple Making Movements (DMM) that results in planting small house churches even in tough, resistant communities, the book tells about explosive church multiplication in various countries of Africa and Asia. I have actually been using this book as one of my required texts for the class I teach at Whitworth University on The Global Christian Movement.
I recently sat down for coffee in Addis Ababa with an Ethiopian friend, who shared some insights about how this strategy is faring now years later. As former director of a church planting organisation intimately involved with DMM, he and his staff have used it to plant literally thousands of small, house churches during the past ten years. According to him, it was some of these very "miraculous movements" that Jerry used as powerful illustrations in his book.
He explained that most of those church plants are doing just fine, but that there were some, as might be expected, that have not stood the test of time. "What do you think those that have not lasted were missing?" I asked. "I can't give you a definitive answer yet," he told me, "but I believe it involves five key elements that were not present or emphasized enough. Today, as we continue to plant churches especially in larger urban areas, we are making sure that those five things become an integral part of the life of those churches with the hope it will help them be sustained indefinitely."
Anxious to hear more, I ordered another round of coffee macchiatos, pulled out my notebook, and said "OK, tell me what those five key elements are." Here was his reply:
- People need to truly be in love with Jesus. This means a sincere desire to get to know Christ and imitate Him in their daily walk.
- People need to learn how to study Scripture with real depth. This has to be more than just reading a passage and sharing what you think it means. It means really digging in to learn the full truth God wants to reveal in His Word. He also added that just listening to a preacher, no matter how gifted or popular, is also no substitute for committed personal Bible study.
- People need to worship through singing that truly comes from the heart. It is not enough to sing songs other people think are neat. Singing from the heart, even composing personal worship songs, is a critical measure of someone's passion for God.
- People need to develop a consistent habit of pray. It is not good enough to just go through the motions of prayer. They need to enter into a prayer experience that helps them connect personally and intimately with God.
- People need to understand what true fellowship of the Body of Christ is all about. This cannot be for just an hour on Sunday morning, but a commitment to community that causes them to care for each other throughout the week.
As I jotted all of these down, I was struck with the fact that nothing here seemed to be earth-shaking or radical. But in every case, my friend kept emphasizing words like "truly" and "sincere." So, it appears that consistent discipleship that encourages these five habits just may be the bottom line "secret" to house church communities that are able to stand that test of time.
I will be very interested to stay in tune with my friend and hear what reports he might have down the road about lasting impact of these efforts. In the meantime, it seems to me that all of us as Christians around the world could benefit from following the insights being learned and modeled by our brothers and sisters in Addis Ababa and the house churches they are planting.
(Note: This blog post has been rewritten from its original version and re-posted here on March 13, 2020. This is due to my misrepresenting what I had understood my friend had shared with me as well as lacking to request his permission for sharing his name and picture. For this I apologize to him and to all who read my original posting. Unfortunately, I also must delete some of the comments in order to preserve my friends anonymity. I trust that this new edited version is now both more accurate and continues to honor my friend and his amazing work in advancing God's Kingdom through church planting.)
(Note: This blog post has been rewritten from its original version and re-posted here on March 13, 2020. This is due to my misrepresenting what I had understood my friend had shared with me as well as lacking to request his permission for sharing his name and picture. For this I apologize to him and to all who read my original posting. Unfortunately, I also must delete some of the comments in order to preserve my friends anonymity. I trust that this new edited version is now both more accurate and continues to honor my friend and his amazing work in advancing God's Kingdom through church planting.)
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ReplyDeleteI have known of this problem in East Africa for a few years. New Generations (with Jerry Trousdale) has been addressing this problem in different ways. Key has been uncovering and eliminating 'outside' funding. I have not heard of the same problem in other areas of the world, but suspect there are some.
ReplyDeleteI think we all know that "outside" money has deleterious effects on movements. Raiding of movement leaders by other ministries and denominational groups is an ongoing problem. Also, leadership development is essential.
'Mansour' in Iran, emphasizes insisting on and reaffirming commitments from all of the people he reaches. Without commitment and follow-through with their "I will" statements, he releases them and moves on to others.
David Watson gives three stages of discipline that he uses:
1. If the person fails to follow through in completing a commitment, he asks them why and then requires a re-commitment.
2. If the person fails a second time, he tells them to contact him when it is complete and discontinues meeting with them until and if, they complete the commitment.
3. If they don't follow-through and contact him in a reasonable length of time, he then begins to look for someone else. Leaders and primary facilitators are expected to have a high levels of commitment and embody the DMM DNA, and expect that of those they lead to three generations deep.
Here are the five characteristics of disciples of Jesus that separate them from followers, (after Ed Gross):
1. Obedience to his commands
2. Understanding, memorization, and sharing his teachings with others
3. Knowledge of the Old Testament, and understanding and ability to communicate all of Jesus' teachings about them.
4. Commitment to and imitation of Jesus; in particular his kingdom mission, glorifying the Father, and reliance on the Holy Spirit
5. Bringing others into the same relationship with Jesus that the disciple himself has.
In the text, the Great Commission was given to disciples, not to believers or even followers. That means like the Twelve/Eleven, it is essential that each disciple-maker first becomes a disciple, embodying the five characteristics . Since Jesus is present whenever two or three are gathered in his name, the most natural place to begin is with the disciple-maker's family. The "start slow to grow fast" begins here. The disciple-maker's family should be both his own laboratory and initial model he works from.
Jesus has all the power and authority and will be with his disciples (Matthew 28:18-20), but will not entrust himself to people whose hearts are unchanged (John 2:23-25). In other words, from Matthew, unless Jesus is involved there will be no movement. From John, heart transformation is necessary for Jesus to entrust himself to our actions. So, personal preparation and a transformed heart are essential prerequisites for a disciple-maker. He himself must be a disciple of Jesus.
The article lists: prayer, community of believers, and worship in addition to loving Jesus and deep study and application of the the scriptures as important characteristics. Of these, I think living in community is an often overlooked factor. The discovery groups should become communities to the participants. I suspect that the emphasis on forming "church" forces these groups into a model that is more institutional than communal.
Community building is an area that is not addressed in any current training, but I believe it deserves some focused attention. Like the whole DMM process, there are some counter-intuitive or at least counter-cultural concepts involved, As a minimum, focusing on disciples living in communities should precede establishing churches. The churches that grow out of these communities will likely be different and healthier, with better survival characteristics in hostile environments.
Blessings
Thanks for your comment, with which I agree heartily. We agree with your comments on the dangers of outside money. We have not yet seen a single example where outside money has not produced dependency. It hinders the development of a tithing communities and thus prevents movements from expanding without outside support. Furthermore, if and when the money ends, there are always relational problems.
DeleteWe also appreciate your emphasis on community. This has been strongly reinforced by our experience both in the USA and in Ethiopia. Our colleagues have, therefore, built that into the movements they oversee. In fact, they don't consider a person to be a follower or member of a congregation unless he or she is a member of a small group with a trained leader. Each leader is him- or herself in a small group of leaders on his or her level, all the way up to the highest local level. The results have been very gratifying both in terms of growth and maturity. It is working in all demographic sectors.
About "churches," what we see is that once there is a larger group of followers in a given geographical area, it is almost impossible, except in some MBB contexts, to prevent the formation of larger congregational-sized groups. They convey a certain sense of legitimacy and allow for a wider social context. They also allow exposure to more mature Bible teaching. Therefore, in our model, we don't try to prevent that. However, every such unit is carefully mentored so that a congregation supplements what is happening in the smaller groups and does not replace them. Whereas in the typical Western model, the large congregation is central and small groups are optional additions, in our model the small groups are essential and the larger congregation supplements them. We are certainly not batting 1.000, but we are gratified that once people experience a good level of community in the small groups, they are excited by them and they are relatively easy to maintain. In addition, the only route to congregational leadership is on-the-ground success in disciple-making through small groups. Once leaders are sold on this and experience success, they tend to want to maintain it.
Thanks for your insights,
Ron Klaus, Hope in View
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DeleteGreetings from Pakistan.
DeleteWell explained brother Jim, your five keys for DMM movements are really important for Movements especially Muslim countries because we don't focus on conversions and sobering reversals but only true Disciples of Jesus Christ.
I do agreed with your statement and research, “Jesus has all the power and authority and will be with his disciples (Matthew 28:18-20), but will not entrust himself to people whose hearts are unchanged (John 2:23-25). In other words, from Matthew, unless Jesus is involved there will be no movement. From John, heart transformation is necessary for Jesus to entrust himself to our actions. So, personal preparation and a transformed heart are essential prerequisites for a disciple-maker. He himself must be a disciple of Jesus"
Movement is a natural process with natural growth and without the power of the deliverance and love of Jesus Christ we can't step forward.
Blessings
Saleem Masih
Chairman Grace Christian Outreach Ministry Pakistan.
DMMPAKISTAN
gracechristianpakistan@gmail.com
+923044369257 WhatsApp and call
www.dmmpakistan.org