“There is no new thing under the sun,” the Preacher tersely stated (Ecclesiastes 1:9). However, between 1997-1998, missionaries David Garrison and David Watson began to speak of “something new” God was doing in the world through a ministry paradigm shift that would eventually become known as a Church Planting Movement. According to Jerry Trousdale, “Over the last 50 years, and especially since the turn of the 21^st century, the Spirit of God has been birthing a new concept in the earth. Instead of addition, the Spirit of God is calling forth multiplication. The outcomes of these phenomena are called by different names including Disciple-Making Movements, Church-Planting Movements, T4T, or Four Fields.”^[1]

According to its practitioners, the results of these new movements are nothing short of miraculous. David Watson claims that he has seen more than 2.5 million baptisms and 500,000 new churches started over the past twenty-three years since he began embracing the movement model of disciple-making ministry.^[2] Jerry Trousdale asserts that hundreds of thousands of previously unreached Muslims have been coming to Christ “in a flood” as a result of the evangelistic methods employed these movements.^[3] David Garrison suggest that movements might be the “last wave” in the fulfillment of the Great Commission.^[4] “If we want to be on mission with God and not simply pursuing our own agenda, then we must turn our attention to how he is using Church Planting Movements to bring entire people groups to himself,” he boldly asserts.^[5]

How should Christians respond to such staggering claims? Are these movements truly producing the fruit that they claim to be producing? Are unbelievers converting to Christ “in waves” through these movements, or is something else happening that might in the long run hinder the cause of missions amongst the nations?

Should we abandon the traditional models of gospel ministry that have been used by churches for hundreds of years and embrace this new paradigm of Great Commission ministry? Many large, well-known missions agencies and campus outreach organizations have. After all, shouldn’t we want to be in sync with what the Lord is doing to advance His kingdom?

In short, what should Christians make of Church Planting and Disciple-Making Movements?

This week, I will be posting a three-part blog series that will evaluate the theology, methods, and practices that are integral to Church-Planting and Disciple-Making Movements. The core tenants of these movements will be identified, explained, and critiqued from a Biblical perspective. 

Defining The Movements

Church-Planting Movements and Disciple-Making Movements are distinct but interrelated terms that have clear definitions and specific characteristics. Initially, these movements were simply referred to as Church Planting Movements (CPMs). David Garrison was the first to coin this term in his booklet “Something New Under the Sun.”^[6]Garrison argued for a new direction and other sweeping reforms in the International Mission Board (the primary mission agency of the Southern Baptist Convention) based on an evangelistic movement that he was witnessing while ministering in Asia.^[7] 

Garrison and others claimed that these movements were born out of a rediscovery of the ministry model Jesus and His disciples used to advance the gospel in the New Testament era. In 2004, Garrison organized his observations and wrote his seminal work, “Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World.” In this book, Garrison articulated the core beliefs, ideas, strategies, and practices that characterize both Church Planting and Disciple-Making Movements. Garrison argued that CPMs were “the most effective means in the world today for lost drawing millions into saving, disciple-building relationships with Jesus Christ. That might appear to be an ambition claim, but it is an accurate one, and an honest description of how God is winning a lost world.”^[8]

Initially, a CPM was defined as “a rapid multiplication of indigenous churches planting churches that sweeps through a people group or population segment.”^[9] Over time, a more detailed definition emerged based on conversations with other movement practitioners like David and Paul Watson. A CPM eventually became known as “an indigenously led Gospel-planting and obedience-based discipleship process that resulted in a minimum of one hundred new locally initiated and led churches, four generations deep, within three years.”^[10]

As more ministry leaders because aware of CPMs, concerns were raised that gradually led movement leaders to adopt the term Disciple-Making Movement (DMM) to describe the role God’s people play in the fulfilment of the Great Commission. They argued for a cause-and-effect relationship between CPMs and DMMs. Jerry Trousdale defined a DMM as follows: 

“In a nutshell, Disciple Making Movements spread the gospel by making disciples who make disciples who learn to obey the Word of God and quickly make other disciples, who repeat the process. This results in many new churches being planted, frequently in regions that were previously very hostile to Christianity. All the principles that we are seeking at work are clearly outline—indeed commanded—in the pages of Scripture.”^[11]

Cause and Effect

Movement practitioners like David and Paul Watson explain the cause-and-effect relationship between DMMs and CPMs: 

As believers obey Christ, they are to train men and women to be Contagious Disciple-Makers who pray, engage lost communities, find Persons of Peace (the ones God has prepared to receive the Gospel in a community for the first time), help them discover Jesus through Discovery Groups (an inductive group Bible study designed to take people from not knowing Christ to falling in love with Him), baptize new believers, help them become communities of faith called church, and mentor emerging leaders. All of these very intentional activities catalyze Disciple-Making Movements. Jesus works through His people as they obey His Word, a Disciple-Making Movement becomes a Church-Planting Movement, and Jesus gets the glory for everything… In our experience, a CPM is the result of obedience-based discipleship that sees disciples reproducing disciples, leaders reproducing leaders, and churches reproducing churches—in other words, a Disciple-Making Movement.^[12]

For the sake of clarity, these movements will simply be linked together and identified as Multiplying Movements (MMs) for the remainder of this series. 

Core Characteristics of a Multiplying Movement

At the core of these movements is a vision for gospel ministry that rapidly reproduces wherever it takes root. The goal in MMs is to see explosive growth that leads to the fulfillment of the Great Commission in one generation.^[13]Robert Kelbe states, “Like a spontaneous chemical reaction, disciple-making movements hope to ignite a cascading chain reaction of disciple-makers that leads to explosive growth compared to slow-moving, traditional church-planting methods.”^[14]

Movements are Rapid

Rapid growth is built into the core values of each church plant in a MM.^[15] Within months, newly planted churches are encouraged to start new churches that follow the same pattern of rapid reproduction. Garrison states, ‘“How rapid is rapid,’ you may ask. Perhaps the best answer is, ‘Faster than you think possible.’ Though the rate varies from place to place, Church Planting Movements always outstrip population growth rates as they race towards the entire people group.”^[16] 

Many movement advocates point to the explosive growth of the early church in the book of Acts as the normative pattern that churches today should seek to replicate and follow. They eschew traditional models of church planting or theological training that are time-intensive and slow down rapid growth. Slow growth and patient plodding are seen as antithetical to the urgency of the missionary task. Garrison says, “Some missionaries insist on taking time to ‘lay a good foundation’ with a small group, rather than sowing the gospel widely and expecting a Church Planting Movement. In fact, slow sowing and slow harvesting communicate to the hearer that the message isn’t urgent so why bother responding to it?” ^[17]

There has been pushback from some key practitioners on Garrison’s emphasis on breakneck speed. David and Paul Watson, for example, believe that disciple-makers should be prepared to invest a great deal of initial time and energy investing in key leaders so that movements can multiply. They argue that growth is not necessarily quick, but exponential due to the emphasis on replication and leadership development. “Nothing is quick. It only appears to be because more and more leaders are produced in obedience to Christ’s command to go make disciples of all nations…So, in a DMM, rapid multiplication really isn’t rapid. We go slowly but appear to go fast. We invest extensively in one person to reach and train many.”^[18] Regardless of how practitioners define it, speed is an essential component of movements. 

Movements are Reproducible

For something to be classified as a MM, it must not only be rapid but also reproducible. “If you want to see reproducing churches planted, then you must set out to plant reproducing churches,” says Garrison.^[19] MM leaders believe that “institutional” churches are too large and complex to reproduce in other contexts. Churches must be planted as simply as possible so that local leaders can take ownership of the gospel’s advance in their context. MM teachers like Trousdale argue that movements must be “scalable and replicable by indigenous believers” for the gospel to take root and flourish in a foreign context.^[20] This emphasis on indigeneity from the very beginning liberates movements from unhealthy dependence upon foreign missionaries or financial aid for their success. As Addison notes, “Movements don’t spread if paid professionals are solely responsible for the work of missions. The movement Jesus started grew rapidly through the efforts of ordinary people.”^[21]  

The goal of rapid reproduction and indigenous ownership of ministry is noble. However, it appears that their passion for these outcomes has clouded the perspective of many movement practitioners on the rich history, theology, and biblical practices of churches through the centuries. The Watsons, for example, boldly declare, “Approaches promoted by branded Christian institutions for accomplishing the Great Commission have not succeeded in sixteen hundred years or in the years since the Protestant Reformation began in 1517.”^[22]  

Instead of offering their approach as a way of doing ministry, many practitioners elevate their paradigm as the God-ordained way of ministry that was somehow lost in church history but now recovered by today’s movement leaders. As will be seen later in this series, the emphasis on rapid reproduction has led movement practitioners to either downplay, diminish, or outright dismiss models of ministry that are teacher-centric, proclamational, or “branded” / denominational.

Moving Forward

In our next two articles, we will explore and evaluate the strategies essential for multiplying movements. As we do so, my prayer is that we will become increasingly convinced that there are no shortcuts to doing the Lord’s work the Lord’s way.

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^[1] Jerry Trousdale and Glenn Sunshine, The Kingdom Unleashed: How Jesus’ 1st-Century Values Are Transforming Thousands of Cultures and Awakening His Church (Murfreesboro, TN: DMM Library, 2018), 27.

^[2] Joseph Wilson, “Disciple-Making Movements, with David Watson,” Fuse Life, accessed November 2, 2021, https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/fuse-life/86-disciple-making-movements-psXqiACtuNj.

^[3] Jerry Trousdale, Miraculous Movements: How Thousands of Muslims Are Falling in Love with Jesus (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012), 19-26.

^[4] David Garrison, “Church Planting Movements: The Next Wave?” International Journal of Frontier Missions 21, no. 3 (2004), 121.

^[5] David Garrison, Church Planting Movements: How God Is Redeeming a Lost World (Midlothian, VA: WIGTake Resources, 2004), 27.

^[6] This booklet was originally published in 1999 by the International Mission Board. The booklet is no longer in print today. 

^[7] Wendy Handy, “Correlating the Nevius Method with Church Planting Planting Movements: Early Korean Revivals as a Case Study,” Eleutheria 2, no. 1 (2012), 4.

^[8] David Garrison, Church Planting Movements: How God Is Redeeming a Lost World (Midlothian, VA: WIGTake Resources, 2004), 28.

^[9] Garrison, 28.

^[10] David Watson and Paul Watson, Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Faith (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2014), 4.

^[11] Trousdale, Miraculous Movements, 46.

^[12] Watson and Watson, 5-6.

^[13] Steve Addison, The Rise and Fall of Movements: A Roadmap for Leaders (100Movements Publishing, 2019), 34.

^[14] Robert Kelbe, “Disciple-Making Movements,” Gentle Reformation (blog), June 29, 2021, https://gentlereformation.com/2021/06/29/disciple-making-movements.

^[15] Garrison, Church Planting Movements, 195.

^[16] Garrison. 21-22.

^[17] Garrison, 244.

^[18] Watson and Watson, Contagious Disciple Making, 7.

^[19] Garrison, Church Planting Movements, 181.

^[20] Trousdale and Sunshine, The Kingdom Unleashed, 132.

^[21] Addison, The Rise and Fall of Movements, 55.

^[22] Watson and Watson, Contagious Disciple Making, 25.