A Critical Analysis of Church-Planting / Disciple-Making Movements, Pt. 3: Prayer and the Person of Peace

This article is the third in this week’s series on Church-Planting and Disciple-Making Movements. It’s important to note that these movements are not inconsequential. The methods espoused by movement leaders have significantly influenced major missions organizations such as the IMB, Cru, International Students Inc, and a host of others.

 In our first article, we explored the history and core characteristics of these multiplying movements (MMs for shore). In the second article, we analyzed the first main strategy that movement leaders emphasize: disciples who make disciples. In today’s article, we will explore the second and third major strategies of movement workers: prayer and the person of peace.

Prayer

Multiplying movement advocates emphasize the primacy of prayer in the advance of the gospel. As Trousdale states, “Prayer is the starting point and sustainer of dmm.”^[1] Movement practitioners believe that prayer is “God’s chosen means to release His power into the world and advance His Kingdom here.”^[2]

It should come as no surprise that MM leaders place a tremendous emphasis on prayer movements as integral to disciple-making or church planting movements. “You cannot have a Disciple-Making Movement without a prayer movement,” the Watsons state.^[3] A robust personal prayer life, however, is not enough. Gospel workers must also recruit, train, and mobilize rapidly multiplying prayer support networks as well. According to the Watsons, the reason that many traditional missionaries do not experience rapid growth from their gospel labors is due to a lack of large prayer networks: “They [disciple-makers] often have a good personal prayer life. When we did a little deeper, however, we find their prayer network is pretty small—usually a hundred people.”^[4] The Watsons and others offer suggestions and techniques to encourage potential movement practitioners to start prayer movements. 

“He Whispers Your Role in His Plan” through Prayer?

MM advocates believe that prayer is more than one-way communication with God. In prayer, disciple-makers are not only encouraged to bring their requests to God, but also to be still and note how God speaks to them. The Watson’s state: 

“Prayer isn’t about twisting God’s arm to get Him to do what you think He should. It’s about aligning your heart and mind with God’s. Prayer is about spending enough time with God that you see His vision for the city (because it is His city) and His people (and they are all His people, not just the Christians). And as you spend time with God, walking the streets of His city, He whispers your role in His plan for the city. Not all at once, because that would be overwhelming, but little by little.”^[5]

Movement workers frequently share stories of God speaking to them as they take prayer walks for their communities. Disciple-makers are encouraged to remember the insights God gives them as they pray for the spread of a gospel movement in their community. In describing how to take a prayer-walk, the Watsons offer the following suggestions: “Take a notebook. When God tells you something, stop at a bench or in a coffee shop and write it down. You don’t want to forget it.”^[6]

Manufacturing Movements

In a day when many ministries are enamored with pragmatism and performance, the emphasis MM leaders place on prayer is profoundly refreshing. “Prayer permeates Church Planting Movements. Whether it’s the Koreans rising at four in the morning for a two-hour prayer time, or Spanish Gypsies ‘going to the mountain,’ as they call their all-night prayer vigils, Church Planting Movements are steeped in prayer.”^[7]As demonstrated in the book of Acts, the New Testament church was birthed and sustained in an environment of prayer. Church history is filled with examples of prayer preceding great gospel advance or revival. The importance and power of prayer is universally affirmed amongst evangelicals. Sadly, few ministries devote serious time to earnest, faith-filled praying in their gatherings. As Trousdale notes, “Bold prayers are affirmed as a good thing, but in many traditions rarely put to the test in a public gathering.”^[8] If evangelicals truly believe that the Lord uses His Word and the prayers of His people to advance His Kingdom, then we too would follow the example of many MM practitioners and steep our work in prayer.

As the Watsons rightly note, prayer is not twisting God’s arm to do something. Nevertheless, the Watsons and others seem to imply that disciple-making movements will inevitably follow if disciple-makers apply their strategies, and enough people pray for their success. These advocates embrace the same theological errors of revivalism that marked the ministries of preachers like Charles Finney and others during the Second Great Awakening. ^[9] If the right methods, practices, and techniques are used, a movement or revival can be manufactured. As a result of this mindset, ministry leaders overemphasize the role of man and underappreciate the sovereign movement of the Spirit in the gospel’s advance. 

Engagement

Once workers committed to disciple-making have built a large prayer network, they are now ready to engage with the community that they are seeking to reach for Christ. Before launching right away into ministry, disciple-makers are encouraged to first gain a working understanding of the culture and its worldview so that they can develop contextually appropriate strategies for church planting. “It is the structure of the community that determines the kind of church to be planted and the tactics to be used to reach the community… Churches grow from the soil of culture where the seed of the Gospel is planted” the Watsons state.^[10] As understanding grows and relationships are built, MM workers seek to take advantage of “silos,” or natural affinity networks, to introduce the gospel to families and communities. Instead of merely targeting individuals, movement workers aim for the conversion of affinity groups where the gospel can rapidly spread. 

Moving Beyond the Individual

MM leaders rightly point out the potential danger and loss of gospel opportunities that “extraction evangelism” methods create in a community. Sadly, many evangelical missionaries are so focused on reaching the individual that they neglect to seriously engage with the larger affinity group or silo that the individual inhabits. “We must see individuals as doorways to families, families as gateways to silos, and silos as highways to nations… We must not contribute to strategies that intentionally fracture families or alienate communities from future encounters with Christ.”^[11] Cross-cultural gospel workers need to give more earnest thought about how best to establish a gospel presence in the community. The gospel will at times divide families (Luke 12:49-56), but the strategies disciple-makers employ should not unnecessarily bring about such division.

As Kelbe points out, “Disciple-making movements have reminded us to remove any unbiblical barriers to the Gospel by focusing on affinity groups where the Bible spreads most naturally in communalistic cultures, as well as by employing less confrontational evangelistic methods such as evangelistic Bible studies where the Word can work by the power of the Spirit prior to the commitment of entering the visible church.”^[12]

Person of Peace

he teachers of the popular Four Fields Discipleship training ask, “What’s the best way to present a radically different message to a people with an established worldview, methods of decision-making, and social structures? Answering this question means transitioning from the efforts of an outsider to mobilization of local believers as the laborers in harvest.”^[13] MM advocates believe that the first step that disciple-makers need to take in order to mobilize indigenous believers for gospel ministry is to identify, train, and then minister through a “Person of Peace” (POP). 

A POP is a spiritually interested person who serves as a gateway to reach families, silos, and/or entire communities for Christ. This person is an unbeliever who responds positively to the disciple-maker and his message. The POP becomes a channel of evangelism to his network of relationships and eventually comes to saving faith.^[14] The concept of a POP is taken from Christ’s instructions to His disciples on their first missionary journey to the surrounding villages of Jerusalem (Matthew 10:1-16; Luke 10:1-20). Commenting on these passages, the Shanks note, “Jesus didn’t send His outsiders to become insiders; rather, He sent them to seek out locals whom the Spirit had prepared to receive the message. In this way after its initial acceptance, within the house of peace, the spread of the gospel carried the potential to become a movement driven by local believers.”^[15]

The Single Most Important Thing?

Identifying the person of peace is considered by some the single most important thing a disciple-maker needs to do to launch a multiplying movement. Finding this person is not an option; it’s a matter of obedience to Christ. The Watsons state, “In the Great Commission Jesus commanded us to ‘go.’ What do we do when we get to where we are going? We find the Person of Peace.”^[16] Garrison notes, “Finding God’s receptive person of peace was more than a pragmatic way of avoiding persecution; it was a demonstration of obedience to the teachings and patterns modeled by Jesus.”^[17]

MM leaders believe that God’s Spirit has prepared a POP in every society.^[18] According to the Watsons, the key to finding this individual is to live out our faith as conspicuously as possible.^[19] As disciple-makers live out their faith, the person of peace will welcome them, listen to their message, provide for their needs, and allow them to influence their families and communities for Christ (see Matthew 10:11-13 and Luke 10:5-7). 

Evaluation: A Faulty Hermeneutic

The entire person of peace doctrine is built on a faulty hermeneutic and theology. Movement advocates frequently confuse descriptive and prescriptive texts. Prescriptive texts provide timeless instruction, commands, or rules for God’s people to follow. These texts are not time-bound, but universal in their application to God’s people. The commands of the New Testament epistles are examples of prescriptive texts. Descriptive texts, on the other hand, simply describe what that took place in the Biblical narrative. The commands or instructions in such texts are not universal mandates that directly apply to the church today. Christ’s instructions to His disciples on their first missionary journey in Matthew 10 and Luke 10 are examples of descriptive passages. The gospel writers simply relay what took place. In these accounts, Christ gave specific instructions to His disciples for the unique mission that He was sending them on. While on this mission, they were told not to minister to the Gentiles, but to the people of Israel. They were to perform miracles, acquire no physical possessions, and leave town if the people did not receive their message. 

It is interesting to note that Movement advocates do not apply these commands to their ministry paradigm. They insist on following some of Christ’s instructions to His disciples in Matthew and Luke 10 while ignoring other commands that don’t fit their scheme. If they truly believe that Christ’s instructions to the 70 were prescriptive, then they would insist that movement workers perform miracles, acquire no possessions, and minister exclusively to Jewish people. 

Helpful Pushback Within the Movement

Thankfully, some have pushed back against the person of peace emphasis promoted by movement practitioners. For example, Ken Guenther of SEND International states, “In my observations of missions teams that have adopted a DMM strategy, I do not see the same strong emphasis on the absolute necessity of finding a ‘person of peace.’”^[20] Nevertheless, the POP teaching remains strong in most MM circles and has contributed to an unhealthy obsession with finding “the one” through whom the gospel can advance to the community. 

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^[1] Trousdale, Miraculous Movements: How Thousands of Muslims Are Falling in Love with Jesus (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012), 54.

^[2] 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), 192.

^[3] David Watson and Paul Watson, Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Faith (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2014), 90.

^[4] Watson and Watson, 90-91.  

^[5] Watson and Watson, 84.

^[6] Watson and Watson, 99.

^[7] Garrison, Church Planting Movements: How God Is Redeeming a Lost World (Midlothian, VA: WIGTake Resources, 2004), 172-173.

^[8] Trousdale and Sunshine, The Kingdom Unleashed.

^[9] For an excellent analysis of the theological and historical differences between true revival and manufactured revivalism, see Iain Murray, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism 1750-1858 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994).

^[10] Watson and Watson, Contagious Disciple Making, 32, 37.

^[11] Watson and Watson, 110.

^[12] Kelbe, “Disciple-Making Movements.”

^[13] Nathan Shank and Kari Shank, “Four Fields of Kingdom Growth: Starting and Releasing Healthy Churches,” 2014, https://noplaceleft.net/four-fields/.

^[14] Steve Smith and Ying Kai, T4T: A Discipleship ReRevolution (Monument: WIGTake Resources, 2011), 76.

^[15] Shank and Shank, “Four Fields of Kingdom Growth.”

^[16] Watson and Watson, Contagious Disciple Making, 127.

^[17] Garrison, Church Planting Movements, 213.

^[18] Smith and Kai, T4T, 76.

^[19] Watson and Watson, Contagious Disciple Making, 124-125.

^[20] Ken Guenther, “Response to Radius International’s Criticism of Disciple Making Movements (DMM),” Brigada Today (blog), September 23, 2018, https://brigada.org/2018/09/23_24666, 4.