Healthy Skepticism Tests the Spirit of Disciple Making Movements

All of us are aware of the need to consume information discerningly. This is nowhere more important than when we are evaluating sources claiming to represent God’s Word and wisdom. Whether we are reading about topics we know well or new ideas, in every case we must take care.

When a new movement claims to have truth and methodology for missions previously unknown to the church, we should be very wary. Enter the Disciple Making Movement (DMM).

The Need to Test the Spirits

We also need to remember that even the most respected, godly, and knowledgeable thinkers are yet sinners with limited understanding. The Word of God is the standard of truth, not any man. Everything we take in from others must be tested against the words of God’s Spirit. 1 John 4:1 tells us “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.”

Another caution comes from the rest of 1 John 4:1-“for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Many claim they speak for God when they do not. Satan is aggressively seeking to confuse God’s truth. Sometimes he even uses well-intentioned believers who have strayed from the sure anchor of God’s Word.

Miraculous Movements: How Hundreds of Thousands of Muslims are Falling in Love with Jesus by Jerry Trousdale[1] explains and promotes “Disciple Making Movements”. It is a fascinating read on multiple levels but is has to be read very discerningly.

Encouragement from the Disciple Making Movement Emphases

The book encourages us by reminding us of many truths of Scripture. The book is filled with testimonies of how God has used unusual means in recent years in settings where Gospel opportunity is very limited and spiritual darkness extreme. It tells of visions, dreams, healings, and even isolated occasions of the dead being raised, all of which God has used to call Muslims to Himself. It is exciting to read how God did these things to cause people to seek Jesus Christ. No doubt many of these testimonies are true. God can do these things whenever He wants to. Apostolic gifts have ceased, but God can do as He wills. Sometimes we forget this.

Another good reminder we glean is that the Gospel can indeed spread quickly, especially when most believers consider themselves disciple-makers, even among young believers with limited training. God is not bound to use only the most educated and theologically trained to bring His people into the sheepfold. Many do need to be challenged away from a leadership-heavy model of ministry that results in leaders being the primary evangelists. The book is refreshing in this way.

Motivation from a desire to reach the Muslim world

The author does a wonderful job calling attention to the desperate hopelessness that pervades the Islamic world. Islam does not promise final salvation or eternal life. Even the most fervent Muslims are hopeless. The vast majority are moderate in their views but dominated by the minority who advocate violent Islam according to the Koran. Muslims are real people in desperate need for Jesus and usually have extremely limited opportunity to hear the Gospel. When they do hear it, many respond in faith. This urges us to get the Gospel to them.

The movement emphasizes ongoing training for leaders rather than degree achievement before beginning ministry. This is also refreshing to some degree (pun intended), as the West overemphasizes educational achievement while deemphasizing actual biblical qualifications and experience. Training people to obey God’s Word as they read it is the focus of this movement’s training.

The movement gives very serious attention to prayer among new believers and intercession for the forward movement of the Gospel. Reading about these Muslim background believers and their sustained priority on intercessory is so helpful.  

Serious Concerns about Disciple Making Movements

However, red flags went up continually as I read Miraculous Movements. The Disciple Making Movement’s (DMM) philosophy of church planting is oversimplistic, even to the point of seeming naive. There is a definite de-emphasis of sound doctrine as foundational to the effective spread of the Gospel. There is also the temptation to assume that those truly miraculous works of the Lord in some areas should be normative in other contexts.

Their method of evangelism causes concern. The program they advocate facilitates small groups coming together to read the Bible, asking unbelieving participants questions about what they read, and then waiting for God to use His Word to open their eyes. Teaching and explanation of Gospel truth is discouraged. Using this approach may not be wrong, per se, and may be useful at times, but this is definitely not the Gospel proclamation, teaching and reasoning that the NT so clearly illustrates for us. 

Another serious issue is the emphasis on obedience before there is even repentant faith and understanding. Yes, you read that right. The fact that sound doctrine is strongly de-emphasized leads to weird methodologies like these.  

A fundamental weakness of the movement is the use of the ministry of Jesus as our primary example for how to do ministry. Instead of turning to Acts-Revelation to see how the apostles and early church applied Christ’s Great Commission, DMM leads us to questionable ministry practices drawn from trying to imitate Jesus’s ministry methods too closely.  

Personal testimony from Cambodia

I have seen first-hand in Cambodia the absolute failure of the Church Planting Movement’s attempt at rapid multiplication similar to DMM. A whole area of Cambodia has been burned over through mass false professions and de-conversions resulting from this methodology. I will never forget understanding this fall-out not long after I received a copy of a book praising the massive “revival” that had supposedly taken place there in Cambodian through this methodology. I was stunned by what had happened, but even more so by continued talk of revival even after the movement imploded. 

Conclusion about Miraculous Movements (and DMM)

Miraculous Movements is devotionally stimulating and thought-provoking. We need some prodding by this movement. Some of the teaching is of God’s Spirit, clearly. We need urging towards simplicity and reproducibility in our disciplemaking endeavors. God’s people need to be challenged about what God can do. All of us ought to have a longing to see God work in greater measure and brings the most unreached to Jesus Christ.

Many of their methods are questionable at best, some simply unbiblical. Some of its claims, like the necessity of all-out pursuit of rapid multiplication, to the neglect of other key biblical truths, are of another spirit. To put it bluntly, this is a very dangerous movement for God’s people to embrace. I do not recommend this book except for the biblically well-grounded.

Micah Colbert’s four-part series on the DMM movement, A Critical Analysis of Church-Planting / Disciple-Making Movements, is a thorough testing of the spirits.

Better Resources for the Missions-Minded

There are other books that encourage a more rapid expansion of the Gospel that remain consistent with the New Testament. Three classics come to mind:

Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?  by Rolland Allen

The Indigenous Church and the Missionary by Melvin Hodges

The Planting and Development of Missionary Churches by John Nevius

More contemporary books that tackle some of these issues include:

Discovering Church Planting: An Introduction to the Whats, Whys, and Hows of Global Church Planting by J. D. Payne

No Short-cut to Success: A Manifesto for Modern Missions by Matt Rhodes

Paul’s Missionary Methods: In His Time and Ours  by Robert L. Plummer and John Mark Terry

Missions By the Book: How Theology and Missions Walk Together by Chad Vegas and Alex Kocman

Pioneer Missions: Meet the Challenges, Share the Blessings by Forrest McPhail

May God help us all be humble learners while also maintaining vigilance and discipline to test the spirits behind what we consume, especially about new and trendy ideas. As John MacArthur wrote in his study Bible, “Christians are to have a healthy skepticism regarding any teaching.” This includes healthy skepticism about resources for missions.

[1] Trousdale, Jerry (2012). Miraculous Movements: How Hundreds of Thousands of Muslims are Falling in Love with Jesus. Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the ESV® Bible.

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