Tracing the Roots of Disciple Making Movements By Steve Hoke The recent visibility of the Church Planting Movements approach to rapid and widespread new church planting has many interested in knowing more about where the original ideas came from, how they developed, and how the different branches have grown. This short history describes the key thinkers and practitioners who have contributed to the present philosophy of ministry.

Early Origins—Historical Roots Former missionary to India, Donald McGavran, became known for His Eirst book, Bridges of God (1954), founding the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1966, and his landmark book, Understanding Church Growth (1971). In Bridges he very simply described the organic extension of the early church in the book of Acts as it followed relational links or bridges within a culture and the parallels he observed in mid-1950s India. His magnum opus, Understanding Church Growth, was perhaps the most inEluential and important missiological text of the latter half of the 20th century. In it, McGavran outlined both the biblical principles and the sociological patterns he had observed in India and Africa of rapidly growing churches. McGavran was inEluenced by both Roland Allen and J. Waskam Pickett. Roland Allen had asked similar questions in his book, Missionary Methods—St. Paul's or Ours? (1962) and Pickett had undertaken extensive research in India tracing the factors inEluencing mass movements to Christ. In 1933, Pickett published Christian Mass Movements in India which chronicled and examined the growth of the church in India. Principles described by Pickett in that work became the basis for McGavran’s later work. McGavran often said, "I lit my Eire at Pickett's candle.” McGavran insisted that effective cross-cultural ministry must focus on ethno-linguistic “people groups” rather than political nations or geographic regions. His initial research and writings were also popularized in the 1970s by C. Peter Wagner and many of his missionary students in what became known as the Church Growth Movement. Ralph D. Winter, a former Presbyterian missionary to Guatemala and then professor at the Fuller School of World Mission in Pasadena, CA, presented a landmark paper at the July

1974 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in which he introduced the concept of hidden or “unreached peoples groups.” Drawing on McGavran’s emphasis on “people groups,” Winter strongly urged the 3700 participants to refocus mission strategies on the yet unreached peoples of the world, rather than continuing to send missionaries to areas of the world that had been contacted and “reached,” although not necessarily fully evangelized. Thus began a sea-change in missions strategy, as countless agencies, starting in the late 70s, began to explore what focusing on “Unreached Peoples Groups” (UPG) meant, often in the countries in which they had been ministering for decades. Then in 1976, George Patterson formulated his missionary observations of spontaneous church multiplication in a self-published book, Obedience-Oriented Education based on his experiences since the late 1950s as a missionary in Guatemala with the Conservative Baptists (CBFMS).

A New Emphasis in the 1980s Thom Wolf, of The Church on Brady in Los Angeles, CA, started writing for the Church Growth Bulletin in the mid-70s. Thom had been reading Roland Allen and Donald McGavran and wanted to share his initial Eindings with his church and missionary colleagues. His initial articles were on Einding the “person of peace” and working through their “oikos” or relational networks. Several of the Eirst International Mission Board (IMB) “non-residential missionaries” or what became known as “Strategy Coordinators” dropped by the church in the 1980s to consult with Thom. Kent Parks, Garrett Baldridge, Curtis Sergeant, Steve Smith, and David Watson, working collaboratively with several others, went on to design these non-residential roles for people who would oversee missionaries working among unreached peoples in regions of world. IMB missionary and journalist V. David Garrison published his Eirst book, The Non- Residential Missionary in 1990 which included much of the thinking of this collaborative group. He urged the formation of wider partnerships with strategic purpose with room to experiment and fail with new approaches. By the mid-80s George and Thom were talking about how these patterns and principles could be replicated in areas of the world other than Latin America. Thom was also discussion with James Montgomery of DAWN. During the late 80s and 90s, a group of some 40 practitioners would meet every several years in Singapore to compare notes and learn from each other. This group included Garrison, Smith, Waters, Watson, and others. In 2004 Garrison published his second book, Church Planting Movements, building on what he had learned from McGavran and Wolfe, telling stories of what was beginning to happen among church planting movements (CPM’s) on the Eield, and tracing the initial people movements to Christ he had witnessed in India through CSI.

The Trunk Grows in the 1990s

A considerable amount of traction for implementing CPMs began to occur in the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (IMB). Kent Parks, formerly of the IMB from 1980-1992 (and now president of Mission to Unreached People), began to help focus the efforts of the IMB on unreached people groups and was helpful in collating the thinking of various practitioners who were effective in moving into these groups. By the early 90s Kent also became an advocate of the CPM approach. Simultaneously, Stan Parks (no relation to Kent), an independent missionary working out of Singapore, also began espousing CPM as the most fruitful model for missionaries to use… In 1993-2000 Jerry Rankin joined the IMB as president and brought with him a renewed “harvest Eield” mentality. He strongly urged that all IMB efforts move toward utilizing the CPM approach among unreached peoples of the world. This strategy completely refocused the efforts of many IMB missionaries working around the world... Obviously there was mixed reaction in every region, having to do with the changes in paradigms and methods shifting to this kind of harvest mentality would necessitate. Also in the 1990s, researchers began tracking the growth of various movements in the majority world, working to measure both quantitative and qualitative CPM data. David Watson who had served as an IMB missionary in East Asia during the 1980s and 90s, had focused his interests on language groups in India. In a CPM in India, a group of leaders was martyred. This catastrophic event threw him into a period of depression in which he waited on the Lord, examined Scripture, and spent long hours over many months in prayer, asking the Spirit to reveal faults from the past and to unlock principles for the future. In his study he became newly convinced of the importance of Einding the “person of peace” in each village and region entered – based on Luke 9, 10, Matthew 10, and Mark 6 – which he felt was a key to opening a people group to the gospel. He began to teach: Eind the person of peace, and stay to make disciples among those people. Watson further focused on maximizing a small group discovery process or what he called “Discovery Bible Study (DBS) groups,” borrowing many of the basic questions from John DeVries and others. He observed that the most rapid and penetrating growth resulted from reproducing groups of disciple makers who would in turn reproduce new groups of disciple makers. There was also speciEic accountability in the DBS groups. Each week participants would leave with very speciEic words from Scripture to obey, and they would return to tell and report the next week how they attempted to fulEill what was expected from those passages. From the beginning, outsiders were not to take any visible leadership, but to be mentors and coaches behind the scenes. This allowed the leadership of a DBS, from the start, to be facilitated by local seekers.

He found this simple pattern to be quite radical but essential in catalyzing new vitality and growth within the group. The Word of God and the Spirit of God were all that were needed. This way of discipleship, though slower initially, had the potential for exponential multiplication and would be more sustainable than traditional methods of planting new churches. Also, when beginning with entirely non-believers, the leader development process seems to be more seamless. Watson focused on accountability, and continually asking two questions: 1) Who are you discipling? and 2) Who are they discipling and how are they doing?

Branches Grow in the 2000’s Steve Smith was a veteran IMB missionary with extensive experience in church-planting movements in East Asia. For the past decade, he has trained missionaries from around the world in church-planting movement best practices. In 2011 he co-authored the T4T: A Discipleship Revolution with his IMB co-worker Ying Kai. Ying Kai had been at the center of a fast growing church-planting movement. It may be helpful to point out that the T4T developed in one of the most densely populated areas of the world. At its core, Steve Smith’s overall strategy appears to be the similar to that employed by David Watson. Many of the same principles are stressed, and like Watson, discipleship is obedience-based and not knowledge-based. Both approaches emphasize accountability, and gospeling among one's oikos (although Watson does this differently). They develop simple churches where everyone is engaged in disciple making and responsiveness to the Word is central. The T4T approach assumes all the functions of the church in each group as well as living within God's Kingdom vision for a lost world. Transformation of a society comes as disciples obedient to Jesus's presence in the Spirit through the Word saturate a city, a nation, a continent and world. As with Watson, Steve Smith's approach is being applied in both non-Western and Western contexts with good results. A distinctive of T4T is the three-thirds process for groups that allows both church and leadership to arise and be distinguished by fruitfulness (disciplemaking and Word obedience). The T4T approach also provides numerous vision casting tools to engage existing evangelical churches in the process. While Watson's approach developed earlier in the development of church-planting movements, Smith's is a more recent iteration of the same basic concepts. Both approaches have their strengths. Steve Smith has recently pulled together an urban practitioners user’s group and some movements seemed to have leap-frogged from the rural setting to the urban arena. Proponents of T4T believe the process works well in either setting.

David Watson, CityTeam and New Generations In 2005, David Watson joined CityTeam in San Jose, CA and gave leadership to a new CPM training effort by that agency called New Generations. From that platform, Watson and his team have steadily been training and inEluencing a plethora of other missionaries and agencies worldwide to adopt CPM as a primary ministry philosophy and strategy. Some

observe that Watson’s approach is distinct in its initial focus on Einding the “person of peace” and facilitating the formation of DBS groups from behind-the-scenes, with the missionary never directly involved in leading a group. Through these efforts, Watson and his team calculate from 2005 to the present that 37 identiEiable church planting movements have been launched resulting in 100,000 new churches made up of approximately 5 million new disciples of Jesus. In 2011, Watson and others from agencies aligned with CityTeam and their DBS approach to CPM relabeled their effort as Disciple Making Movements (DMM). This nomenclature shift was due to several factors. First, the terms “church” and “church planting” carried unnecessary negative baggage – particularly in the West – which impeded their progress. Secondly, there was the conviction that DMM was a more accurate description of the philosophy of ministry and that out of these movements of multiplying disciples, new churches inevitably emerged.

Observation and Comments: CPM’s continues to be a compelling issue that challenges missionaries imbedded in cultures around the world. One issue that most practitioners have faced is the opposition they (CPM workers) receive from colleagues who do not see or realize a movement generated from their efforts. Every missionary who has participated in an actual CPM has had to overcome criticism from fellow workers who have not experienced similar fruit. Some inevitably leave their agency to continue working with CPM’s independently. One trainer observed: “Critics, not seeing such fruit justify their lack by Einding fault with one who does. It's in all agencies that I know of that have experienced CPM’s. It is easy to Eind fault with a new movement because there are always errors, as in the New Testament, and it's a huge temptation to cast stones.” Most of the impact of CPMs has admittedly been in India, China and sub-Saharan Africa which is understandable in light of the history among unreached people groups. The impact and applicability of the strategy in the post-Christian West is just now being tested as agencies such as CRM and others who are committed to such contexts pioneer DMM implementation. Although not yet proven, they have a growing conviction that DMM strategy and philosophy of ministry, astutely adapted, may hold the key to re-winning the West as it sinks further into secularism and post-modernity. Missiologists and Eield leaders all agree that the CPM and DMM phenomenon needs ongoing and serious research on the part of mission leaders. One trainer commented: “I think the discussion around how to launch CPM’s is one of the most critical deployment and strategic issues in today’s missions. It is far more common than our seminary mission professors in general are aware, and needs attention. Workers from institutional churches must acknowledge that some of their practices will not Eit a pioneer Eield, and they must be liberated from them. “

Selected Resources: Bruce Carlton and E. Coye Still. Strategy Coordinator: Changing the Course of Southern Baptist Missions. Regnum Studies in Mission. May 2011.
 V. David Garrison. The Nonresidential Missionary: Innovations in Mission. MARC, 1990. _____. Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World. WIGTake Resources, Arkadelphia, AR. 2004. Steve Smith with Ying Kai. T4T:A Discipleship Re-Revolution. Monument, CO.: WIGTake Resources, 2011. www.skp@sr-21 David Watson. Numerous articles and blogs are available on the website: www.comtr.org and www.reachingtheonlinegeneration.com and www.newgenrationsintl.org Steve Hoke, CRM. 10.20.12 This paper was researched through personal conversations missionaries and CPM practitioners in Asia, Europe and North America. It is not intended to be an academic historical analysis., but rather to serve as a practical historical introduction to the roots of the current exploding phenomenon of CPM around the world. Please send any feedback or comments to [email protected]