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Contrasts Between Disciple Making Movements and Most Traditional Church-Planting Approaches

a simple overview, not in any particular order

by Jim Yost; edited and annotated by TW;
many points are addressed at length in David and Paul Watson's Contagious Disciple Making

0. No Place Left versus Legacy Vision

[Chris Galanos:] Rather than transplanting existing institutions through legacy methods, Jesus commands every people group’s total evangelization (Matt 24:14). This begs a ‘WIGTake’ question for realizing a God-sized ‘end-vision’ within a generation (cf. Matt 24:34).

  • Steve Addison: Movements proceed from identity (God's Word, Holy Spirit, mission) to strategies to methods. Vision helps determine next steps, resists tactics that don't multiply/scale, and demands cooperation. Legacy institutions canonize methods, decline.
  • A clear vision attracts the right strategy; without it, no strategy will succeed.
  • God-given vision is more compelling than defending a strategy, and protects from traditional church drift (cf. John 21:1–19).
  • This lends a sense of urgency, drives us to prayer, makes our strategy obvious and thus less controversial, and exposes movement strategy as the only viable option.

1. Invitation versus Presumption

Entering a community or social network depends on the invitation of an influential insider ("Person of Peace"), not the presumption that we are welcome and what we offer is wanted.

  • A 'person' or 'son of peace' is Open, Hungry, and Sharing.
  • A person of peace perceives the 'church-planter' (the one sent) to have something different that adds value which is of a spiritual character. PoPs have been gang leaders, drug dealers, office employees, brothel owners, parents—anyone.

2. Local versus External Leadership

Establishment of a church depends on leadership that is natural to the community (insiders) even if the external leaders (outsiders) know more.

  • Luke 10:2's prayer is for the Lord to 'cast out' workers, i.e., insiders, into the harvest.
  • From the beginning, identify an insider leader and ask, "Would you help me next week?" Let leaders emerge naturally according to their social context. (A leader is in back at meetings, identifying and raising new leaders.)
  • It's hard to predict who will be an emerging leader, but not-yet-believers are more open and have fewer assumptions about Christianity to unlearn.

3. Discovery versus Teaching

The fundamental process of learning from scripture comes through personal (or group) discovery, not instruction.

  • Corporate discovery is not top-down with strong leaders, but participatory observation of what the text says, means, and matters.
  • Heresy and cultishness come from strong personalities, inward orientation, and high power differentials. Countering bad interpretations by going back to scripture models a more reliable discipline than leaders' experiences and opinions.
  • 'Teaching' outside information (even background) brings a power dynamic that stops multiplication. Strong teachers monopolize, but God can speak to and through anyone. Discussion must stay in the passage. Let the apostles and prophets be the strong teachers.

4. Obedience versus Knowledge

The goal of all interaction with God's Word is rapid obedience, not just acquiring knowledge.

  • "Command and teach" (1 Tim 4:11). Christian tradition has separated these; 'training' implies obedience whereas 'teaching' doesn't. "Delayed obedience is Satan's best tactic." So train people to learn a little and obey it right away, moving ASAP to a transformed life in living relationship with God. Secular universities are better soil than Christian ones: non-Christians often obey more quickly, while Christian culture delays obedience.

5. Catalyst versus Implementer

The role of the church planter is to coach the local leader to launch the church (quickly, even before full belief), not do it himself or herself.

  • Polished and professional church worship services are restaurants; discovery groups are cooking schools in home kitchens.
  • Train broadly like the parable's sower, but invest in the few who give it away.

6. Multiple versus Single Generation Design

Multiplication is normal and necessary for a church to be considered successful.

  • Don't reduce audiences to mere objects of mission; God calls and equips them to be subjects of mission. Full inclusion builds them up to full maturity while removing bottlenecks that constrict growth. Disciples make disciples; groups make groups; churches make churches; leaders make leaders; movements make movements.
  • Multiplication over four generations (2 Timothy 2:2) signals sustainability.

7. Local versus Outside Culture

The emerging church is allowed to have whatever cultural flavor is natural to the community (as long as it doesn't violate the Word of God) without the imposition of any non-essentials from other cultures.

  • Church-planters should highlight cultural factors as they arise so they're appreciated and considered entrepreneurially. Show people that these are new wineskins; new is the norm.
  • Surrender old-wineskin-assumptions as church-planting vision and methods expose them.

8. Self-Supporting versus Subsidized

No outside support for ongoing cost is provided.

  • The insiders 'pay' the church-planter for the ministry, because they see it's valuable. That fosters strength, transformation, and sustainability rather than dependency.

9. Unbranded versus Branded

No attempt is made to have a discovery group or newly planted church align with any group for the purpose of identity or control.

  • The church-planter doesn't promote his or her denominational or even social identity. All seekers are welcome. Even the label 'Christian' is sociological, with baggage and assumptions in insiders' minds. ('Christians' weren't self-named anyway; they were just followers of Jesus' way.) Yost even performs insiders' (Muslim) weddings.
  • It's best to keep these groups hidden as long as possible, uncontaminated by traditional-cultural-church Christianity which stops multiplication.

10. Active versus Passive Involvement

Discourage anyone from just sitting and listening. Personal discovery, personal obedience, personal reproduction, group participation and group correction ("where do you see that in the passage?") are the norm.

  • All must try to be active. The passive self-select out. God may prepare them to follow later on, but not yet.

11. Group Process versus One-to-Many

Church functions within an interactive group where leaders facilitate full participation rather than others supporting a single dominant leader.

  • Facilitating discovery groups rotates, exposing participants to initiative and leadership.
  • A leader can summarize at the end. (The pastor's message at a DMM 'hub' church in Australia shares what its discovery groups discovered in the previous week's DBSs.)
  • The Spirit's gifts, as well as APEST (Ephesians 4:11), are for building up all to maturity rather than just shepherds dispensing Word and/or sacraments.

12. Starting Embryonic Churches versus Starting Groups that Evolve

All the DNA of 'church' is included in the formation of small groups, not added in increments over time.

  • Acts 2:36–47 shows a maturing but full 'church circle' of the elements of full church life.
  • Do church for not-yet-believers and let it develop in contextually appropriate forms.

13. Immediate versus Delayed Leader Development

Locals immediately own the church planting process and leaders are regularly coached on a "just in time" and "on the job" basis to grow.

  • 'Failures' learn to succeed through incremental successes.
  • Leaders release authority as they grow into their own in "duckling discipleship."
  • A share of leaders at each level is gifted to leadership within generational networks.

14. Simple versus Complex Process

Inside leaders keep church planting processes reproducible.

  • Too much complexity can't multiply, so "simplify something today."
  • Share tools (3-3 DBS, three circles, four fields, church circle, MAWL) widely ASAP.

15. Local Learning Style versus Outsiders' Preference

Accommodate the primary learning style of the local people (often oral learning/stories), not an outsider's preference.

  • Many even in the developed west learn through narrative, rap, etc. (Lecrae sends out rappers internationally and produced raps of all the New Testament books.)

16. Start at the Beginning versus Start in the Middle

A context for God and his relationship with people starts with Creation and crescendos with Christ.

  • Muslims respond well to the OT before the NT. Hindus' focus is where power/gods come from. Buddhists: John 1, or Job. (Secularists: Finding meaning? Israel's exilic renewal? aesthetics?)

17. Mutual versus One Way Accountability

Mutual accountability within the group takes the place of one-way accountability to a leader or no accountability at all.

  • North American societies resist accountability, but people realize they need it, and mutual peer accountability avoids power issues (e.g., Twelve Step AA).

18. Informal versus Formal Locations

Newly planted churches don't need a building for meetings.

  • Gatherings feel real rather than churchy or 'religious.' Community is purposeful, not just for its own sake. Cell churches stagnate if they become support groups and stop reaching out. Necessary correcting/rebuking happens privately.
  • Groups can meet in offices, mosques, cafés, gang hangouts, parks, or jogging groups, weekly or more often. Better if in contacts' environments, not a Christian home (too insular and removed from people of peace) or Christian building.
  • "Hubs" or clusters of groups can meet monthly for an outreach activity. Here teaching can happen, e.g., a 'hot topic' such as why suicide is on the rise, relating Jesus' teachings. But sustained growth happens where each network penetrates its participants' networks.