Sustainable Disciple Making Movements Part One

 It's been quite a while since I wrote a blog article about the Disciple Making Movement Strategy.  In the beginning of our work in Honduras and Latin America, I regularly wrote blogs about the Movement strategy and principles that the team in Honduras was applying. (If you go back to the years 2008 through about 2012 in the archive of this blog, you will find a lot of that).  More recently, I have used this blog to share about the advance of the movement in Central America and South America that has resulted from this strategy.  I have also been highlighting the new DMM teams that we have formed at WME that are focusing on the Caribbean, Native American Tribes, and other regions as we are turning our attention to bringing the Disciple Making Movement strategy to bear on the remaining Unreached and Unengaged People groups in the world, especially in the Western Hemisphere.

At this point, WME has 6 or 7 discernible teams that are focused on finishing the Great Commission through the DMM strategy.  The Central American project has seen the birth of a movement 34 Generations deep!  About 70,000 people have made professions of faith to Christ and followed in Baptism.  To God be the Glory.

But I want to begin to address an issue that has presented itself to me as I have been spending the past few years in Mentoring and Coaching and Encouraging and Learning from Various DMM leaders and movements globally.  That issue is the issue of Sustainable Disciple Making Movements.

The DMM Strategy has not been without its critics.  One criticism of DMM that has recently been highlighted in some missions literature is the concern that although Movements have seen great multiplication and initial conversions, when viewed longterm, they have not been sustainable as established churches or structures that continue to bear fruit.  Along with that critique, some have voiced the concern that the fruit of DMM tends to be theologically shallow and the new believers have not matured.

It is these concerns that I want to address in this blog and in some following blogs in the next few weeks.

And I address them by introducing the subject of Sustainable Disciple Making Movements:  That is to say, Multiplying Movements of Disciples making Disciples, and Churches planting Churches, that result in not only rapid multiplication of new believers, but as permanent fruit that remains and with disciples that mature in their Christian walk.  

Over 20 years ago, when I was pastoring a church and we were bringing Cell Group concepts to our church, I had a conversation with one of our key team leaders, Rick Clendenen.  Rick was serving as the cell group coordinator for the church, and later as a missions leader with WME and then the founder of a ministry that has coached many pastors and leaders.  In this particular conversation in the late 1990s, Rick said to me something like this:  "To move forward, you need both legs working.  First the Right Leg steps forward and then the Left Leg goes forward.  That's how multiplication and structure work together". I have never forgot that conversation, and I have used that analogy for many years. 

 When I was first introduced to the DMM strategy in 2005 and 2006, the emphasis was entirely on the multiplication factor. Indeed, in all my years of study and experience, I have never found any strategy that multiplies the Kingdom of God like the DMM strategy.  Without any exaggeration, I can say that is true by orders of magnitude!  Every evangelistic or disciple making focus I have ever been exposed to (Local church evangelism, Mass crusades, Cell groups, Door to door evangelism, etc. etc. etc.) are literally dwarfed in comparison to the DMM strategic results worldwide.  Through DMM, according to very reliable research, approximately 1 percent of all human beings have become followers of Christ in the last approximately 20 years!!!!(That would be somewhere between 70-80 Million People).  Nothing since the Day of Pentecost has had those kinds of results......again I say unequivocally, by Orders of Magnitude!

So I am believer in the DMM Strategy and our personal experience with this Strategy in Central and South America in the last 14 years has only confirmed in our personal experience what we have heard from other reports worldwide.  And Yet.....

One thing about our Critics, in any field of Endeavor, is that many times they can highlight legitimate oversights that we have.  Rather than merely try to defeat or answer our critics, sometimes the best thing to do is listen.  And listening does not mean that they are right:  I am convinced that the Critics of DMM are indeed Wrong.  Yet the concerns they raise can open our eyes to areas where they have a point, and areas that we can learn from to make our point of view stronger.

Sustainable Disciple Making Movements, Rapidly Multiplying Movements of Disciples that see the production not just of Much Fruit, but of Fruit that Remains. That is the goal.

If Multiplication is the Right Foot that Propels us forward, Sustainability is the Left Foot that follows and allows real Advance to Happen.

All of that leads me to this Proposition:  In Sustainable Disciple Making Movements there are 3 basic moves forward that can be Discerned.  These are 3 Stages that flow in a Cycle and exist with each other in a propulsion of the Kingdom of God to Unreached Peoples and Places.

1.  Launching a Movement:  The Foundation Stage

2.  Multiplying a Movement:  The Momentum Stage

3.  Sustaining a Movement:  The Structure Stage

I propose to write a blog about each of these Moves/Stages in the next few weeks.  In my experience almost all of DMM training tends to be focused on the first 2 of these.....and that is understandable. If there is no Movement, there is nothing to Sustain!  But Movement Catalysts need to have a big picture plan in front of them that helps them see the larger view of the full goal:  Fruit that Remains.