Transcription
Hello, I'm Timothy Moore, and this is unit nine of Introduction to Missions, and we're going to be looking at collaborative missions in this unit. But I told you, uh, in our last unit, when we were uh talking about disciple-making movements, that I wanted to touch on Dr. David Garrison's uh movement killers. And just uh to refresh, Dr. Garrison was the first person, and I believe this was around 2004, he was the first person to do um research on the field, extensive research of 12 major um multiplying movements of discipleship, DMM, and church planting uh movements. He traveled to several different continents, a couple of dozen movements, and he discovered some common elements, common qualities, and then a few of them died. And so he discovered some common killers of disciple-making movements and church planting movements. And I think that is very relevant to know in um an Introduction to Missions class.
So uh, we're going to touch on those things before we move into the common uh elements of collaboration and alliances in in mission. And so uh, just by way of reminder, Dr. Garrison has a PhD from the University of Chicago. Uh, he was a a researcher and um and pioneer for Frontier Missions for the Southern Baptist Convention. Um, and his book, *Church Planting Movements: How God's Redeeming a Lost World*, that came out January 1st, 2004, actually gave us the terms. Uh, I don't think anyone had used the term disciple-making movement or church planting movement; if they had, um, it it wasn't something that was commonly spoken about in the mission uh world among missiologists and mission strategists. But after this book came out, it was impossible to talk about frontier missions and making disciples globally without using these terms, disciple-making movement, church planting movement. And and so he's very influential in in these ideas that are defining what the Lord is doing with his church globally.
And so uh, a few of those common elements—again, they all start with extraordinary prayer. I mean, that's the place uh movements start. And so there's an intentional uh directed prayer effort. And out of that extraordinary prayer, the second element was abundant gospel sowing: the gospel of Jesus is being shared regularly. And then uh, as people come to Christ, there's intentional church planting. That's a third element. Um, the fourth common element was scriptural authority: a very high view of scripture as the infallible and inherent word of God. There was local leadership. So people are not coming in from other countries as professional missionaries leading the churches. That's called indigenous leadership. So all of the churches, the the missionaries that are part of this are simply there training, equipping, encouraging, deploying local leadership. Um, they all start with small, reproducible groups, uh small groups um revolving around um discovery of what the Bible teaches and immediate and obedient application of the scriptures. And so those small groups become the uh the the many churches—the first expression of the church—but a small—the smaller the group is, the easier it is to reproduce. Um, and so there's a focus on smaller, reproducible groups, and then uh rapid reproduction and church health.
Uh, there are some observable qualities in these uh exponential disciple-making movements. Uh, the first observable quality that Dr. Garrison writes about is worship in the heart language. And so um uh the worship is happening maybe in a tribal language of the people. Uh, there's communal evangelism. And what he means by that communal evangelism is relational evangelism connected to the natural relationships you have in your life. Uh, there are a few missional expressions of what he's talking about when he uses the term communal evangelism. Uh, you might look up concentric circles of concern or F.R.A.N. Uh, I use F.R.A.N., which is your friends, your relatives, your associates, and your neighbors. That pretty much covers everybody in your life. But in these movements, there's an intentionality of the average believer to take the gospel to their friends, relatives, associates, and neighbors. And then there's rapid involvement, and and so uh new believers are—are—there's a way for them to be engaged and on mission with Christ immediately in church planting movements. Uh, there's a fearless passion, is another quality that that he saw. Uh, there's conversion sacrifice, uh, which means there's a cultural price to pay uh to come to the Lord. Um, there is uh OJT—on-the-job training—for church leader development. You don't have to send someone off to be trained. They're actually trained in the context of the local church or group. Um, and so those are some of the qualities that he observed in these that were common to these 24 major disciple-making movements.
But then he also saw some um common movement killers. And I think I think that that's extremely relevant for us to know because if God is working through our lives uh even for a a local church and that local church is growing, there's application uh for these movement killers. Uh, if you if if we allow these things to happen, they will actually slow and hinder the work; um, it it will do what um what Paul spoke about in 1 Thessalonians 5 where he says, "Do not quench the Holy Spirit." The word quench means to throw—like throw something wet—like a wet towel, a wet sheet over a fire. And so, and that's what I see when I look at these movement killers is if we do this, it it just takes a wet towel and it throws it over the fire and it puts the fire of uh that movement out or slows it down uh tremendously.
And so, the first uh thing that he saw is what he called sequentialism. Sequentialism um is a movement killer, and this involves a rigid, step-by-step approach to ministry multiplication or church planting. And the the missionaries start prioritizing language learning, relationship building, evangelism, and and things like that in a very linear fashion, so that you have to do this before this can happen before that can happen—becomes very sequential—and it delays the actual planting of churches. And Garrison argues that this approach is deadly because it can take years to unfold and halt the entire process if one step fails. Instead, he suggests practicing the end—church planting—from the beginning, modeling evangelism and discipleship and church formation from the outset. So, someone comes in and just models it and starts a group, and that group starts another group, and so on. So sequentialism can kill a group.
The second thing is intellectualism, and intellectualism refers to an overemphasis on theological knowledge and academic training. Uh, it's not that I wouldn't be your professor at a seminary if I didn't believe in theological knowledge and academic training. But where um there is overemphasis on the accumulation of theological knowledge and academic training, often at the expense of practical application and the needs of the people, it will kill a disciple-making movement. Uh, Garrison argues that intellectualism can create a disconnect between the message and the lived experience of the new believers, hindering the growth and multiplication of the churches. Um, I think maybe an application of that would be uh if someone has a particular systematic theology. Systematic theologies are usually expressed with the word -ism, like Calvinism or Arminianism—uh, ways uh to see God, see the world, and and put uh the truth of scripture kind of in neat little boxes. Uh, and and the the the challenge is um God doesn't fit in our boxes very well. uh, but if we are focusing on whatever particular systematic theology that we have and we put that, say, in a new believer's course, so that we are converting people to Calvinism before we're converting them to Christ, or they've come to Christ and like the next step is so is that they might understand the the five elements—total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints—uh, that's probably going to kill the movement. Uh, and that's that's um that's tongue and cheek. It absolutely is going to kill the movement. So, intellectualism is a movement killer.
Uh, programmatism is what uh Dr. Garrison calls this next killer. And this involves focusing on programs and structures rather than on people and needs. And so Garrison warns that programmatism can lead to a lack of flexibility and adaptability. And when a movement is happening, a movement of the Lord sweeping people into the kingdom and and we're focusing on the experiences of discipleship and disciple-making. Uh, as soon as we lose our flexibility and adaptability, it kills the movement, uh, because there are always changing needs in the context of a disciple-making movement, and and programmatism is getting so rigid and so structured that we can't move and adapt. Uh, the the next thing is being professionalistic, and what he means by that is being dependent on professionals. This refers to relying solely on trained missionaries and leaders, neglecting the potential of the local believers to lead and participate in the movement. So Garrison argues that dependence on professionals can limit the growth and sustainability of the movement. Think about the think about the disciples of Jesus that became apostles. Like how many of them were professional ministry? Uh, they none of them were were engaged with the Sanhedrin. They weren't Pharisees, Sadducees. There there was no professional ministry involvement. They were they just spent three and a half years with Jesus. It inhibits the growth and sustainability of the movement when the leadership of local churches depends on um someone who's had formal training.
Uh, in this country—in in America—we had two incredible—the first two um almost unexplainable movements of disciple-making are called awakenings. We had a the what's called the first and second Great Awakening. Uh, and during the second um Great Awakening. This this impacts me personally because I have a great-great-grandfather that came out of that that um that was what's called a circuit-riding preacher, a circuit-riding church planter. And in the mountains of western North Carolina, he would go from from these little from town to town. He actually uh he was a circuit rider. Sometimes he rode a horse, but most of the time it was his mule pulling a a cart, and uh and he had a bench in there. And so he his he would take Bibles, he would take supplies, and he would go and he would preach uh about he would preach maybe at four or five locations every two or three days. And he was in essence starting discipling groups. And in these discipling groups, he would identify a leader. And he called that leader a deacon. And uh 1 Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1 uses the word deacon as an office in the church. Um, and so he would start the church. He would then appoint a deacon. And then as that deacon matured in the faith, he would hand it over; that deacon would in essence pastor the church, raise up another deacon who eventually would pastor another church. And so there was an exponential church planting movement that spread like wildfire. And and then there was a shift where uh an expectation happened where pastors and leaders, instead of being indigenous and organically trained in those locations, they were expected to go off to an to a seminary away from where they lived for anywhere from 2 to 4 years before they could be involved in ministry and start another church. And and that idea of having to go off somewhere for years before you could come back and start a church, help start a church in that next town, effectively killed the second—the movement of the second Great Awakening. And so there has to be a better way than sending people off, and then ministry movement depending on the professionals that come back. And so the the people who have the privilege like you to attend seminary, you have to become the training process for indigenous people where you live—for for the people in your towns, for the people in your cities. So you in effect become a seminary for disciple-makers because you had the privilege of attending this seminary.
Another movement killer was simply a lack of focus on multiplication. So um, when the focus became on building strong, large individual churches rather than multiplying new churches and leaders, Garrison emphasizes um that when the priority shifts from reproduction of churches and leaders to making a singular large, strong congregation, it kills the movement. And so, um, churches, if they become large, they've got to maintain their focus on their sending capacity, not just their seating capacity, developing and deploying leaders within that church who can go start other churches.
And then the uh the the last movement killer he talks about is just uh lack of vision, losing the vision. And so um, where there ceases to be a clear and compelling vision for the movement, it leads to confusion and lack of direction. And so he argues that a strong vision is essential for motivating and mobilizing people to participate in the movement. Um, so in order for that vision to remain clear—what what and how—has to be very understandable and simple enough to be transferable. And and so you should be able to express what a disciple is—if we're if we're a disciple-making movement—we should be able to express what a disciple of Jesus Christ is in 2 minutes or less. We should be able to uh express the distinctives of of a life with Jesus, what that looks like in 2 minutes or less. Because if if you can express it clearly and biblically in 2 minutes or less, then anyone, including a child, can understand it, and and it can multiply.
I was uh in in the coming units—the next three units—we're going to focus on the um disciple-making movement that I have the privilege of leading called Impact Multiplied. And one of the things that surprised me uh when the movement started a few years ago was uh a church that that took on that multiplication culture that had been a strong individual church, what we would call a megachurch, but they said, "We don't want to be this. We want we want to develop and deploy people to start churches and lead discipling groups. Can you help us?" And so they took uh some material, a book that I had written, uh a tool that I had developed called the Kingdom Continuum, and they applied it in their church, and then they asked me to come visit so that their leaders could ask questions about it, and uh and so that kind of movement could continue. My my wife Melissa and I went down uh to that church, and um I was so overjoyed and and surprised when seventh and eighth grade children who had started discipling movements using my the Three Essentials book that I wrote. They started groups in their schools that had multiplied to the second and third generation. So the groups they started started other groups that started other groups. And I had eighth-grade girls saying, "When this happens in our group, how do you suggest we we deal with this particular issue?" Or, "If someone asked a question about this? So I had I had this question asked; I wasn't sure about how to respond." Uh, and and then just to to hear their leadership questions and then to hear, you know, "We've had three of our friends become followers of Jesus in our Impact group that we started based on the Three Essentials of Discipleship," eighth graders. So I had we had we had middle school students leading disciple-making uh groups, and we were working with 60-year-old seminary professors with PhDs that were doing the same thing. And so uh the—as if the vision can be communicated clearly—what is a disciple? What is disciple-making? What does life with Jesus look like? If it's clear and transferable and compelling, then the movement can continue. But if that's lost and it becomes something else, then it will kill the kill the movement. Okay. So those are the movement killers that Dr. Garrison identified. Uh, through all of that travel, he traveled over 250,000 miles uh in his time doing this research. Amazing amount of time, resources uh put into to this re-search that you were just exposed to.
So now what I'd like to do is uh shift gears to the unit title for a few minutes. Uh, and and we may carry this over into the into the next unit, but it is collaborative missions, alliances—because alliances, global alliances have formed where people are collaborating at a rate that's never happened in in the history of the world. And and it really has happened um from about 2010 until now. And so it's a recent thing where you have global alliances forming that have literally resulted in millions of new churches being started. And so, um, I want to expose you to two of the primary alliances, and, uh, and encourage you to go to their websites and just spend some time there and learn how people are coming together across denominations. It's interdenominational, and they're coming together around beliefs and commitments. And I want us to look at some of those beliefs and commitments. And the two alliances that I would like for us to focus on in in the remainder of our time here is GACX, the Global Alliance for Church Multiplication, GACX. And the other one is the World Evangelical Alliance.
So, um, first we're going to look at, um, at at what brings people together in these large global alliances, uh, because the benefits are incredible. The the exponential impact is unlike anything that we've ever seen. And uh, in effect, it causes us not to navel-gaze and just look at what we're doing right here, but see what God's doing in the world and how we can join him in what he's doing in the world. And and if we go all the way back to the first lesson in Intro to Missions, we we we saw that that that the missionary thrust of the New Testament starts in Acts 1:8 where Jesus said, "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth." Your Jerusalem is where you live. Your Judea is the region where you live. Your Samaria is the country where you live. Your ends of the earth are the other countries of the world. And so missions happens across the street and around the world. That's Acts 1:8. Um, but in terms of global alliance, uh, there's always a posture. There's really three things. So there's a posture, a heart posture that has to happen for for collaborative missions to occur—missions where many different agencies and churches across denominations are working together for impact—a heart posture. Then there has to be there has to be collaborative belief—so a statement of faith that everyone agrees on—and then uh certain commitments. And so I want to just read the heart posture. Uh, GACX uh actually expresses very clearly the posture of the alliance, and it says, "The posture of GACX is to share ideas and learn from one another with humility." I would stop right there if we were in a small class together, and I would have everyone repeat the word humility. The only way we can work together in a global alliance is to kill ego. We have to have humility. And so they said, "Our heart posture is to work with humility, curiosity, and grace. We encourage members to ask probing questions and listen well. We do not expect all members to share the same perspective, use the same methods, or draw the same conclusions. We hope all members will contribute to constructive dialogue on complex issues. GACX is a connector. We connect organizations to one another and with the resources, research, and tools they need to accelerate church multiplication. We are centrist. Our alliance includes organizations utilizing legacy and movement church planting models. We don't prescribe, promote, or elevate only one type of methodology, tool, or perspective. We promote unity, not uniformity. And we elevate the exclusivity and supremacy of Christ, the power and authority of scripture, and the beauty of the church of Jesus Christ unified around a common mission and our shared love for God." So that's the heart posture. When there's a global alliance, there has to be a clearly communicated and intentional heart posture. Then there has to be collaborative beliefs that are agreed on. And so here's the statement of faith:
1. We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible and authoritative word of God.
2. We believe there is one God eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
3. We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, his virgin birth, his sinless life, his miracles, his vicarious and atoning death through his shed blood, his bodily resurrection, and his ascension to the right hand of the Father, and his personal return someday in power and glory.
4. We believe that for uh we believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.
5. We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit, by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
6. We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost: they that are saved unto the resurrection of life, and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.
7. We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.
So those are core beliefs necessary to be in the alliance, global alliance, Christian multiplication of church multiplication, excuse me. And then they have commitments, and there are six commitments. They all begin with the word *all*. So the commitments are: All Matter, All Methods, All Multiply, All Together, All In, and All God. And so let's define those:
All Matter: They're talking about all people. And so God loves the whole world. We mobilize every resource and use every gift under our care to reach every person with the gospel.
All Methods: There's one church. We love, respect, and affirm any size, expression, tradition, or ministry methodology of the church, provided that Jesus is proclaimed as Lord and King and the Bible is elevated as the Spirit-inspired, inherent word of God.
All Multiply: Living organisms are designed to reproduce. We all use the tools, strategies, and methods God has given us to creatively multiply disciples, leaders, and faith communities and churches.
All Together: We are better together, and therefore we love, inspire, support, and learn from one another.
All In: God's kingdom is bigger than any organization, any church, or any denomination. We focus on what unites us, and we work together humbly, intentionally, and strategically.
All God: That means we can do nothing without God. We pray, we mobilize prayers, we believe, and we take faith actions to further the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So what are the the three elements of a global alliance? Number one, a heart posture. Number two, shared beliefs. And number three, shared commitments. So spend some time on the GACX website. It is um and the home page would be gacx.io. gacx.io. And then I also encourage you to go to the World Evangelical Alliance, and the website is worldea.org. worldea.org. Or I know that through the reason I chose these two alliances is there's a goal uh and they're working together—4.5 million churches. I believe they've been doing this for about 10 years. It's I I don't I'm almost positive it's not it's not longer than a decade. Um, but these alliances working together, they set a goal of one faith community for every thousand people. And I think that came to about 4.5 million new churches that needed to be launched. And they just went over 3 million. And so the the aim and the intentionality is 4.5 million. And they've started over 3 million new churches. And so pay attention to what's happening through GACX and WEA. Next time we're going to lean in a little more to collaborative missions and see how uh that is happening through the organization that I lead called Impact Multiplied.
Hi, my name is Chuck Rap. I have the privilege of serving as the Africa regional director for One Mission Society, and our primary ministry in village church planting is training men and women to plant churches in villages. Right now our biggest partnership is with CRU Jesus Film. Uh, they've been a wonderful partner with us. We've been um the recipient of a number of Jesus Film backpacks, and that's become a very uh helpful tool for us in our evangelism and in our church planting. So, thus far we've received about 50 Jesus Film backpacks, and two weeks from now I'll be in Nairobi, Kenya, and plans are are that we will receive 12 or 13 more. As I said, it's been a wonderful tool. It gives us access to villages where we are intending to plant churches. We try to be a good partner with them in providing the data, the reports, and the testimonies that they request of us. Just one quick story about this: I received a report a couple of months ago from the nation of Togo. In the previous six months, there had been 37 viewings of the Jesus Film. They reported that 1,560 people—villagers—had observed—viewed the video. They reported 320 conversions and 14 churches planted. Those are just some of the results that we've seen with the Jesus Film. They also shared this exciting testimony with a village chief. He was Muslim, and over the years he had not not accepted any uh churches or any evangelistic work.
In his village. Last fall, he developed insomnia. He went to the medical doctor. He went to his imam for prayer. The insomnia continued. This spring, one of our church planters approached him about the Jesus film, and he gave permission for us to show it. He and he himself intended. The next morning, he received Christ. Our church planter prayed for him, and he was delivered from that insomnia. Now we have a church planted in that village.
So collaboration means that none of us, you know, none of us have the entire skill set. None of us are good at everything. And so one of the things that I learned in my corporate career is the importance of benchmarking. Find who's best in class. Don't try to reinvent the wheel, but come alongside, collaborate, work together, and together we're much stronger and we're much more effective and much more efficient.
Hello, GACX family. My name is Robert Brown, and I represent ICM or International Cooperating Ministries. We have the pleasure of serving the entire international community in 108 countries in 66 different languages. We're so grateful to be a part of this alliance, uh, for church growth, and we're excited about all of the other partners that have come together in order to serve the kingdom of heaven. We have partnered with, uh, another GACX, uh, member called Jesus Film Project, and we have loaded the Jesus film on every one of our audio and visual devices that we use for content distribution. Through this partnership, we have literally gotten testimonies over and over again of many people, hundreds and even thousands of people who have watched this film, been exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and have given their lives to him. I think it's very important that we collaborate because collaboration shows unity, and unity is the strength of the body of Christ. So, God bless you. We love you, and we just cannot wait to see what God is going to continue to do through GACX and all of its partner members. God bless you.
Hi, my name is David NMS, and I'm the founder of the Timothy Initiative, also known as TTI. Oh, GCX. Well, first of all, we're a founding ministry, so we've been part of JCX from the very beginning. But GCX is, uh, just to come together with other ministry leaders who actually believe in the great commission. To come together with men and women like that, it's just an incredible blessing and a great encouragement. And in fact, by working together, we have become friends. And we work with quite a few G6 members. Some of them that just come to the top of my head would be GCM crew, uh, Jesus Film, Converge has been a major partner, uh, Gospel Link, Mega Voice, E3, One Hope, Unto, and I, I'm probably leaving out several, but those are the ones that come to mind. As a result of the collaboration with other ministries, there have been literally tens of thousands of churches started. I mean, I've lost count. Just tens of thousands that would not have been started otherwise.
Collaboration to me means it just the it's a big word. I can barely spell it. But what it really means to me is is you hear quite often, we are better together. TTI is in 41 countries right now actively. Well, that means there's a couple hundred more countries out there that we're not even in. We can't get the job done by ourselves. It's going to take all of us working together. But we can work where we're at, and if we can join hands with others and they can work where they're at, and we just help each other and we bless each other, and together we can accomplish the goal. TGI cannot do it by ourselves because we're we're only in a limited number of countries. And that's the same for most ministries. And even if you are in every country, you still can't do it by yourself. We need each other. And so that's the beauty of collaboration. Together we can get the job done. Two is be two are better than one. And a three-fold cord is not easily broken.