A Brief Guide to Disciple Making Movements, Part 3

Discovery Bible Studies

What are Discovery Bible Studies (DBS hereafter)? What role do they play in DMM as a methodology? Is the approach to DBS biblical? DBS is the tool prayerfully placed into the hand of the POP in an effort to facilitate OBD among an unreached people group. These components when combined with prayer by a missionary team form the general approach of DMM. As Trousdale wrote, “In the context of Disciple Making Movements, we have seen that the best tool to teach obedience is Discovery Bible Study (DBS).”¹

In DMM, the missionary, upon finding the POP, would facilitate a DBS among the family and friends gathered by the POP. The missionary does not teach. Trousdale puts it clearly, “Don’t preach or teach. Help the group to discover by themselves and to obey the truths in the Bible.”² The Watsons add that in DBS, “there is a minimum DNA required for groups to replicate past the first generation.”³ That DNA includes the following: Prayer, Intercession (praying for the needs of folks in the group), Ministry (helping with needs of the group or the community), Evangelism/Replication, Obedience, Accountability, Worship, Scripture, Discovery, and Group Correction. Thus, in DBS you have groups of unbelievers meeting to participate in these activities. The goal is that when they become devoted followers of Jesus, are baptized, and formed into a church, not much really needs to change.

DBS works on the conviction that unbelievers can study, understand, and obey scripture without an outside teacher. They need only the Holy Spirit. Trousdale exhorted his readers, “Do not teach or preach; instead, facilitate discovery and obedience. When people are simply exposed to the Scriptures, God will reveal the truth to them.”⁴ The Watsons provide a similar encouragement,

When working with lost people, we have to avoid falling into the role of explaining Scripture. If we do, we become the authority rather than allowing Scripture to be the authority. If we are the authority, replication is limited by our leadership capacity and the time we have to teach every group. Consequently, shifting from Scripture being the authority to the teacher being the authority will keep groups from replicating as they should. This is a hard shift to make. We love teaching. It makes us feel good. We know the answers and want to share that knowledge with others. But if we want to disciple people who look to Scripture and the Holy Spirit for answers to their questions, we can’t be the answer-people. We have to help them discover what God says to them in His Word.⁵

Additionally, DBS assumes that unbelievers can evangelize other unbelievers. The Watsons asserted the following, “Did you know that lost people can evangelize? Well, they can if you keep it simple enough. Evangelism, at its core, is sharing the Gospel with someone else. When working with lost people, they don’t know the whole Gospel. That is totally okay. We just want them to share the story they just heard with someone who wasn’t in the group.”⁶ Unbelievers lead the study. Unbelievers obey the commands of scripture. Unbelievers evangelize the lost. It is the job of the missionary to pray, find the POP, and facilitate DBS.

Are there not concerns that these groups will fall into error? What does the missionary do to protect the DBS group from error? The Watsons answer, “That said, groups still need to be discipled. In other words, they need to be taught how to study the Bible together, how to discover what God says through His Word, how to change their lives to obey God’s Word, and how to share Bible passages with friends and family. Groups don’t do these things naturally; they have to be discipled into them so that they become as natural as breathing.”⁷ This guidance, however, by the missionary is not to be teaching or correcting. The Holy Spirit will correct them.⁸

A question immediately arises for the missionary candidate: “Can lost people actually read passages from the Bible, internalize the message, and agree together to obey God in whatever that passage shows them?”⁹ Trousdale answers in the affirmative arguing that the Muslim peoples whose stories his book records discovered and obeyed God’s will through a group like that.¹⁰

In a system that depends upon OBD, it is necessary that we begin with the obedience of unbelievers to the commands of Jesus. This is true with the DBS groups above all. The Watsons repeat, “As we said before, obedience is a critical element of Disciple-Making Movements. It has to be present even at the small group level, even with groups of lost people.”¹¹

Is DBS Biblical?

We are not asking, “Is it biblically permissible to gather unbelievers and teach the Bible to them?” Yes. Undoubtedly. The question is whether the Lord and his Apostles ever commanded or provided an example of Christian ministers facilitating a group of unbelievers to interpret scripture, obey scripture, and evangelize other unbelievers without the instruction of a Christian minister who has been sent in the power of the Holy Spirit to preach the gospel and teach the Word? Are we instructed to assume unbelievers, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, will self-correct in doctrinal error as they learn to read the Bible? The answer is an unequivocal, “No.”

The Old and New Testament evidence against these methodological assumptions of DBS is so overwhelming and univocal that it is admittedly difficult to know where to begin. Perhaps, it is best that we begin with a few simple observations. First, man’s need for a teacher is seen before our fall into sin. The LORD had to instruct Adam and Eve in the garden. Admittedly, they were taught directly by the LORD and not a human teacher. Second, after the fall into sin, the LORD saw fit to reveal his will to our fathers by the prophets in a variety of times and ways (Hebrews 1:1). Third, the LORD provided men to lead his people throughout the Old Testament. The Old Testament offices of prophet, priest, and king assume that without leadership and instruction the people would wander from truth and godliness. Fourth, in these last days God has spoken to us in his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2 cf. John 1:1–2). The Lord Jesus was a teacher. He was a Spirit-filled teacher. He instructed his disciples. He corrected his disciples. Fifth, the Lord Jesus provided apostles and prophets as the foundation of the church (Ephesians 2:20). These prophets and apostles revealed God’s will. They taught and corrected. They preached, argued, exhorted, and declared the word of God in boldness. Sixth, the Lord Jesus also provided elders, pastors and teachers. The role of the pastor / elder is to teach sound doctrine and refute those who contradict. He is to feed God’s flock, bind up the wounded, and seek the lost (Ephesians 4:11 cf. 1 Timothy 3:1ff, Titus 1:9, 1 Peter 5:1–3).¹²

When the Lord Jesus sent the Holy Spirit upon the church at Pentecost we saw the apostles go forth preaching and teaching. We never see them looking for unbelieving POPs to facilitate such activity. Throughout Acts, Luke described the activity of the apostles with “verbs of teaching, proclaiming, refuting, reasoning and persuading (which) require hearers to understand, think, reason, consider and examine.”¹³ There is simply no evidence of any character in the Bible being commanded to, nor providing the example of, facilitating a self-corrected, untaught, Bible study. Further, there are no examples of the apostles, nor any other leader, employing unbelievers in the work of evangelism.¹⁴ Sadly, DBS is simply an unbiblical and untenable tool built upon the sandy foundation of OBD and POP.

Conclusion

It is our settled conviction that DMM fails at the most critical point: its unbiblical foundation. Further, the components of DMM crumble under even minimal biblical scrutiny. We do not commend DMM to missionaries we train as a viable option.¹⁵ We thank God for the missionaries who have given their lives to the cause of Christ. We grieve that so many have been encouraged to embrace a methodology that is fundamentally flawed. We confidently trust the head of the church, Jesus Christ, to correct this trend. We believe that Christ will build his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

Christ has given the gift of cross-cultural missionaries to his church for the purpose of evangelism and teaching in fulfillment of the Great Commission with the goal that churches are planted among every ethnically-linguistically distinct people group. They are sent from their local churches by the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. They need to be fully prepared to proclaim the gospel clearly in the language and culture of an unreached people group. We believe they are able to reach the necessary level of language fluency and cultural awareness required to speak as adults to the people group to whom they have been sent.¹⁶ We believe they need to be prepared to suffer in the pursuit of making Christ known among the nations. We believe they must be committed to being among that language group for as long as it takes to finish the task of planting a healthy church. We believe they are accountable for making sure the gospel word is communicated clearly and understood well by the people as they evangelize, teach, and appoint as indigenous leaders to govern the church after their departure.

In the pursuit of this glorious vocation, Radius exists to come alongside the church in preparing her candidates for such glorious and weighty work. We do not know where the Holy Spirit will blow, but we know he will. We are not aware of whom Jesus will save, but we know he will. We are merely those who revel in the eternally glorious privilege of naming Jesus among all people groups as we long for that great day when we will join with every tribe, tongue, and nation to sing, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever! Amen.”¹⁷

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This is the third part of a three part series. You can continue reading A Brief Guide to Disciple Making Movements in Part 1 and Part 2, or by downloading the PDF copy at the top of the article.