No Substitute: A Review of David Garrison's “Inside Church Planting Movements”
“I’ve planted four churches already!” the man told me.
I was ecstatic. I had been on the field for more than 10 years as a missionary to an unreached language group in central Asia. I’d been connected with this young man through a mutual pastor friend, and he’d agreed to meet for coffee as I surveyed a new area, determining its viability for another team of missionaries to the unreached. Not always an easy thing to do in a Muslim area (you can’t just Google “churches in X town”!).
I was relieved to hear this city had been reached with four churches, and my mind began to think of other needier places in the area to send this new team to. Still, I wanted to hear his story and to celebrate the great thing that God was doing through this zealous young man.
“Just over a year ago I met my person of peace,” he said. This term was new to me. Being on the field for a decade, I hadn’t kept up with the latest in missiological thinking, but I started to wonder, “How could anyone plant four churches in a single year?”
“Then I started telling him stories from the Bible,” the man continued, “encouraging him to obey Jesus and to tell others.” Confused about how a Muslim man, dead in his sins, could possibly obey Jesus’ commands in any sense that would be helpful for his salvation, I began to ask some questions. But the more answers I got, the more confused I became. “So this man,” I asked, “your person of peace, is now sharing these Bible stories with four groups of his friends? That seems like an amazing evangelism opportunity! So then you come to those group meetings and share the gospel with them?”
“No,” I was told. That would somehow “ruin” what was happening. Maybe the man of peace repented and believed at some point, I thought. Had I just missed that part of the story? I asked if this person of peace was now evangelizing his friends and family.
Wrong again! At this point my confusion was admittedly pretty overwhelming. “If you’re not sure that this guy is a Christian, and you’ve never even met most of these other people in the four groups to know if they’re Christians, then how can you say you’ve planted four churches?” I asked, incredulous.
This was my first exposure to a disciple-making movement on the field. I came away wanting nothing more than to read the literature that had led this young man to this strategy for reaching a Muslim city. He recommended two books: Contagious Disciple-Making by David Watson, and Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World by David Garrison.
I got home and, eager to understand, devoured these books. As I read, I grew more and more concerned by concepts like “Obedience-Based Discipleship,” the idea that we should teach obedience to Jesus’ commands before salvation, which stands in complete opposition to the New Testament’s teaching on that subject.
“How did it get this way?” I wondered. How did this young man, who loved the Lord enough to sacrifice his career to move to Asia to share the gospel with Muslims, get to the point where he’s teaching doctrine that wouldn’t be allowed in his Bible-believing sending church?
In the years since my meeting with that young man, I’ve learned that the Church Planting Movements (CPM) espoused by Garrison and others are not only popular, they’ve become nearly ubiquitous in contemporary missiology. I shared J. Gresham Machen’s frustration that “At this point the perplexity arises. The Christian man discovers to his consternation that the agencies of the Church are propagating not only the gospel as found in the Bible and in the historic creeds, but also a type of religious teaching which is at every conceivable point the diametrical opposite of the gospel.”
In short, I began to ask “Who is to blame for poor missiology?” Is it the missiologists and missions agencies? Is it the missionaries themselves? Or could it be that behind these problems lies a passive, even dormant sending church? This concern has renewed focus on the church, for myself and other like-minded missionaries and pastors. We want to prevent churches from abandoning accountability for the missionaries they send overseas. Instead of entrusting their missionaries totally into the hands of missions agencies that have usurped the church’s authority, local churches need to be cognisant of biblical missiology and sound methodology. So, with the publication of a new and important work on CPM, it’s important that sending churches have clarity on where things stand with CPM, a quarter of a century on.
25 Years of CPM
In his new book Inside Church Planting Movements: What 25 Years of Assessments Reveal, David Garrison reexamines his original 2004 book on CPMs. Though CPM has become popular, it hasn’t been immune to criticism, and pushing back on detractors of CPM occupies much of the new book. The publisher’s site puts it this way: “Are Church Planting Movements real—or exaggerated?” Insisting that the success of CPM is both real and not exaggerated, Garrison cites an extensive list of organizations who have been influenced by his thinking and marshals impressive statistical analyses on how these purported movements have been carefully assessed.
The book’s argument can be summed up in 3 points:
- When missionaries correctly apply CPM strategy, the result will be CPMs.
- We can see this from history, as CPMs, as defined by Garrison, have been thoroughly assessed and many are genuine.
- Therefore, the pursuit of such movements should be central to the strategy of missions that the church pursues in the future.
Since Garrison’s original book came out, many other proponents of movement missiology have followed in his wake. Until very recently, it would not be an exaggeration to say that most missiological thinking was influenced or even inspired by the proponents of movements (indeed, Garrison spends 11 pages in chapter 4 of this book citing a who’s who of missions agencies and coaches who subscribe to his perspective).
Some readers might be tempted to ask at this point, “who would ever be opposed to a movement of churches that plant other churches or a movement of disciples that make more disciples? Isn’t that the whole point of the New Testament?”
Indeed, it is! However, recent works like No Shortcut to Success by Matt Rhodes and Missions By the Book by Chad Vegas and Alex Kocman have raised concerns as they press to define these terms. It is all well and good to say that one is for churches planting more churches, but if we have completely different definitions of the word “church,” then we might come to very different conclusions about a “church planting movement.”
Impaired Movement
Movement methodologies generally start with an unspoken premise. In their view, church planting strategies fall along a spectrum: healthier, slower to grow churches at one end and weaker, more quickly planted churches at the other end.
In the minds of movement practitioners, the trade-offs are self-evident. We can either plant strong churches slowly, or weaker churches much faster. This is seen in a now famous exchange in which a movement practitioner argued that we should be planting “rabbit churches,” not “elephant churches,” prompting Brooks Buser to retort that in Acts 20 Paul warns of the danger to the church from “fierce wolves.” He then noted that while rabbits are easy prey for wolves, elephants aren’t that bothered by them.
One leading movement thinker, George Patterson, admits that his goal is to pare the definition of a church back as far as possible: “To plant churches in a pioneer field, aim for each community to have a group of believers in Christ committed to obey his commands. This definition of a church might get a D minus where you studied theology, but the more you add to it, the harder it will be for the churches you start to reproduce.”
If we accept this premise, then the argument of Garrison and his disciples would be understandable. One could argue planting any church quickly is more important than planting a healthy church slowly, especially among the unreached. However, the premise is entirely based on a pragmatic perspective that sees human effort and strategy as determinative and, as we will see, this perspective is reflected over and over in both of Garrison’s books. As Ed Roberts wrote of Church Planting Movements: “In reality, Garrison doesn’t look to Scripture, but to current or historical examples of CPM. He studies them and then marshals the stats. Then he assigns a cause and effect relationship—usually asserted not proven—between the methods he observes and the effectiveness of the CPM. Voila! Observations become causes.”
Strawmen
One of the more revealing sections of Garrison’s new book, is the chapter where he identifies and responds to eight critiques of CPM. It’s an admirable approach, but Garrison tends to make straw men of his opponents, framing them in such a way as to make the pro-CPM argument appear much stronger. For example, a “Ministry As Mission” critique argues that the emphasis on short-term missions trips has led to a reduction in missions efforts focused on planting churches. This is a critique I personally haven’t encountered very often. He goes further, essentially writing off “Missionary Critics” because “most missionaries around the world haven’t seen a CPM, therefore they question them.” This seems to accuse the missionaries who see seemingly legitimate issues in the CPM methodology of either lack of imagination or plain jealousy, rather than engaging with their actual arguments.
The primary critique of movement methodology, of course, is and always has been that its proponents are willing to minimize or outright deny the need for preaching and teaching of the Word of God by biblically qualified elders. Instead, motivated by a need for rapid growth, they will sacrifice these fundamental elements of a church for the sake of pragmatism and numerical results.
This criticism warrants only a brief mention, which he labels a response from “Reformed Critics.” Most of Garrison’s response here is based on the assessments performed on CPMs, and he argues that the assessments verify how Scriptural fidelity has been “sown into the very DNA of each reproducing church.”
However, even as he says this, he cannot help but admit that “finding ‘elders’ from movements of new disciples is practically an oxymoron.” Furthermore, he says that “expository preaching … requires years of formal education, something rarely found in CPMs.” As someone who actually planted a church among an unreached language group in central Asia, I can categorically state that this is not true. Yes, it takes longer to disciple new believers until they meet all of the biblical qualifications for an elder and are capable of expositional preaching. However, it is certainly not impossible, as hundreds of years of missionaries and the churches they planted from all across the world can attest.
Sadly, Garrison chooses to sweep this argument against movement methodology under the rug, arguing instead that movement advocates “have discovered that there are numerous ways for the church to submit to the authority of Scripture, feed the sheep, and shepherd the flock.” But perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the book is the way that Garrison chooses to engage with the critics he decries as “missionary church planting,” including pejoratives like “remnants of a colonial age.” Most perplexing is his linking this perspective with “buildings and pastors.” To my knowledge, there is not a single major advocate of churches owning buildings in closed countries in the missions community today (or, similarly, anyone who equates having a building with having a pastor). On the contrary, anyone seriously engaging with the task of planting churches in these countries recognizes that there is no biblical reason for a church to have any sort of formal relationship (rental or ownership) to the building where they meet.
Garrison, however, continually returns to this theme, repeatedly arguing against a strawman who advocates exclusively for seminary-trained pastors in church-owned buildings. The idea that missionaries planting churches among unreached language groups could evangelize and disciple believers who then meet together in houses or other informal locations without sacrificing the preaching and teaching of God’s Word and biblical qualifications of eldership is simply never seriously engaged.
Arguments
Straw men aside, it’s worth examining Garrison’s key arguments on their own merits:
1. When missionaries correctly apply Church Planting Movement strategy, the result will be Church Planting Movements.
To Garrison’s credit, he does, on occasion, acknowledge that God is in control of where and when movements occur, as on page 14 where he acknowledges that assessments allow us to see “where God is at work” and describes one movement as “God doing something substantial among this people group.” Other places where God’s sovereign role in movements is acknowledged include a report discussing the results of the ministry of Ying and Grace Kai which refers to “an extraordinary movement of God.”
However, far more often we see a baked-in assumption in all of Garrison’s discussion of assessments that if missionaries simply apply the right strategy, it will lead to a CPM, seemingly without exception. In his telling, every time an assessment proves that a CPM is happening, it shows that the team is using good CPM strategy. Conversely, every time an assessment proves that a CPM is not happening, it shows that there is something wrong with the strategy and the team must adjust it in order to see a CPM. There is, quite simply, very little room in Garrison’s thinking for the idea that someone could proclaim the gospel clearly, disciple faithfully, and plant churches biblically and then fail to see multiple generations of multiplying churches.
This error is far from a new one. Indeed, going back centuries, there have always been those who, seeing a work of God’s Spirit, have tried to reverse engineer it, as though humans were capable of manipulating God into repeating his past actions if we can repeat the conditions in which he worked.
This tendency in American evangelicalism is well-documented by Iain Murray in his book Revival and Revivalism. Garrison reveals how far down he is on the revivalism side of that equation when he approvingly cites Charles Fielding’s description of CPMs as follows: “... Fielding saw that the right ingredients coupled with the right methods should generate predictable outcomes.” A more concise definition of pragmatism could hardly be imagined!
This is far from the pattern we observe in Scripture, however. As Psalm 127 tells us, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” Of course, this doesn’t mean that we can’t learn how to build and even become skilled builders. For example Garrison cites an assessment report that cited the decision by missionaries to work in the mother tongue of the Kekchi people as a crucial strategic decision that proved fruitful and which is very in line with scripture! Rather, it simply means that the results, especially the numerical results of any ministry are ultimately in the Lord’s hands, and we cannot describe them as “predictable.”
2. We can see this from history, as CPMs, as defined by Garrison, have been thoroughly assessed and many are genuine.
This is the longest section in the book, and the most challenging for an outside reviewer to respond to. Garrison marshals statistics and describes the assessment process in great detail, with the goal of convincing us that some of these church planting movements have been evaluated thoroughly by qualified people with on-the-ground knowledge. As a result we can’t question them.
Indeed, who would venture to argue, without knowledge of the language and culture of the Bhojpuri of northern India, or the Kekchi of Guatemala (or any of the other 26 people groups described) that there was not in fact a movement of God’s Spirit that led to many thousands of churches and hundreds of thousands of Christians among these groups?
However, even as we admit that we are not qualified to evaluate this evidence fully, Garrison himself gives us some clues that the assessment process might not be quite as straightforward as he makes out. He makes frequent references to subjective “reduction formulae.” and admits that later analysis reversed the initial team’s assessment on some of the CPMs.
For example, in his description of the Foro movement assessment, he admits that the local Baptist churches evaluated the purported movement “churches” and concluded that many of them were not, in fact, churches, but actually more akin to “outreach groups.” However, the Westerners conducting the assessment rejected the locals’ conclusion and found that these groups “functioned fully as churches and counted them as such.”At the heart of the discussion is the recognition that measurable responses may be occurring in some of the purported movements, responses that may include openness to Christian teaching or even participation in new religious practices. Such developments may appear promising and may rightly prompt further gospel engagement and church planting efforts. But are these responses genuine repentance and conversion as scripture describes them, or do they primarily reflect excitement and curiosity without a clear reckoning with sin, idolatry, and the exclusive lordship of Christ?
It’s important to note that a careful examination of the assessment questionnaires reveals that the assessors almost never ask questions about repentance or the rejection of a previous worldview. There are many questions about how a person came to faith and their behavior (especially on their personal evangelism) but almost none about how they view their former religious identity or beliefs.
Why is this important ? Significantly, many of the movements being assessed are located in South Asia, where anyone with a Hindu worldview has no major issue adding Jesus to the list of gods in whom they believe. Additionally, given Garrison’s description of Insider Movements among Muslims as a “parallel idea,” it’s reasonable to wonder how many of these statistics are based on mixed beliefs and a desire to please the questioners. One group was asked about syncretism, but this question does not appear to be a part of other assessments.
3. Therefore, the pursuit of such movements should be central to the strategy of missions that the church pursues in the future.
Here we arrive at the really important point. If movements can be predictably achieved when we apply the correct strategy, and if we can demonstrate from history that this has happened, then it must naturally follow that anyone wanting to obey the Great Commission should indeed make the pursuit of movements central to their efforts.
However, the reverse is also true. If movements are a work of the Spirit and cannot be replicated simply by following the correct strategy, then we have to question whether finding and following such a strategy is truly the wisest course. Rather, our strategic thoughts should be geared towards reading God’s Word and trying to determine our strategy from its whole counsel. We cannot possibly endorse church-planting methods that require us to jettison parts of the Bible just because it slows down the numerical growth we so desperately wish to see! For example, no matter how much slower it makes things, we should not argue for setting aside the biblical qualification of an elder that he “hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.” (Titus 1:9).
Again, this is not a new argument. God’s people have long wrestled with the challenge of measuring “results” of Christian ministry. As Westerners, we love nothing more than analyzing different approaches, seeing which are more fruitful, and writing out prescriptions for others to follow those that produced more success. In this, we are greatly shaped by the air our culture breathes, where most of us work for companies that function in this way, trying to gain market share on competitors.
Results in God’s economy, however, simply cannot be measured in this way! As Spurgeon put it “Men are exceedingly apt to measure actions by their consequences. How wrong it is to measure actions by results, rather than by their own intrinsic character! … If a man gives his life to convert the heathen, and he does not succeed, he shall have as much reward of God as he who turns a nation to the faith.”
As Christian ministers, we are not given the option of saying “this works, therefore it is the right thing to do,” primarily because what “works” and doesn’t is only known to God.
It’s hard to miss Garrison’s desperation to convince the reader that CPMs are genuine and that it inarguably follows that replicating them should guide our missiology moving forward. However, I can’t help but wonder how Garrison would respond if someone were to present him with a study of 30 different church plants that have grown to megachurches around America, and identified 5 strategies that they share in common that helped them grow to thousands of people each. Would he immediately conclude that we should adopt these strategies, without careful consideration from the whole counsel of God’s Word? Would the “success” of these church plants simply be obvious from their numbers? One would hope not! As ministers of the gospel, we cannot simply reduce “success” to numerical response and seek to replicate it, as if the church were just another business, competing with others for market share.
It seems clear that Garrison has simply misunderstood his critics. His original book made the case that God was working in a new way, resulting in thousands of churches planted in some of the most hostile places on earth. When people questioned elements of the strategies that he espoused, particularly the absence of the “ordinary means of grace,” the response centered on “but look at the numbers!”
Obviously, we cannot reduce church planting to a purely numerical pursuit of multiplication. I am not sure, however, that Garrison recognizes the danger here at all. As he writes about the potential CPM among the Walu people of northern Africa: “The team discovered that some internal obstacles hindered the growth potential among the Walu. … The Walu Christians were dependent upon pastors for leading the churches. The Walu pastors’ insistence upon six months of discipleship before administering baptism … impeded rapid multiplication.” All of Garrison’s analysis is premised on the idea that rapid multiplication is the only goal, and the churches’ “dependence” on pastors who value discipleship is seen as a “hindrance.”
The Case for Sending Churches
It is no small thing to offer public critique of brothers and sisters in Christ. To speak with grace, love, and a genuine desire for unity while expressing concern, even serious concern, about their methods is a delicate task.
This difficulty is only intensified when many who have participated in CPMs have made costly sacrifices, moving their families into hard places out of devotion to the Lord Jesus and a longing to see His name proclaimed “to the uttermost parts of the earth.” Indeed, I share many of their concerns. Of course we want to see many come to Christ, and soon! Many churches around the world do have an unhealthy dependence on foreign money and on buildings! It is a good thing to stress the need for saturating any missions efforts with prayer!
But even while honoring such motives, we must remain anchored to simple, biblical truths. We cannot compel the Spirit’s work by merely relying on patterns of past fruitfulness and then attempting to reproduce them mechanically. The sovereign work of God is not ours to manufacture, and methodology, however earnest, is no substitute for the deeper, slower, Spirit-dependent work of planting healthy churches among the unreached.
The solution to this problem is not a simple one, because we will not solve the root of the problem by arguing for more robust ecclesiology among the movement practitioners. The truth is, missions is where poor theology and ecclesiology can go viral in the worst sense, spreading rapidly because mission agencies untethered to the Church simply do not have the antibodies to fight these problems off.
No, brothers and sisters, the solution is for the church, the body of Christ and the instrument through whom his manifold wisdom will be made known, to take her rightful seat at the head of the missions table. As long as sending churches remain passive and unaware, then we in the missions world will face one battle after another against poor missiology, underequipped and unprepared to face them.
The true solution is for healthy churches to begin to send out well-equipped missionaries and then stay intimately involved in their lives and ministries, not settling for being relegated to, as Bradley Bell puts it, “pay, pray and stay out of the way” by agencies. Rather, the churches should demand to sit in the driver’s seat. When sending churches engage in this way, we will start to see global missions in a much healthier place.