An article recently released at Desiring God titled, What Could Be Wrong with ‘Church Planting’? Six Dangers in a Missions Strategy provides a nice anecdote of some of the problematic issues in talking about movements today.
In the introduction, the author remarks that:
…by his grace, God used me to start a movement that helped plant churches.
But he then attempts to refute “church planting movements.” Basically, he has started a movement that helped plant churches but he is against church planting movements. Let that sink in for a moment.
There were several misunderstandings and inaccuracies in his argument and portrayal of CPM/DMM, but that is for another post. The author concludes:
Missionary fads come and go. Clear proclamation of gospel truth in the context of healthy biblical churches will last until Jesus returns.
I am not an apologist for DMM, although I believe the approach is more biblically and missiologically sound than the author portrays it. Indeed, no strategy is perfect. We will not shy away from these issues in Motus Dei.
However, I’m more curious about his approach to talking about “movements” in this article. I take him at his word that God used him to start a “movement” that helped plant churches. Why can’t we talk about that?
What is the nature of this movement? What is its scope? How did it begin? What were the factors that contributed to its success? What was his strategy? How did they network? What is the vision of the movement? How did new people join? What sustained it? What were the socio-contextual factors in that context that potentially facilitated its emergence? How did it relate to context? How did the community view it? What changes happened in society as a result? Is it still continuing today? What would they do differently if they could start over? Etc.
From my perspective, our missions community would have been better served by his own empirical case study, rather than simply warning people of the “dangers” of a strategy that appears to be misunderstood and has plenty of positive case studies of its own.
“If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another” (Gal. 5:15).
To be fair, it was a short blog post. We are free to criticize error when we see it.
But to the extent that this article criticizes movements, I don’t think we’re quite there yet. Our missiological discourse on movements needs to go deeper and wider. We still have much to discover, complex issues to unravel, unity in Christ to maintain, and unengaged nations to disciple.
3 comments:
Warrick, he's drawing a distinction between "starting a movement that helped plant churches" and "Church Planting Movements" (note the capitalization), the "relatively new missions strategy."
For sure, we would like to know the details of his church planting experience, but I think the point is that he did not follow the CPM missions strategy but was still successful in planting churches.
I remember I once received some negative feedback on a paper I wrote, from someone I didn't know all that well. Most of the critique was not about what I wrote, but what I didn't write. "Why didn't you write about this? Why didn't you write about that?" After some thought, I wrote back, "Well, because it's my paper, and I chose to write about the things that I wanted to write about. If you're interested in those other related topics, you should write your own paper." In God's providence, we've become good friends since.
Stiles didn't write the article you wanted him to write, and answer the questions you wanted him to answer, but I think his topic is worth discussing. So, for example, if you could respond to one or more of the "six concerning weaknesses" of CPM that he cites, perhaps we can have a good discussion! And who knows, maybe you and Stiles could become good friends in the future.
Hi Elnwood, thanks as always for writing. I do agree with you.
I also understood that he was trying to create a distinction, and my post was meant to show that there is much more to learn rather than criticizing something he doesn't fully understand. A friend counted 11 inaccuracies in the article and has already responded. I'll post it if he wants to share it.
It is difficult to talk about movements constructively. But what makes the article so discouraging is that his approach was condescending and dismissive. We need to do better.
So I fully agree with you that we need to address this issue with dialogue and relationships in Christ. I have started a network for this very purpose and we have more than 100 people involved: http://muslimministry.blogspot.com/p/movements.html
Hi Warrick, thanks for the reply.
I appreciated that Mack Stiles gave both positives and negatives about CPM based on his own experiences with practitioners. So personally I found it constructive, as well as encouraging and challenging, not condescending and dismissive.
In contrast, I did not find a positive word about Stiles' post, there were parts that I found condescending and dismissive. In particular, your comment "Basically, he has started a movement that helped plant churches but he is against church planting movements. Let that sink in for a moment."
It sounds like you’re saying that Stiles is being self-contradictory. But when I clarified his meaning, you said you already understood that. So what purpose did it serve? Why did you remove the capitalization from Church Planting Movements? Removing the capitalization changes the meaning of the phrase, and in doing so you are misrepresenting what he said. That whole section seems condescending and dismissive to me.
I say this not to be condescending, but to point out how easy it is to see the speck in our brothers’ eye, and not the plank in our own. As you wrote, we need to do better!
I am glad for your Motus Dei network, and I hope that Stiles will be able to participate in that discussion.
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