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Disciple-Making Movements
Local churches within a people or population group rapidly and regularly planting multiple new churches as a normal part of being the church.
The term Disciple-Making Movements has gained extensive usage in recent years with many evangelicals since being popularized by the International Mission Board in 1998 and David Garrison’s Church Planting Movements, published in 2004. Perhaps it’s the new buzz word overtaking the former Church Growth terminology initiated much earlier at Fuller Theological Seminary. Often it is mis-understood or used haphazardly and as a result may fail to differentiate from various other strategies or processes of Disciple-Making. However, the concept of movement is foundational to this strategy of church planting. Movements in the context of Christian renewal or Disciple-Making are supernatural acts of God. They are outside of human control. They are not institutional, tradition-bound, managed, or owned. Disciple-Making movements are often characterized by young believers still in a disciple-making and maturing process themselves, passionately in love with Jesus who go from their newly established community of believers to make new disciples in a new region from which a new community of believers quickly emerges. This rapid multi-generational self-replication of churches in a given region or population segment defines church planting movements.
