20 Hinderances to ignite Disciple Multiplication Movements

The book of Acts ends with the repeated a phrase, “He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ--with all boldness and without hindrance!” Acts 28:31

In May of 2013 my Israeli friend Sean Steckbeck gave me the honor of training several of his Israeli Messianic Jewish and Palestinian Arab trainers across the Holy Land.  I met Sean through our mutual friend and mentor Dr. Victor Choudhrie.  Sean calls Victor, George Patterson and myself often to learn from our success and mistakes in multiplying churches among the Unreached.  I have never seen the power of God as much as I have witnessed with Sean and his friends.  I have learned a lot about how to heal the sick without being weird.  In the past 2 years that Victor, George and I have been training him, Sean reports that the number of new house churches and believers have doubled.  His networks have now seen 60 new seeker groups and house churches with 50 baptisms.  This is a miracle in Israel.  

In one training in a home, overlooking the Sea of Galilee, I met one of the Messianic believers who had yet to implement Sean’s DMM training.  This brother’s name was Ariel and he really began to challenge Sean and my faith that Disciple Multiplication Movements can and in fact ARE happening in the Holy Land.  “Jay and Sean,  Maybe DMMs can happen in India and Burma but this will never happen here in Israel.  This is hard ground!”  I could almost see the atmosphere of faith that we were eagerly trying to build start to quickly drain out of the room.

Ariel is one of only 3,000 native-born “Sabras” out of 6 million Israeli Jews who were followers of Yeshua.  I knew what he said was the normal attitude because, statistically it takes 8 years on average and millions of evangelistic outreach dollars for “Sabra” Israeli Jews to come to faith.   94% of the 20,000 Messianic Jews in Israel are first generation immigrants.  Israelis rightly see the Body of the Messiah as foreign.  

The spontaneous reply that came out of my mouth, I believe was from the Lord.  “Ariel,  I want you to go to the Tombs of Caleb and Joshua near the settlement of Ariel and repeat what you just told me.  Repeat it standing in front of their graves.  I could see that he got my point from Numbers 13:30.   “There are giants in the Land but our God is with us. We can surely do this!” Are you going to be a Joshua and Caleb or will you remain in the cynical unbelief of the 10 spies who quivered before the giants?   

In my 15 years of living in the midst of the 10/40 Window's billions of Unreached I have seen very few foreign missionaries who have the faith of Caleb and Joshua.  Neil Cole hits the nail on the head in his recent article “Missions is Broken”.  The vast majority of missionaries are unaware that thousands of new Disciple Multiplication Movements are indeed springing up among Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists.  The majority who HAVE heard the DMM vision and know a few case studies tend to be, like the 10 spies, overly cynical.  They doubt that it is even possible to see churches multiply without enormous amounts of theological training and millions of dollars to start a few new churches. 

You are correct to assume that foreign missionaries and agencies have many practices that actually do more harm than good in regards to igniting DMMs.

1.  Honest humility Learn from practitioners who have started and sustained Disciple Multiplication Movements, rather than thinking you have mastered all the answers. 2 Tim. 2:2, Ex. 18:18.

2. Vigorous vision Think on the multiplication and addition principles presented in Acts, rather than thinking of church growth by addition only.

3. Fearless faith Believe that rapidly obeying Jesus leads to rapidly multiplying disciples, rather than fearing “There are giants in the land!” Num. 13:30 Firm obedience Base discipleship on obedience , rather than overemphasizing information. Mt. 7:24-28. Mt. 28:20.

4. Sacred rites Affirm the importance of Jesus’ command to baptize and practice the Lord's Supper, rather than pushing for decisions of the will.

5. Power Allow demonstrations of the Power of Christ to heal the sick, rather than merely preaching the Word.

6. All nations See all ripe fields that God has readied in an area, to start separate movements, rather than focusing with tunnel vision on only one people group.

7. Family units Do family evangelism in homes, rather than focusing unduly on individuals.

8. Lay leaders Let new, indigenous leaders of new churches baptize and serve Communion, rather than making them disobey Jesus’ commands for lack of ordained clergy.

9. Tentmakers Enable self-support for leaders, rather than providing paternalistic subsidy of leaders who often over-control.

10. Poor people Make disciples among the poor in pioneer areas, rather than trying to push camels through a needle’s eye, working exclusively with middle and upper class folk.

11. Balance Alleviate poverty as you evangelize, doing both, rather than having two separate efforts of development work and discipling.

12. Truth Critically analyze generational multiplication and “fruit inspection”, rather than naively believing every evangelistic event report, neglecting monitoring and evaluating evangelistic and disciple multiplication efforts. 

13. Stories Relate Bible stories and ask discussion questions, rather than relying primarily on monologue sermons.

14. Model skills Train apprentices on the job working with people, rather than merely lecturing.

15. Priorities Give making disciples top importance, rather than overly focusing on language learning. Those who focus all their time on language seldom turn over leadership to local believers.

16. Practice first Start a Disciple Multiplication Movement, before writing about it, rather than striving to gain recognition as an expert’ or trying to climb an organizational ladder. The sin of Diotrophes was loving to be first, 3 John 1:9.

17. Wolf warning Inoculate believers against those “sheep stealers who will surely come, rather than waiting until they have already begun to decimate Christ's flock.

18. Train locals Train lay leaders who have jobs and are local "Sons of the Soil", rather than importing and exporting leaders from Bible schools or seminaries.

19. Light baton Develop easily reproducible, affordable training techniques to disciple nations, rather than overemphasizing high tech devices and media.

20.  Time Management Spending large amounts of time with a few curious DMM learners rather than doing short trainings with a few committed and obedient trainers. 

You are correct to assume that indigenous missionaries are much cheaper and better at language proficiency than foreign missionaries. However, 90% of indigenous missionaries have just as many hindering ideas and practices as expensive foreign missionaries in regards to igniting sustainable Disciple Multiplication Movements. Wherever these practices are placed under obedience to the Rule and Reign of the Lord Jesus, churches are multiplying and millions are coming to Christ.

The Tomb of Joshua and Caleb in the Samarian Hills.  Palestinian Arabs constantly desecrate this holy site with graffiti 

Jay Pratt is a Disciple Multiplication Movement Coach who's trainees are seeing several DMMs among Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindus in a Military Dictatorship in Asia.