Introduction
Inside Church Planting Movements (2026) is published by WIGTake Resources, a small publisher started by David Garrison in 2004. WIGTake has published several other movement-related books, including the original Church Planting Movements, T4T, Any-3, A Wind in the House of Islam, and Bhojpuri Breakthrough, among others.
After more than two decades since the original release of Church Planting Movements, the purpose of Inside Church Planting Movements is to demonstrate that church planting movements are “real.” It seeks to accomplish this by surveying and/or assessing 28 church planting movements and determining which were real movements and which were not—or not yet. The assessment teams concluded that 11 of these were real. The application of the reality of these movements is thus a call to involvement:
“If Church Planting Movements are real, how can we afford to ignore or oppose them? How can we dismiss something God is doing that is bringing millions of new believers into discipleship-based churches among the world’s least-reached peoples? The haunting question for us is: Will we be a part of what God is doing in these movements?” (p. 178)
The “Straw Man” Critics
Garrison devotes a chapter to CPM critics and categorizes them into eight categories. According to Garrison, critics oppose movements:
- for being potentially heretical
- for not being tied to their denomination
- for not having expository preaching, not having elders, and being pragmatic (“Reformed critics”)
- for not having ordained leadership
- for being too tied to evangelism and church planting and not “ministry”
- because they hadn’t personally seen a movement
- for being too rapid
- for being too remote
As a critic, I was disappointed with this chapter, wondering why Garrison doesn’t address some of the more potent criticisms of movements. He dismissed Andy Johnson and Matt Rhodes in less than a page and failed to mention critical resources by John Massey, Ed Roberts, Hoyt Lovelace, Jackson Wu, George Terry, Chad Vegas, Alex Kocman, and many others. In essence, this chapter was a “straw man” that dismisses the critics and sidesteps some of the major problems. But I get it—it would be hard to convince readers to get involved in movements if they heard the rest of the story (see Prov. 18:17). Garrison wrote, “In the chapters ahead we will explore case studies of Church Planting Movements and their assessments, and as we do so we will keep in mind the objections that sincere critics have raised” (p. 25). He achieved the first half of that goal but failed at the second.
The Ecclesiological Gap
The book starts out with two definitions of a church as defined by the International Mission Board (IMB). The first, more basic version was defined in 2000, and an updated version came in 2005. The latter definition includes an ecclesiological and complementarian statement that includes the assertion that a church’s “scriptural officers are pastors and deacons” and that “the office of pastor is limited to men” (p. 9).
If the 2005 definition of a church were built into CPM and DMM methodology, I’d be much less of a critic, but such is not the case in movements methodology. As I wrote in another article, most movements and the methods used to get there are defined by egalitarian theology. In this book, Garrison argues that the Bhojpuri Movement is an example of a confirmed church planting movement. He allocates five or six pages to describing the movement and its assessment. What definition of a church was he using? It doesn’t appear to be the one with scriptural offices for leaders and the requirement that pastors should be men. The Bhojpuri Breakthrough book, also published by WIGTake, is a much fuller description of this movement. It states:
Our stand from the very beginning has been that men and women are equal. Just as God calls men, he calls women as well. If men can make disciples, women can make disciples. So we have many women who are leaders and church planters in the movement. They have discipled people and won whole households. We have no problem with appointing women as leaders in the church. The head of our organization is a woman, a wonderful servant leader. (John and Coles, 2019, p. 228)
I also doubt whether other movements in Inside Church Planting Movements were operating under the 2005 definition of a church. In one quote, Garrison says, “As new believers filled a small apartment or house church, it quickly became necessary for them to hive off new believers to other homes, thus rapidly multiplying new house churches” (p. 20). So, if you have a group of 30 that can’t fit into an apartment, you “hive off” new believers into other homes, thus multiplying new “churches.” Does this mean that these new houses have biblical, complementarian leadership structures? No. These are merely groups of believers who are meeting together, hopefully practicing baptism and the Lord’s Supper. This is much more like the actual definition of a church being tossed around in movements books.
The Bottleneck of Biblical Leadership
In this same vein, I also came across another quote that sheds light on the ethos behind church planting movements. In assessing a Muslim Berber movement in North Africa, Garrison wrote, “The team concluded that the Berber work appeared to be an emerging Church Planting Movement, but with some reservations. While the churches they visited were vibrant and growing, their members worshipped in traditional church buildings with recognized pastoral leaders” (p. 68). I can tolerate the first “reservation,” namely, that churches are meeting in buildings—especially if it means that buildings are required to be considered a church. But I find it profoundly telling that “recognized pastoral leaders” is a liability. It’s one thing if you require a leader to have an MDiv for pastoral ministry; it is quite another to treat the very existence of qualified leaders as a liability. In most church planting movements literature, there is an absence of teaching about biblical leadership qualifications or an insistence that churches need to have qualified leaders. Garrison stated in an early chapter, “While plural leadership is not unusual in rapidly multiplying Church Planting Movements, finding ‘elders’ from movements of new disciples is practically an oxymoron” (p. 20). You’re also unlikely to see biblical leadership structures emerge in movements if you systematically downplay any teaching or insistence on biblically qualified leadership—which is exactly what most movement methodology does. Why? Because it can kill a movement. Why didn’t the Apostle Paul think of that?
Biblical Fidelity Versus Results
On paper, Garrison and other movement proponents claim that everything they do is “biblical.” Regarding doing movement assessments, he states, “We must begin with a biblical foundation to ensure that whatever we do aligns with Scripture” (p. 154). He also declares, “[C]atalysts of Church Planting Movements share with their Reformed critics a deep commitment to biblical authority. In healthy Church Planting Movements, missionaries endeavor to sow scriptural fidelity into the very DNA of each reproducing church” (p. 21). Really? I wonder Garrison understands the terms “biblical authority,” “scriptural fidelity,” “whatever,” and “each.”
First of all, movement proponents have renamed and redefined biblical roles such as apostles and evangelists into roles such as “strategy coordinator,” “trainers,” and “movement catalysts.” These roles redefine biblical categories in ways that obscure accountability and authority. Regarding a job description, when I was taught to become a movement catalyst, I was told not to teach the nationals I was seeking to reach. I was told of many female believers who were starting and leading churches. I was told that proclaiming the gospel in certain hard-to-reach Muslim areas was bad and that I should let Muslims discover it for themselves. I was told that my household (oikos) meant my social network and that a person of peace, biblically defined, was the person who opens up his or her social network to the gospel. I was never told how or when to appoint elders to the churches, the biblical distinctions on the roles of males and females, or the biblical importance of teachers and sound teaching. Clearly, there was a lack of sowing “scriptural fidelity” into our DNA.
It’s glaringly apparent what the actual goal was. It wasn’t scriptural fidelity or biblical authority—it was results. Garrison states, “CPM catalysts are driven by an end vision of their entire people group or urban complex coming to Christ” (p. 150). He also says, “David Watson’s Strategy Coordinator paradigm asked a big question: What’s it going to take for all of the Bhojpuri to come to Christ? His goal was nothing less than the entire fifty million Bhojpuri coming to faith” (p. 42). The name of this book’s publisher, WIGTake, is also revealing: “what’s it going to take?” I’ll tell you what it’s going to take: You must overlook qualifications on biblical leadership, biblical ecclesiology, and biblical roles for men and women so that as many people can believe in Jesus as fast as possible. At least that’s what is implied in movements literature and methodology.
The Myth of Missiological Novelty
Another issue that seems curious to me is that Garrison seems to limit church planting movements—a term he capitalizes as “Church Planting Movements”—to those that happened since around the turn of the 21st century. He first states, “We were seeing something new, and we wanted to describe it accurately” (p. 6, emphasis added). Later, he says, “Even today, a quarter century after the first movements appeared, one hears that CPMs are a rural phenomenon, a village thing” (p. 180, emphasis added). He also dismisses “graduate seminary programs” for “attempts to fit new phenomena into nineteenth-century paradigms and vocabulary,” stating this is an “academic lag in missiological studies” (p. 147). Additionally, the 28 CPMs surveyed in this book all occurred slightly before or after the turn of the century. In Garrison’s view, church planting movements seem to be a phenomenon only observed in the last two or three decades. I’ve studied missions history extensively in the area where I serve, and I’m well aware of missionaries in the early 20th century talking about masses of people in India coming to faith in Christ. And what about the mass movement to Christ within China in the 20th century? Does that not count as a church planting movement? Numerous tribes throughout history have also converted to Christ within short periods of time. Do they not count? I don’t see why Garrison insists on church planting movements as a new or unique phenomenon. Even resources much earlier than Garrison and the IMB mention “church planting movement(s)” (e.g., William R. Read, New Patterns of Church Growth in Brazil, 1965, p. 162). Garrison does seem to contradict himself later when he writes, “Church tradition tells us that after his experience with the resurrected Lord, Thomas became a missionary and took the gospel as far as India. The movement fruit that Thomas catalyzed two thousand years ago continues to flourish to this day, with countless indigenous churches planting churches throughout South Asia” (p. 179). So, if movements only happened in the past 25 years, how could the Apostle Thomas have been a “movement catalyst” two millennia ago?
The Problem of Transparency
I have one final reflection on the title of this book: “Inside” Church Planting Movements. In many ways, church planting movements are shielded from criticism. One reason for this is that most have never experienced one. Garrison is aware of this and even has a category of critics he calls “missionary critics.” They are those who “have never seen a Church Planting Movement” and who “have questioned the very existence of Church Planting Movements and dismissed them as fraudulent or shortcuts to a questionable end” (p. 23). On the other hand, for those not privileged enough to observe a movement, proponents are not generous about giving details about movements. They paint a pretty picture of movements when describing them in 4–5 pages. But we aren’t privy to entering into the details of these movements.
We later find out that this is partly intentional. In a chapter titled “Doing Your Own Assessment,” Garrison advises giving two different reports of a movement. He states:
One report will be as exhaustive as possible. This comprehensive report will also be confidential. . . . The second report is an executive overview, a redacted summary of the movement that eliminates any information that might damage the movement should it fall into the wrong hands. This typically means deleting the names of individuals and places that need to remain discreet. (pp. 163–164)
I understand the need to remove sensitive names and places for security reasons. But not all confirmed movements have taken place in restricted locations; one took place in Guatemala. And releasing only a “redacted summary” effectively screens observers from getting an up-close view of a church planting movement, including all of the messy details, the collateral damage, the fallout, the leadership abuses, and those burned by the movement. Bhojpuri Breakthrough is a fantastic example of a book about a “confirmed” movement that is viewed through rose-colored glasses. Proponents like to tell us that movements are messy, but they don’t give us any details.
As a critic, it’s nearly impossible to learn from or criticize a movement that is described as follows: “In 1997, there were 350 believers and 5 churches. By 2002, there were 13,350 believers and 575 churches. We sent in an assessment team and determined that this was a real movement.” And that’s about all we get in this book. I feel like I’m getting more promotional literature that emphasizes results over biblical faithfulness. I hardly feel like I’m learning about church planting movements from the “inside”; I feel I’m being sold on them from the outside.
