The Missions Podcast (hosted by Alex Kocman and Scott Dunford) interviewed Zane Pratt on April 21, 2022 at the Together for the Gospel (T4G) conference in Louisville, KY. Zane Pratt is IMB's vice president for global training. The main topic was on the issue of defining church in CPM/DMM movements. They also talked about urgency, pragmatism, and…
Brooks Buser is the president of Radius International and a vocal critic of CPM and DMM. In this episode of the Defend and Confirm Podcast, co-hosts Sean DeMars and Russell Berger ask Brooks the following questions (paraphrased): Brooks, tell us a little about who you are and what you do.What does training missionaries at Radius look like?Have…
Missions by the Book contains a light critique of CPM/DMM but is probably a response to it. Rather than a critique, it is written from a positive stance advocating a biblical basis of missions (and thus the book's title). One of the main points is that the Bible gives us a method for missions, and we are…
Russell and Sean with the Defend and Confirm Podcast discuss whether the churches planted in CPMs actually fit the biblical definition of a church. One interesting point was that the IMB defines a church differently than the Southern Baptist Convention. Watch it here and then come back and leave a review.
Russell Berger and Sean DeMars, co-hosts of the Defend and Confirm podcast, begin their series critiquing church planting movements with this episode. This episode is meant to introduce the issues, but they actually jump in with their critique. A couple of their points seem slightly off base—namely, that nearly all IMB missionaries are applying the CPM methodologies…
Caleb Morell, currently the Senior Pastoral Assistant for Research at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., reviewed Steve Addison's 2019 book, The Rise and Fall of Movements: A Roadmap for Leaders (100Movements Publishing). Morell takes issue with several DMM elements featured in Addison's book, including obedience-based discipleship, definition of church (or lack thereof), and Discovery Bible…
Mack Stiles is the pastor of a church in Iraq. In this short article on the Desiring God site, Stiles begins with the positives about CPM and then mentions six weaknesses. They include: sloppy definitions of churchvulnerability to error and heresytemptations to pragmatismlack of clarity (on definitions of church and conversion)ethnically homogeneous congregationsover-contextualization Read it here.
Caleb Morell critiques Jerry Trousdale and Glenn Sunshine's popular DMM book, The Kingdom Unleashed.[1] One of his main criticisms is that the authors redefine the historical Protestant definition of a church. Read it here. [1] Jerry Trousdale and Glenn Sunshine, The Kingdom Unleashed: How Jesus’ 1st Century Kingdom Values Are Transforming Thousands of Cultures and Awakening His…
Darren Carlson reviews Miraculous Movements: How Hundreds of Thousands of Muslims Are Falling in Love with Jesus (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012). Carlson says that the crux of the issue is Trousdale's hermeneutics. In addition to that, Carlson lists four theological concerns which include obedience-based discipleship, the definition of church, "where is the Bible?" and "where is the…
John Michael Morris is (or was) a professor of missions at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS). In this article from SBTS's Southwestern Journal of Theology, he contrasts two conflicting approaches to discipleship that are both based on different interpretations of Matthew 28:20, namely the phrase "teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." CPM proponents…