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…
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…
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.
The Mission Podcast hosted Andy Johnson, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. and author of Missions, How the Local Church Goes Global. The podcast was posted June 2, 2019. Major topics included pragmatism, prioritism, and how local churches can do a better job of sending missionaries. Questions that the hosts asked included (paraphrased): How…
The Missions Podcast co-hosts Alex Kocman and Scott Dunford interview IMB Vice President for Global Training Zane Pratt. The interview addressed disciple-making movements (DMM), syncretism, and obedience-based discipleship. Questions included: Tell us a little bit about yourself and your ministry.What is a disciple-making movement?What about the Great Commission's inclusion of teaching?Why is it important to discuss disciple-making…
Steve Jennings is the pastor of Immanuel Church of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates. In this article posted on the 9marks website, Jennings addresses the "madness" of looking for the "perfect formula for explosive, exponential kingdom growth" (para. 2, conclusion para. 1). He mentions the "person of peace" approach, Four Fields, T4T, and discovery Bible studies…
When this article was published, George Terry was serving as a professor at Malaysia Baptist Theological Seminary in Penang, Malaysia. This article, which critiques T4T methodology, recalls Paul Hiebert's famous 1982 article named "The Flaw of the Excluded Middle." Terry writes that T4T "undervalue[s] the influence of context" (p. 335) and contains too many false dichotomies (thus…
David Sills critiques church planting movements in Chapter 7 of his book Reaching and Teaching: A Call to Great Commission Obedience. He addresses issues of pragmatism and rapidity, but one of his main points is that movements and revivals are acts of God and no one can force them into existence. He ends the section with, "[T]he…
Andy Johnson, associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., wrote this excellent article on pragmatism in February 2010. Using David Garrison's CPM book as an example of a "pragmatic approach to missions," Johnson argues that pragmatism ultimately leads to liberalism. He encourages biblical faithfulness over results and raises a number of questions that challenge…
Ed Roberts, a church planter in Central Asia for over twenty years, critiques David Garrison's book Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World (2004, WIGTake). The critique includes issues of rapidity, pragmatism, and ecclesiology. The book review was written on July 25, 2009. Read it here.