Abner completed this PhD dissertation in December 2019 as a student of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He argues for an "embryonic ecclesiology" which "identifies the core elements of a church that, when given appropriate attention, will enable a new church plant to flourish where it is planted" (p. 50). He uses his rubric of an embryonic…
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…
John Henry Serworwora is a native Indonesian educated at Mid-America Baptist Seminary and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also the former president of Jakarta Baptist Theological Seminary (2006-2010). In this 2014 article in the Great Commission Research Journal, he heavily critiques the ecclesiology of T4T, including using new converts as leaders, promoting women to church leadership,…
George Robinson (DMiss, Western Seminary) reviews T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution in the October 2011 issue of Global Missiology. While favorable to movements, Robinson expresses concerns with issues of rapidity, ecclesiology, definition of church, and heresy. This review contains both positive and negative aspects of the book, and Robinson concludes that he would recommend the book with certain…