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| Catalyzing “Insider Movements” Among the Unreached |
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| David S. Lim |
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In spite the Church Growth phenomena (esp. the mega-church kind) and talks about Church Multiplication and Church Planting Movements (CPM), there seems to have been no significant impact on the major religious affinity blocks, especially the Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Communist and Orality worlds,1 perhaps except for some regions in China,2 Vietnam, and Cambodia (Carlton 2000). As our Lord’s Great Commission includes discipling these major blocs of peoples and nations,3 which model of evangelism and mission will be effective in reaching them today, that will bear fruit and even much fruit among them? Our evangelistic and missionary efforts have not been wanting in zeal, holiness, dedication, prayer and even sacrifice. The problem seems to be with the church model and mission strategy that have been used! Are we willing to make a major paradigm shift for the sake of putting closure to the Great Commission, even if it may mean breaking with some of our sacred traditions in doing church and mission?
Understanding “Insider Movements”
In the latter part of 2005, the evangelical mission community had been alerted to the new phrase “Insider Movements (IM).” This was the theme of the September-October 2005 issue of Mission Frontiers. It was also the theme of the 2005 annual conference of the International Society for Frontier Missiology (September 12-15, 2005) in Denver, Colorado: “Insider Movements: Doing Church Where There Is No Church.”
IM is synonymous with “gospel movements,” people movements,” “Christ-ward movements” and “disciple-making movements” as long as these phrases refer to a nuanced understanding that CPM should be combined with “radical contextualization (RC)” (cf. Lim 2003). Some even contrast IM from CPM:
The term “Church Planting” implies inventing a new structure. No matter how contextualized the “church” may be, it is still a new structure that is foreign to the people group. Church-planting work of various levels of contextualization is necessary in some contexts. However, our primary desire is for the spontaneous spread of culturally relevant Gospel movements through pre-existing networks. We believe that the extended
family unit is the primary and foremost biblical model of ecclesia (“Seeking…” 2005).
They say further:
Our aim is to be catalytic agents in the spawning of new movements. We do not have a prescribed methodology. We focus on facilitating the inductive learning of the scriptures that will enable indigenous believers to define their own convictions in their daily living. Using the scriptures as the primary and foremost authority, we trust in the self-correcting power of God’s Word that is lived out through obedience and the work of the Holy Spirit to lead the indigenous believers (ibid.).
Call to Paradigm Shift of “Church”
Unless church leaders and missionaries who have been ministering in non-Christian-majority contexts shift paradigms of church and ministry, they will remain ineffective, even if they seem to be winning a population increase and growing mission activities of other religions, esp. among the poor, we need to adopt a more effective approach, otherwise millions of non-Christians will continue to die and go to eternal destruction by the millions each year!
Global Christianity (including Evangelicalism) has unwittingly fallen into a trap, which is historically known as “the Babylonian captivity of the church,” that constitutes the Christendom paradigm of church and also often called “western shape” which most third world churches have adopted. Thinking that this will result in better church growth, Christian leaders have been promoting “the local church is the base for ministry and/or world evangelization.” By “local church” is meant a congregation that seeks to have a full-time pastor (and a pastoral staff as it grows bigger) and her own sanctuary (ideally bought and owned rather than rented), in order to attract and maintain an ever-increasing attendance in her weekly Sunday worship services.
Though this looks appealing (and not many have seriously questioned this tradition), it has been a self-defeating (and historically, quite self-destructive) trap: for the maintenance mode of local churches have almost always killed (often sooner than later) the mission mode of the (whole) church! A lot of Christian resources become absorbed into the maintenance of church activities (e.g., evangelistic rallies, Sunday Schools, youth camps, mission conferences, building projects, etc.) for nominal believers who offer to God (often hypocritically!) what are conveniently “extras” from the “abundant blessings” that He provides in their middle class “comfort zones”! Usually only a pittance (ever calculated the percentage of church budgets that really go into missions?) are actually spent to help reach out to non-church members! In secular terms, this is NOT cost-effective! Or in spiritual terms, it is poor stewardship! Why?
May I suggest that there are at least three ways by which local church structures become hindrances to church growth: they stunt quality growth, quantity growth and long-term growth!
1. They hinder quality growth. In spite the zeal and fervency affirmed in the songs, prayers and sermons of worship services, they actually nurture nominalism (or worse, hypocrisy)! Disciples are made in small groups, not big meetings. Yet most (if not all) local churches would emphasize congregational assemblies rather than cell groups. The best proof is: where do they look to count their weekly church attendance? Such emphasis is perhaps inevitable, because of the hierarchical (perhaps undeniably elitist) and clerical model of church in the minds of most Christians nowadays and ever since the Edict of Milan (in AD 313 when Constantine enforced Christianity in the Roman Empire) when the bishops introduced the diocesan and parish structures to the church!
Thereby almost inevitably, most church activities (including the central “Sunday worship services”) have helped keep Christians immature spiritually. They are kept perennially as “spiritual babies” who are dependent on pastors, church buildings and church programs to “feel spiritual” or even just to “be in God’s presence.” Almost all “lay-people,” even after 40-50 years in faith, would still need to be visited or counseled or prayed for/blessed (by “pastors” usually), still self-centered, and needing to be served (instead of being equipped to minister to others, cf. Eph. 4:11-16). A majority would hesitate to lead in public prayers or to do personal evangelism! Instead of spiritual empowerment, they experience spiritual disempowerment! In short, local churches normally produce “nominal (or baby) Christians,” not “committed disciples”!
2. They hinder quantity growth. Moreover, local churches stunt the amount and the rate of numerical increase of the church! We have mentioned above how they waste a lot of resources in maintenance, mostly on
more costly ways to keep the members happy, if not “spoiled.” In fact, to attract more people to Christ, they create more “come structures” (read: church programs that almost always has to border on entertainment; how else are they going to be seeker-friendly, given the competition “out there” in the world?), rather than more “go structures” (read: more secular-looking programs NOT held in church buildings)!4
And instead of “total church mobilization” to evangelize their community and the ends of the earth, local churches elicit low commitment from their members (besides weekly church attendance and giving their offerings), hence the need to constantly cajole people to be more active in church. Meanwhile, they enhance the role of “full-timers” (pastors and missionaries) to be the key players in doing evangelism and missions! “Reaching out to the lost” becomes the job of specialists, and not of the whole body! No wonder the rate of growth of local churches decreases as they increase (often slowly) in size! How tragic! Should we not be longing for a more “spontaneous expansion of the church” involving the whole church to reach the whole world? Hardly any local church has been able to sustain rapid quantity church growth for ten years – with the only exception that they were able to institutionalize a have been able to maintain and sustain such structure beyond twenty years?
3. They hinder long-term growth. And worst, local churches are structured in such a way that future growth (in quality and quantity), if any, will be stunted! The emphasis on big assemblies, magnificent buildings and super-gifted “full-timers” seems to fit into the less democratic (or more authoritarian) societies in Asia. But in the long term, this breeds the “superstar complex” in the church leaders and “hero (bordering on demi-god, as in Korea) worship” among the members. Tragically, in the long term this results in the appointment or election of “lay leaders” (often called “trustees,” “elders” or “deacons”) who are chosen on the basis of their popularity – often due to their giftedness in public speaking (or singing) and/or in political savvy, including the use of wealth for self-promotion (perhaps often unintentionally). The almost inevitable rise of such populist leaders, especially as the church grows richer and becomes middle- or upper-class (known as “redemptive lift”), usually results in the degeneration of the quality of church leadership – often sooner than later. Normally the second generation of local church leaders (both clergy and lay) would be good bureaucrats (knowledgeable in maintenance management) rather than good entrepreneurs (who can provide visionary and creative leadership).
But more tragic, their concept of spirituality also often degenerates into “spiritual showmanship” (usually on stage, something which our Lord Jesus clearly denounced in Mt. 6:1-18), thereby placing non-functioning people (who are not doing actual disciple-making) in positions of authority, while the functioning ones (who are doing actual disciple-making) are busy taking care of the flock, often in their silent ways (even shying away from accepting administrative roles that entail a series of committee meetings). Thus, local churches produce spiritually immature (perhaps often quite hypocritical) leaders who hardly contribute to quality or quantitative church growth at all!
So, are we destined to have local churches that gradually become less and less effective in evangelism, discipleship and missions? Not necessarily, but it comes at great cost to our present local church structures. Are we willing to shift to a more decentralized (less hierarchical and less clerical) paradigm of church? That is, to transform our local churches into house-church networks, where “small group meetings increase, while big assemblies decrease”? The challenge is to work for the multiplication of more small churches (each self-governing, self-supporting, self-propagating and self-theologizing) rather than for the addition of more mega-churches. The key is to remember: “disciples are made in
The secret to maintain a long-standing revived state of the church is to keep strong small group structures, just as it stretched for more than a hundred years at least twice in history: in the Moravian community in Hernnhut (with its cells called “choirs”), and during the Wesleyan Awakening (with its cells called “classes”). However, in both these cases, gradually “small group meetings decreased, while big worship services increased.” This is due, in my view, mainly to human weakness, as usual. Attendance in big meetings (where one can remain anonymous) require less commitment than participation in small groups (where one can hardly hide any secrets)! We tend towards “cheap grace” rather than “costly discipleship.” (Hence, under normal instances, mega-churches will grow at the expense and loss of small churches!)
Thus, the ultimate challenge is: Are local churches willing to die, so that house churches can be born and flourish? Then and only then will there be the possibility of all converts growing into mature Christians who can be disciple-makers, and be sent elsewhere as tentmakers to make more disciples. And church leaders will only be those who are true servants with proven pastoral gifts. Thereby, the whole church will be empowered to reach the whole world in the fastest way possible through this IM or rapid disciple-making strategy done by (hardly visible) house-church networks!
Biblical Basis for IM
Actually, Jesus’ mission paradigm was IM. His mission was insiders – Jews multiplying disciples among Jews without creating another organized religious system parallel or counter to the synagogue (of early Judaism). He did not intend to found a new religion, but his movement later on became an institution (Bosch 1991: 50-51). He even perhaps had secret converts in Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and perhaps through them, Gamaliel.
The early Christians followed the same pattern, too. They reached out to their compatriots as Jews to Jews within the Temple and synagogue structures of Jewish society, and just met “from house to house,” evangelizing and discipling a few households at a time. Within a few years of such IM, they had literally turned the Roman Empire upside down (Ac. 17:6 KJV). They did not create a clergy class, nor construct (or even rent) a religious building nor hold regular religious services, except to break bread weekly in their homes.5 It was the teaching and practice of the apostle Paul (perhaps the best model of a cross-cultural missionary) not to plant a growing “local church,” but an indigenous disciple-making movement in house churches that are formed by converts who did not have to be dislocated from their homes and communities (cf. 1 Cor. 9:19-23).
This New Testament practice is not different from that of Old Testament (OT) Israel, which shows God’s design and structure for a reached, discipled or transformed people: (1) There were no local shrines or temples in each village or town. (2) There were no weekly Sabbath worship services (synagogues came later in 200 B.C. for teaching Diaspora Jews).6 (3) There we no weekly nor monthly collection of tithes and offerings.7 And (4) there were no “full-time” clergy (the levitical priests were provided not just with cities, but also with pasturelands: Josh. 21).8 The OT Jews were required to celebrate communally as a people in the national Temple (note: God’s design was a portable and transportable Tabernacle) only three times a year: Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles (Dt. 16:16). The actual teaching and obedience of the “way of God’s righteousness” was in the homes (Dt. 6:1-11)!
Biblical Christianity is therefore structured as a network of simple churches (usually called “house churches”). It is not “churchless Christianity” nor “religionless Christianity (cf. IBMR Editorial 2005; Tennent 2005),” but “simple Christianity.” Its mission is to reproduce simple groups of Christ-worshippers without elaborate religiosity. Thus the mission statement of the Philippine house church movement is: “to multiply God’s church throughout the world, one household at a time.” This seeks to fulfill God’s covenants with Abraham that through him every family on earth will be blessed (Gen. 12:3, cf. Gal. 3:14, 29), and with Israel that she will be a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:6, cf. 1 Pet. 2:9-10).
Practical Steps for Churches
How then can church leaders shift into the IM paradigm? Most of them look “foreign” to their own peoples.9 They just need to follow the simple yet effective strategy which Jesus and his first disciples used. It is based on a simple doctrine (“priesthood of all believers”) and a simple practice (“making disciples”) in a simple structure (“house-church networks”). Churches can be transformed from centralized Christendom (traditional local churches) to decentralized house-church structures. Although, by God’s grace, it is possible to skip some steps, it seems best to work out a 3-5 year plan to take one’s church through the transformation process so as to avoid unnecessary conflicts and splits (cf. Southerland 1999). It may be best to transition first into a “mega-church” (church with cells) to a “cell church” (church of cells) and finally to “house church” (church is cells) (Zdero 2004: 110-118).
First of all, the church leadership must make a policy that membership in their church entails the commitment to be a faithful participant in a small group (maximum of 15 members in cities, and 20 in villages). If they are alone or just a few, they can start by forming a cell and multiply from there. Start like Jesus, who began with 12 disciples. Alongside this decision, training sessions for cell leaders should be scheduled. After the initial orientation and training on the basics of leading cells, the cell leaders (and their assistants) should meet at least monthly for fellowship and mutual learning. Each cell leader should know who is his/her coordinator who is facilitating their cell leaders’ meetings and monitoring their ministry. And to ensure cell growth, all cell members must be trained to do “friendship evangelism.” If they have no more non-Christian relatives and friends, they should learn how to make friends with their neighbors and work/schoolmates to win them for Christ.
Then the church is ready to become a “cell church” (“church of cells” model). They should work activities into cells: prayer meetings into “prayer cells,” youth fellowship into “youth cells,” Sunday School classes into “children’s cells,” choirs into “singing groups,” etc. They can start training and delegating the administration of the sacraments/ordinances to the cell leaders; after all, they are truly the “pastors” of their cells.
And finally, they are ready to become a “house church network,” where each cell is a church indeed – self-governing (with its own leaders), self-supporting (with its own budget), self-propagating (with its own missions program) and self-theologizing (with its own doctrinal beliefs)!10 Each cell can collect and spend their own funds (so-called “tithes and offerings”), giving at least 10% for the support of their “favorite” leader/minister/missionary; they should aim to allocate at least 50% for ministry beyond their in-group. The Sunday service becomes cell meetings, perhaps alongside (ministerial or practical) training workshops or open forums as needed by the network. And better, slowly lessen “celebrations” from weekly to monthly to quarterly (or even just 3 times a year, as was instituted in the Torah for O.T. Israel). The church building can be transformed into a multi-purpose ministry center to serve the needs in the community. If they don’t have a building, there is really no need to have one. Whenever they need a large space for big gatherings, they can resourcefully find free or rented facilities for their purposes.
By this time the church will have become a “community church,” with direct attachment, ministry and witness in her (even if it were largely non-Christian) neighborhood. The cells will be sending their members to serve in the community and to form partnerships with other Christians in their community, perhaps starting with a monthly prayer meeting and forming a “local leaders” (or ministerial) fellowship.”11 They will be teaching and submitting to one another, learning to work as fellow servant-leaders with those who share common convictions on the essential doctrines, and allowing (and delighting) in the diversity of views on non-essential ones. Welcome to post-denominational Christianity!
Then they should have formed the habit of counting church membership, not according to how many attend Sunday worship services, but according to those who participate regularly in the cell meetings! What a good way to really count true “disciples of Christ” and to clear our church rolls (and David Barrett’s annual statistics on global Christianity) of “nominal Christians”!
And what’s the curriculum for each house church? Simply, LIFE as it comes! The agenda is set by the members as they share their concerns (read: prayer requests): actual needs and interests are discerned, and thereby opened for discussion, aiming at their mutual edification (cf. 1 Cor. 14:26-33). As they follow the NT teaching to serve one another with their spiritual gifts (Rom. 12:3-8), exhort one another (Heb. 10:24), teach one another, even confess sins to one another (Js. 5:16), as they share insights into what the Bible teaches, they will find concrete applications to obey God’s word in their own context/life-situation. If they feel that they have not resolved the issues (doctrinal or practical) adequately, they can assign someone (usually the cell leader) to research (most probably to ask his mentor or co-coordinators) and report in their next meeting, or they can invite an expert to share (and be ready to give him a generous honorarium, of course!).
How then will each “full-timer” be supported? Well, there’s really no need for “full-timers” until there are about 500 members meeting in 30-40 house churches! Anyway, technically one house church can support a “full-time” minister (pastor-coordinator of about 6 co-coordinators, each serving 5 or 6 house churches) or a missionary (preferably in pairs, sent to plant house church networks elsewhere) through their regular tithes and offerings! Jesus and the Twelve had their own “common purse” and were supported by just one small group of women (Lk. 8:1-3)! Once Christians learn to relate to one another in love, and “pastors” do serve their “little flock,” their disciples will naturally provide for their family’s needs and their ministry expenses. (Remember also that their collections are no longer used for church paraphernalia and building maintenance).
IM at the Frontiers
But perhaps it is even better to start from scratch: to pioneer an IM in virgin territory among a truly unreached people group where no known Christian or church exists. The key to this incarnational or infiltrative approach is to be as low profile as possible. Until the converted become a majority, they must not be de-culturized from their social and religious communities. And even if they become the majority, they must avoid establishing elaborate structures for religious purposes.
In fact, all social affairs in non-Christian societies can be sanctified and transformed, for all things belong mainly to God; and those that have become sinful and evil can be redeemed through prayer and the Word (cf. 1 Tim. 4:3-5). Even almost all religious activities can also be redeemed and transformed into Christ-centered and Christ-ward worship!12 What makes them biblically “true follower of Jesus” is the heart or motive, almost always regardless of the forms. What counts is that these activities and rituals are led by those who have been and are being nurtured or discipled in the low profile cells or house churches, which almost always are informal and therefore do not require formal and elaborate rituals. (Actually missionaries and new converts may create new organizations and programs, but these should be community-based (not church-based) structures that cater to the real needs and aspirations of the people).
Keeping the faith simple, to just change allegiance from their god (or no-god) to Jesus, is essential to IMs. The essence of the Biblical faith lies not in a philosophy or an ethic but in a Person. Thus any religious or cultural artifact, belief or value must be evaluated in light of God’s revelation of the historical Jesus revealed in the four (not one) gospels! Aiming just at eliciting simple faith in Christ makes evangelism quite easy, thus ensuring rapid multiplication of converts.13 It makes possible the easy passing on by word of mouth (even gossiping!) of the Jesus story within a community. Each person and household can be discipled as “insiders” in their own contexts (cf. Petersen & Swamy 2003).
Historically we can also read the conversion of Armenia, the European peoples and other Christian-majority lands like Latin America, the Philippines, northeast India (Mizos, Nagas, Karens) as different forms of IMs! The missionaries were able to win the top leaders of their societies, so that these indigenous leaders influenced, if not coerced, their constituencies as a people to join them in the faith. The days of those “top-down” approach to mass conversions is almost gone. The challenge through IM today is to catalyze “bottom up” mass conversions following the pattern of Jesus and the early church, as China’s Back to Jerusalem and the Philippines’ missionary movements are trying to do: mainly through “friendship evangelism” with “an army of ants, worms and termites (and not elephants)” (cf. Hattaway 2003: 90-94).
Yet to achieve community or mass conversions, missionaries must aim at winning the leaders, especially the top two or three. This may be done through the community development approach: one must get “immersed” or “integrated” (better: “incarnated”) in the community while befriending and serving the people, hence gaining the attention and friendship of the local leaders, including the religious leader(s); yes, even Buddhist monks, Muslim imams, Hindu priests and Communist generals!
Hence the ideal missionaries should be “tentmakers,” Christian professionals or businessmen, or skilled workers who have “secular” skills to serve and earn a livelihood in the community. Their witness to Christ will not be viewed as the expansion of a religious movement. It is interesting to note that the Mission Frontiers issue on IM also includes articles on “social entrepreneurs” (Lewis: 2005; Wall 2005; cf. Bornstein 2003). Community service by ordinary “lay believers” not only helps themselves gain a good reputation among a people group, it also helps gain the trust and respect of community leaders, thereby opening the opportunity for the conversion of these leaders and eventually the whole community as these influential converts protect, if not encourage the “house to house” multiplication of disciples in their midst (cf. Lim 2004).14
Conclusion
Christianity (even among predominantly non-Christian lands and peoples) will then return to what Jesus Christ originally intended His Kingdom to be: a personal relationship with God through simple faith in Him (liberated from sin and the complexities of both primitive/animistic/folk religions and major/great organized religions), which results in works of sacrificial love for Him and His creation/creatures (liberated from sin’s effects on the poor bound to their poverty and on the rich bound to their prosperity). No more need for elaborate religiosity with elaborate theologies, liturgies, temples or clergies. His kingdom and mission is to bring forth a spiritual (read: moral) transformation rather than a religious reformation of “nations.” And his mission strategy is humble service (way of the cross) rather than triumphalistic crusades (way of the world).
Let us not burden people of other faiths with “stumbling-blocks” other than the simple gospel of following Jesus. Let there be “more Jesus and less religion!” May IMs multiply soon across the non-Christian
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1 At least a little has been heard about CPMs among Muslims (Garrison 2005; Travis 2000, 2006) and Hindus (Richard 1999; Hoefer 2001; Raj 2004; Pierson 2004: 34-59).
2 Covell 1993; Deng 2005; Pierson 2004: 60-86; Tang 2005; and Wesley 2004.
3 Spaulding 2006 raises the issue of why we are not prioritizing the least reached populations who happen to be the dominant peoples in Buddhist lands, albeit they may have a viable small church (often uncontextualized) among them.
4 As seen below, the best “go structure” is to “make disciples” through informal “friendship evangelism” and bringing converts and interested parties to “come and see” the (informal) body-life of one’s cell group/house church (a la Ac. 2:42-47).
5 For biblical precedents for RC, esp. in relation to religious rituals and customs, cf. Davis 1993: 128-143 and Lim 2003.
6 On the origin of synagogues, cf. Lim 1987.
7 1 Cor. 16:1-4 shows weekly offerings in the early church were mainly for immediate survival needs, esp. of widows and orphans (cf. Ac. 6:1; Js. 1:27).
8 Were they exempt from being stewards of God’s resources, to be shepherds and cowboys to provide livestock products for their neighbors and nation (cf. 2 Thess. 3:6-10)? And where else did the priests learn to be expert butchers of animal sacrifices in the Temple three times a year?
9 On how foreign Christianity looks in Sri Lanka, cf. Somaratna 2006; and in Buddhist societies, cf. Smith 1993: 126.
10 In post-denominational Christianity, churches do not need to be Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian or Reformed, Methodist, Pentecostal, Full Gospel or whatever! They can name their own names! What label(s) and theology(ies) did Paul want the factions in Corinth to have (1 Cor. 1-4)?
11 The importance of this show of unity can not be over-emphasized, cf. Jn. 13:3435; 17:21-23.
12 On the witness of God’s revelation among the religions, cf. Kraft 1979: 239-253; Richardson 1981; Seamands 1981: 173-199; and Travis 2005: 13-14.
13 Garrison 2004: 241-243 considers “Improving the Bible” as the second deadly sin against CPMs.
14 For more details, cf. Lim 2004.
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