Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
God's power / God's strategy, April 19, 2005
Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World. By David Garrison. Bangalore: WIGtake Resources, 2004. 362 pages. Paperback, $12.
"In 2001 a newly emerging Church Planting Movement yields 48,000 new believers and 1,700 new churches in one year" (p. 49). How can you start a church planting movement that sweeps through an entire people group? You can't! But God can. And God can use you to facilitate His purposes.
David Garrison's Church Planting Movements invites the reader to view God's blueprints for reaching all people groups- quickly! But before delving into missiological theory on how these movements work, Garrison takes the reader on a trip to eight major sectors of the world to view already existing church planting movements (CPMs). Each of these episodes narrates the events that catalyzed a full-fledged movement resulting in unreached peoples turning to Christ. He visits India, China, Africa, Latin America, Europe, North America, and the Muslim world. Next he distills the common elements from each movement into comprehensive lists of: 1.) What occurred in every CPM and 2.) What occurred in most CPMs. Some of these elements are: house churches, rapid reproduction, and lay leadership (p. 172). With the good, Garrison includes the bad. He lists the "seven deadly sins" of a CPM. These include: sequentialism (i.e. adding churches versus multiplying them), developing dependency on foreign funds, and not contextualizing the Gospel to the culture (p. 239). These elements choke a budding movement.
The last section of the book challenges the reader to assess his own standing in the scheme of God's church planting movements. Then, it equips him with tools to works towards getting on mission with God. Garrison's appendix includes: a step-by-step guide for planting and reproducing a house church model (p.307-315), an apologetic to reach Muslims (p. 319), and reference materials including Scriptures that under gird all aspects of the CPM philosophy (p.331).
Garrison does his presentation a service by beginning with stories of CPMs in action. People are drawn to the tales of what can actually happen, which are based in reality. These stories are inspiring, educational, and fun to read. This prepares the reader to be open to the new paradigms presented in the second half of the book, as well as builds anticipation to finally get to that point. "How can I start one?!"
The text is easy to read, put into contemporary terms and concepts that the greater Christian community can digest. Missiologist David Garrison has organized this content into lists, graphs, reference tools, and easy to reference case studies in order to communicate the perhaps intimidating world of church planting and frontier missions to the average North American Christian. His positive attitude remains one that encourages rather than rebukes its Christian audience or the Christian movement in general.
The content itself issues a challenge to traditional church planting strategy, not only through its exegesis of the Scriptural text, but through the distilled wisdom gained from case studies. Garrison makes a strong case for unpaid, local, lay leadership, planting rapidly reproducing house churches that exhibit characteristics of evangelism, prayer, and a persistent obedience to the Word of God. With the mention of only a few of these, certain church leaders may balk, saying "Is that feasible? Is that Scriptural? ... Is that comfortable?" Church Planting Movements fields these questions comprehensively, almost anticipating them at every turn.
The section entitled "A Call to Action" seems to anticipate that its readership will only be able to really absorb a certain degree of the material presented (p. 297). It directs the reader to assess at what stage he is in his personal response to CPM philosophy. With this in mind, he can take the next steps through further awareness, education, and/or experience- jump in! In light of this, Church Planting Movements may be a book worthy of re-read, if not definitely for reference. Its charts, steps, and other helpful tools make it a valuable resource to plumb either as new awareness prompts deeper study or as new stages of a CPM develop.
This book is ideal for church planters, world Christians, and pastors looking to amplify their vision to a God-size. It should not be despised by those already involved in church planting ministries, as Garrison showed many examples of principles neglected by current church planters through ignorance. In other instances, he advocates that the removal of bad principles is all it takes to set a dormant movement free (p. 239). David Garrison's book, Church Planting Movements, will be an invaluable addition to a Christian's spiritual and strategic preparation in seeing God's glory spread to the nations.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review of "Church Planting Movements" for Pepperdine Missions Class, December 13, 2005
Because Garrison's book was published in 2004, the stories of church planting movements in all areas of the world, are exciting to read and more importantly, credible. He brings in numbers to support his claim that all over the world, people groups are coming to Christ in ways that parallel "the book of Acts", planting churches instead of focusing on the traditional missionary strategy of making one church grow larger in size and in population. Garrison focuses on the idea that the Gospel needs to be heard to people groups, taking the focus away from geography (there are Christians in India but there are many Indians.) The first two parts of this book focus on different movements- in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and India, South America, Europe, and North America. It is valuable that even in these last three areas (places that are considered "Christianized"), there are still groups and even nations that are spiritually poor and in need of missionary activity.
Garrison works hard to take a new approach to missionary strategy, even redefining missionaries as "strategy coordinators". He also works hard to write about Church Planting Movements in places where missionary activity is dangerous, often protecting the anonymity of the people involved in certain countries, even renaming some countries themselves. Garrison uses the last sections of his book to describe essential characteristics of these movements and even points out "sins" that many missionaries commit in their work. Important tools for bringing the gospel to these people groups include media and translations of the Bible and stories into their own language, a strong emphasis on prayer, and bringing training to the people instead of requiring the people to leaver their people for training. Believers model their faith so that others can learn and grow; Christians are encouraged to worship God in ways that are culturally relevant (with their own songs and strategies for worship).
Perhaps one of the most radical but at the same time fantastic points of Garrison's book is in his focus on immediate evangelism and on lay leadership. He writes about how missionaries should begin their work even before learning the language, prepared to pass on leadership and authority immediately to local leaders of authority regardless of their lack of seminary training. It is total dependence on the Holy Spirit and on God but at the same time, Garrison presents the idea of rapid growth and rapid dependence on lay leadership in a way that doesn't read as irresponsible or as a "plan-so-far" missionary strategy. The goal is to create churches that are reproducible, in their own heart language, empowering them to take on their own responsibility of evangelism to the people around them just as they have received their blessing of salvation.
If there is one reason to read this book, it is because it is proof that God is working in places that Westerners are not even aware of. Churches are being created, according to biblical principles that do not even want to depend on foreign aid, worshiping in ways that westerners might even consider barbaric.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book -- don't buy it from Amazon, March 21, 2009
I've one chapter left to read and I am very pleased with this book. The author writes well (though he could use a little help from an editor) and presents a very comprehensive discussion of the Church Planting Movement that is present across the world and some practical action steps that every believer can do.
There is just enough coverage on the different case studies that the reader doesn't get bogged down in details but still gets a feel for what God is doing on the different continents. Then, he shifts to summarizing the characteristics of church planting movements, things that hinder them, and suggests that what we see as novel in the 21st century is actually akin to what the 1st century experienced.
WARNING: The book is inspiring. If you have any kind of heart for the lost, I can't see how you can read this book without feeling like you should be doing more to unleash God's power in your Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, or the uttermost parts of the world. Get ready to be challenged.
Some forgivable problems that wouldn't keep me from recommending the book:
* Some of his scripture references are lifted out of context but not in a heretical way, so I kind of forgive him.
* The book is pretty cheaply bound. My 9th grade English teacher taught us to flex the spine of paperbacks (for some reason I can't remember), but as soon as I did that, the glue cracked and two chunks of pages came out.
Lastly, I recommend that you not buy the book from Amazon. At the time of this review, the going price is close to $50. Visit the author's website (http://churchplantingmovements.com/) to order it for under $20.
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by Ed Stetzer
by Wolfgang Simson
by R. B. Kuiper
by Roland Allen
