Some people hold the idealized but naive idea that, in a movement, each person makes a convert of _x_ number of people (i.e. 3, or 10, or 12) – and that each of those people then do the same with the same number of people: that is, 3 disciple 3, who disciple 3, who disciple 3. (This hearkens back to old ideas about “if only…”).

But if that were to happen, not just millions of people but multiple hundreds of millions, even billions, would be reached within a fairly short time. Globally, there are over 100 million people in movements, but in most locations, the number is often a fairly small percentage (if growing rapidly).

It’s not that, in movements, every person disciples _x_ who disciple _x.

It’s just that, in movements, there are more disciplemakers than in the traditional church.

In most churches, it’s the pastor and some number of staff who do the disciplemaking. In movements, there are far more lay disciplemakers.

Some churches verge on this when they have small groups, but small groups are often a very small percentage of the overall church, and are really only turned to as a “feature” when a church gets to a certain size. Movements, on the other hand, do not wait to get to a certain size to build in small groups, discovery groups, or house churches. Movements begin with small groups. (Movements began this way because they are usually in situations where formal buildings are impossible–house churches are the only possibility–but movements rapidly discovered this was a feature-not-a-bug).

Because movements feature a higher % of their people being disciplemakers than churches do, they naturally have more outreach opportunities, more discipleship opportunities, etc. And so they grow faster.

Most movements tell me a small % of their people actually make disciples. It’s definitely not 100%. It’s often below 10%. But this number is high enough to tip the scales into rapid growth.

Churches could take a step in this direction by helping their people, to some extent, not just be people who “invite their neighbors to church to hear the gospel message” but find some initial tangible way to “share the gospel message, themselves, with their neighbors.” (I’d prefer churches go full-bore into making their members into disciplemakers, but sometimes small, incremental steps are best.)

On the other hand, here’s something I frequently observe in movements. This is from one older movement profile I have on hand:

“Initial persecution was lighter. One high profile imam came to faith, and was the first open baptism. Then, in [a 4 year period], fundamentalists began to attack, destroying property and threatening. This finally dropped off because of the number of converts and high profile people. Key persecutors converted. Many Sauls became Pauls. Transforming society–family issues changed–declining dysfunction–lots of community work.”

In the past week, I have encountered two different movements who have articulated nearly 100 martyrs in the past year to two years.

This year, I have heard from numerous movements about the martyrs they have endured, even if not perhaps at those levels.

Any rapid expansion of the Gospel will encounter resistance. We must all count the cost.

Sometimes, when the numbers of martyrs are not readily visible–as is the case with many of these “below the radar” movements–we forget that this price is being regularly paid.

Let us continue to pray for the widows and orphans of the martyrs, as well as for those who now bear scars and disabilities for the sake of their witness.

I have frequently found myself saying or praying “Marantha”–come, Lord Jesus!–especially when I read or hear some sort of event that seems really horrific.

Yet I have been struck by the thought that, in a sense, this prayer is actually against his currently revealed will.

This is not to say it’s a bad or sinful prayer to pray. It’s just that it doesn’t seem to be his will to return right now.

We don’t know when it’s going to be fulfilled. We don’t want to put God in a box. On the one hand, the indicators seem to be that he’s not coming back now. It’s been 2,000 years and he hasn’t come back yet. If Matthew 24:14 is any kind of indicator at all, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be fulfilled any time soon. And yet we long for his return and pray for it regularly.

I’m reminded of the two “sides” in 2 Peter 3. In verse 9, we are reminded that God is “not slow to keep his promise… He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” In verse 12, we are told to “look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.”

I do wonder what Peter meant by that. God already knows the hour when Jesus will return (Matthew 24:36). If that is a fixed point in time, then how can we “speed its coming”? Living in the tension of 2 Peter 3–knowing that God is lingering, yet some how working to speed his return, even knowing that he has already set the date–requires living in the. midst of mystery.

Perhaps the best thing is to live in Philippians 4 – “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

So, I continue to pray, “Marantha.” I am making my request – “come, Lord Jesus!” known to him. And I am trusting that his timing is good, and seeking his peace.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” —usually attributed to Einstein

“Naïveté is doing the same thing over and over, and always expecting the same result.” —Frank Wilczek, Scientific American, 2015

“More is different.” –P.W. Anderson, Science, 1972.

I’ve heard Einstein’s insanity quote quite often. I’ve heard Wilczek’s less. Both of these—while pithy—only apply in certain instances.

If a door is marked “push,” it really doesn’t matter how many times you “pull” it–and it would be ‘insane’ to expect that it will open. On the other hand, if you work in a coffee shop and the first five people of the day order plain coffees, it would be ‘naive’ to expect the next five also must.

When we look at a statistical analysis of gospel presentations, we might say the vast majority of a particular kind of Gospel presentation—for example, a tract—achieve no result in a particular context. This doesn’t mean they are entirely without result.

For example, hypothetically, let’s say a million Bibles are placed in hotel rooms, and 99.9% of them yield no result. That still leaves 0.1%, and 0.1% of a million is 1,000 souls. For most strategies, the issue isn’t a lack of desired results, but rather the cost-effectiveness (money, time, and so forth) and the question of whether some other strategy is more cost-effective or not.

The third quote taps the additional nuance: you can repeat the same thing over and over and get the same result (“insanity”)–but if you do the same thing in greater quantities, you can get a different result. With things that involve people, ‘more’ can eventually reach a tipping point that causes a cascade (“go slow to go fast”). Suddenly, everyone is buying the latest fad toy or joining on the latest social network. The ‘virality’ has exploded seemingly out of nowhere (but really, just doubling unseen in the background). My general rule of thumb: more is different at 10^x (or, simply, “add another zero”).

Never make the mistake of thinking “Western” Christianity is the “center” of Christianity.

There are more Christians in Africa (680m) than there are people in the United States.

There are probably more Christians in Asia (354m) than there are people in the United States.

This article on the shift of the center of Anglicanism from the global North to the global South is just one example. Most of the Anglicans in the global south have little interest in the things that occupy the attention of the global north.

It’s worth thinking about whether the “majority of Christians”–e.g. believers in Africa and Asia–think about, worry about, or do about the issues that “we” focus on and write about.

I have read dozens of books on strategy, experimentation, and the role of failure in teaching us. I have tried a lot of what I’ve read. What it boils down to is this:

1. You have to have a broad sense of the direction you are going in. Various books call this various things – intent, vision, whatever. The end-goal may or may not be crystal clear – in most cases its quite fuzzy. But you have to have some sense of this to orient yourself.
2. You have to have some action. You have to get in the car and drive in the direction you want to go. Sitting still until the path is crystal clear is often a recipe for getting nothing done at all. We all want the Google Map into the future but usually don’t have it. We have to do things the old ‘Go west, young man’ pioneering way.
3. You need to have a frequent way of testing experiments. What doesn’t work should be stopped and changed. This is analogous to making frequent compass sightings when you are orienting yourself across a path. You take a sighting, walk toward a landmark, and take another sighting. Likewise, in work, you make an experiment, learn from it, and either iterate or try something different.

None of this is rocket science. The thing I’ve found most helpful is increasing the frequency of experiments. If you can run a daily experiment, you are 365 chances to get somewhere in a year–vs a weekly (52 chances) or monthly (12 chances). But, in order for an experiment to teach you anything, you must:

(1) make failure survivable
(2) define the experiment such that you know if it’s a ‘win’ or a ‘fail’ (or, in my own work, a ‘knock it out of the park’)
(3) define the experiment in such a way that you know what you are trying to learn from it.

Another thing I’ve found helpful: have a list of rules or heuristics you use when making initial experimental decisions. I’ve been collecting a personal list of 100 things to remember when thinking. Here’s an example of “useful decision razors” published by someone else.

A new DMM Dashboard will soon be up at 2414now.net.

A short comment: the DMM Dashboard took life as something given to movements. The purpose of the dashboard is not to provide statistics or proof to the wider Body of Christ about movements, and so it is missing much of the methodological description that would be appropriate to such a document.

My goal is not to authenticate, prove, etc., movements to people who aren’t involved in movements. My purpose is to serve movements, to help them see the trends in the data that they are reporting, and most importantly to provide gap lists of places and languages that are not yet served by movement teams. (These gap lists are not available in public or on the Internet–for security reasons, I share them only with movement practitioners who are sending teams & who are sharing data with me.)

The Dashboard is, therefore, a limited snippet of a conversation had with a very small number of people. The few articles I have written are very compressed articulations of larger presentations I have given for that very small number, and often limited by space constraints in the publications they are in.

I think you deliver the best value when you know your audience and are laser-focused on serving them, and do your level best not to get distracted by other things.