Inside Church Planting Movements: What 25 Years of Assessments Reveal

by David Garrison

Are Church Planting Movements Real? Are they fabrications? How can we know?

David Garrison (PhD, University of Chicago) set out to answer these questions by analyzing twenty-five years of onsite assessments of Church Planting Movements conducted by the Global Research Department of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.

This book pulls back the curtain on in-depth evaluations of twenty-eight reported movements from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The findings are surprising. Discover what is really happening in reported movements across Cuba, India, East Asia, Africa, and the Muslim world.

Garrison was granted unprecedented access to previously unpublished onsite surveys of movements that claimed hundreds of thousands of new Christians and churches among the world's least-reached peoples. For the first time, this book opens the IMB's archives, offering a behind-the-scenes look into the findings of one of the world's largest missionary organizations. What do hundreds of interviews, random samplings, and firsthand accounts reveal about one of the most significant issues in modern missions?

Inside Church Planting Movements offers new insights into this long-debated subject and is essential reading for any Christian wanting to understand what is actually happening in the remotest corners of the world. It is the most extensive analysis of Church Planting Movements ever produced and promises to be an invaluable resource for students and practitioners of contemporary Christian missions.

216 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 1, 2025

About the author

For 25 years David Garrison has served as a missionary with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board. His assignments have included Associate Vice President for Global Strategy, Regional Leader for South Asia, Interim Regional Leader for Central and Eastern Europe, and Interim Regional Leader for Northern Africa and the Middle East. Prior to that, Garrison directed the work of the International Mission Board’s Cooperative Services International program which opened new work among 40 previously unengaged people groups. Garrison’s quest to understand and join God’s global mission has led him to study a dozen languages and visit more than 80 countries, serving as a missionary in Hong Kong, Germany, France, England, Egypt, Tunisia, and India.

Garrison has degrees from Ouachita Baptist University (B.A., 1979), Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary (M.Div.,1982), the University of Chicago Divinity School (Ph.D., 1988).

Garrison has taught at Hong Kong Baptist University, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Seminary, and Columbia Biblical Seminary, in addition to leading seminars and workshops internationally. His books include The Nonresidential Missionary (MARC, 1990), Something New Under the Sun (IMB, 1998), the booklet Church Planting Movements (IMB, 2000), The Camel Workshop: A Practical Guide to Muslim Evangelism (WIGTake Resources, 2009), and Church Planting Movements: How God Is Redeeming a Lost World (WIGTake Resources, 2004). Dr. Garrison currently lives with his wife of 30 years, Sonia, and two of their four children in Colorado where he serves as the International Mission Board’s Global Strategist for Evangelical Advance.

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