Pioneering Movements: Leadership That Multiplies Disciples and Churches

by Steve Addison

The spontaneous expansion of the Church reduced to its element is a very simple thing. It asks for no elaborate organization, no large finances, no great numbers of paid missionaries. . . . What is necessary is faith. Roland Allen, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church

the five characteristics of dynamic movements—white-hot faith, commitment to a cause, contagious relationships, rapid mobilization and adaptive methods.

My trip to China had left me wondering whether my five characteristics should really be six. I felt I should add a crucial sixth characteristic—pioneering or apostolic leadership. When I asked for their opinion, they said, “We have never seen a church-planting movement without apostolic leadership.”

Some practitioners spend too much effort trying to get the strategy and methodology right rather than looking for the right person to invest in. If someone says to me, give me the method or give me the curriculum, I know they have not understood that this is accomplished through persons rather than through methods. Bill Smith

I remember sitting in my psychiatrist’s office fishing for some sympathy. I told him I thought my life was over. I would grow old without ever seeing my dreams fulfilled. My life would have no legacy. He looked straight at me and said, “Who promised you a legacy? Who promised you purpose?” He opened his desk drawer and drew out a pocket New Testament and began reading me verses on the love of God. There was no guarantee of the legacy I wanted. There was no guarantee of the purpose I felt was my due, just the promise of the everlasting love of God in Christ.

God can use times of crisis to remake leaders from the inside out. At first everything is fine. Church leaders have effective ministries and no big questions that need answers. They have a way of seeing the world, and it makes sense. Then God unsettles them. Sometimes, it’s a personal crisis. Sometimes, it’s a ministry crisis. It may be a growing sense that there has to be more. For whatever reason, they are unfrozen. Like the children of Israel in the wilderness, the leader can’t go back, and they don’t know how to go forward. They’re lost. We may think of the wilderness as a place to avoid, a place of testing. Yet the wilderness is also a place where we encounter God. It is a place of profound change. We are given the opportunity to surrender and trust God before there are any answers. Pass that test and clarity will come as a byproduct of surrender. Most movement pioneers have faced God in the wilderness and allowed him to remake them. Breakthroughs in pioneering movements often occur as the byproduct of crisis encounters with God.

God was rattling my cage. Knowing something was not enough; he wanted me to do something.

I talk to a lot of leaders who are stuck. They think they have to rewire their whole lives and ministries before they can implement change. It’s the all-or-nothing syndrome. If we can’t do it all, we’ll do nothing. In response I tell them, “Don’t change anything about your life or ministry. Don’t impose this on your unsuspecting congregation. Just free up two hours a week, find a partner and begin doing it yourself. See what God does, then build on that. Take a step of obedience, watch what God does and build on that. Now, you’re ready for some training.”

what to do on Monday morning. We know Jesus’ prime directive is to go and make disciples. That’s what we signed up to do. But no one has shown us how—what to do on Monday morning. So, we fall back into running programs, or we focus on secondary goals. So little of our time makes a difference when it comes to obeying the Great Commission. We may know how to motivate and exhort, but not how to train and to do. So the people we lead are passive or guilt-ridden.

I tell pastors, “If you exhort your people without training them, you’re setting them up for failure and guilt. You’re also creating a dependency relationship in which you, as the professional, do the ministry on their behalf.”

Training followed by action breaks this cycle. Teach people to share their stories and the gospel story and they have something they can do. When they step out in obedience, they see God at work and their faith grows. There’s no turning back when they’ve led someone to Christ. They’ll never be the same after they baptize that person and be...

The training approach assumes that we’ve spent too much time trying to motivate people to make disciples and not enough time training them. People know what they should do, but don’t know how to do it. The learning is hands-on and immediately applicable. We teach how to connect with people, pray for a need and

then ask, “Are you near or far from God? Would you like to be nearer?”

We teach them how to share their story of faith in Christ in three minutes and how to share a gospel story of someone who was far from God and came near to him. They learn how to share a gospel outline and lead someone to Christ. They also learn how to help someone become a follower of Jesus through Discovery Bible Study, a method o...

We covered how to share one’s story and God’s story (the gospel), how to pray for lost people by name, how to facilitate a Discovery Bible Study for people far from God and for new disciples, how to form discipleship groups that become churches, and how to multiply workers. All the training was hands-on and to be applied between sessions.

We need to train a large number of people to find the few who are ready and willing to implement. Just about everyone I trained loved the experience. They all felt more confident in sharing the gospel and making disciples. But only 10–12 percent of the people who attended made a sustained effort to implement the training. There are two ways to look at that ratio. We could despair and say, “Only 10–12 percent!” Or we could say, “As many as 10–12 percent! That means if I train one thousand people, I’ll have at least one hundred workers I can teach to train others.” I took the second position.

After reading a passage, Joy would ask the discovery questions: What do you learn about Jesus or God in the story? What do you learn about the people? Is there an example to follow or a command to obey? What will you do to obey what you’ve learned? With whom will you share this story? How can we pray for each other?

Methods matter. They have to be simple but profound. Teaching every believer to share his or her story is simple and easy—and profound. Every believer has a story, and stories touch the heart in a way that arguments never can. We have to find simple but profound methods that are contagious. They can spread to new and existing believers quickly and effectively. Some of these are: How to pray for a need and ask, “Are you near or far from God right now?” How to share a story from the life of Jesus. How to facilitate a Discovery Bible Study in a home.

How to lead someone to Christ. How to use Discovery Bible Study to disciple new believers. How to help a discipleship group become a church. Once we identify people who are sharing the gospel and making disciples, we need simple methods to equip and encourage them. Once or twice a month we get together for an hour and a half, and we help each other reflect and refocus by asking, What have you done since we last met? How have you seen God at work? What are you learning? Where are you stuck? What do you need to do next? How can we pray for you?

Paul did on the road to Damascus. He humbled himself before the risen Lord Jesus and heard his call: Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. (Acts 26:16-18)

The soldiers stood silently, listening to the gospel in the biting cold. Finally, we lined up as a group and shook the hand of every soldier, each one smiling and nodding in appreciation that we had taken the time to talk with them. Sharing the gospel with Indian border guards could have got us into trouble. The leader of the trek took a risk. I saw in him what the New Testament calls parrhesia—boldness, confidence, openness and freedom of speech. The opposite of parrhesia is to be ashamed, to be silent, to be hidden. This freedom of speech and action was on display in the life of Jesus. Its origin is not human; it is a gift of God. Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus passed on that gift to his disciples, to Paul and to the church in Acts. Freedom of speech and action is possible because God has spoken freely in Jesus Christ. He is the Messiah, crucified and risen. He is our only hope of salvation. This Word is alive, active and powerful. It’s not about us—our church, our missional community—or about our methods and strategies. It’s not about our creative imagination or even about movement pioneers. It’s about God and what he has done through Jesus. It’s about the power of the Holy Spirit and his dynamic Word. If Jesus died for our sins and rose again, then nothing is too hard for God. He will make a way. The question is, will we join him in this great cause? Will we stare down the giants that confront us every day?

Previously the Father was the sender and Jesus was the sent one. Now Jesus is the sender and the disciples are sent. Like Jesus, they are to bring glory to the sender, do the sender’s will and make the sender known. They are to know him intimately and follow his example, depending on him in prayer. From now on the disciples are to relate to Jesus the way Jesus related to the Father.

What Jesus Started identifies six activities that describe what Jesus did as the founder of a missionary movement: Jesus saw the end. He focused his ministry on Israel while he prepared his disciples to take the gospel to the whole world. Jesus connected with people. Jesus crossed whatever boundaries stood in the way and connected with people who were far from God. He sought people of peace, the people that God had prepared to reach their community. Jesus shared the gospel. Jesus called people to repent and believe in the good news. His death brought forgiveness of sins and life with God. Jesus trained disciples. Jesus called disciples out from among the crowds. He taught them a new way of life. Jesus gathered communities. Jesus’ disciples were the nucleus of the renewed people of God. He prepared the way for the birth of the first church at Pentecost. As the risen Lord, Jesus continues to build his church.

Jesus multiplied workers. Jesus trained his disciples to make disciples and launched a global missionary movement.

If you hear the word apostle and think only of the Twelve and Paul, you’d be mistaken. The New Testament refers to a wide variety of people as apostles. The noun apostolos was not a common word in secular Greek, but it appears seventy-nine times in the New Testament, mostly in the writings of Luke and Paul. The verb apostellō means “to send,” and frequently “to send with a particular purpose.” The noun apostle means someone sent with a commission.

Over one hundred years ago J. B. Lightfoot argued that neither Scripture nor the early Christian writings indicate that apostleship was limited to the Twelve.6 The New Testament writers apply the term apostle to a variety of people other than the Twelve, including Paul and Barnabas (Acts 14:4, 14); James, the brother of Jesus (Galatians 1:19); Apollos (1 Corinthians 4:6-9); Silas and Timothy (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2:6); Andronicus and Junia (Romans 16:7); and Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:25).7 Paul distinguishes the Twelve from “all the apostles” (1 Corinthians 15:5-7). He referred to his opponents at Corinth as “super-apostles” (2 Corinthians 11:5; 12:11) and once as “false apostles” (2 Corinthians 11:13). His problem was not that they called themselves apostles, but that they preached a false gospel. Paul taught that apostleship is a spiritual gift for the church’s common good and ministry (1 Corinthians 12:28-29; Ephesians 4:11-13). In Ephesians 4 Paul lists a variety of leadership functions with the purpose of equipping and maturing the body of Christ. Some of those leadership ministries are more likely to be mobile (apostles, prophets and evangelists) while others are more settled (pastors and teachers). The role of a pastor-teacher is by nature more likely to be limited to a local congregation or network of congregations.8 Apostles are sent ones. The nature of apostolic ministry means it cannot be confined for very long in one location. Twice Paul places the gift of ap...

The Twelve were, therefore, pioneering leaders and models of apostolic ministry. They were with Jesus in his pioneering ministry, and they laid the foundations for the church in its (Jewish) infancy. Their uniqueness lay not in their function as apostles and pioneers, but in their unique calling as witnesses and guardians of the gospel. The Twelve were apostles par excellence, but they were not the only apostles. 2. A wider group of itinerant missionaries and church planters also known as apostles. Another, wider, group also known as apostles shared the call to go into all the world and make disciples. They were pioneer church planters. However, they did not share the same unique place in God’s purposes as witnesses to the resurrection and guardians of apostolic doctrine. Scripture differentiates between the unique role of the Twelve (and Paul) as the authoritative witnesses to the resurrection and those who functioned as apostles in spreading the gospel, training disciples and multiplying churches. The Twelve and Paul also shared in this functional ministry of apostleship. The unique role of the Twelve and Paul as authoritative witnesses ended with them and the writing of the New Testament. Yet Jesus continues to call pioneers to lead his people into the fullness of what it means to be a missionary movement.

What does that look like? What do movement pioneers do? They follow the example of Jesus and the disciples he trained. Movement pioneers see the end. They obey God’s call to join his mission. They submit to the leadership of Jesus through the Holy Spirit and the power of his living Word. Movement pioneers connect with people. They cross boundaries (geographic, linguistic, cultural, social, economic) to establish contact with people who are far from God. They seek out responsive people who have been prepared by God. Movement pioneers share the gospel. They communicate the truth about the nature of God and salvation through Christ. They equip new disciples to spread the good news throughout their communities. Movement pioneers train disciples. They lead people to faith in Jesus Christ (conversion, baptism, gifts of the Holy Spirit) and teach them to obey all that Jesus has commanded. Movement pioneers gather communities. They form new believers into church communities featuring the observance of the Lord’s Supper, transformation of behavior, love, service and witness. Movement pioneers multiply workers. They equip local church leaders to multiply disciples and churches. In partnership with the churches, movement pioneers form apostolic teams that are launched into unreached fields.

Sometime between AD 64 and 67, Simon son of Jonah (whom Jesus named Peter) was executed in Rome during Nero’s persecution of Christians. Peter was probably in his mid to late sixties. Rome was the fitting place for his death, with its Jewish community of forty to sixty thousand people. Peter was the apostle to the Jews. It was also fitting because Rome was the greatest of all Gentile cities, and Peter was the pioneer of the mission to the Gentiles. Rome was a long way from Peter’s boyhood home of Bethsaida, a northern Galilee fishing town where the Jordan River runs into the Sea of Galilee. Bethsaida was a Jewish town, so Peter grew up speaking Galilean Aramaic. He would also have learned Hebrew in the local synagogue as a boy. Bethsaida was surrounded by settlements of Greek-speaking Gentiles. Anyone growing up in Bethsaida would have understood some Greek and been familiar with Greek culture and religion. Simon was the Greek name that sounded closest to Peter’s Hebrew name, Symeon. His brother Andrew and his friend Philip also went by Greek names. Before he met Jesus, Peter had moved to nearby Capernaum, a larger fishing village and commercial center. At Capernaum he and Andrew partnered in a fishing business with Zebedee and his sons, James and John. Peter owned his own boat, and the business was large enough to employ workers to help in rowing, handling the sails and heavy nets, and sorting the fish to be ready for market.4 A Galilean fisherman lived a hard life under ...

Herod.5 By the time he settled in Capernaum, Peter was married, living in an extended household with his wife, mother-in-law and his brother Andrew, and probably had children of his own. He had established himself in the world and could provide for his family. Peter had some exposure to Jesus—his teachings, his signs and miracles—but nothing prepared him for the encounter that changed his life and destiny.

One day Jesus stepped into Peter’s world and shattered it. Jesus was teaching by the shores of the Sea of Galilee. As the crowds pressed in around him, Jesus climbed aboard Peter’s boat and asked him to push out from the shore. When Jesus had finished teaching, he told Peter to take his boat out into the lake and throw his nets out for a catch. Peter knew the futility of Jesus’ request, but because it was Jesus he obeyed. Immediately, the nets were straining under the weight of a massive catch. Peter, overwhelmed, threw himself at Jesus’ feet and cried out, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8). Peter was face to face with the presence of God in the person of Jesus, and he was helpless and unworthy. Jesus called Peter to follow him and promised to teach him to fish for people. Peter, together with his brother Andrew, James and John, left everything and followed Jesus. This encounter on the lake was both Peter’s conversion and his call.

The Gospel writers don’t explain why Jesus chose Peter. Their focus is not on Peter’s qualities or shortcomings, but on the authority of Jesus to call and to equip Peter for the task.

Without Jesus’ intervention in Peter’s life, we would never have heard of him. Every significant breakthrough in Peter’s development as a movement pioneer was initiated by God: the miraculous catch of fish, the call to follow Jesus and learn how to fish for people, the revelation at the Trans...

Peter is the one person who experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at three critical turning points in the spread of the gospel. He was there when the Spirit came upon (1) Jewish believers at Pentecost, then (2) in Samaria and finally ( 3) at the house of Cornelius, when the Spirit came upon the Gentiles.

Peter’s settled life was disrupted as he traveled with Jesus to every town and village in Galilee—all 175 of them (Matthew 9:35).8 There were also mission trips south into Judea and to Jerusalem. Jesus sent his disciples out in pairs with no other support than faith in God (Luke 10:1-24). They expected that if an unreached town was receptive, someone would invite them in and provide food and lodging. If that didn’t happen, these leaders in training went without food and shelter. Peter learned

As they traveled from town to town on mission, Jesus trained Peter’s head, heart and hands. His classroom was on the road, in the marketplace, by the lake, at a meal, in a garden, in an empty tomb. At Pentecost, Peter became the leader of the movement Jesus started. Peter didn’t always get it right, but when he did, it was because he had been with Jesus.

Peter took other disciples with him on mission. When God called him to take the gospel to Cornelius and his friends and family, Peter took six other disciples with him and had them, not him, baptize the new believers (Acts 10:45-48; cf. Acts 11:12).

Peter shared ministry with others, and he supported the work of others. He developed leaders who took responsibility for the church in Jerusalem and moved on to unreached regions. When Peter’s job was done in Jerusalem, there was a transition of leadership from Peter and the Twelve to James (brother of Jesus) and the elders. Peter and the apostles were the most prominent leaders of the Jerusalem church in its early years. During that time they prepared James and the elders to step into the leadership of the local churches in and around the city.

The high point of Peter’s early discipleship with Jesus was the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36). On that mountain, when Peter caught a glimpse of Jesus’ divinity, he did not know what to say, but he spoke anyway, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”

Peter could not accept that the Messiah must die a shameful death, cursed by God and deserted by his closest companions. He could not accept a suffering Messiah who came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Jesus knew this. He knew that Satan would sift Peter like wheat. Jesus knew Peter’s faith would fail, so he prayed for Peter and urged him to turn again to God and become the rock who strengthens his brothers (Luke 22:31-32). Jesus knew that Peter would never grasp the reality of God’s grace until he had faced the reality of his sinfulness. Only then would he become a rock on which Jesus would build the restored people of God.

From the moment they first met, Jesus had been writing the gospel on Peter’s heart. Now on the other side of Easter, Peter

Following Pentecost Peter was based in Jerusalem, a city of one hundred thousand permanent residents and the center of the world for the Jewish Diaspora. Jerusalem drew hundreds of thousands of pilgrims every year. Thousands of Diaspora Jews, like the young Saul and his family, settled in Jerusalem and maintained their contacts with friends and family in the cities of the Roman and Persian empires. Many of those who heard Peter’s Pentecost message returned home to spread that message in faraway places. Over the next twelve years, while Peter was based in Jerusalem, the pilgrims continued to visit the city and

The same religious leaders who opposed Jesus also opposed Peter. They accused Peter and the apostles of filling Jerusalem with Jesus’ teaching (Acts 5:28). Peter overcame his fear and endured threats, beatings and imprisonment with boldness and conviction. Luke tells us that the church grew in strength, and, living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers (Acts 9:31). Under Peter’s leadership, the churches spread throughout Jerusalem, Judea, Galilee and Samaria, and on the coastal plain to the west—in Lydda, Joppa, Caesarea, Ptolemais and maybe Ashdod (see fig. 3.1). Peter was not the pastor of these churches but an apostle commissioned by Jesus to reach Jews and Gentiles.13 Through a ministry focused on prayer and the Word, Peter multiplied and strengthened disciples and church communities wherever he went.

The twelve apostles were not primarily organizers or coordinators of the work of the church. They were movement pioneers. Once the churches in Jerusalem, Judea, Galilee and Samaria—with thousands of believers—were consolidated, the apostles handed over the leadership.15 We are not told where Peter went. The author of Acts has other concerns. Luke assumes his readers know about the pioneering ministry of Peter and his wife (1 Corinthians 9:5; Galatians 2:11-14). Early traditions point to the northern regions of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) as one of Peter’s mission fields. His first letter is addressed to the believers in Asia Minor—those from Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. These churches may have been the fruit of his mission. Peter could

also have traveled to the larger Jewish communities of Antioch in Syria, Alexandria in Egypt and Ephesus in Asia. There is a strong tradition that by the mid-60s AD, at the end of his life, Peter was in Rome, the capital of the empire, which had a population of around one million people (see fig. 3.2).

Peter returned to Jerusalem briefly in AD 48 to attend the Jerusalem Council. James, the Lord’s brother, led the discussions, not Peter. At the council Peter was the pivotal figure who bridged the divide between the Jewish and Gentile missions. Through his example with Cornelius the Gentiles were accepted as full members of the body of Christ without the requirement that they come under the Jewish law. Peter, not Paul, was the first missionary to the Gentiles. His bridging leadership ensured that the way was now clear for Paul and others to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Like the great apostle Paul, Peter was not competent to fulfill his apostolic task. Jesus called, equipped and rescued him from defeat and failure. He taught him what to say and do. He filled him with the Holy Spirit. The dynamic word of the gospel did the rest. The result was a multiplying movement of disciples and churches.

It’s most likely that Emperor Nero had Peter executed. The fisherman did not have the same social status and rights of Paul, a Roman citizen, who was probably beheaded. According to tradition, Nero ordered Peter crucified. Peter had become like Jesus in life and in death. He remains today an example of a movement pioneer who stood strong to the end.

When in 1860 what may have been hepatitis forced Taylor to return to England, it looked like they might never see China again. But Hudson Taylor could not forget China. He hung a large map of China on the wall of his study and placed pins in the seventy locations where he knew Protestant missionaries were working. As he lay recuperating he kept returning to the map to pray and to think. One day he realized what should have been obvious—most of the pins were on the coast, very few in the interior. The map became his “accusing map.”

Hudson Taylor believed that the Chinese people were lost without Christ.