By Aila Tasse_,_

Through Church Planting Movements (Disciple-Making Movements) amazing things have occurred among unreached people groups in East Africa. Since 2005, we have seen 7,571 churches planted with 185,358 new disciples. Multiple streams have started, multiplying into additional CPMs. In Rwanda, the movement is at 14 generations of new churches. Kenya’s at 9 generations. God is impacting 11 countries including Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda, and even Sudan despite the war.

I grew up in Northern Kenya on the edge of the desert. One day as I was praying, God gave me a vision. He showed me 14 of the 22 unreached people groups in Kenya, every one of them living in that desert.

I felt God was calling me but didn’t want to accept the call. I had gone through so much persecution from my family and community that I wanted to leave the area. At that time there were no Christians among the indigenous people. The churches there all consisted of people working for the government or NGOs.

In 1998, I began fulfilling God’s vision and over the next few years I started implementing CPM principles. I became serious about applying a simpler pattern of church which was much more reproducible. Two other key factors that helped me multiply churches were the ideas of helping people discover truth (instead of someone telling it to them) and obedience as a normal pattern of discipleship. The strategy of DMM focuses on Discovery Bible Studies (DBS), where lost people are introduced to the Scripture and discover the truth for themselves and obey whatever God is speaking to them. This strategy doesn’t force them to convert but rather focuses on the Scriptures and what the Holy Spirit speaks to the person through them. The DBS leader helps them hear from God, he moves in powerful ways in them.

At this point we have engaged all of the 14 UPGs in the desert and gone beyond that. Now we’re talking about 300 unreached people groups as per Joshua Project. We’re working at it country by country in East Africa, praying and focusing on the least reached, the least engaged.

Jesus commanded us to make disciples (not converts) as we go, until no space remains untouched by a worldwide explosion of disciples. This won’t happen by planting and growing churches one at a time. It won’t happen by trying to build megachurches or by paying a few people to try to do it. We believe the only way for the Church to fulfill the Great Commission is through making disciples who can make disciples. We have seen God do in East Africa, sometimes in partnership with existing churches.

A DMM Skeptic Starts a Strong Movement of Disciple Making

Agali gave Disciple Making Movements training to a group of pastors in 2015. From those who took the DMM training, a pastor named Roba came to him and expressed serious doubts that existing churches could make this kind of change. Agali did not argue but challenged Roba to start the process in his community. Roba took the challenge and went to his community in search of a person of peace. The community was predominantly a Muslim community where the men like to gather in the public square in the afternoons to drink tea and to socialize.

Roba went to the public square one afternoon. He greeted the men and offered to buy them tea telling them he had come to get to know them. He told them although he is a Christian and they are Muslims, they have been neighbors for a long time and as people who honor God maybe they should know each other better. The Muslims invited Roba to sit with them. As they were chatting together, Roba got an opportunity to tell them a story from the Bible. He told them the story of Zacchaeus. The men were attentively listening to the story and when he reached the part of the story when Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a son of Abraham,” his listeners became more attentive when the name of Abraham was mentioned. After finishing drinking tea, and as they were parting they invited the pastor to come again with more stories.

A few days later, Roba joined them again for tea. After the usual greetings and talking about current happenings in the community, Roba asked them if they remembered the story he had told them in his first visit. They told him they did. He asked them to repeat the story for him, which they did. After repeating the story, a lively discussion followed. One of them asked Roba if he believes that Jesus is God. Roba threw the question back to the men and asked them, “if Jesus in the story of Zacchaeus was able to give salvation to men, does this not show that Jesus could have divine attributes that are not found in men?” Some of the men responded in agreement by nodding their heads.

These meetings over tea became frequent and regular. In a natural progression of the relationships, many Discovery Bible Groups and churches were established among these Muslims, resulting in 32 small churches.

New Wineskin for New Wine

When Pastor Kamau was invited to conduct a DMM training among a group of pastors from a particular district, he did not expect much to happen. They were skeptical because the people of the district were known as very nominal Christians and the existing churches had lots of strong church traditions that did not advance the gospel. Pastor Kamau saw little hope that the pastors of these churches would take up the challenge of Disciple Making Movements and apply them among their people.

But happily, Pastor Kamau was proved to be mistaken. Just four months after the DMM training, that region had seen 98 new Discovery Groups, four generations deep in some streams.

Pastor Ado shared that the DMM training which he took from Pastor Kamau changed his mindset. Ado reported that immediately after he took the DMM training, he replaced the Sunday preaching with Discovery Groups to see what would happen, if any of the people would report back about how they obeyed God.

He relayed that his members reported renewed joy in their relationship with God and with each other. Some members reported being healed of sicknesses during the prayers of the Discovery Group.

Pastor Ado says the members of his church were also coached to start Discovery Groups in their homes and in their neighborhoods and 42 more groups were started in just a few months.

We see God using many people and groups, and we praise God for the network and collaboration of 24:14. We need to work together as the Body of Christ. We need to learn from others, as well as to share what we are learning.

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