Steve Addison's Blog

A conversation with Don Waybright on movements around the world.

Link: multiplyinghope.org

Someone asked me recently, “Must a prayer movement precede a movement of disciples and churches?”

Let’s go back to the beginning, to the movement Jesus started.

When Jesus rose from the dead, he confronted a band of defeated disciples. They’d denied him and fled in fear. He had forty days to restore them and prepare them to go to the ends of the earth.

Did Jesus begin with a prayer movement?

According to Luke, Jesus began by opening their minds to understand the Scriptures. He took them from Genesis to Malachi, explaining how the Messiah would suffer and rise, and how repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem (Luke 24:44–49). In other words, he began with the Word.

The story of Acts is the story of the spread of God’s Word. In Acts, the Word spreads, grows in power and multiplies. The fruit is disciples and churches to the glory of God among every people and in every place. 

Once the disciples understood God’s purposes from Scripture, Jesus gave them their mission and promised to send the Spirit who would clothe them with power. No mention of prayer yet. The promise is unconditional: “I will send what the Father has promised.” 

In Acts 1, the church is gathered in the upper room. What are they doing? They are all praying. Constantly. The Twelve, the women, Mary and Jesus’ brothers, all the disciples are praying. Then the Spirit comes upon a praying people.

The disciples prayed not because they had to summon up the power of the Spirit through the volume of their prayer. They prayed because the Spirit was coming and they must be ready. When the Spirit comes in power, they must be prepared to bear witness to Jesus throughout Jerusalem and the world.

The Spirit came and the prayer meeting stopped while everyone took the Word to the streets. By the end of the day, churches were formed all around Jerusalem, characterized by love, generosity, evangelism, worship, the Word and prayer. The day of Pentecost began in prayer and ended with prayer.

But to say, “No movement of disciples and churches until there is a prayer movement” is misleading.

The risen Lord began with failed, not praying, disciples. He taught them from the Word, gave them their mission and promised them the Holy Spirit. They prayed because when the Spirit came, the mission would begin.  

If you say, No movement without a prayer movement, why not say, No movement without a Word movement? Or, No movement without a Holy Spirit movement? Or, No movement without missionary movement?

Every element matters.

Gary was in the US military for fifteen years. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He started out a belligerent atheist. God broke him. His wife called and said, I’m done. I’m leaving with the kids. He didn’t blame her. He knew he’d neglected his family.

He sat in his trailer for two days, surrounded by desert, crying out to God. When a voice called him by name, “Gary you can keep on doing what you've always done, or you can follow me, and it will change everything.” Halfway around the world, his wife, Jenni, was also crying out to God, saying, “If you bring Gary to you, I’ll follow you.”

Gary returned home and they began following Jesus together. When they explained their decision to the children, their eight-year-old asked, “Daddy, what is God?”

They began attending a local church where they met a couple with young children who were making disciples and forming groups in Afghanistan. God was preparing Gary and Jenni for a calling that would come four years later.

Today Gary serves as a movement catalyst among Afghans. Gary says the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 was a massive catalyst for people coming to faith in Christ. Many feel, “If this is Islam, I’m out!”

In just one stream, hundreds have come to Christ and over twenty churches have been planted. There are streams of disciples and churches among the ethnic groups that make up Afghanistan—Hazaras, Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and even some Turkmens. The movements are spilling over the Pakistan border.

Gary quotes Psalm 115, “Our God is in heaven; he does all that he pleases.”

Our God has rescued this broken soldier, his wife and family. Through the turmoil and destruction that is Afghanistan, God is gathering the peoples of Afghanistan to himself.

Watch out for my podcast interview with Gary in a few weeks.

I’ve discovered how to boost my traffic on Facebook, just quote what Jesus said about sex and marriage.

Discipleship begins with repentance and faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice; it continues as we learn to obey what he commanded. You cannot build a movement of God on any other foundation.

Church leaders and denominations have made their decisions to bow to the culture or remain silent in fear. History is not on their side.

Meanwhile, around the world, wherever God’s people proclaim the Word in the power of the Spirit, disciples and churches are multiplying to the glory of God.

I have been a student of David Garrison for over 25 years. His writings on Church Planting Movements opened the door and set the agenda for a generation.

His latest work, Inside Church Planting Movements, examines twenty-eight assessments of church planting movements over twenty-five years — from India to Cuba, from Guatamala to the megacities of China.

Teams of assessors gathered data to reveal the size and nature of these movements. Are church planting movements real?” In eleven of the case studies, the evidence was undeniable.

Garrison explains how the assessments were conducted and provides the tools to help researches conduct their own.

This is book for those who want to go beyond the hype of movements to the reality of what it takes to multiply disciples and churches to the glory of God.

Buy on Amazon

Denominations, churches and dear friends are falling like flies by welcoming and affirming of same-sex relationships.

Some deny Biblical truth, others remain orthodox but silent and afraid. Saying it’s a “complex” issue—no it’s not.

Jesus, quoting Genesis said, “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh?”

One friend of forty years told me, “Steve that’s what it says, but what does it *mean*?” Well it means what it says.

This is the tactic the serpent used when questioning God’s Word. “That’s what it says, but let me tell you what it means…”

Movements rise and fall as they move towards or away from the life and ministry of Jesus. He came to call us all to repentance. He came to fulfill God’s Word, not overturn it.

A conversation with Max and Sydnie Doty on their departure from Greece and their new start in Arizona.

Max, Troy and Steve

My friend Max is an evangelist. Everywhere he goes, people come to faith in Christ.

He’s one of those examples we point to when we explain why we can’t share the gospel. We’re not like Max!

Evangelists can obey the Great Commission, not us ordinary disciples.

But Max was an evangelist who, by his own admission, didn’t know what to do with the people he led to Christ. He’d sit down with them one on one, listen to their questions, and then turn on the firehose of his knowledge. It didn’t work.

Then one day, he met Troy Cooper and his kids at a skate park. He started hanging out with Troy and his family and team, learning how to turn converts into multiplying disciples.

Max was a born evangelist, but he had to learn how to make disciples.

The gift of evangelism wasn’t given so the rest of us could stand back and watch Max do all the work. The gifts we’re given are meant to serve the core missionary task—multiplying disciples and churches to the glory of God, everywhere.

Regardless of gifting, everybody has to learn to do the basics. Connecting with people far from God. Sharing the gospel. Making disciples. Planting healthy churches and multiplying workers.

Max was never going to see a movement by just focusing on his gift of evangelism. He had to learn to turn new believers into disciples in community, train them to make disciples.

Your mission is not to discover your gifts and put a label on yourself. Our gifts serve a greater purpose.

Announcing the release of Your Part in God’s Story audiobook.

This book lays the Biblical foundations for multiplying movements of disciples and churches. Everywhere.

Available on Audible-Amazon and Apple

Listen on Spotify

Download the notes

I’ve been spending a lot of time on the road looking for case studies and stories of movements that are multiplying disciples and churches. It’s the theme of my next book.

One thing I’ve noticed — they’re not driving political agendas. They do one thing exceptionally well — making disciples and forming them into multiplying churches.

Yet in the West, politics is ultimate. The kingdom has come and so we need to make the world a better place. God will renew the whole creation, so let’s get started.

There’s optimism about our prospects of transforming society in the light of the kingdom of God. That’s been the theme of Western thinking about missions for 100 years. The result has been the decline and collapse of mainstream churches. Today evangelicals in the West are going down the same path.

There’s a move of God that is transforming lives in the Texas prison system. It started in maximum security and spread to death row. Criminals are becoming disciples, and they’re planting churches in their day rooms.

Transformation is the by-product, not the goal, of this movement. The gospel changes lives and it brings blessing. But the cross is not someone’s tool for social transformation. Transformation may come — or it may not. Jesus promised rejection and persecution wherever the gospel is proclaimed. That’s why all around the world where the gospel is spreading, the believers are suffering.

Meanwhile in the privileged West, we’re doing fine, but no one is coming to Christ.

Our leaders deny Jesus’ teaching on sexual ethics or remain silent. The culture has shifted. It’s the price they are willing to pay for a seat at the table.

Tell the disciples in Northern Nigeria, as they die daily under Muslim persecution, that their real mission is “to speak truth to power.” Ask the believers of Iran, Laos or North Korea to stand up to their Communist or Islamist overlords and they may be puzzled. They’re doing what Jesus commanded, taking the gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins to their world. They’re trying to stay alive and one step ahead of their persecutors.

Their world looks more like the book of Acts, so does their mission.

Meanwhile in the West, we’ve stopped sharing the gospel with people far from God. And instead, we’re making the world a better place.