Insights on CPM (T4T) and DMM (DBS)
Chuck Huckaby mades some good points on the relationship between two streams of theory and practices in disciple-making/church planting movements.
One issue that wasn’t mentioned in the article itself or it’s follow up as to why some might prefer DMM over T4T is a theological/methodological one for many, myself included.
Originally T4T struck me as the same old “hard sell”, “low content”, “easy believism” approaches to evangelism I had witnessed before. I know I have experienced someone seemingly saying “yes to Jesus” really to be rid of me! Going immediately into a lesson on “assurance” in that situation seems presumptuous and spiritually dangerous for the person. The reason Jeff Sundell (rightly) switched from using “saved/lost” language in North Carolina was because of precisely the same kind of false assurance his participants had about folks living far from God who had, nonetheless, “walked the aisle” and been “assured” they were no longer “lost” at an earlier age.
In contrast a DMM approach that starts with Bible Study and continually tests for obedience from the start is much less likely, one hopes, to produce “false positives” when it comes to counting conversions for that very reason. That format more likely allows for a worldview change than the other format… it is the changed worldview that helps avoid the factor of syncretism – a “Jesus whitewash” over a “pagan core belief system”.
