Review:
The master plan Jerry
Trousdale describes in Miraculous
Movements (Thomas Nelson, 2012) is from the Disciple Making Movement used by City
Team and its international affiliates. He describes “multiple cases of entire
mosques coming to faith, thousands of ordinary men and woman being used by God
to achieve seemingly impossible outcomes, tens of thousands of Muslim
background Christians becoming dedicated intercessors who fast and pray for the
gospel to penetrate the next community. Muslim people groups that never had
even one church among them now have more than fifty churches planted, and in
some cases more than a hundred churches – within two years of engagement; and
former sheikhs, imans, and militant Muslims making up twenty percent or more of
the new Christian leaders in Muslim regions” (pp.24,25). His statistics come from seven years of
research among Christian ministries reaching Muslims. The results of this Disciple Making
Movement’s approach seem hard to believe, yet the results seem to validate the strategy
the Movement uses of prayer saturation for Muslim communities coupled with
Discovery Bible Studies for Muslims that focus on obedience to the passage
studied each week with a resulting incremental understanding of God that
eventually leads the Muslims to conversion to Christ. Discipleship before conversion. For those
committed to Christ’s global agenda in Mt. 28:16-20, this book is a challenging
resource. A must read.
M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D. 10/18/13
Excerpts:
When Trousdale speaks of
churches planted, he is referring to small basic churches built around family
and clan structures and out of public view [ranging in size from 30 people to
100]. The foundational prayer base for those churches includes:
*”advance intercessory teams to research new ministry areas
and to lay the important groundwork of prayer in those areas.
*intercessors to pray for the pioneer teams who go into
those Muslim regions, many times at risk of their own lives.
*intercessors to train new Christians how to pray
effectively in every new church. This ministry began by training hundreds of
new Christians and has seen a new harvest of more than 200,000 new Christians
in 7 years. The goal was and continues to be that every new Christian in the Disciple
Making Movement would fast and pray corporately every week. And that every
family or individual would invest time every day in prayer and studying God’s
word. The goal is that every person who becomes a follower of Jesus also
becomes an intercessor…Weekly days of prayer and fasting have become an
integral part of the Christian life. And most of the members spend 2-4 nights a
month in half night prayer meetings…Christians also attend prayer camps to pray
for their neighbors and learn how to pray by praying together - not by learning
about prayer, but by practicing prayer. Amazingly, Muslims who are hungry for prayer
consistently show up at these Christian prayer camps. And typically scores of
them have an encounter with God that causes them to seek baptism on the last
night of camp” (pp.30,31). The Movement
follows Jesus’ “counterintuitive disciple-making strategy” (p.33). They
focus on a family at a time (the whole family) and disciple people toward
salvation through reading God’s word and obeying it.
Prayer
Abundant prayer is what “is
catalyzing the movement and sustaining it The prayer movement that started in
Jirani and Hadhi’s home ultimately produced hundreds of intercessors, as well
as many occasions of passionate fasting and prayer for provisions, protection and
God’s miraculous interventions. And those prayers are being answered in the
witness of seven generations of disciples making disciples and churches
planting churches, more than 500 simple congregations populated by 26,000
former Muslims who have given their lives to Jesus” (p. 52).
“Prayer is the greatest
weapon that any disciple maker can yield…Prayer takes the spiritual battle out
of the human realm and puts it fully into God’s hands and not even the powers
of hell itself can stand against His mighty Spirit…A huge spiritual battle is
raging and the heroes and heroines of the battle are tenacious warriors in
prayer…Where many people are praying and fasting much, engaging lost-ness by
intentionally applying the disciple- making values and principles of the Bible,
the God of the impossible is bringing about the salvation of thousands of the
most difficult to reach Muslims, more than we had imagined possible” (pp.52-54).
There are four elements of a
prayer strategy in ministries to Muslims:
1.“Leaders living and
modeling personal disciplines of prayer…
2.Praying for new regions and
pioneer teams, asking God to go before them preparing persons of peace to
bridge the gospel into that area, and binding the demonic influences that will
invariably fight against their effort…Many new regions are beset with demonic
influences and those influences must be recognized and bound by prayer before
the Gospel is taken into those places. This includes spiritual scanning…of the
background of a community, the people groups, the traditions that hold a town
together, the pressing physical, educational, health, agricultural, business
and social needs of the community. Pioneer prayer warriors walk the streets of
the town to discern spiritual strong holds, issues of prevailing sins,
spiritual bondages, covenants made with spiritual forces. We train people how
to do a spiritual survey and when we find the prayer points, we pray to see
these bondages broken before teams go in so that the Spirit of God will
prepare hearts to receive the good news”(pp.57-59).
3.“Training new Christians to
pray by their praying with more mature believers...
4.Developing intercessory
prayer in every church” (pp.61-62).
This prayer approach is
understandable to Muslims “where daily prayer is a ritual and rigid requirement
and prayer is done by reciting memorized words. For Muslim background
believers, it is always a joyous revelation to discover that prayer as a
Christian is a conversation between a child and a Father…The notion is very
foreign to Muslims that a person can approach God and ask for things, as a
child might ask of his father…Christians presume to pray directly to a God that
they seem to know personably, and ask him to heal or deliver people, and it happens.
That sort of the involvement of the supreme God in the needs of people by the
prayers of simple Christians, is the single most powerful reason that Muslims
turn from Islam to the loving God of the Bible” (pp.61,79).
“Bringing people to the
knowledge of Christ for their salvation is spiritual warfare; we need to bind
the strong man before we can plunder his house (Matt 12:29). In this process
prayer is critical throughout – pray for families and individuals who have
influence in the community; pray that the persons of peace may reveal
themselves; have a regular and focused time of praying as you walk through the
community; discover and engage the spiritual powers that must be prayed against
and bound by God’s power; proclaim the blessings and promises of God’s word
over the people and invite God’s Spirit to break all the evil bondages that
keep people from being able to hear, believe, and obey” (pp.188-189).
Engaging Lostness
1.
“Bring the Gospel
through service – meeting the needs of the people and praying for them…Be a
genuine friend, living out Christ’s compassion” (pp. 83-89).
2.
“Only share with
people of peace whom God has prepared to receive you…People of peace are God’s
pre-positioned agents to bridge the gospel to bridge the gospel to their
family, friends, and work place. (Biblical examples are Cornelius and Lydia)…A
person of peace is waiting for someone to help him deal with a significant
spiritual hunger although he might not be consciously aware of it yet. God has
put a hunger in his heart and the longing to worship or just to know God” (pp.90,95).
3.
Disciple new
Christians for obedience, not mere knowledge. “Jesus discipled the disciples to
conversion…Discipleship is relationship based…it is coaching and mentoring
based – it is on the job training...it is group process…Making disciples is
discovery processed based: Jesus spent time with the twelve and gave them the
opportunity to discover who he is. He revealed himself progressively to them
until they came to the point where they knew that he is the Christ the son of
God…Making disciples is obedience based…we help people ask themselves
[regarding the Bible] “if this is truly from God, then what might change in my
life today?” (pp.101-104).
Signs and wonders
“About 40% of the former
Muslim leaders who are now making disciples and planting churches reported a
dream or vision of Jesus that prompted them to begin a search to know more
about Isa al Masih…A minimum of 50% of these believers in the most violent and
extreme areas and 70% of all new churches among Muslims have been planted
because of signs and wonders (typically miracles of healing and
deliverance)…but the miracles don’t happen in a vacuum. They are the result of
intercessors and of pioneer missionaries who are prepared to spend a lot of
time engaging people, finding people of peace, and then investing additional
weeks and months coaching leaders of Discovery Bible Studies. Disciple-making
is a time consuming process of relationships” (pp.133,135).
Discovery Bible Studies
“Start a Discovery Bible
Study with a person of peace and members of his/her network:
1.
Opening – What
are you thankful for this week? What has worried you this week? What do you
need to do to make this situation better (this will lead to prayer and
opportunity to serve one another better?) What are the needs in people in your
community? How can we help one another with the needs we expressed?...
2.
Review – What did
we talk about in the Bible study last week? What changed in your life as a
result in last week’s Bible Study and the point of obedience you discovered?
How did it go when you shared the story with someone else? We identified
several needs last week and planned to meet those needs; how did that go?...
3.
The Bible Study: First,
read the passage; what does it say? Second, have someone retell it in their own
words. Ask the group, ‘Do you agree with the retelling? Is there something he
or she added or left out that he or she shouldn’t have?’ Three, …’if we believe
this passage is from God, how must we change?’ Four, ask group members to
formulate their personal responses to this passage by starting with ”I will”…
4.
Go and live it
out. Help your DBS group to apply the Scripture in their lives through
obedience to God’s Word. Ask “Who are
you going to share this passage with before we meet again?” Say, “From now on,
let’s practice what we have seen today. It is the truth from the Creator and we
all should live according to that truth.”
Ask ’When do you want to meet again?’
If there is a need to visit someone or a family in the community, go
with two or three people from the group to visit…
Baptize and start a church…and
develop new leaders to make disciples of others (pp. 192-197).