How My DMM Journey Began

Disciple Making Movements, or DMMs, are a mission and church multiplication paradigm that has gained momentum in recent years. For most who pursue them, however, they are far more than a strategy. They are a passion. A desperate sense of urgency to see lost people come to know Christ drives them to the costly pursuit of seeing rapidly multiplying groups of disciples in their areas.

Movement practitioners are willing to face persecution from within and without, and to spend much time on their knees. Mountain tops of breakthrough and valleys of discouragement are all part of the DMM journey.

This week, I thought I’d take a break from the series I’ve been writing about on leadership in a DMM, and share instead a video clip from an interview by a friend and mentor in movements- Uncle Victor. In the clip, he asks how I got started in this journey.

For those who prefer to read, below the video is a transcript of our talk. I pray my story encourages you.

Continue to persevere step by step! You and God are writing your own disciple-making story. Keep walking forward on your DMM journey toward the release of a movement. It may have as many twists and turns as my journey has also had, but the destination is well worth the sacrifice!

Victor

When did this multiplication bug catch up with you? You are very strong as a trainer, as a coach on multiplication. So tell us something about your ministry.

Cynthia Anderson

Yeah, sure. When God called me to the unreached, I knew that’s what God wanted me to do, to work with people who had never had a chance to hear. And the same exact summer, the Lord called my husband, who was my close friend at the time, and we decided to get married and kind of headed in that direction.

We went to Bible school and got a degree in Cross-Cultural Ministry. There we learned about church planting among the unreached, and some really great principles. At that time, movements and things that we talk about today had not really taken off.

Obviously, movements have been happening for centuries. They happened in the New Testament. But we didn’t use those terms back then. And so really when we left Bible College and headed to the field, our biggest goal was just to plant one church among the unreached.

That was our dream…that we could start one church among people who’d never heard of Jesus before. We went to the country of Nepal and started to work there. And then George Patterson, some of you have heard of George. He was one of the fathers of the multiplication movement.

He came to visit Nepal and ran a seminar. It was through hearing George talk that we began to catch a vision for more than just one church, but to plant a church that would have daughter churches and granddaughter churches and begin to multiply.

Then, I’ve kind of grown with the movement strategy as it’s developed. Later, of course, I read David Garrison’s book about CPMs, or church planting movements, and was struck by that and said, “Wow, we need that.” And really, the needs of the unreached demand greater multiplication.

And the need of the lost, I think, it is that passion and burden for those who’ve never had a chance to hear, and that if we don’t do something more than traditional church planting, they never will. We won’t be able to reach the unreached. So that’s what’s driven me towards a multiplication mindset and a passion to do whatever we have to do to see multiplication take off, particularly in unreached areas.

Victor

In the beginning, as I mentioned, you had a personal determination. You went about sitting on scooters with your baby in your lap, preaching in the villages.

Cynthia Anderson

Yes, we did. We went to Nepal. I was pregnant with our first daughter. Back then, we worked with Youth With a Mission. Sometimes we call it YWAM…and we jokingly say it stands for youth without any money. We didn’t have much of a budget, but we did have a little scooter and we had a little baby.

A little scooter and a little baby in the big mountains in Nepal. We would put our little baby in the front pack, one of those little bags that you carry on the front and cover up with a raincoat and drive the scooter up the mountains, and down the mountains, to the villages. We tried to look for Persons of Peace and that’s where we started the first church that then became a movement there in Nepal. It was in a valley area about three hours outside of the capital Kathmandu. (This ends the short clip from the interview but the story continues.)

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Join our 1-hour free training where I finish that story, introduce Disciple Making Movements, and share about our online course where you can learn how to start a movement in your area.

Continue moving forward! Don’t despise days of small beginnings. God is at work. He will respond to your faith and courage as you pursue the multiplication of disciples in your area.