CPM as social movement: Placing church planting and disciple making movements in conversation with the wider study of social movements

Given the popularity of Church Planting and Disciple Making Movement strategies, the stated goal of many local and cross-cultural missionaries is increasingly to start a movement. The word movement, however, is not a neutral term. Emerging in popular usage during industrialization in Europe, the term has been used by historians, sociologists and scholars of religion for centuries, yet the corpus of their work is seldom engaged by the missions community. This paper attempts to construct a broad overview of movement sociology and place it into conversation with CPM/DMM. In doing so, new insights are revealed for the missions practitioner and theorist alike, filling a crucial gap in CPM/DMM literature and inviting future research.