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David Watson's 'Contagious Disciple Making': Part 1




This is a book review of the above good book. Two reasons why you should pack it along with your crocs or flip-flops this summer!

1. ‘Disciple-Makers Embrace Lessons Taught by Failure’

Often, without realising it, mission-workers bring a lot of cultural and denominational baggage with them. We naturally tend to reproduce ourselves and our churches, but what we are aiming for is to produce followers of Jesus. David says, 'God taught me, through many failures, that I had to focus on making disciples of Christ, not followers of my church or denomination. He also taught me that I needed to teach these disciples to obey the commands of Jesus, not my Church/denominational doctrines or traditions.' His focus is on Disciple-Making Movements and Church-Planting Movements instead of working in one small area and carrying out one small church plant. The work may be slow at first but once it takes off there is much fruit, and many indigenous churches are planted. Disciples are taught to obey all the commands of Jesus. They are also taught to train other disciples. Once this work gets moving, it multiplies quickly.

2. ‘Disciple-Makers Deculturalize, not Contextualise the Gospel’

In chapter 2 David shows us how hard it is to contextualise the gospel. However hard we try, we can't do it. Instead, why not train leaders who will preach in their way, and teach the Bible themselves, who will contextualise it without even thinking. This is much more effective than trying to work out how to contextualise the gospel ourselves. They also have the advantage of speaking the language as their mother-tongue, instead of having to learn it. David shares some good examples. When teaching people to be baptised, one local man said, 'It isn't right, baptising women.' He knew that in his culture men outside the family are forbidden from touching women in the family. The answer was simple - instead of ordained ministers carrying out baptisms, others were given the task, and the right men were found to do the job.

This first part of my book review covers chapters 1 and 2. Chapters 3 and 4 next! Here's the ref.:

David and Paul Watson, Contagious Disciple Making, 2014, Thomas Nelson, Nashville

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