Frequently Asked Questions

First, as we are all brothers together on the same team... team Christ is King... In practice, DMI does not in any way oppose the use of other missionary strategies. We trust that the Lord will accomplish His will as He calls each of us. However, after careful study of history and the Bible, we do believe that what is often referred to as the "Proclamation model" is more faithful to the New Testament model of church planting as practiced in Jerusalem and as done by Paul in the Greco-Roman world, and is the model that has, in the long term, produced more enduring fruit than any other model. Though the proclamation method supposedly appears to take longer, a look into the history of missions shows that while the Lord has produced fruit in rapid manner (e.g. Patrick in Ireland), the timeframe we present in our strategy page is actually the most common process and timeframe for most people groups.

Given all this, we have chosen to put our focus and efforts into the Proclamation Model. We do this because we strongly believe it is the most likely to produce a strong and enduring church capable of transforming the people of the Maranao, Badjao, and other Muslim tribes of southern Philippines.

If you want the "inside baseball" discussion about the two primary missions models being discussed in the missions world today, here is a good article on that. As stated earlier, we believe that the practitioners of the CPM/DMM model are on the same team as us, and that they do have valid critiques of the "older" model, but in our context we believe that the Proclamation Model is the most faithful and effective and so have chosen to focus there in.

We love our Orality focused missions brethren. In fact, if you feel led to support or join an Orality focused mission, head over here. However, as I think the Orality leaders would agree, Orality is a branch, and without the root of the written word cannot properly function. There are already people who are doing a much better job than we can in Orality. But, in our field, there is a lack in equipping and training up for the use and study of the written word, and we aim to focus there.

Even people groups who are primarily oral cannot have a stable oral tradition of the Bible without a written Bible and leaders who can use it. Furthermore, we believe that it is of great benefit to all people groups to learn to be a literate civilization. Just as Protestant Europe and America have been the primary beneficiaries of literacy because Luther and Tyndale brought them the Bible in their language, we believe that it is spiritually and materially good and proper to encourage literacy via the written word through the Bible for all people groups.

We see ourselves as partners with those doing Orality — and they are doing a better job than we are... We need to catch up!