Along with two other people, I’ve recently contributed to a new book about movements: Forests in the Seed: How Kingdom Movements Are Multiplying Across the Unreached World. Some other great books about movements are already available. This article is a note of caution for all these materials.

Many reports and books have been written describing movements. Nearly all are English-language abstractions shaped for a Western audience. They use Western acronyms, buzzwords, and lingo to explain ways of working that are largely non-Western. While it’s a good and useful thing, there is a danger we will read these descriptions and think, “That is a precise definition of a movement.”

We might not say it that way, either out loud or in our head. Yet I frequently hear a story: Someone goes into the field, or to a conference, or some other event, and talks with some people connected to a movement. They learn some details, hear some stories, and suddenly “discover”—“This is not a pure disciple making movement.” When they say that, I know they aren’t actually commenting on the movement’s perfection or integrity (although they may think they are). They’re revealing their discovery that any given movement doesn’t do exactly what is described in some Western book or training. That’s because the book is an abstraction.

Think of a map. Maps have different scales. A 1:1 scale is just the actual terrain itself—every tree, rock, and path in full detail. Such a map is impractical—it’s just reality. A map really becomes useful when it is scaled or abstracted—certain details are removed to give us a better picture of how things interrelate. A neighborhood map highlights streets but omits homes. A city map shows neighborhoods but loses small roads. A national map outlines highways but omits the backroads. The broader the scale, the less detail remains. The same is true for books on movements—key features are shown, but the fine details disappear.

A movement, like a landscape, exists at full scale in real life. The books, reports, and training materials are written at a broad scale. They highlight key features but leave out the 1:1 details, the messy variations, and the lived experience.

For example, all movements encourage believers to connect with the lost. Some may do this in a very disorganized way, in the context of daily life, and others may do it in a much more organized fashion. All movements encourage house churches, but some do have designated buildings. The size of groups can vary significantly between movements, largely due to security requirements. Some have churches averaging in size from 5 to 8 people, while others average 13 to 15. The role of teachers is more organized in some movements, less so in others. Outreach into nearby communities is sometimes done through intentional business starts, sometimes through community programs, sometimes through sports, sometimes through education, sometimes through prayer walks. And this list is the tip of the iceberg! Some movements pay workers at certain levels, and others avoid this at all costs. Some use Discovery Bible Studies (DBS), and others use other formats. Some movements seek to baptize people very quickly, and others go through a long period of discipleship, teaching, and examination before baptism.

Westerners work with some movements but never see them all. In their work, they make observations. In most instances, such observations and analyses are for the benefit of the movements themselves. But occasionally, they get abstracted into English-language papers, books, and case studies, then cross-pollinated to other movements and shared with the world. Details, nuances, variations, messiness, and challenges within movements always get lost in the abstraction and translation. What comes across are simple principles, which are true and helpful (especially for other movements, who understand the messiness). However, these can make disciple making movements seem cleaner, more engineered, more simplistic and mechanical than they really are.

When we hear the abstract principles and read the miraculous stories, we often wish for that to happen “where we are.” We miss the hours of sharing, prayer, and tears. We see the stories of 2,000+ movements, and wonder why it doesn’t happen for us. But we don’t hear about the 3,000+ teams presently engaged in the field—for whom it hasn’t yet happened. We miss most of the uncertainties, trial-and-error, failures, tears, rejoicing, miracles, sudden conversions, strong stands, fearful nights—and yes, even arrests, jailings, torture, and martyrdoms.

We can gain knowledge of these things. It requires getting out among the movements and building relationships in logistically demanding, dangerous, high-security contexts. I’ve been in many meetings of movement leaders, heard the case stories, and realized again that the only way to really begin to understand a movement is to get into the middle of one. From there we can ask questions, listen to lots of stories, perhaps even try things and learn by doing—no matter how challenging that is.

To further complicate matters, we as Westerners think of movements through our Western lens. But the reality is, 99% of movements are non-Western in culture and worldview. When any of us, as Westerners, go into a movement, it’s almost certain we will experience significant culture shock.

In Forests in the Seed, we aimed to keep the stories in the original voice of the storytellers as much as possible. Some of the stories are “culture shocky” even to us, the authors. We thought it better if our readers had to grapple with some of that. What is happening, is happening in non-Western environments, among people who think in ways very different from the way most of my readers think.

The books communicate basic principles and vision, but they are only the tip of the iceberg. Books, like maps, only go so far. This doesn’t make them deceptive or erroneous. It simply means books, like maps, give enough information to usefully describe reality, but are not reality itself. They help orient us to major landmarks and acquaint us with some big things we can expect—but they don’t tell us every bit of weirdness and beauty we will find just around the bend in the road.

Down in the individual houses, alleys, markets, temples, and palaces, God’s Spirit is doing some amazing things— unmarked on maps and untold in books. Often, the only witnesses for those things are the people present there and the record of Heaven. If we want to know, we have to go places ready to be surprised and open to what the Spirit is doing.