Among the frontiers of mission today, enthusiasm for church planting movements (CPMs) or disciple making movements (DMMs) often outpaces our understanding of what actually makes them work. Much of the current conversation focuses on theological precision or methodological replication, while too little attends to the social, structural, and cultural dynamics that shape missional transformation. If movements are to be sustainable and reproducible, our missiology must both deepen and widen.

In my work with movement practitioners, I have noticed that the same stories can circulate for years with little examination of the lived realities beneath them. Some assume that sound doctrine and clear obedience alone can explain movement dynamics. Yet beneath every movement are complex webs of kinship, social pressure, economic conditions, and group identity that profoundly influence whether the gospel “runs ahead” (2 Thess 3:1) or stalls.

Sociology offers tools that help us see this reality more clearly. Samuel Perry’s Religion for Realists1 argues that religion should be studied empirically rather than idealistically. Although Perry’s focus is on Anglo-Protestant Christianity (mainly White Evangelicalism) in America, his “realist” framework can illuminate what God is doing in very different settings, especially among least-reached peoples in the Majority World. We do not have to accept all of his conclusions to appreciate his insights. His emphasis on group identity, population dynamics, and social structures provides helpful lenses to examine the communal and embodied realities of movements. Especially since sociology explains how individuals form groups, movement missiology needs realism as a companion to theology to help us discern how the gospel interacts with real social forces.

Belonging Before Believing

Perry maintains that religion is primarily about group identity and social norms rather than individual belief. Theology, in this view, functions as a marker of belonging that reinforces community cohesion. This may sound backward to those of us trained on the primacy of theology, but think about it: Depending on your own theological tribe, your position on gen-der roles (or charismatic gifts, politics, ecclesiology, eschatology, etc.) is often the defining feature of your faithfulness to Jesus! Our theological convictions are strongly shaped by the communities we belong to.

This sociological realism resonates with what practitioners of CPMs have long observed. Transformation often occurs collectively rather than individually. Movements grow when the gospel spreads through existing relational and kinship networks instead of extracting people out of them.2 As Motus Dei notes, people tend to accept or reject a new faith de-pending on whether it strengthens or threatens their social identity.3

In my experience, movements among Muslims illustrate this vividly. CPMs/DMMs are not “Insider Movements” seeking to retain a Muslim identity, yet they also resist premature labeling as “Christian.” Believers often form new communities of faith while using novel terms to identify with Jesus, usually because the “Christian” label does not fit. This reflects Craig Keener’s observation that the socioreligious identity of early Jesus followers did not solidify as “Christian” until the late second century.4 Movements today may echo that same slow, organic process of identity transition and formation.

Discovery Bible Study (DBS) also demonstrates how group belonging shapes belief. Perry references an anthropological study of evangelical Bible study groups in the West, showing that participants often use Scripture to confirm what their group already assumes, a process called “establishing congruence.”5 While that study concerned believers in the United States, it raises intriguing parallels for non-Western contexts. In CPMs, groups of seekers (often oral-preference learners) study Scripture together and encounter Jesus in community. Social congruence may initially guide interpretation, but the Spirit works through those same relationships to bring change. DBS leverages the communal nature of belief formation. The gospel enters relational networks and begins reshaping them from within.

Practitioners who recognize the realist priority of belonging over abstract belief are better equipped to catalyze move-ments. This should challenge missiological frameworks that center theology as static and primary. Western models that assume isolated individual conversion often overlook the collective processes through which faith actually spreads. Real-ism calls us to take group belonging seriously as the environment in which movements are formed.

Population Dynamics

Like other sociologists of religion, Perry argues that religious change follows population dynamics more than intellectual debate. “Bodies precede ideas.”6 Growth or decline in religious movements often mirrors demographic patterns in society.

This insight has important implications for movement research. Where there is population growth, particularly across parts of Africa and Asia, there is often church multiplication and potential for movements. Where populations are shrinking or aging, movements seldom emerge at scale. In my observation, every major movement I have studied also exists within a wider environment of population growth. Even in the United States, Ryan Burge has documented that growing churches are also much more likely to be in counties with positive population growth.7

Sociological realism highlights a fascinating paradox between population dynamics and ecclesiology: It’s easier to plant a church in the West than among the least-reached, but it’s easier to plant a movement among the least-reached than in the West.

Realism does not reduce the work of God to demographics; it roots our theology in reality. Movements are embodied in human communities and subject to birth rates, migration, and generational change. Understanding these factors invites us to see how God works through ordinary patterns of life to accomplish extraordinary things.

Structures That Shape Faith

Perry next highlights social structure, the systems and institutions that organize and constrain human behavior. Western societies tend to downplay these structural dimensions of religion, focusing instead on personal belief. Yet social structures such as state power, economic security, and community networks deeply influence how faith takes root and spreads.

Religious groups that enjoy state privilege often stagnate, while marginalized or minority faiths tend to grow. Authoritarian regimes can fuel religious activity, but such growth is often tied to nationalism rather than genuine discipleship. The lesson for missiology is clear: Structural privilege rarely produces biblical-spiritual vitality.

In my research among movement leaders, I have noticed that the most dynamic expressions of faith often emerge from communities without access to formal power or resources. When persecution or poverty limits options, believers adapt by becoming flexible, mobile, and networked. In such contexts, structural issues such as a lack of access to large meeting halls and the presence of persecution means they have the built-in architecture (pun intended) for multiplication in simple churches. They rely on relational trust, shared ministry, and local leadership rather than institutional dependency.

Realism helps us recognize that abundant evangelism alone is not enough. The shape of society, with its institutions and networks, either constrains or enables the spread of faith. Movement missiology must therefore engage both social structures and spiritual realities.

Realism and the Powers

Here theology becomes essential. Perry’s sociological realism, though helpful, can make it seem that humans are prisoners of their social environments. I believe the Bible insists otherwise. Social forces are real but not ultimate. Scripture names these structuring realities as the “powers,” structural-spiritual forces that influence human systems (Gal 4:3; Col 1:16; Eph 6:12).

Walter Wink’s Engaging the Powers offers a way to hold this tension together.8 Wink describes the “powers” as both spiritual and structural realities that shape institutions, governments, and ideologies. They are created good, fallen in rebellion, yet capable of redemption to aid in human flourishing when brought under Christ’s rule (Col 2:15). This insight allows us to take sociology seriously while also affirming that the gospel penetrates beyond what mere sociology can explain.

Jesus and Paul both demonstrate a profound awareness of these dynamics. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus never says “what to believe” but focuses on “who to be” and “what to do,” showing what life under the reign of God looks like. Paul likewise addresses the church as a social body marked by unity, love, and holiness. Both understood that transformation occurs when new identities, grounded in the Spirit, overturn the norms of the surrounding world.

The New Testament also declares that these powers can be resisted and redeemed. The gospel breaks through deterministic systems, both sociological and spiritual, by inaugurating a new creation. Those joined to Christ enter a new social order governed by the kingdom of God rather than the powers of this age.

For missiology, this means realism cannot stop with sociology. We must unmask the invisible powers that shape cultures and institutions while proclaiming the gospel that liberates people from them. The same Spirit who works through social identity also transforms it, creating new communities in Christ that no ideology or structure can contain.

Both sociological realism and biblical theology affirm that religion is socially embedded, but Scripture reveals that God enters those very structures to redeem them. CPMs/DMMs are not simply sociological phenomena; they are manifestations of God’s power breaking through entrenched norms and systems, turning the world right-side up.

Conclusion: Redeeming Realism

Missiology needs realism, an honest engagement with the social, structural, and embodied dynamics of how people come to faith and form multiplying communities-of-the-kingdom. Yet Christian realism must go further. It must affirm that while humans are shaped by their sociology, they are not bound by it. The gospel is both socially embedded and transcendent, both immanent and liberating.

My hope is that missiologists and practitioners alike will see realism as a means of discernment. Studying mission within our fallen world as it is, can strengthen our faith in what God is making it to be. Movements to Christ among the least-reached remind us that theology and sociology need not compete. When held together, they reveal much of the motus Dei, God’s movement within real human networks, transforming social worlds from within. Realism helps us see the world truthfully. Jesus shows us how that world can be redeemed.