Anyone who has been around disciple making movements (DMMs) and church planting movements (CPMs) will have heard the rabbit and elephant metaphor. It’s a classic illustration of how some animals are big and beautiful but only have limited reproduction. Others are small, nothing special to look at, but multiply rapidly, even into the thousands within a few years. It’s an apt and effective illustration for the goal of multiplication and catalyzing movements to Christ.
The legacy, traditional, or megachurch is often compared to elephants and simple churches or disciple-making groups to rabbits.
Not long ago, I used this example to train a group of people just beginning to discover disciple multiplication principles. I proclaimed, “You don’t need to be an elephant killer to multiply rabbits.”
Our job is not to kill elephants, nor is it to criticize or degrade mega-churches. God has used megachurches to minister to many! Likewise, the Master used the seeker-sensitive movement, initiated out of Willow Creek Community Church, to impact many who never would have come to faith. God creatively and constantly releases new approaches. The megachurch has its place and has had its season in modern Church history. It does seem, though, that its effectiveness as a strategy for making disciples has demonstrated significant weaknesses.

New Wine and New Wineskins—An Older Analogy

Jesus spoke of new wine and new wineskins.
“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved.
And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, ‘The old is better.’” (Luke 5:37–39 NKJV)
Most readers will understand that rapidly multiplying movements to Christ are not a new idea. They trace back to Jesus and Paul in the New Testament. It does seem, however, that they are something God is accelerating in our day. They are a tool in his hands to bring hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of unreached people into his kingdom in our time. Justin Long of Beyond, told me something interesting in a recent interview on the Dare to Multiply podcast (daretomultiply.com). He said that the vast majority of the close to 2,000 movements in the world today were started in the past 30 years. That indicates that God is doing a new thing! It’s time to join him. The time for thousands more movements to be released has come.

What Do We Do with the Elephants?

If God is shifting his Body into rabbit churches, what do we do with the elephants? What do we do when people like elephant churches and don’t want to change?
There are many reasons why people like the attractional church model. They resist deeper discipleship and being challenged to become disciple-makers. Detailing these is not the focus of this article. Suffice it to say, though, this reality exists. Despite the efficacy of multiplication models, many choose to stay with more established ways of doing church. Elephant churches are not going away anytime soon. Nor, in my opinion, do they need to.
The way we handle this issue is important. We will continue to pursue the launching of thousands more movements among the unevangelized, both in the Global South and in the West. As we do, our actions related to the “old wineskins” matter.
What does Jesus say about this in the verses quoted earlier?
He says not to try to put new wine into old wineskins. He goes on to say, “Or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined.” In other words, don’t ruin the old wineskins! Don’t kill elephants (read elephant–church models), or even wound them with negative words and attitudes. In the early days of church planting movements, some trainers and strategists did. Perhaps they believed the best way to get people to change was to expose the failures of these models. They took a hammer, so to speak, to the solid walls of these ideas and worked to crack them.
Many, if not most, of us who have been involved in the CPM/DMM world would admit there were times when our rhetoric was too harsh. Our zeal for releasing the new methodology of movements caused us to be unkind in how we spoke about more established ways of doing church. Convicted by God in this, most have stopped this kind of talk. Instead of speaking about the shortcomings of these systems, they focus on the benefits and efficacy of the new wine God offers. This is an important change and improvement.
The issue, however, remains. What do we do with elephant churches and how do we relate to them?

Don’t Try to Marry the Elephant to the Rabbit

Many DMM and CPM practitioners still attend legacy churches. Missionaries doing DMM/CPM are financially supported by them. When we go home and share stories of movements, they are curious and interested to learn from what we are seeing in the field. And we sincerely want to help these churches win the lost, multiply disciples, and grow. This prompts the question. Do we do this within their existing systems, or help these churches begin new ones?
Another statement I made while training a group was, “You can’t marry an elephant to a rabbit. If you try to do that you will end up with deeply frustrated animals that can’t mate, or that give birth to some kind of monster children.”
Jesus put it more eloquently when he said, you can’t put new wine in old wineskins or sew patches of new cloth on the old. New wine needs new containers. A fresh move of God needs a new system within which to flow.
I am, by no means, familiar with all the attempts to transform elephant churches into rabbit ones. I have to say though, that when I’ve seen it attempted, it hasn’t always ended well. Not for the elephant system, nor the rabbit one.
Let me write plainly.
It’s good to desire to see legacy–church members activated and learn to make disciples. It’s a natural thing to want those new people being led to faith to then attend your church, leading to church growth. This is not wrong per se, but it is a very different thing from attempting to catalyze a movement of disciples—one that will grow rapidly and organically. Is your aim to see God sweep through a population segment as thousands, even tens of thousands, become Jesus followers? This requires new wineskins completely. It will not work within the old.

Movements or Church Growth

On another Dare to Multiply podcast not long ago, I interviewed Matt Ulrich of Greenhouse Church in Florida (Episode 72). They use a hybrid–church model. We spoke about discipleship pathways more than about the way their model works. I learned a few things from them, though. One thing they are very clear about is that the small groups are not fellowship groups. They are churches. They are not yet seeing what we would call a full-blown disciple making movement, but it’s an interesting approach. These groups are multiplying several generations. Other networks have tried something similar. They have kept their megachurches. They also have mid-size churches and have started new house–church networks. The Dove Network is an example of this. This too has caused multiplication to some degree. I am not aware of it leading to fourth- generation movements with thousands of new believers. Some experimentation has taken place and more needs to happen.

Clearly Define Your Goal

It is important to determine what it is that you are trying to do. Are you wanting to spark revival and revitalize your believers? Shifting them into more active evangelists who lead people to Christ and then bring them to the church building? Are you attempting more of a cell church model, where everyone returns to the mother body and is accountable there? Tithes there? Are you wanting to help your small groups or house fellowships to have more participatory and engaging Bible studies?
Or are you serious about wanting to do something differently with radically different results? Or trying something that has the potential to cause an organic and rapid spread, sweeping many lost and broken people in your area into his arms? Do you have a vision for addition growth or truly exponential multiplication?
If you are aiming for the latter, it is my humble opinion that it must be done completely outside the structure of the existing building church. It can be catalyzed by those who are members of building churches. Eventually, as the rabbit– church movement grows in size and scope, those members will need to disassociate from the other. They will need to give themselves fully to the newly emerging movement. Personally, my recommendation would be to do this sooner rather than later. I base this on my observation of these hybrid attempts as well as my interpretation of Jesus’s words quoted above.

Parallel Systems or Train Tracks to Begin With

Initially, these two systems (elephant and rabbit) can support and assist one another. Yet they must be separate. Like train tracks, they can begin as parallel church systems. This metaphor breaks down, however, if the kind of exponential growth hoped for in movement efforts begins to happen. In that case, one side of the track will become far greater than the other and need to be free to move without being tied to the other track.
Here’s my advice. Keep the old wine and savor it. Let it be the beautiful thing that it is. Don’t kill elephants but begin to grow and multiply rabbits on a separate farm. If you are an elephant church with a heart to release rabbits, understand the cost it will be to you. Know the challenges you will face. You will need to release some good people, some of your best, to go and start something new that you and your brand won’t get credit for. Control will have to be in their hands and while you help finance it, you will need to release trust and authority to them.
Embrace the new wine and create new spaces and containers for new movements to grow and thrive. You don’t have to throw out your old wine and wineskins to do so.
It’s not either/or. Eventually, new wine may completely replace the old, but we can still value and be grateful for the old. Let the new rabbit churches and systems grow freely. Let them rise in strength and even dominance. Let’s not be fearful of that. God is doing a new thing, now it springs up. Do we not perceive it? (Isa 43:19 paraphrased).