Much of the attention of pastors has been on growing their ministry. Growing usually implies having more people attend than did the week or month before. In order to grow, new people must be added to the church. So in that sense, growth is all about addition. Adding new people. Adding new staff. Adding new programs. Adding new givers to the organization. Adding new volunteers. Adding new facilities.
Now don’t get me wrong, addition is not a bad thing. We need to add new people, new believers, and new leaders if we want to stay strong and healthy. Even in Acts 2.41, after Peter preached at Pentecost ,the Spirit writes, “…and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”
Addition is a good thing. But addition should not be confused with multiplication. Multiplying your ministry requires investing in others so they are released to invest in others, thereby creating exponential growth. Let me give you three ways you can begin to multiply the ministry in your church.
Personal multiplication.
Personal multiplication is when a believer personally reproduces his or her life in the life of another person. This may happen when a seasoned Christ follower builds a relationship with a friend far from God and over time the gospel is shared and that person comes to faith in Jesus. That’s spiritual reproduction. It may happen when a believer reaches out to another new Christian and offers to walk alongside them and show them how to walk with God, reach their world, and invest in a few.
Group multiplication.
Group multiplication is when a group, led by disciple makers, grows to the point that they must “birth” a new group. First you had one group, now you have two. Theoretically, if those two groups birth new groups, then the two become four and hopefully the four become eight and so on. That is group multiplication.
Again, the stated goal of the group is to at some point multiply. Eventually, as these groups grow in number, the church as a whole grows numerically. As cells in a body grow, divide, and multiply, so the groups in a healthy church grow, divide, and multiply. This type of multiplication is more complicated than just personal multiplication.
In order for a group to multiply you must do three things. Think of them by the acrostic V.I.P.
- Vision – The group must have a vision to reach as many people as possible.
- Invested leaders – These are leaders who have been discipled; they know how to walk with God, reach their world, and invest in a few.
- Plan to multiply – The group must have a clear, intentional, thoughtful plan of how they are going to reach people, disciple and raise up leaders, and launch a new group.
Church multiplication.
This last approach to multiplication happens when a church multiplies, creating other disciple-making churches. This may happen through church planting, re-planting or multi-site expansion.
Ralph Moore, in his great book, How to Multiply your Church said that we need to “stop counting converts and start counting congregations.” Again, just like with group multiplication, there are few churches that have the vision, invested leadership, and a plan to actually multiply. Many pastors see church planting in a negative light, siphoning off much needed leadership and financial resources from the church they are leading.
Reaching a diverse community
When I pastored the church in Oklahoma City, we were in a downtown transitional neighborhood. The church had been plateaued for decades and all the churches around us were in steep decline and many were dying. The communities were extremely diverse.
How would we ever reach a diverse community, much less help our people reach those they know in the suburbs? Our strategy was simple: multiply. We began by launching new congregations in our church facility to reach a people segment in our community.
We not only focused on planting congregations in the inner-city, but we also planted new locations in the suburbs. We launched the first multi-site church in the state of Oklahoma in a convention center building northwest of town. While the whole “multi-site strategy” was extremely new, they were eager to reach people who lived close to them.
A few weeks later, our church was filled. The entire community had embraced us as their church because we had embraced us with the love of Christ. I couldn’t help but think that all of heaven was celebrating, too! The words flashed in my mind, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5.16). When you set your heart to multiply your church, people will notice and God will get the glory.
Committing yourself and your church to multiplication
During that season of ministry, we saw the church grow numerically and baptize more that it had in years. It was a very fruitful season because we were committed to multiplication. Was it difficult doing all the work that went into starting new churches, launching another site, serving the community, and planting churches overseas? Was it difficult investing in leaders and discipling people to walk like Jesus? Was it a struggle doing all that in an inner city church that was so limited in resources? The short answer is yes. But was it worth it? Absolutely.
You can do this, too. No matter the size or budget of your church, you can commit yourself to multiplication. You can begin to invest in emerging leaders personally and train them how to walk with God, reach their world and invest in a few. You can then place those new disciple makers in key roles to launch new groups. Those groups then become places where they reach new people and disciple them.
As your groups mature, you infuse them with vision, invested leadership, and a plan to multiply. Then release those groups to reach their community with the gospel. Eventually, missional groups reaching their communities become the core of a new church plant, replant, or ministry site.
Nothing is impossible with God. He wants to use you and your church to do things you never dreamed possible. And he will do it through you as you trust him and follow his lead.
This blog features an excerpt from one of our books, Bold Moves.
