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Why Your Church Needs to Multiply
Our movement is powered by sending churches: churches that send church planters, churches that send people, and churches that send resources to the field where the churches need to be planted.
Our movement is powered by sending churches: churches that send church planters, churches that send people, and churches that send resources to the field where the churches need to be planted. That’s why developing a multiplication culture in our sending churches is so vital.
Create A Multiplication Culture
Culture is a powerful thing. And culture is mediated through leadership over time. Your role as a leader is powerful if you’re going to create, nurture, and cultivate a multiplication culture in your church. You have to cast a vision to your church for multiplication. Now, this can be challenging because for the last 30 or 40 years, most churches have evaluated themselves based on their seating capacity. That’s why a lot of pastors feel successful if they are able to build a larger building. That’s why we measure ourselves against other churches. You have to cast a vision for multiplication so your church family will see that multiplication is success.
Send Out
Jesus sent His disciples out. And the Holy Spirit is sending us in all the different places where we live and all the different communities that we serve.
At our church, we decided years ago to abandon the regional megachurch strategy. The regional megachurch strategy is to build larger and larger facilities and have bigger and bigger programs, so we can attract people from a wider and wider radius to come drive to our church from wherever they live. Now, I’m glad that we have regional megachurches all over America, but our church decided instead to pursue a network of neighborhood churches because we decided that multiplication was going to be the name of our game.
We cast a vision for our church to plant 100 churches here in South Florida. I know other churches want to plant a whole lot more, and some want to plant less. It’s not about the number, it’s about the idea of multiplication and sending. So let me ask you something: How many churches does your church plan on planting? Is it 1000? Is it 100? Is it one? I would encourage you to start somewhere. If you haven’t ever had a plan to plant churches, why don’t you think about one? Multiplication is the name of the game.
Cast a Vision for Lostness
How many people do you want to reach? Here in Palm Beach County, in South Florida, where I live, we have 1.4 million people in our county. Statistics tell us that 96 percent of the people in our county have no church home. But our church has decided that we would like to move the needle. Could we even move the needle on lostness in our county by 1 percent? One percent doesn’t sound like much at all, but 1 percent of our 1.4 million residents equals 14,000 people. To move the needle 1 percent in our county, we need 14,000 people to repent of their sins, believe the gospel, and join a church. So, how are we going to win 14,000 people to Christ? It’s going to be very difficult if we try to do it from one regional megachurch. But if we could plant a network of neighborhood churches, maybe we could do it. Which one do you think is more likely? Will we get 14,000 more people to come to one location, or will we have multiple locations that can reach hundreds or even thousands? We’ve got to plant churches. We’ve got to multiply.
Know Your Context
Now, that’s just our community. Your community’s completely different. And you know your own context. But the point is to cast a vision for multiplication. Then put some numbers to your vision so people will understand your goal, and so that you can know when you’re actually succeeding. One of the reasons I think planting is so powerful is because we know that new things grow faster than old things. Babies grow faster than old people. That’s the way that God made all of this to work.
Whether you have a big church or a small church, if you’ve been church planting for a long time or if this is brand new to you, you can multiply. The Holy Spirit is in you and working through your church. And if you follow the patterns that you see in the book of Acts, you can do it. And you pastor, you are the key. Because a culture of multiplication is mediated through leadership over time. And leadership, well, that’s your job.
If you’d like more information on becoming a multiplying church, learn more at namb.net/send-network/mobilize.
