How To Multiply Your Church Ralph Moore I. II. III. IV. Why 1943 Was a Very Good Year. A. Lessons from WWII 1. The Germans had better technology but we out produced them. Manufacturing and more boots on the ground won the day. Often times the soldiers were farmers who were trained without a real weapon. P. 27 “Stop counting converts and start counting congregations.” 2. Wedding of Necessity. We won the war by partnering with Communist Russia. We need to partner with other Christians even if they aren’t from the right denomination in order to win. 3. New Paradigm. Until Pearl Harbor the war was over there and didn’t concern us. We don’t plant churches fast enough to keep up with population growth. P.25 “We need to overcome the peaceful isolation of our comfortable church campuses. A missional church invades and permeates. The operative word is ‘Go,’ not ‘Come.’ “ It’s a change from seating people to sending people. Kingdoms in Conflict: A. Jesus said to disciple nations. The command suggests transformation of the entire world. 1. While discipling nations is a spiritual issue, it also carries seeds of rescue from poverty, racism and evil dictators. The needs find their place parallel with the discipleship process. They seldom precede it. P.37 2. Positive world changes have usually followed large-scale disciplemaking. B. Paul discipled the nations in 3 steps 1. He made converts 2. He made disciples of his converts 3. He quickly organized those converts into churches, appointing elders whenever he left the city. The Big Question: Will Another Church Really Help? A. Biblical Metaphors: Mustard Seed (Mt 13), Vine (Jn 15), Vineyard (Mt 20) B. Pruning: He talked about how in gardening you can rapidly grow plants with cuttings and the result is that the mother plant is healthier. P.44 C. Churches are most fruitful when young. Evangelism is a necessity for survival. D. Ex. of culture of multiplication 1. Member was stationed in Antartica and planted a church using audio sermons of Ralph Moore. 2. Surfer girl moved to Japan, led friends to the Lord and hooked up with a new plant. 3. Soldiers from the church planted churches among fellow soldiers. Hope: Imperfect People Moving in the Right Direction A. There is multiplication happening in unlikely places: China, Nigeria, South Korea, Nepal. US is 5th largest mission field. B. Culture is changing. We live in a neo-pagan society. V. VI. 1. We cannot expect rising generation to “return to church” like the Baby Boomers. 2. Good news: there are probably several culturally attuned church planters in your church. They are usually young. Young people bring about drastic changes to society. C. Stop Adding and Start Multiplying 1. “Multiply your current goals by 100. If you don not have ministry structure or systems to reach that new goal in a relatively short time, you are not set up for rapid multiplication.” P.63 2. “Don’t even think of calling it multiplication unless you can identify the fourth generation in a discipleship network! Any strong leader will attract other leaders.” P. 63 Leverage: Making the Great Commission Doable A. “You subtract by adding two entities together, and you multiply by dividing them.” Joining two churches can result in less than the sum of its parts. B. “Most churches think of equipping people so they can serve the organization. They want to keep them. It’s more fun and far more productive to train leaders and then release them to multiply the kingdom.” P.70 C. Enthusiasm and momentum are common returns of church multiplication. 1. Pew sitters get involved. 2. Leaders who leave grow and are invigorated. D. Unhealthy churches can multiply. Some say don’t or you will reproduce the unhealthy. Most church planters will choose the best parts of the congregation to use as building blocks. Confusion: Why Don’t Our Churches Multiply A. Why it’s the exception 1. Overworked and overwhelmed pastors seeing it as another program. 2. Program orientation of the church. We are products of our culture. To get out of the rut we need to look at our past. When the church has prevailed, it has been on the heels of a church planting movement. 3. Discipling nations requires full blown spiritual awakening. 4. The West is good at evangelism and discipleship. We score very low in rapid multiplication of churches and leaders. 5. Most of what we do is curriculum oriented instead of relationship oriented. B. What is our idea of church growth? It reveals our views toward a lost world. 1. Grow bigger or convert the entire world? 2. Transfer growth? Are we happiest living in a rapidly growing subdivision? 3. Is foreign missions money given to people in faraway places or does the church multiply itself oversees? C. Multiplication not Addition(Conversion Growth) 1. Acts 8:4. The believers who were scattered went everywhere preaching about Jesus. 2. Before the church was scattered addition took place. Granted it was large addition 3000, 5000. This never substantially changed the Roman culture. It was when the church scattered throughout the empire that culture was impacted. VII. VIII. IX. Roadblocks: What Stands in Our Way. A. The limitations are in our head. 1. The Germans had a 400 mile long impregnable defense. The Allied forces were innovative. They overwhelmed one spot and destroyed the enemy fortress in a day. We too must be innovative and exploit the weak spot. 2. Weak spot: Humanity’s quite credible search for meaning, purpose and community. TV ads sell cars by attaching personal significance. Extreme sports highlight the satisfaction from singleness of purpose. Online communities are mushrooming to fill people’s need for touch. 3. How we address those human needs constitutes our perception of a “proper” church and how to start one. B. Buildings. Churches are held in warehouses and shopping centers. Take it a step further. Launch where you have people, not wherever you can rent a building. Start in a park if necessary. C. Bucks. The salary of a FT pastor is a barrier. 1. Separate operational costs from opportunity costs. Why not spend all the money you have drawing a crowd to the first week or so? Fund the opportunity and let the results fund ongoing operations. Don’t squander startup funds on overhead. 2. Bi-vocational pastors. 3. When money is less of a problem the new church can afford to do creative things to serve its community. D. Brains. Seminary is expensive in terms of money and time. We shouldn’t ditch seminary but also shouldn’t rely on it to produce pastors. Learn on the job through disciple making and coaching. E. Impossible Structures. Pastors believe they must duplicate all the mother church / large church organizational and technical hardware from their first week. 1. No baby comes out of its water world understanding calculus. No baby church should expect to operate a full-scale ministry out of the box. 2. If the bar is held too high you will only reproduce once in a blue moon. 3. “In a war, you need both artillery and foot soldiers with rifles. Our large churches represent heavy artillery. But artillery is nearly useless without infantry. Do you know what you call an artillery unit without infantry? It’s a “defensive position.” It stays in one place trying to repel a mobile enemy. Emotions: It Doesn’t Feel Quite Right A. Told a story about the German ship the Bismarck. It was destroying the English naval fleet. In a last ditch effort WWI biplanes were sent to air drop torpedoes. One fighter flew “too close” risking his life and dropped a torpedo that struck the ships rudder. All it could do was move in circles. It was sunk two days later. B. Moral of the chapter is don’t wait for your emotions to feel right. This is David vs. Goliath stuff. Not just in terms of size, but impact. David beat Goliath and enlivened a nation. See also Rom 8:31 Model: Jesus as a Church Planter X. XI. XII. A. The goal is a worldwide kingdom of God through individual conversions. If we keep the kingdom of God uppermost, the NT read differently than if we subjugate it to a manual for personal holiness. If we read it as a manual for revolution, our own personal walk with God will accelerate. B. “The call to discipleship is a call to mission. Personal piety is part of the package. It was not, and is not, the end goal. Discipling the nations is.” C. Jesus and Multiplication: Jesus modeled evangelism to the 12 (Lk 8:1-4). He then deputizes the 12 to a similar mission (Lk 9:1-6). Finally, he commissions 72 to a ministry trip quite similar to that of the 12 (Luk10:1-16). Jesus began with a small group and duplicated his knowledge, experience and power. They did the same. Possibility: Doing What Jesus Did A. Jesus’ stated mission was, “I will build my church, and all the power of hell will not conquer it” (Mt 16:18). His strategy was to empower a few people who would empower others to change the world. B. Keys to the Kingdom (These are strategy. How he empowered others) 1. Accept Your Calling. “Am I willing to accept the Great Commission as a personal calling?” 2. Recruit by Revolution. After praying Jesus called those whom the Lord revealed to Him. Are you looking for revelation when you call people to serve? Or do you recruit just to manage the church? 3. Communicate Broadly with Holy Spirit Power. Lk 5:8 Peter experiences a miracle that revealed to him his own sinful heart. After this he was called to ministry. Luke 10, Jesus told the 72 to “heal the sick” before He told them to announce the Kingdom. “It is the power of God in everyday situations that rolls back darkness in a culture bent on killing anyone who converts to Christ. We won’t establish Christ’s kingdom without the supernatural.” 4. Make Disciples. Jesus invested attention that others longed for in just a few well-chosen people (Mt 8:18) 5. Commission and Empower Your Disciples. We toss around words like “empower” without much spiritual thought. We must find ways to bring spiritual power into the lives of those we commission. C. The goal never changes. The strategy is a constant. But the tactics can and should change according to the situation. Failure and Success: Multiplication in the Early Church. A. The Apostles were reluctant. When the church scattered they stayed in Jerusalem. B. Acts 8:4 The unnamed Christians. They effectively spread the word similar to Philip. “If the organized church wouldn’t get the job done, God would turn to the disorganized church. That fleeing group of refugees was probably without great financial resources, because most refugees are as tattered as they are scattered. But they stayed on mission.” Methods: What Would Paul Do? A. Strategy vs. Tactics XIII. XIV. 1. The Allied goal was twofold: control Berlin and destroy the enemy’s will to make war. The strategy was fairly straightforward: (1) deny the enemy the resource of the Middle East, (2) destroy the industrial might of the Nazi war machine by air raids, and (3) funnel enough men and material through Normandy to win what had become a three-front war. The tactics included construction of amphibious landing craft, the use of specially constructed tanks to cut through the hedgerows of Northern France and inventing plywood gliders to launch a first-strike team into key positions. 2. None of the tactics was absolutely necessary to the cause. Each would bow to the strategy. Fall in love with tactics and you threaten strategy. B. Paul’s Goal and Strategy 1. Goal: to bring the entire world into reverence of Christ, to make disciple of whole nations. 2. Strategy: The same as Jesus. C. Trust in the Lord Not Tactics. Do you think it is possible that we would multiply churches, and disciples, faster if we trusted more in the Lord and less in our tactics? We work our programs (tactics) with some degree of success. That makes us feel good and gives us notoriety. But the Kingdom goal goes unmet. Slogans: Statements of Mission and Purpose A. The misery index. Is our community more or less miserable because of how we live our lives? B. We are called to disciple nations, a task that will only be accomplished by multiplying churches. It’s not enough to establish a beachhead; we must control the field. 1. Bringing miracles to unchurched people is a first step. Bringing people to Christ is taking back ground on the battlefield. But the big issue remains the spiritual conquest of nations. C. Purpose vs. Mission 1. Purpose submits to mission but is necessarily different form it. WWII the mission was to break the will of the Germans. The purpose was to build a military force capable of attaining the mission. 2. Eph 4:12. The word “for” delineates the purpose of leadership. Your church exists to equip your members to do God’s work – both on and off campus. 3. If I intend to evangelize, serve or entertain, the structures I build will generally move people inward toward our church campus. As soon as I redefine my purpose and that of our congregation in terms of equipping, I point our people outward. If you don’t focus on equipping, you can still have an impact through giving to missions and hiring church planters, but you impact will be limited. 4. An equipping church, leads every member to live as a missionary, at home and on the road. Vision: What Shapes the New Church? A. Luke 10 Model: “Person of Peace”. Whenever the field is ripe, the church planter (apostle) hangs around long enough to disciple the person of peace, leaving that person(s) to pastor the new congregations. B. The Acts 2 Model: Gatherings, Both Great and Small. Displays strong lay involvement. It displays a natural movement into leadership. C. Luke 10 was a training mission. Acts 2 shows the results of the training; then beginning in Acts 10, the gospel began its steady march across the world. Philip, Peter and Paul did Luke 10 in Samaria, Caesarea and Europe. D. What did the Church do? 1. the apostles teaching, fellowship, the Lord’s supper, prayer, shared meals, miracles, praise, generous giving and evangelism. 2. Location and group dynamics are form issues. Form follows function. 3. 1 Cor. 14:26. The assumption behind this text is that the church meeting was interactive. Everybody played. 4. Our churches are addicted to the weekend show. At least half are doomed to a spectator role if we don’t persist in pressing for interactivity. Remember the point is not interactivity itself but equipping people for ministry. XV. Tenacity: Faith in an Age of Fear A. When you and I choose to trust in Jesus over obstacles we win. B. Without the power of the spirit we are Christian humanists. Christian humanism miscasts us as defenders of the faith. Worse yet, sometimes we try to defend the Lord Himself. We forget the meaning of the word “savior.” C. There are hundreds of stories about the Church in victory. Its important that we in the US hear them. XVI. Mission: Reaching People Where They Are. A. Paul as a Risk Taker 1. Examine Paul’s methods in Acts 13-19 and the messy stuff in his letters. Paul rapidly multiplied churches. He did so by betting on people he couldn’t have known all that well. 2. Everywhere he went he appointed elders and established churches even when he wasn’t there long. 3. His methods created problems. It required continued supervision. In most cases, they were babes in Christ, yet they were elders in the sense that they had been saved longer than others in their community. 4. “Elder” is a relative term. In a new church, you can trust leadership to younger men more easily because the man is an elder compared to others. B. Look to the examples of the early Baptists and Methodists in America. They took their leaders from the ranks of members. Most were bi-vocational. They needed more boots on the ground in order to succeed. XVII. Education: Learning from America’s Past A. There was a measure of control in the early church. The apostles were available to bail them out if their knowledge and gifts fell short, as in the case of Philip (Acts 8:4-8). B. Church Multiplication in Acts 1. The Original Cell Church Idea (Acts 2). The important thing to note is their numbers swelled. They needed a lot of home leaders in a hurry. C. God is flexible. We should follow His example. What would have happened during the invasion of Europe in WWII if we had restricted the officer corps to graduates of West Point or Annapolis? D. Education should be an enhancer to ministry rather than a gateway to its service. E. We must challenge, even dare, our churches to reproduce pastors and stop depending upon seminaries and colleges to do the whole job. XVIII. A Second Look: Emerging Urban Opportunities. A. Gang recruiters operate like Paul. They travel to a distant city and hang out at basketball courts looking for kids who are natural leaders. They befriend their potential disciples, offering them the chance of a better life. B. He talked at length about city opportunities and the changing landscape of cities through gentrification. It will take us thinking differently and coming up with flexible models to expand the church to cities. He suggest some ideas from house church, public schools or meeting halls, rundown properties and old congregations. XIX. Fun: Church Multiplication is Like Making Babies A. We reproduce in kind. Bible study leader create apprentices in their likeness. We understand reproduction well until it comes to pastors. A pastor who has it in his/her job description to reproduce pastors will find it quite simple to turn out leaders with a vision for church multiplication. B. The ability to reproduce is a sign of maturity. We should empower pastors by calling them to reproduce themselves in several young disciples. It should be right up there with preaching. Only reproduction at a pastoral level will ensure the future of the church. C. We need to change the paradigm. Our problem isn’t resources. XX. Hardware: Coloring Outside the Lines. A. We need to multiply unorthodox churches 1. He talked about a group of hippies that came to their church and how he befriended a leader of the group Richard. He had leader qualities but didn’t fit the traditional seminary mode, so they didn’t release him to start a church. Then the Navigators called him to pastor. He realized he needed to change. 2. He talked about a drug dealer who came to Christ and started a church in the park reaching out to prostitutes and addicts. 3. Brain Game: Get 3 innovative people together. Read Acts 16. Then read the letter to the Philippians. Ask yourself, What did this church look like when Paul met with them upon release from prison? Who would have led the church? Where did they meet? What would they have done in their marriages? How did they become so generous? B. He talked about house churches and the analogy of rabbits and elephants. House churches being the rabbits who multiply rapidly. He said we need to plant both. In reality, we should plant churches that look like a zoo. We need lots of different kinds of churches to reach lots of different kinds of people. XXI. Equipping: How to Ready Your Church to Multiply A. Teach multiplication values before implementing multiplication strategies. 1. Teach while you preach. Too often missional teaching is limited to the hardcore of the church. 2. Gently leak your intent and the values into your preaching for a year or so. 3. Build the paradigm from the pulpit before you build it into your structures. B. On the Job Training 1. Does your church culture suggest organic movement all the way from being a convert to being a pastor? 2. Can you coach people to the next level from within? 3. Do you believe in discipleship as a viable tool for preparing someone for pastoral ministry? C. Every Christian must produce disciples. 1. A single mother straining to raise two young children should see them as her disciples. 2. First the lead disciples the staff, the staff disciples the MiniChurch (small group) leaders, the MiniChurch leaders all have apprentice leaders they disciple. Together the MiniChurch leader and apprentice disciple the members of the MiniChurch. D. Failsafe method for identifying leaders: They have followers. XXII. Costs: Multiplication When Resources are Limited. A. If you believe Jesus, money is not necessary to the Great Commission. Luke 10:4 “Don’t take along any money, or a traveler’s bag, or even an extra pair of sandals.” 1. Ed Stetzer. There is no correlation between cash investment and the survival rate of new churches. 2. Think this way, “If I don’t have conventional resources, God must be providing what I need in a way that I can’t yet see.” B. The answer to limited resources is churches started in homes. 1. We ask a leader to gather a few fired-up friends and start in a home. 2. If they never outgrow the home, little harm is done. A healthy church in a home is a success. If they long for the comfort of a larger congregation, they can simply integrate into the life of our church. Nearly half of those “chunked off” in the past have returned. 3. Raise the leader from within – no cost. The pastor is bi-vocational during the early years. If the church grows out of the house, they can afford to pay their pastor. 4. If the church outgrows the home, front-load the spending to draw a crowd and let that crowd fund the day-to-day needs of the church. 5. Don’t spend money on a pastor’s salary if you can help it. Don’t rent office space. Save the money and make a splash. XXIII. Momentum: Managing that Most Important Management Factor A. Four Costs of Planting Churches: People, cash flow, part of the leadership base and passion. For passion: the transfer members always stay with you. You are gradually turning your congregation into a church of dispassionate transplants and long-term Christians who have lost some of the fire of their faith. The fired up on mission Christians leave to plant the churches. B. Lowering the Cost of Planting. He met with other leaders to discuss 1. Limiting the number of people you send. Average is 20 – 30. In the early years they sent about 20%. 2. Limiting the loss of leadership. Don’t let the planter hand pick only from leaders. 3. Limiting a financial burden. Negotiate the number of strong givers that go with the new church. 4. Limiting the loss of passion. Leave the gleaning of new converts to church announcements. Don’t intentionally target them to go with the new church. Blitz the mother church two weeks prior to the team leaving. Don’t recruit new converts to team meetings before this. Great quote from the end of the book, “My job as a trainer of leaders is to spot the potential of a person….It doesn’t matter if he is doing anything now or not. I must see where he is capable of going. Then I must encourage him along that line.” P.250