Created To Multiply (Part 1)

By Niyi Dunmade, Lead Consultant/CEO, Magnicraft Consulting

How do you know if what you are doing as a church leader is actually growing God’s kingdom? Is it enough to simply have a large number of people attending your church or do you also have to go out to far places and thus have a multiplying effect? The answer is seen in Genesis 1:28 where God commanded us to be fruitful and multiply. It is also seen in the great commission where Jesus charged His followers to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28: 18 –20).

We were created and tasked to be fruitful and to multiply. God wants us to multiply our impact and reach the lost souls in the far-reaching parts of the earth. He wants us to show His glory by bearing much fruit. It will be difficult to achieve this if as a church leader, your only focus is just to increase the number of people that attend each worship service in your church. That’s being myopic in your assignment, and ungodlike as well.

A church can only multiply by having a healthy local church at its core. It is from this core that it can successfully branch out to evangelize and plant other healthy churches. Churches that multiply have three main characteristics.

Passion

First, they are passionate about multiplying; and when we say multiply we mean compounded addition that is exponential. As a result, they create awareness about their intention, create processes and a culture that encourage multiplication and thereafter, work tirelessly towards achieving the goal of multiplication. These churches recognize the fact that having a bigger church with a large congregation will not on its own greatly affect the large number of lost souls that need to be reached. Thus, they channel their energies and resources towards the act of making disciples that will lead to multiplication.

Development Path

Secondly, they have a channel that serves as a means to discover, train, equip, and deploy those who will serve as church planting team members. In effect, they see their church members as the resources that will bring about the needed multiplication. These channels take different forms, and a church must be intentional about the channel it intends to make use of.

Effective Pattern

Third, churches that multiply show an effective pattern of mobilizing church planting teams from within the church, and this pattern actually results in multiplication. Churches that desire to successfully multiply should pay attention to these characteristics. The sending capacity of a local church brings greater benefits to God’s Kingdom than her local church seating capacity.

In order to achieve multiplication, a church needs to move from being an impact church to becoming a reproducing church, and finally becoming a movement of reproducing churches. It is at this last stage that multiplication is achieved. To successfully multiply, there are two vital things that a church should pay attention to.

READ MORE in PART 2.