Created To Multiply (Part 2)

By Niyi Dunmade, Lead Consultant/CEO, Magnicraft Consulting

…Continued from PART 1

To successfully multiply churches, there are two vital things that a church should pay attention to.   These are the business of disciple-making and the business of planting churches. These two form the foundation of every multiplying church.

Disciple Making

A church that intends to multiply should focus on making disciples who leave the church and spread out into various communities to begin their personal movement of stimulating multiplication. It is for this reason that it is said that pastors of multiplying churches die to self. This is because they become selfless with their ultimate goal being to reach the lost parts of the earth, rather than focusing on amassing a large number of members who continuously attend their church without branching out as reproducers. The church should be motivated to multiply and resist the urge to remain in addition mode, where the only concern is to keep on adding members.

To do this successfully, the pastor has to place emphasis on the fact that sending people forth into the world is vital to the church’s ministry. When we have selfless kingdom work as the foundation of our ministry, it becomes easier to understand that the acts of disciple-making and sending forth are more important than the acts of growing and gathering.

Church Planting

The second aspect of multiplying is church planting. The church planting movement has been defined by Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird. In their book, Viral Churches, they defined church-planting movement as, “A rapid multiplication of churches where a movement grows through multiplication by 50 percent in the number of churches in a given year to the third generation.” This means that if a church multiplies 200 times in a year, it should multiply at least 300 times in the subsequent year. You should ask yourself what it takes to bring about a multiplying church. Think about it, research it, pray about it, define it, and then work it out.

How To Create A Church Planting Movement

There are various ways that you can bring about a movement of church planting. One way is to have a program where church planters are trained for a certain number of months in the form of apprenticeship. This is to ensure proper skills acquisition to be obtained before launching out. You should have various means for promoting church planting and also various ways of measuring church planting and multiplication in general. This is important because when we keep track of the things that bring about multiplication, we create more emphasis and opportunities for creating even more multiplication.

For church planting to be successful, it is important for church planters to understand that it is not safe to wait to plant only when they can afford it. In addition to this, churches also have to find a way to balance the need for money and people in the church with the desire to send and plant. You should aim to get to a point where your church starts to track and celebrate the number of other churches that the church plants and supports and also includes this in their kingdom scorecard to measure success (you can read our post on the kingdom scorecard HERE).

Please note that church planting is different from simply having multiple sites. Having multiple sites is not a bad idea. In fact, if done properly, multiple sites can act as stepping stones to achieving multiplication. However, it is better for a church to shift its focus from developing multiple sites to planting churches.

It is our prayer and great desire that more and more pastors and their congregations will pay more attention to disciple-making and church planting. This very important today with increase in population. One key to accomplishing the mission of Jesus is through a movement of many multiplying churches. There is no room for competition though, because the work is geared towards the same goal. Apart from the fact that there shouldn’t be competition within the body of Christ, there are far too many lost souls in the world than the number of churches available to contain them all.