The simple truth is that we need more churches. If we are going to see North America transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, we need healthy churches in every city, reaching every demographic and every people group. To do this, we need to develop more church planters, so more churches are planted. To go even deeper than that, if we want to have more church planters to develop, we have to first discover them. This is exactly what the Multiplication Pipeline is all about.
I think the average church has a lot of great people, who love God and follow Jesus, but the idea of church planting isn’t even on their radar because they don’t know it’s an option for them. They are either in business or they don’t sense a calling to be the pastor, so they continue serving where they always have. Or, if they have thought about it, they often dismiss the urge because they think, “Well, I already have two kids, a full-time job and I don’t know anything about church planting.”
The Multiplication Pipeline was created to help educate church members and elevate their capacity by developing them as church planters or church planting team members. It applies to not just to the person who wants to be a church planter, but also the person who has always thought about moving to Chicago and wants to follow Jesus by being a church planting team member there. Now, we are going to be able to give them some training and some tools so they can make a significant contribution even as a team member.
We have been shown that one of the aspects that causes a church planter to not succeed is when they try to lead the effort by themselves. The probability of health and success comes when they have people on their team. This is for everyone! It’s not exclusive to only lead church planters, but it opens up possibilities for people who have never thought about church planting outside of the traditional role of being a church planter.
Our goal is that over the next 10 to 15 years, we are able to develop more and more churches that are multiplying and not just reproducing. This is going to take more church planters and more church planting team members to accomplish.
A pastor’s role is so critical. Our Send Conferences do a great job at getting people fired up to live on mission and we always have next steps for people to take, but if the pastor becomes the catalytic mobilizer, that is the true game changer. If a pastor can cast that vision and see them as a multiplying church, then that will help stir the hearts of people to be willing to take their first step out in faith.
Throughout Scripture, we see God multiplying His people. He even commands us to go and replenish the Earth. He wanted a people for Himself that would multiply for His glory and the kingdom’s sake. You see multiplication in Jesus’ relationship with His disciples and also in the missionary journeys of Paul. God was always multiplying, and He created us to multiply. So really, if things are alive, they reproduce things that are alive and of like nature. The church is a living entity that is to multiply and give life to new expressions of life, i.e. new churches!
We want to walk alongside and help churches do just that. We want to help them prepare to multiply churches that multiply. The growth is exponential. It is multiplying, multiple ways. If we are going to push back lostness, we have to not only make disciples, but also give birth to churches that are multiplying and giving birth to new churches. We are praying for revival and anticipate that God will do an extraordinary work in North America. Join us in this pursuit of making His name famous, by starting a Multiplication Pipeline in your church.
Published July 20, 2017