I was asked to write an endorsement to Ralph Moore's just-released How to Multiply Your Church: The Most Effective Way to Grow God's Kingdom. Since I missed his deadline (oops), I'm writing my endorsement here. In a word: Ralph will fire you with both a sense of urgency and a vision for doing ministry by "multiplication" rather than "addition." You won't agree with everything he says, but you'll be very glad you read it.
The artwork on the book cover looks like addition, but in reality Ralph's passion is out-of-control multiplication. His life models it too. He became a pastor in 1971, largely pastoring two churches. But he's helped birth 700 new churches during that time, churches all around the world. That's because he focuses on multiplication, not addition.
He offers lots of analogies with history, such as the way the United States changed in response to World War II, but all his illustrations and statistics lead to one place: he believes the New Testament norm is for you and me to multiply our congregations. He starts with Jesus's model: Jesus duplicated himself in his disciples and gave them his authority to do the things he did. Jesus had three close disciples. He asks, shouldn't we? He makes more insightful observations from the models seen in Luke 10 and the Book of Acts.
Why is this important? Church multiplication carries the potential for exponential growth of the gospel. Whenever the church has prevailed in history, according to Ralph, it has been on the heels of a church planting movement.
Ralph suggests a different way of thinking: “stop counting converts and begin counting congregations.” He also says, "It is doable and it’s easier than you think."
What does it look like for Ralph at the level of the church he leads?
It is pretty simple. In our situation, I disciple my staff. We read books in synch then discuss them in our staff meeting. We pray and minister to each other in the same meeting—it usually lasts a couple of hours on Tuesdays. And that is before we do our business. I think discipling the staff is as important as preparing a message and certainly more important than any day to day planning.
The staff, in turn, are discipling leaders of our “MiniChurches.” We either do this by reading books together or by operating as a MiniChurch made up of leaders. The MiniChurch leaders all have apprentice leaders who they disciple. Together they disciple the members of their MiniChurch. A MiniChurch being a dozen people who gather weekly to share what the Spirit said to them during the weekend sermon, to share life experiences and pray for each other. They also eat lots of sweets!
The MiniChurch discipleship chain produces nearly all of our staff pastors. Each year, it also produces one or two pastors capable of planting a new church. It is all pretty simple. It should look a little different in every congregation. But, it is biblical and necessary to a church that wants to multiply on multiple occasions.
Warren Bird, Ph.D., is Research Director at Leadership Network, and co-author of 21 books on various aspects of church health and innovation.
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