Church multiplication movement

A mega shift is taking place in the world today. The reporta are numerous. The voices are so many that we can't ignore them any longer. The Spirit is moving and more and more ordinary believers, like me, are moved by the Spirit to to great things!

I will report more on the Wolfgang Simson seminar, but I came across a very good interview with Neil Cole that I want to share with my friends!

This article is taken from DAWN: http://www.dawnministries.org/globalministries/northamerica/churchplanting.htm

Oh, so that's what a church multiplication movement looks like!
by Barni Feuerhaken

Church Multiplication - how does it happen? What does it look like? A recent 'key word' search on the Internet came up with over 24,000 hits - and almost as many opinions. It seems this is a hot topic and everybody is interested in and talking about the subject.

Neil Cole, the director of Church Multiplication Associates in Long Beach California, has some definitive and enlightening viewpoints that can help us understand exactly what we're dealing with when we talk about church multiplication movements.

Q: How can we tell the difference between a true church multiplication movement and something that just carries that label?

A: Church multiplication is church planting with multi-generational reproduction. In other words, it is where daughter churches have granddaughters who have great granddaughters who have great great granddaughters and so on. If all you do is spin off daughter churches, if those daughter churches don't have daughters, no matter how many times you do it, it's not multiplication.

It is not multiplication to gather together Christians from other churches to form new churches. I don't even think that's church planting; it's reshuffling the deck. Yet many times that is called church planting and church multiplication.

Big revival meetings and evangelistic crusades are not church multiplication movements, and never will be, even if everybody in the stadium comes to know Jesus.

Seminaries, leadership development centers or church multiplication training centers that send out many church planters and start lots of churches are not church multiplication movements. That's actually a church addition movement.

In order for it to be a multiplication movement the churches themselves must produce the leaders and the churches.

I'm not against anything that adds churches to the kingdom of God, but I am saying that multiplication is more powerful than addition. It starts slow, but gains exponential speed.

Q: Where does a multiplication movement begin?

A: Jesus asks his disciples a question, "Who do you say that I am?" (Matthew 16:13-18), Peter answers him, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus responds, "Blessed are you Simon Bar Jonah because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you." Then he goes on in verse 18 to tell us more about the church than we can imagine.

Do you notice that it all starts with Jesus?

A spontaneous church multiplication movement must begin with the question, 'who is Jesus for me?' Spontaneous reproduction is like a spreading virus, it's contagious. If Jesus hasn't changed my life, I'm never going to be able to change someone else.

It doesn't start with whether you're a seeker-oriented service, or a cell-based church plant or even a house church. If it starts with a discussion of your model or your method or your form of church, you are starting in the wrong place. It starts with, who is Jesus to you?

In the same conversation with Peter, Jesus says, "I will build my church." He doesn't say to Peter, you will build my church, and he doesn't say, I will build your church. The church is his, he owns it - it's his passion. You are not responsible for a church multiplication movement. That's something only Jesus can do.

Jesus died and rose from the dead; he's given his Spirit to us; we have the word of God itself. We shouldn't be removing ourselves from the world thinking it's going to contaminate us. We should contaminate the world.

Q: What will hinder a movement like this?

A: Three roadblocks to multiplication are buildings, budgets and big shots.

Buildings are a problem because they don't multiply. They are inorganic, don't reproduce, are expensive and require man-hours and resources for upkeep.

Budgets are a problem. If money is the key to start a church there is not going to be a church multiplication movement. The more money it costs, the less likely it will be to reproduce.

When I talk about "big shots" I'm talking about clergy. By requiring people to have degrees before they can be in leadership, you are hampering the kingdom work that could be done by very capable people. We want people who are learners for life, not just ones who have gone to the right institution.

Q: What are the identifying marks of a genuine movement?

A: Basically, it is made up of simple and reproducible strategies that release the common Christian for the uncommon work.

For us, we use Life Transformation Groups, house churches and simple systems to accomplish this. Above all, we try to keep it as simple as possible.

A second characteristic of a movement like this is evangelism and reproduction that is natural and spontaneous. It's not forced; it's something that everybody does, not just the few.

When you see a true movement, everybody in the movement is involved. Everybody is a living agent for the kingdom of God. Every part reproduces, and that occurs at every level and in every unit of church life. We want to see the reproduction of disciples, then leaders, then churches and then movements. It begins from the micro to the macro.

So the place to start is with disciples. That's why we use Life Transformation Groups; they're simple groups of two or three. If you can't multiply a group of two or three, what can you multiply? We made it so simple all you have to do is add one more person and you've now got two groups of two. It's that easy.

Another characteristic of a true movement is the interdependence that exists among the churches within the network. We want churches that bring weaknesses and strengths to one another and all grow together. They don't need each other, yet they don't want to be alone and apart from each other.

A group of interdependent churches have to be self-perpetuating. By that I mean that the individual church doesn't need someone to infuse it with money, resources, people or music. It's healthy in and of itself. It's self-contained.

This group also has churches that are self-propagating - they are giving birth to other self-contained units.

In order to see a movement take off, these points need to be reached rapidly, and this mindset should be in place from the beginning.