By Daniel Im: Churches that multiplied within their first five years did a few things at a far higher percentage than those that didn’t. The first thing is that they were consistently ruthless about communicating their vision to multiply on a monthly basis. Multiplying churches didn’t just preach about it once a year, occasionally take up a special offering, nor did they relegate their plan to multiply to a dusty old pamphlet. Instead, they communicated a vision of multiplication consistently and clearly to their whole congregation on a monthly basis starting from their very first Sunday.
The second thing that multiplying churches did was that they partnered with another organization to plant churches. Partnering with another church, network, or denomination to plant a daughter church is far more effective than doing it alone. Plus, partnering is a natural result of the first characteristic, as well: a Kingdom vision. God has a plan for your city, and it’s going to take more than just one church to saturate your city with gospel preaching churches.
Churches that multiplied not only had a clear strategy of constantly communicating the vision and partnering with others for multiplication, but finally, they invested holistically into other church plants. In other words, multiplying churches invested time, energy, resources, and finances into other plants. Following the biblical imagery of reaping what you sow, churches that experienced the fruit of multiplication were churches that sowed the seeds of multiplication.
Think about a farmer. Unless a farmer invests money, time, energy, and labor into a field, he will fail to yield a crop. Likewise, unless a church is investing time, energy, resources, and finances into other church plants, they will fail to become a multiplying church. One of the ways multiplying churches sowed seeds of multiplication was for their staff to regularly invest in new or potential planters at least quarterly via mentoring, coaching, residencies, training, and/or internships.
But the investment didn’t stop there. They poured resources and money into other plants by designating a percentage of their budget to newer works because they realized that while having a future planter speak at your church is great and sheds light on the concept of multiplication, it doesn’t necessarily make you a multiplying church. Thus, what’s better for them is sending out short-term mission teams, commissioning their own launch teams, and financially contributing to other church plants. Possessing a clear strategy of investing holistically into church planting is connected to churches multiplying within their first five years of existence.
*This article is an excerpt fromMultiplication Today, Movements Tomorrow that I wrote with Ed Stetzer. Download the e-book for free or purchase hard copies of this book here.