Video Transcript: Growing and Multiplying your Church

Welcome to lecture 35 of the practical ministry skills course, growing and  multiplying your church. This is also part of chapter 19 in the pastoring the nuts  and bolts book, our key verse is other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they  sprouted, grew and produced a crop that was 30, 60, and even 100 times as  much as had been planted. You recognize this as from the parable of the sower.  These are the seeds that that were in the good place, and they sprouted and  grew and multiplied 30 times, 60 times, 100 times as much as had been planted. Now I don't intend to try to teach you about personal evangelism based on the  growth of Christianity in many nations compared to in America, most of you  could probably teach me about that. I've been told there are places in South  America, for instance, where, in recent years, pastors will not even be  considered for ordination until after they planted several new churches. So  praise the Lord for that. There are books and courses and so on about  evangelism and about pretty much everything else that I've talked about here.  But what I do want to do in this lecture is to share some ideas about how the  church can best care for and disciple all of those new Christians. Once they are  evangelized, once they come to the Lord, then what do you do with them. When  a whole bunch of people come to the Lord all at once, we call that revival. It's or  sometimes it's called an awakening. And there are differences of opinion as to  the exact definitions of the two, so I'll use them kind of interchangeably.  Awakening revival are basically two words for the same thing, even if you're  talking about people being asleep or sick. So the point is, there are times when  all of a sudden, there is massive growth in the church, lots of people coming to  the Lord, and we need to be prepared for that. It's amazing how we can pray for  something and not really believe it's going to happen. That's that ever happened to you? Jesus said that we should believe that we've already received but we  don't always do that. You have to learn how to do that. You have to kind of grow  into that. But it's not just us. The first Christians had the same problem. You  remember the when Peter was arrested in the book of Acts, and he was thrown  in jail, and an angel came and set him free, and in the meantime, all the church  is praying and praying for Peter, because James had already been arrested and  had his head cut off, he was killed. And so the church is praying that this won't  happen to Peter, and that he'll be released and he'll be taken care of. And so the angel comes and does release Peter from the jail. And Peter went to the home  of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many were gathered for prayer. He  knocked at the door in the gate, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to open  it. When she recognized Peter's voice, she was so overjoyed that instead of  opening the door, she ran back inside and told everyone, Peter's standing at the  door, you're out of your mind. They said, You're out of your mind, the same thing that they're praying for. They don't believe it happened, so don't let that happen  to you as you pray for revival. If you're going to pray for revival, prepare for  revival. Prepare for what you pray for. That's just a sign of faith. Prepare for what

you pray for. And if you're praying for revival, prepare for revival. Any two or  more Christians should be ready to be the church and have church. Any time,  any place, with anybody. If real revival comes, it will be the people in your  congregation, whom you have trained, who will be there to take care of the baby Christians. Praying for revival is wonderful. Praise the Lord when it happens.  What about all those times that the the growth of the church is more after the the figure that Jesus gave, the parable that Jesus told, that it's like yeast in a big  lump of dough. You put yeast in a lump of dough, it doesn't explode. That would  be revival, but you put the yeast in the dough, and it gradually grows, and it  gradually grows until finally the whole lump is leavened. Jesus said, That's how  church growth usually happens. That's how Christians usually come to the Lord.  And when that happens, as your church is beginning to experience that, then  you have two two possibilities, two options, two ways of dealing with it. One is  addition, where you just keep adding these people to your church, adding more  and more people to your church, you're adding to your church, and praise the  Lord for that. But what happens when you run out of room? Well, you have two  options there, the first one, and the easiest and cheapest is to add another  service. You've been having one service on Sunday morning. You have too  many people to fit in. Add another service following it. Maybe you shift the times  some. Maybe this allows you to have Sunday School in between the two  services, and then your Sunday school teachers can go to one of the other of  the services. Adding services is one way of dealing with it. Expanding your  building or moving to a bigger building is another way of dealing with it. And  these are wonderful ways I'm not going to get into all of that that's beyond the  the scope of this, course, but addition, is a great thing, and God does call a lot of churches to grow. Now, I do not believe that God called every church to be a  mega church. I believe that mega churches have their place and they can do  wonderful ministry, but I believe also that smaller churches have their place and  can do wonder, wonderful ministry. And I read a study someplace that studied a  church of 1000 a mega church of 1000 people, and 10 churches of 100 people,  and they using all the measures that they looked to discipleship and growth and  evangelism and everything. The 1000 people who met in 10 separate 100  church, 100 person churches had more effective ministry in terms of, as I said,  discipleship, evangelism, other kinds of things than the 1000 people who all met  together in the one church. So we tend to think that the goal is to make our  church as big as we possibly can. That's not the goal. The goal is to make it as  much like what God wants it to be as he can. And that may be big, or it may be  something else. And so I like to look at the idea of multiplication, instead of  continuing to add to this congregation, which can get very expensive if you have to build a new building, you you're already running four or five services every  weekend, and you can't add any more services. You have to add another  building. What are you going to do? You multiply, and there are various different 

ways to do that. Multiplication versus addition, they're both good mathematical  properties and but they do different things, and multiplication gets things  happening faster. One way of multiplying your church is satellite locations, that  is, you maintain your congregation as the hub. You maintain your position as the senior minister, but you set up other places, another space may be rented,  maybe someplace else where you people can gather. So maybe it's you've had  people who were driving a long distance to get to your church, and so you can  start something much closer to them, and they are still they're a satellite of your  church. It's all part of the same ministries. They're all doing the same things. In  some cases, they even see the same sermon. In the satellite locations, they see it on video. In other cases, the satellite location has its own pastor who may  paraphrase the senior pastor's sermon, as I mentioned earlier about that. So  everybody's on the same page, but then you can add more and more satellite  locations, like you're all part of the same organization, you all have the same  vision, you're all working under the same leadership, and that is a wonderful way to do things. There are a lot of advantages to that. Another is to plant daughter  churches, and that's more or less the same thing, except for the daughter  church, you're sending out probably a starter group of people and a new pastor,  but that pastor, that minister, is going to be on their own, the sending church, the parent church, provides some kind of support, maybe initially, some financial  support, some resources, and of course, they maintain communication, the  pastors and so on. But the idea there is not that it's one church in several  locations. It's one church that has planted another church that is going to be  independent of the first one. They'll probably still be in the same denomination, if they are in a denomination, but, its own pastor, its own governing board, its own  budget, and so on. And then, as either of them grow, either of them can plant  more daughter churches, or this one could decide to do satellites or become a  mega church. So satellite locations, daughter churches are similar, but with  some differences. The last one that I want to mention is one that I think is really  cool. It is both the oldest and the newest of the movements in church, and that is house church networks. I mentioned that in the New Testament, the Christians  met in houses because they didn't have church buildings. They didn't have  places to rent. They just met in homes in small groups, and when they outgrew  the home. Very often they would just one of the people who had been coming to  this house, would offer their home and start hosting the small group in their  home. And then they spread from as they outgrew any particular house, they  would spread to another and and grow in that way, and yet stay together in a  network, in the sense that perhaps the leaders of the different ones would still  meet together every now and then for Prayer and for conversation and maybe  planning and cooperative programs and so on. I said that is the oldest because  that's the way that it was in the New Testament that is perhaps the most  persistent down through the ages, especially in places where Christianity was 

not a quote official religion where, where Christianity was an official religion, like  Europe during the Middle Ages, then there was a lot of government money  behind building big churches and cathedrals and so on. But in places where that was not the case, and especially in places where the church was persecuted,  they would still continue to meet in homes, and, for that matter, in places around the world today, where the church is persecuted, they meet in homes when they  can. Sometimes they have to find other places. In Rome in the first few  centuries when. Christians were being persecuted. They famously met in the  catacombs, which were the tomb areas under the city, tunnels under the city,  where they buried people. And the Christians would hide down there and have  their services. But meeting in houses is now becoming one of the newest  movements, the fastest growing movements among church at least in America,  in the United States, is house churches. And finding ways to maintain that  relationship, be together with other Christians in the house churches, other  leaders of the house churches, there are so many advantages. You're not  paying rent, you're not paying salaries, you have all kinds of flexibility. You can  move and grow and change. There is all kinds of advantages in the relationships of the small number of people that can meet together in a house church, as  opposed to the large numbers of people in the bigger churches. Now let me say, in the bigger churches, you really ought to have small groups so people can  have make those relationships, create Bible studies or support groups or  whatever kind of small groups for people to make those relationships that's so  important in a house church that's already there. So if your church is growing too much, you can consider adding services or building a bigger building, you can  consider satellite locations or daughter churches, or maintaining your position as a non house church. Maybe you have a building and you have all of these other  things, maybe even paid staff and everything. But you can you could decide that what you want to do is start house church networks, expand your small groups  into house churches. House churches is a great way to develop leadership,  because they practice in the small setting and gain their confidence in their  skills, whether it's preaching or whether it's music or whether it's any other kind  of leadership. So your church might decide that the thing for them to do is to  start a house church, or a home church or a micro church, as it's called, I would  encourage you to think carefully, pray carefully about where you decide to start,  that the location starting a home church is fine, but do you think we could pray a  bit more about the location? Group of people packed into a rowboat and rowing  out to a lighthouse. I don't think a lighthouse is probably the best place to start a  house church. God may lead you there, but most likely not. The thing is, we  need to remember the third purpose of the church. The first purpose is to create  a home for God to feel comfortable in with our worship. Second is to raise up  children of God to be like Jesus through discipleship. And the third is to invite  everyone into the family, expanding your church, whether it's through addition, 

whether it's through some form of multiplication, the whole point is not to make  your church bigger, not to make your church more famous, not to make your  your minister more famous. It's to invite more people in and help them become  more like Jesus and give God more places that he can go and be comfortable  and welcomed home as Daddy, speaking of the house churches, the next book  that I am working on is tentatively called when church stops working, and It's  aimed at people who have, for whatever reason, been going to a conventional  church and decided that it's no longer for them. In the United States, there's  there are a lot of people who have stopped going to church because of news  about church scandals, or because they feel like the church is always asking for  money, or whatever reason. I'm sure you're familiar with, reasons like that. And  the point of this book that I'm writing is to show them how they can follow the  promise of Jesus, that where two or three are gathered in my name I'm in their  midst, and essentially start their own house churches. So it is. It's. Kind of aimed at that group of people, but everything that I put in it is about how to start a  house church, and all of those how to do it are just as true if it is an intentional  outreach from your own congregation. So that's not out yet, but when it does  come out, you can look under my name on Amazon, tentatively titled, When  church stops working, we have finished 35 we have one more session, and I will see you then