Joby Martin: Why Churches Must Multiply, Not Just Grow (Part 2)
Don’t miss Part 1 of our interview, where Joby Martin talks about why going to Church of Eleven22 is like the last night of camp, why churches must multiply, not just grow; and how the church thinks of reproduction.
What is an overlooked quality that helps a church—especially a sizeable church like yours—successfully reproduce? What are you learning about what works?
In my experience, every preacher who preaches on giving says at some point, “You can’t outgive God.” But few of them believe it when it comes to their church and their church’s resources with regard to reproduction.
So financial investment?
And investing in people. Some of the key leaders in our church have decided to move with church plants to other places. That’s hard. It has a cost when a key staff person says, “Hey, God is calling me to go and be a part of this church plant.” Those moments test us. Do we actually believe that if we put everything—and everyone—we steward in the hands of God, that he can do more with it than we can?
I’m telling you, when pastors are preaching about giving to their ministry, they want everybody else to believe that. “Come on, bring it to God. You can trust him.” But we need to believe that for ourselves, too.
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Of course, who knows the mind of God? But one of the questions I ask our folks when we’re talking about generosity is, “If you were God, from the way you spend money, would you give you more?” That’s a reasonable question for pastors and church planters too: “If you were God, based on what your church is doing with the resources he’s brought your way, would you give you more?”
When we as a church try to honor him with our firstfruits, and bring our first and best to him, we decide to invest all for his glory. But the first spend for us is a tithe into kingdom endeavors that are broader than Eleven22.
I love that connection of church reproduction and stewardship.
It works. And what if the real thing that God wants to do is not even in my lifetime at Eleven22? We’ve seen almost 10,000 people come to Christ since we opened the doors 10 years ago—but what if the real fruit of our ministry is a couple of generations from now, supporting the next Great Awakening, laying even a little groundwork for a worldwide revival? Perhaps our job is to build the launchpad from which upcoming generations are going to take off.
With all of this in mind, what have been some of the most unexpected or difficult challenges that you have faced in that mission?
Division is the big one. One of the most disappointing things can be the infighting and denominationalism that we see in Christianity. It’s sad. The Acts29 Network has about 700 pastors around the world planting churches. And in every city they work in, there are multiple paid for buildings standing empty. One of the hardest challenges new church planters face is finding a place to meet they can afford. It seems like if we’re all on Team Jesus, we could figure that out.
And we are trying to meet this where we can. Eleven22 uses almost every one of our campuses as a place where other church planters can launch their churches. We have people launching churches out of our campuses all the time. Honestly, it’s not easy to do so—it is more expensive to host than we expected, they never clean up the way they say they’re going to, and so forth. But whatever—this is a way we can work and serve.
“What if the real fruit of our ministry is a couple of generations from now, supporting the next Great Awakening, laying even a little groundwork for a worldwide revival?”
On the other end of it, one of the most refreshing things I’ve seen has been how so many leaders—especially the big names—are behind the reproduction movement. I guess I have been pleasantly surprised. Guys like J.D. Greear, Matt Chandler, Dave Ferguson, Ed Stetzer, Steve Stroope, Larry Osborne—I mean the list is really long of people who behind the scenes are thoroughly supporting this work across lines that could be divisive. There’s a sense we’re in it together.
