We are living in a truly unique time in history. We’ve come through what has been described by the World Health Organization as a “once-in-a-century health crisis, the effects of which will be felt for decades to come.” COVID-19 was a disrupter that impacted nearly everyone in some way or another.
But it’s only one of hundreds of disrupters we are experiencing. With technology developing at breakneck speeds, disruptors have entered our everyday activities too. Watches are not only phones but also medical devices. We have self-driving cars. Virtual reality. Smart locks, smart ovens, smart vacuums, smart lights and plugs. Artificial intelligence can even write for you on any subject.
And more disruptors are on the horizon, and they’re coming faster than before. As songwriter Peter Gabriel once put it: “The only constant I am sure of is this accelerating rate of change.”
What does all of this mean for the church? Every generation shapes the church for the generation to come, but today we may be at a particularly malleable hinge point. If that’s true, our efforts over the next two decades may have a greater impact on the future than any other 20-year period in the history of the American church.
How Do You Define Success?
Most leaders don’t have a clear idea of what we think God wants to do through us. If you were to ask pastors for their definition of a successful church, they will usually say something about a financially stable institution where large numbers of people attend on the weekend. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s the wrong endgame. At best it’s a means to an end. If your aim is off by even a small percentage, you can miss the entire target. It’s even worse if you’re aiming at the wrong target to begin with.
Imagine how what you are doing might change if your primary metric of success switched from growing your church to something like community transformation. What would you be doing differently if your primary measure of success was the number of people in your community who have a daily encounter with Jesus in word and deed? Or if you prioritized bringing the light of Jesus into specific areas of darkness in your city? You may just discover that merely growing your church isn’t ultimately going to have the gospel impact you desire.
Addition in the church is good—the kingdom of God grows one new Christ follower at a time. However, if our primary goal is, say, weekend attendance, the temptation is to use manufactured methods to get people to show up. Too often, the felt need we fabricate to persuade people to attend is not remotely close to their actual, deeper need.
Jesus showed us a different way to add. He clearly drew large crowds. But if maximum attendance was the goal, why do the Gospels show us that he spent most of his time with some iteration of the Twelve?
A Disciple-Making Problem
Jesus’ way of discipleship was disciple making. He didn’t just teach content; he taught his disciples to be disciple makers. He built the greatest movement in history with a handful of somewhat uneducated, ordinary teenagers and young adults. He entrusted the future of the church to them as they trusted the Holy Spirit.
What if we took the same approach?
We have the opportunity to tap into what is likely the greatest latent potential of the church—everyday Christ followers. Collectively, our churches make up the greatest volunteer base in the world. If you added them all up, the church’s man-hours would likely eclipse those of the largest corporation in the world.
Yet we tend to confine everyday Christians to second-class citizens in the kingdom: They are the “laity,” and their job is to serve the “clergy.” Few pastors would ever deny the priesthood of all believers. Even so, they’d be hard-pressed to prove it from their church budget and calendar.
Our posture as church leaders is most often, We [clergy] can do it; you [laity] can help. If we truly believed we were all equally responsible for the Great Commission, and that Ephesians 2:10 meant each of us were uniquely gifted, our posture would be more like, You can do it; we can help.
This shift in perspective is important for reaching the next generation, some of whom will live into the next century. Gen Z in particular will not likely be drawn to the “launch large” model of the past that expects them to integrate into a system with leadership archetypes and financial structures. Rather, they will be drawn to new expressions of the church focused on bringing the kingdom of God to bear on their communities. Those expressions are likely to look more like a kingdom ecosystem than an island in the community.
Moving to Multiplication
For several years now, Exponential has been talking about five levels of churches as they relate to multiplication:
The Five Levels of Churches
Level 1: Churches That Are in Decline
Level 1 churches are characterized by subtraction, scarcity and survival. They experience some combination of declining attendance, staffing, income and conversions. Without a turnaround, Level 1 churches eventually close.
Level 2: Churches That Are at a Plateau
Level 2 churches are plateaued and looking for the next catalyst to spark a season of growth. These churches experience some combination of flat attendance, staffing, income and conversions. These churches may see temporary ups and downs, but their overall trend is flat.
Level 3: Churches That Are Growing
Level 3 churches are characterized by addition, growth and expansion of impact. They have a strong growth culture with some combination of increasing attendance, staffing, income and baptisms. Leadership development and conquering the next growth barriers are often key priorities in these churches.
Level 4: Churches That Are Reproducing
Level 4 churches are characterized by the value and priority they place on starting new churches—they have a strong programmatic emphasis on it. They see their fruit as more than the apples on their own tree, but by the other trees they plant in the orchard—or the new orchards they establish. These churches continually feel the tension pulling them toward investing in addition at their own church on the one hand, and the kingdom expansion of new churches on the other.
Level 5: Churches That Are Multiplying
Level 5 churches are characterized by multiplying, releasing and sending everyday missionaries and church planters. Multiplication is so deeply embedded in the DNA of these churches that they would need a strategy to stop multiplication. These churches plant churches that plant churches to the fourth generation, resulting in hundreds of churches in their multiplication family. They reach non-Christians at a much higher rate of conversion than other churches, and see disciple making to the fourth generation as a cultural norm.
It has been particularly interesting to recognize that there’s a sort of “magnet” at Level 3. Most churches are drawn to the success metrics we mentioned earlier—attendance and finances. There are volumes of resources to help you build the biggest and best. The majority of the ways we assess, train and coach are designed to help leaders build the best Level 3 church they can. Thus, Level 2 churches are pulled toward Level 3.
But that magnet works the other way too [See graphic below.]. Many (perhaps most) of the things you do to become a great Level 3 church become the very things that make it difficult to move to Levels 4 and 5. By the time you’re successfully at Level 3, you’ve staffed to build and maintain the programs to serve the people attending. You’ve spent money on facilities and structures to house and manage the people coming. And you’ve developed an unwritten social contract with your people, because, as the saying goes, “What you win them with, you win them to.”
Breaking Free
Three things are required in order to break free from the pull of the Level 3 magnet and move toward Levels 4 and 5.
- Multiplication Thinking. There is a profound difference in the orientation and posture of leaders who have moved to Level 4 and are on their way to Level 5. Those that have broken free of the Level 3 magnet have a kingdom-sized dream that is far bigger than just one local church. These leaders will often say things like, “I had to die to my idea of success as a pastor” or “God broke my heart for my community so that I no longer saw it just through the lens of my church.” In our book Hero Maker, Warren Bird and I (Dave) discovered that this kind of thinking is the first of five steps toward becoming a Level 4/Level 5 leader.
- Change Your Scorecard. Churches do and should measure all kinds of things—even Level 4 and 5 expressions will measure attendance and giving. But to really break free from the Level 3 magnet, they must no longer be the primary metrics of success. These leaders ask themselves, If I could be known for only one thing a year from now, what would it be? And they answer it in terms of multiple church plants, community transformation or individual spiritual formation. These leaders have learned that what they measure improves, and what they celebrate gets repeated.
- Culture of Disciple Making. Creating a culture of disciple making requires changing the expectation for every believer so that they embrace their missionary calling to win and disciple others. Empowering everyday-life missionaries will then require you to provide opportunities for them to live out their unique calling. In this culture, volunteering at church becomes more than just a way to fill a hole in a church program—it’s an opportunity for people to discover their calling and dip their toe into mission. As more and more missionaries develop, it will mean releasing them from church activities and encouraging their financial giving to shift to their mission.
The journey from an addition-oriented model to one that’s focused on disciple making and mobilization will not be easy because so much of what we do is tied into our financial security and institutional success. We need new operating systems that aren’t so dependent on a weekend gathering. In the meantime, we need brave leaders who are committed to Jesus’ model of multiplication in order to break free from an addition mindset.
A paradigm is like a pair of glasses: It clarifies, shapes and colors everything we see. The right glasses can show us the world as it actually exists. Moving from Level 3 thinking to that of Levels 4 and 5 is nothing short of a paradigm shift.
But a paradigm shift alone is not enough to bring about the Jesus movement we long to see. That will require the work of the Holy Spirit. That’s why, when studying past movements, you will always find a prayer movement before, behind and underlying a movement of God. To use the metaphor of five loaves and two fish, radical prayer shifts the focus from simply feeding a family of four to instead feeding the multitude through the work of the Holy Spirit.
Reproducing Churches
For the past four years Exponential has partnered with Outreach magazine to create a list of 100 Reproducing Churches. These churches have been assessed at Level 4 or 5 through the Multiplication Assessment (go to Exponential.org/assessment to learn more). While it has been exciting to see a growing community of leaders and churches committed to multiplication, a list doesn’t allow you to see what really makes these churches different.
So, Outreach and Exponential have decided to provide a more succinct list and give you a deeper understanding of how very different Level 4 and 5 thinking can be compared to Level 3 thinking. On the surface, some of the reproducing churches look very much like the prevailing model of the American church. Some are large and some are small; some might have expressions that look very different. But all have moved beyond seeing the world simply through the lens of one church.
Here are some examples:
* Rivers Crossing Community Church began with Level 4 thinking, giving away a third of the money they raised for their church plant to another local church. Since then, they have been deeply involved in church planting, though it’s not obvious because none of their church plants are named “Rivers Crossing.”
* Mercy Road Church has a passion to reach 1 million disciples in Indiana. They have planted churches and started a cross-denominational church planting network.
* Church Project is primarily a network of house churches, though they do have a weekend gathering.
* Lakepointe Church began the Strategic Launch Network, which has been responsible for starting strong churches throughout the country.
* Ethos Church became a church of prayer that led a citywide prayer movement in Nashville. They also started a relational church planting network.
* Hill Country Bible Church began planting churches that led to starting an association of church planting churches. They have also been instrumental in helping churches in a city come together for the sake of gospel saturation. Now they are working to disciple all their congregations into their calling.
* Community Christian Church began with a heart to reach the entire Chicagoland area. That led to multisites, then church planting and now a church planting network that catalyzes movements around the world. [Editor’s note: Dave Ferguson is lead pastor of Community Christian Church.]
A Tipping Point
We want to see a movement of church multiplication in our lifetime. That’s why Exponential continues to champion this biblical call to see the multiplication of disciples and churches in the United States and beyond, and to see multiplication become a normative measure of success in the church.
At Exponential, we believe that when 16% of all churches become a Level 4 or 5 church, it will change the spiritual landscape of our country. This “16% mission” for Exponential continues to be our crystal clear vision. Specifically, it means that the rate of disciple making churches planting churches needs to move from the current 7% in the U.S. to the tipping point of 16%.
We are confident that this 16% mission can be accomplished. The needle is moving, but in a post-pandemic world with so many cultural earthquakes, we know our strategy must adjust and adapt.
To do that, we want to serve a growing army of multiplication advocates and activists who are reproducing mission-mobilized disciples at every level so that more churches can be reproducing churches. Exponential is working to convene tipping-point environments to serve you on your journey to becoming a multiplication activist. We want to serve you: “You can do it. We can help.”