“I hope 15 years from now that I end up 50 pounds overweight, divorced and doing things that compromise my core convictions.”
While I have never had a church leader say this to me, I know that pastors go through those things all the time.
I also have never had a church planter tell me, “My dream is to start a new church that a decade from now will plateau and never will start another new church.” But this statement can accurately describe many churches that dot the landscape of the United States.
How does that happen? How do we as church leaders get so off course?
The Perils of Drifting
We all start out with big dreams for serving Christ. According to Warren Bird, senior vice president of research for the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, 43% of church planters who started churches in the last five years say part of their vision for the future is a multiplying network of churches. At the same time, the common refrain from church leaders post-COVID-19 is, “I refuse to sacrifice my health or my family on the altar of ministry.”
We hope our leadership will be marked by church multiplication and that our commitment to personal health will remain strong, but somewhere along the way we tend to drift. And it doesn’t happen all at once. It occurs slowly, one day at a time; one year at a time; a decade at a time, until we end up somewhere we never intended to be.
Clayton Christiansen, a renowned professor at Harvard Business School, would always finish his favorite course each year by telling a story of his own graduating class. It went something like this (paraphrased from Christiansen’s book How Will You Measure Your Life?):
At my five-year reunion there was a great turnout. Everyone seemed so polished and prosperous, you couldn’t help but think that you were a part of something special. My classmates had great jobs, some lived in exotic locations, and most seemed to have married people much better looking than they were.
But by my 10th reunion, some things we never expected became increasingly common. Many people discovered that while they were making good money, they didn’t like what they were doing to make the money. Many also found themselves divorced or in unhappy marriages. Some were living on the opposite coast from their ex and never seeing their kids. It was strange, because my classmates were some of the brightest and most decent people I had ever met.
Then came my 25th reunion and the problems were only worse. One of my classmates was Jeffrey Skilling. He had risen to be the CEO of Enron, but because of scandal, not only was he fired, he also was in jail. I knew from my four years at Harvard that Jeff Skilling was a good man. He was smart, he worked hard and loved his family. But he was now twice divorced, alienated from his family, and doing time after being convicted on multiple felony charges.
I know he never intended to get divorced, file for bankruptcy and end up in jail. And it wasn’t just Skilling; another classmate was in jail for insider trading. Still another was doing time for having a sexual relationship with a teenager who had worked on his political campaign. And others, still worse.
Then Christiansen would always finish the lecture by saying, I want to end this school year talking with you about three things:
- How to be successful in a career that brings your life purpose and meaning.
- How to stay happily married to one person your whole life.
- How to live a life of integrity and stay out of jail.
Why was this so important to Christensen? I have a guess: He knew that without a warning, his students, left on their own, could drift into mediocrity and lethargy both professionally and personally. He knew that we don’t intend to drift, but we do. Proverbs 14:12 describes this unintentional drift: “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”
Let me illustrate why drifting is such a problem. Let’s say you are walking down the block from your home to a neighbor, and you drift by one degree—you wouldn’t even notice. But if you are traveling from San Francisco to Los Angeles and you drift by just one degree, you will miss your destination by six miles. And if you are trying to get from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., and you drift off course by a single degree, you will end up on the other side of Baltimore, more than 42 miles off course.
I want to sound the same alarm for not only church planters, but for every church leader: Beware of drifting. It happens ever so slowly and surely. Unless you take great efforts to be intentional about your internal world and external world, you will end up somewhere other than where you intended to be.
The good news is there is a solution to drifting, and it is found in the words of Psalm 119:1: “You are blessed when you stay the course, walking steadily on the road revealed by God.” The solution is found in being what the Exponential community and I call a “multiplier.”
Becoming a Multiplier
A multiplier is a healthy disciple-making leader who champions church reproduction. That is who I want to be and who I want to become. How about you? If so, here is a multiplier tool that will help you stay the course tomorrow, next year and 25 years from now.
As you look at this multiplier tool, you will see that there are two worlds to which you must attend: your internal world and your external world.
The internal world of a multiplier has four gauges that you must check regularly. I call them the R.P.M.S.: R for relational, P for physical, M for mental and S for spiritual.
The external world of a multiplier has four practices that you need to implement. Consistently implementing these multiplication practices will assure that you maximize your impact and what you are doing is creating movement for the Jesus mission.
First, here is the internal world.
A Multiplier’s Internal World
To prevent drifting, I have developed a simple five-minute exercise I call “checking your R.P.M.S.” This tool is based on Luke 2:52: “Jesus grew in wisdom (mental) and stature (physical), and in favor with God (spiritual) and men (relational).” Using this tool daily may be one of the most powerful self-leadership tools around. I believe it will keep you from drifting too.
At the beginning of my day, at the top of my journal, I write “RMPS.” Underneath each of these four letters, I rate myself by writing a number on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being bad, 5 being average, and 10 being great. It’s not scientific, but by reflecting every day on these four gauges of health, it keeps me as a leader from drifting.
Let me briefly explain the R.P.M.S. and give you a few questions to ask in your own daily self-evaluation.
Relational: Our relational world typically includes the people with whom we interact on a regular basis: our immediate family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and small group members. Consider asking yourself the following questions as you evaluate:
- How are my relationships at home?
- What about my marriage, dating or family life is going well? What’s not going so well? What would I like to change?
- Who do I consider my closest friend? How is God using that relationship to grow me?
- What are my relationships at work like?
- Which relationship gives me energy and life? Which one is the most challenging or draining?
Physical: Our physical well-being is often the most overlooked aspect of a leader’s life. Yet diet, exercise, sleep and rest are all vital to our ability to lead effectively. If we are serious about developing as a whole person, we have to take seriously our physical well-being. Here are some good questions to ask:
- Am I getting enough rest?
- How is my current energy level?
- What am I doing to maintain good health when it comes to exercise and eating habits?
- Is there anything about my physical health that I’d like to change?
Mental: Acknowledging the range of emotions that we can experience daily is important for our mental health. Having outside and trusted voices help us maintain good mental health is essential. Here are some questions we can ask to see if we are developing mentally:
- What thoughts have been dominating my mind? Are my thoughts drawing me closer to God or pulling me away from God?
- How would you finish this sentence: “I’m feeling __________”?
- When is the last time I saw a counselor, therapist or spiritual director?
- What books am I reading? What podcasts am I listening to? From whom am I learning?
Spiritual: It is also imperative that we discover and act on whatever it is that helps us grow deeper in our relationship with God. Ask yourself these questions to see how we are developing spiritually:
- How would I describe my relationship with God right now?
- What does it look like when I am feeling closely connected to God?
- Which spiritual disciplines seem to help me draw closer to God? Prayer? Journaling? Worship? Sabbath? Solitude?
- Who is holding me accountable for practicing these disciplines?
- What has God been saying to me lately through his Word? The Holy Spirit? Other Christ followers? Prayer?
The longer I am in leadership, the more I am convinced that the most important leadership we can offer is self-leadership. We must be intentional about our internal world to avoid drifting. Check these four gauges every day and you will stay the course.
A Multiplier’s External World
With the confidence that our internal world is leading to transformation, we are ready for the four external practices that lead to ongoing multiplication. You can also be confident that because you are a healthy leader you will reproduce health in others. As a multiplier you are not content with the status quo, so you begin to repeat these four practices: make disciple makers, establish spiritual communities, mobilize leaders and launch church expressions.
1. Make Disciple Makers. If we got to spend time together, you would know that reproducing at all levels is at the core of everything I believe in. This applies to leaders, groups, churches and networks, but it begins by making disciple makers.
So, who are you discipling? Who have you discipled that has discipled someone else? You’ve got to be able to name the folks you’re pouring into—those you’re discipling right now.
I was just talking with my friend Léonce Crump of Renovation Church, and without hesitation he was able to name five people he is currently discipling. He explained how he has these people into his home and takes them on trips with him. He is doing life with them, just like Jesus did with the Twelve.
If you want to get the flywheel of multiplication started, it begins with making disciple makers.
2. Establish Spiritual Communities. You might call them small groups, missional communities or another name, but whatever you call them, I believe relationships are the catalyst for growth. That’s why I’m part of a Tuesday night small group in my church—nothing fancy, just a bunch of folks doing life together. Why? Because if I am going to make disciple makers, I have got to be part of building communities that make disciples.
Making disciples isn’t a solo mission; it’s about creating an environment where relationships flourish. It’s not about leading from the top; it’s about being in the trenches, fostering connections and multiplying growth one group at a time.
3. Mobilize Leaders. This can mean sending out a new small group leader, a new church planter or a new network leader. A multiplier is constantly giving the blessing and commissioning new leaders.
As the lead pastor at Community Christian, I recently announced Ted Coniaris as my lead pastor apprentice. Over the course of months, I will invest in him and commission him as the new lead pastor in May 2025. This will allow him to expand his leadership, and allow me to invest more of my leadership as the visionary leader for NewThing and the CEO of Exponential. And as that happens, the multiplication flywheel turns, and the mission is advanced.
To keep the flywheel of multiplication moving, leadership development isn’t a one-and-done deal; it’s an ongoing process. You are continually developing a leader and then mobilizing, releasing and sending them out.
4. Launch Church Expressions. The last multiplication practice here is the most exciting of all—launching church expressions. These church expressions might be micro, macro, meta or some other new ecclesiological form. The goal is multiplying churches “to the ends of the earth.”
At Community Christian Church, we took the opportunity the pandemic gave us to shift from being one church with multiple locations to one church with multiple expressions. In addition to locations, we also started churches in prisons, online and through microchurches.
We initially dreamed of starting microchurches in Chicagoland, but we were dreaming too small. Two years later, we have more than 100 microchurches not only in Chicago, but also in places like India, Uganda and Cuba. That’s the power of launching new expressions.
You Can Be a Multiplier.
Now, let me tell you something I believe with my whole being—you can be a multiplier. This isn’t some exclusive club. I see these truths in Scripture, and I see them being played out in my own life. Make a commitment to watch the four gauges of your internal world and do the four practices of multiplication in your external world. Don’t drift.
For more on healthy church multiplication, see What Is Your Personal Multiplication Capacity?