FLOW Offers Vital Guidance for Creating a Culture of Multiplication

Review: FLOW Offers Vital Guidance for Creating a Culture of Multiplication

FREE eBook by Larry Walkemeyer chronicles the tensions and impact of transitioning from a LAKE Church to a RIVER church

Todd Wilson

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I’d never heard of Larry Walkemeyer, but his name kept coming up in conversations. Not because his church is on any of the largest, fastest growing, or most innovative churches in America lists, or because he is a best-selling author or keynote speaker at large conferences.
Instead, Walkemeyer has quietly flown under the radar, transitioning an addition growth-oriented church to one that truly values and practices multiplication growth. Larry is one of those Spirit-led, Level 5 leaders with a remarkable mix of humility and teachability, who is secure in his context, and continually seeking to learn. The scorecard that guides him is radically different than the ones that characterize prevailing, addition-oriented wisdom and models.
If you want to establish a strong value of multiplication in your church, you need to listen to and learn from Larry. He believes in growth as much as anyone, but he’s learned what very few in the U.S. church ever embrace: how to move from macro-addition strategies to macro-multiplication.
In recruiting 20+ national leaders who value church multiplication, Exponential could not find anyone better suited to kick off our multiplication book series than Larry Walkemeyer. His FREE, four-chapter eBook FLOW: Unleashing a River of Multiplication in Your Church, Your City and World, can be read in a single sitting and is available here.
The following is a review and summary of Larry’s new eBook.
The Big Idea: A RIVER vs. LAKE Church
Israel’s Jordan River is fed by several gushing natural springs. From a distance, you can hear the flow of these powerful springs that feed the Sea of Galilee and the surrounding farmland. This same flowing water that feeds some of the most fertile soil in the world and brought many of Jesus’ parables to life also feeds the Dead Sea.
What a contrast. Life vs. death. The flowing water produces juicy fruits and vegetables that sustain and expand life. The water reaching the Dead Sea accumulates at the lowest point on earth, adding little value to life. In fact, nothing actually lives in it. On a recent trip to Israel, I visited the Dead Sea, where it struck me that this is not what water is made for. The entire cycle of water as God made it is intended to flow and seek out that which needs it. Fields don’t move to water. Instead, water finds its way to the soil that so desperately needs it to bring its nutrients to life. Water is liquid so it can flow and accumulate–not just accumulate like the lifeless water in the Dead Sea.
In a similar way, the big idea and powerful metaphor in Walkemeyer’s book is that churches are designed by God to be rivers that flow and not simply lakes that accumulate. Walkemeyer writes:
“Rivers can be dammed to create lakes. Streams can be obstructed to create pools. Trickles can be blocked to become puddles. Churches of all sizes can prioritize addition so highly that they become blind to the greater vision of multiplication.
“The Lord birthed a new vision in our minds. It was a concept we’d never heard of, though we did not invent it. The vision was to stop becoming a ‘LAKE church’ and instead become a ‘RIVER church.’ To us, a LAKE church meant a church where people flow in and stay. A LAKE church seeks to get more and more people around one pastor in one place. A RIVER church is dynamically different. Instead of staying, the people flow in but keep moving downstream. God takes them to other places to minister. The measurement becomes about ‘flow rate’ (volume flowing or moving) instead of ‘volume contained’ or accumulated. Specifically, we felt this meant, ‘stay where you are and stop worrying about growing your numbers. Instead, begin to send people out to start new churches, thus making more room for more people to fill their place.’ We sensed the Lord saying, ‘Focus on FLOWING instead of GROWING, and see what I will do.””
Scarcity, Addition and Multiplication: Three Cultures
Multiplication was not originally a conviction for Larry and his wife Deb. Instead, it became a key theme and value that emerged in their journey and story. When he moved from a thriving suburban church to pastor a struggling urban church in Long Beach, California, he was immersed into a culture characterized by subtraction, scarcity and survival. A culture that is unfortunately typical of 80+ percent of U.S. churches and of the culture most new churches are born into.
Walkemeyer’s reality? Multiplication was simply too difficult to even consider when his livelihood depended on stopping the bleeding. But in his words, “trying to stay even in church attendance is a losing wager.”
Eventually the bleeding did stop, freeing him to focus on church growth. And that he did, getting drawn fully into the emerging church addition growth movement of the past 30 years.
He writes: “We devoured ‘church growth’ literature three meals a day–and for a midnight snack. We craved the ‘secret sauce’ that would allow us to attract those turned off by the typical church. We stocked our church refrigerator with every new recipe.”
For Walkemeyer and his team, addition growth provided for him and his team  a powerful alignment around a shared cause and direction. They killed several sacred cows and committed to prayer and pursuing multiethnic diversity. Good priorities and values. Rallying around a few unifying priorities has a way of aligning people and resources. But as Walkemeyer learned, strong alignment to a few good values does not guarantee multiplication. Addition growth can occur via many different priorities and values. But multiplication happens when our core values are rooted in prayer, obedience and sending/releasing the priesthood of believers.
For our 2015 Exponential theme, Spark: Igniting a Culture of Multiplication, we’re pursuing the characteristics that form powerfully aligned cultures. In the Exponential eBook of the same name, I highlight three key elements for establishing culture:

• core values/convictions (what is deeply important to us)
• narrative and language (how  we talk about and celebrate what is important to us)
• practices (how we put into action what is important to us).

When our core convictions shape our vocabulary and stories, which then strongly align with our practices and the actions we take, a strong culture emerges. The impact of our practices will “bloom” with the fruit of our core convictions and values.
Our core convictions are vitally important. They are a seed that is planted and will give birth to some visible outcome and results. A tomato seed produces tomatoes, and a flower seed produces flowers. A flower seed can never produce an oak tree no matter how hard you try. What is the fruit of prayer, obedience and a commitment to sending/releasing?
We must be careful about our core convictions since even unhealthy convictions can form a powerful culture. The language we use and the practices we put in place have no power over the values that drive us. Instead, they can only amplify their impact. Bad values with strongly aligned language and practices will produce strong, negative results (whatever the fruit of those negative values plays out to be).
Obviously, our role as leaders is to get the right biblical values in place. If you value scarcity and survival, your vocabulary and your practices will align to that outcome. Value addition growth as idolized in church culture today, and your vocabulary and practices will align to that outcome.
In FLOW, Walkemeyer confesses that their value system powerfully aligned to the addition-growth culture of the past 30 years. He and his church were successful with this scorecard as they added and accumulated more, and won denominational awards for growth.
Feeding the Beast
Walkemeyer learned firsthand about the tensions that result as a church becomes more successful in addition growth and highlights those insights for us: “The honeymoon of the successful attractional church was in full swing. We were the flavor of the month. We had added, were adding and would add more. We were the poster child of church growth. But have you ever seen a grown-up poster child? They can sometimes get ugly.”
Space overload, volunteer overload, parking overload, staff overload … feeding the beast becomes harder and harder–always new challenges, new hurdles and new adaptations to fuel the next phase of growth.
When God appears to answer your prayer to “enlarge our territory,” does the result produce an elusive feeding of the beast that seems to grow increasingly difficult? This physical phenomena is characterized in mathematics by an “asymptote.” In Spark, I address this physical truth in more detail.
The increasing energy spent on strategy and tackling the next obstacle began to challenge Walkemeyer’s thinking. “I began to ponder, what could be accomplished if, instead of investing those dollars in buildings to ‘add,’ we invested them in people so we could ‘multiply’? What would the Kingdom impact be if we focused on raising up and releasing pastors, leaders and workers to start new churches?'”
Larry is not alone in this holy discontent. A growing number of pastors are asking the question, “Isn’t there something more than just building this church bigger?” Some are asking, “How do we change the conversation from ‘where is the next one’ to ‘how do we release people to take our city?'” The inevitable discontent of the addition growth-focused pastor will shine the light on a different scorecard. Not because addition growth is bad, but because God’s design for the church–and for the earth in general–is multiplication.
A New Season
After a season of seeking God’s voice, the Walkemeyers sensed a new calling and priority–a focus on sending and releasing rather than accumulating. The vision for becoming a RIVER church rather than a LAKE church emerged. Make no mistake. That vision and transition didn’t happen overnight. It took a season of prayer, listening and even getting away. It took courage to put aside conventional thinking and wisdom, opting for a new scorecard.
Hard Work
When I first talked to Larry about his journey from addition to multiplication, he said, “It has been both exhilarating and exhausting.” Exhilarating and exhausting–a perfect descriptor of the journey from an addition-growth focus to a multiplication focus. Walkemeyer describes the journey this way in FLOW:
“The RIVER was a good idea, but LAKES are much more peaceful and predictable. Over several years, we nurtured and repeated this pattern of gathering, empowering and releasing. The relational and financial sacrifice was frequently excruciating. The size of Light & Light North, the mother church, ebbed and flowed as people, resources and energy were gathered from it and released. Church planters would rise up from within or come from outside to join our staff with the plan of planting within a year. Despite our investment in giving away tithers, every year we brought in more income than the previous year. The RIVER was flowing.”
Creating a culture that encourages staff to pack up and go takes courage and conviction. It’s not for the faint of heart. But that is what Walkemeyer did. Over time, as the church continues to watch how  staff are continually being called to “go,” a culture and pattern will develop. Multiplication will move from being abnormal or infrequent to being normal and regular. It becomes engrained in who we are.
In their book Viral Churches, Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird describe the culture in Ralph Moore’s Hope Chapel movement of churches. They note that hundreds of church plants can trace their roots to Ralph’s churches and say that multiplication is a value so deeply engrained in how Moore and his leaders do church that they would have to try not to multiply. Imagine that! Having to try not to multiply. But isn’t that the way its intended to be?
Larry did not establish a culture of multiplication over night. It took diligence and patience. It took hard work and courage. Eventually, a growing number of people embraced the practices and become part of the process of “going.”
The Scorecard
Larry notes that they may never become a megachurch in one location. But he adds:
“Recently, over 5,500 people gathered in U.S. churches started by a church with only 39 parking spaces. We will never become the megachurch we once dreamed of being. Our church addition growth has become secondary to our church ‘flow.’ To date, Light & Light has planted or replanted 19 churches nationally. In addition, dozens of international churches have been started and are embracing the RIVER DNA.”
Tensions
Walkemeyer was instrumental in helping Exponential identify more than 15 different tensions that churches will face in transitioning from an addition-growth culture to a multiplication-growth culture. “Each of these potential “dams” is powerful enough to stop the RIVER’s flow. These key tensions include:

• Kingdom Math: Addition vs. Multiplication
• Build It and They Will Come: Facility Acquisition vs. Facility Sacrifice
• The Almighty Dollar: Financial Security vs. Financial Sacrifice
• A Recliner and a Remote: Attractional vs. Activational
• Empty Seats: Filling Our Church vs. Starting a New Church
• The Hallmark Slogan: Staffing Mother Church vs. Staffing Plants
• A Deep Bench: Leadership Retention vs. Leadership Release
• The Marching Parade: Relational Stability vs. Relational Transience
• The Messy Room: Systems Optimized vs. Systems Disbursed
• The Young Mother: Mother’s Maturity vs. Baby’s Health
• Coasting: Senior Leader Coasting vs. Senior Leader Climbing
• My Turf: Proximity Protection vs. Proximity Evangelism
• Backyard First: Missional Focus vs. Multiplication Focus
• The Natives Haven’t Heard: Missional Focus vs. Multiplication Focus
• The Bigger Lake or Wider River: New Campus vs. New Plant

Larry addresses each of these 15 tensions in his book FLOW.
He very candidly and transparently identifies three key internal tensions that he had to confront. “My inner battle wasn’t a few quick shots of Angry Birds, but was more like Joshua’s siege of Jericho. I was open to taking Jericho, knowing it could be a key to expanding God’s territory. However, huge walls in my heart kept me from making the move. The big walls needed to come down for me to move forward.” These three tensions include:

• Skewed scoreboard – from points scored to assists made. Larry highlights how we all want to be the star of the team scoring the most points. He asked, “But what if assists were worth 5 points (vs. a goal being worth 2 points)?” What if we valued assists more than scoring?” To embrace multiplication is to embrace assists over scoring.
• Play it safe wall – Larry identifies a list of common fears that can paralyze pastors and keep them captive to addition-based scorecards.
• YBH – “yes but how” – How often do we get excited about a new direction, but paralyzed to move forward without knowing or seeing all the details? Larry highlights that taking new hills often requires forward movement without all the details.

Finally, Larry wraps up FLOW, giving us the benefit of 20 years of learning by summarizing five key lessons he has learned. These are things he would be sure to do if starting over again.
Download your free copy of Flow: Unleashing a River of Multiplication in Your Church, Your City and World.
Todd Wilson is co-founder of Exponential, the coordinating organization of the Exponential conferences, and is part of the Exponential leadership team providing vision and strategic direction to the organization. He spends the majority of his time starting and working with organizations committed to Kingdom impact and multiplication. Todd lives in Manassas, Virginia., with his wife, Anna, and their two boys, Ben and Chris. Connect with him on Twitter: @toddwilson