How to Keep Your Integrity As a Leader

By Rick Warren

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Last week, I wrote about the three greatest temptations of leadership. This week, I want to talk about the three ways we can keep our integrity and prevent those temptations from destroying our testimony and diminishing our influence.

First, deepen your reverence for God.

Never forget that God put you in the position you’re in today. Psalm 75:6 says, “For promotion and power come from nowhere on earth, but only from God.  He promotes one and deposes another.” Great leaders realize that they are stewards.  They realize that it’s not their world, their church, their business; they are just the manager, the stewart.  Promotion comes from God, not from other people.
You also much realize that God is holding you accountable. One of the reasons I think leaders try to get away secret sin it is that they don’t fear God. But the Bible says, “Obey your spiritual leaders and be willing to do what they say.  For their work is to watch over your souls and God will judge them on how well they do.” That verse ought to put the fear in leaders. God is going to judge us. There is no authority without accountability.  The Bible says clearly that we Pastors are accountable to God, as are all leaders in God’s kingdom. As a leader you are called to be accountable before God.  Where there is a deep reverence for God, there will be integrity before Him.

Second, develop a love for people.

There is a law of leadership that states, losers focus on what they can get while leaders focus on what they can give. The Bible says, “David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skill he led them.”  Good News says, “He shepherded them with unselfish devotion.”  Psalm 78:72 is one of my life verses.  I pray that God will let me shepherd with integrity and with skill.
I find when I study leaders, good and bad, the leaders who consistently abuse their powers are those who don’t love people. Paul said, “Because of our love for you we were ready to share with you not only the Good News but even our own lives.  You were so dear to us!”  Notice that he says “We gave even our own lives.”  If you really love people you’re not going to abuse and misuse them.

Third, discipline yourself for eternal rewards.

If you’re going to be a leader, instead of having more and more privileges as your influence grows, there is really less space for personal privileges. More is required of leaders, there are more restrictions on leaders.  The higher you go in a position of authority, the more is expected of you, the more is restricted of you, and the less freedom you really have.  You must often sacrifice privilege in exchange for influence.
There’s a leadership law that states, losers focus on their rights while leaders focus on their responsibilities.
Hebrews 11 tells us that, “Moses preferred to suffer with God’s people rather than to enjoy sin for a little while.”  There are few people in the history of the world that had more potential to have the power, privilege and position that Moses did.  He was number two man in line for the number one position as Pharaoh of the most successful nation of the world at that time — Egypt.  And he left it all to lead a bunch of slaves across the desert.  He gave up power, position and privilege — the very thing most of us spend our lives trying to get.  He gave it up because he had his values right.  He had his values right because he had his vision right. He kept his eyes on the future reward.
Protect your integrity at all costs – if you lose it, little else matters as a leader.
photo credit: Brandon Christopher Warren

The Real Purpose of Preaching, and Why It Matters

By Rick Warren

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God has a purpose for everything. The Bible says in Proverbs 19:21, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” Pr. 19:21 (NIV) God has a specific purpose for preaching, and His purpose is far more important than your purpose or my purpose for preaching.
One of the greatest problems in our churches is purposeless preaching. So many sermons are made up of many words in search of a purpose. Each weekend, 55 million people listen to 1 billion words in sermons given in America alone. Yet research shows that the biggest complaint people have is that sermons are boring and don’t relate to their lives. 
If the purpose of preaching isn’t clear to the preacher, it won’t be to the listeners! My friend Charles Swindoll says, “If there’s a mist in the pulpit, there’s a fog in the pew!” Without a clear purpose, preaching is a misuse of the Bible, a waste of time to the people, and a frustration to the preacher.
Every preacher ought to have a solid theology of preaching so that we understand why we’re doing what we’re doing every weekend. And a solid theology of preaching always starts with God’s purposes for man, for the Bible, and for preaching.
God’s purpose for man is to make us more like Christ. The Bible says, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” (Romans 8:29 NIV) Until you understand that this is God’s purpose for people, you aren’t ready to preach to others.

• God wants people to think like Jesus. (see Philippians 2:5)
• God wants people to feel like Jesus. (see Colossians 3:15-17)
• God wants people to act like Jesus.

So the objective of preaching is to develop Christlike convictions (thinking), Christlike character (feeling), and Christlike conduct (acting). The problem is, most preaching utilizes a method that gets people to read the Word, but not to DO the Word. We feed people facts and information so that people leave informed, but not transformed.
George Gallup said, “Never before in the history of the United States has the gospel of Jesus Christ made such inroads while at the same time making so little difference in how people actually live.”
Before you preach again, examine the sermon you’re preparing and ask the question: Does this message not only challenge the way people think and believe but also challenge them to act and make actual changes in their lives as a result of hearing the gospel?
photo credit: micadew

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7 Moves to Multisite Part 1

Jon Ferguson and Eric Metcalf share the process Community Christian Church has identified as they've launched multiple locations

Jon Ferguson and Eric Metcalf

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In part 1 of this excerpt from the podcast of Jon Ferguson and Eric Metcalf’s workshop at Exponential East 2014, the church planters walk us through their stories of what it looks like to become multisite. As part of Community Christian Church’s now 13 campuses across Chicago and being on the ground floor of NewThing’s now 150 churches and sites, the two leaders understand what it takes to multiply and offer critical leadership steps they’ve identified on the path to multisite. Below they offer the first four moves.
Multisite Move No. 1: It’s a God thing. A number of years ago if you had asked me what the first step towards multi-site was, I probably would’ve said, “Well, it begins with vision.” But experience has taught us that more often God things occur first: God’s  up to something. We recognize it. We identify it.
Here are a couple of examples of how we’ve seen this play out as we’ve reproduced sites and churches. The third campus we started at Community Christian Church in the Chicago area was launched when a small, under-resourced church approached us about giving us their facility and six acres of property. Now, when somebody approaches you with that kind of offer, what do you say? That’s like a God thing, right? At least one other local organization had turned it down. Here’s another example.
About six years ago, Troy McMahon (planter/leader of Restore Community Church in Kansas City) was praying about whether or not God wanted him to move back to his hometown of Kansas City to plant a new church. Troy had been on staff at our church for a while. He had been a campus pastor and a really effective and influential part of our team. So we took a trip out to Kansas City to meet with several pastors in the Kansas City area and after about less than a week, came home with all sorts of financial backing. God was at work. Again a God thing.
Below are a couple of questions we use to help us identify these God things:

1. Where is God at work? How do we recognize that? I think it’s primarily through prayer, listening and observing. And when we see Him at work, what do we need to do then? We need to join Him.
2. How is God working to confirm your prompting or your leading? You may have a great idea, but is it really God at work? Are you seeking confirmation for that idea from Scripture and prayer and through trusted friends and wise counsel?

Multisite Move No. 2: Vision
So identifying that God thing gives you a compelling vision to communicate.
In his book, Next Generation Leader, Andy Stanley talks about three basic components of any compelling vision: problems, solutions and then urgency. You have to present the problem; you have to present the solution; and then you have to provide the urgency or motivation for solving that problem. Andy says most visions lack urgency.
If you look at our Montgomery campus, where we were given a facility and six acres of land, the problem piece was that 70 percent of the people in that community were unchurched. (That’s pretty much true all over Chicago.) So the obvious solution piece for was to launch a life-giving faith community and church where those people can find their way back to God. And then the urgency piece came in–being given that facility and receiving confirmation from God that He was actually moving through a dream of one of the women on our staff provided the urgency.
Multisite Move No. 3: Leader
This is kind of an obvious one. You need to have someone who will lead this thing, And it’s so important for us to look for the right candidate because you end up attracting who you are. So the question is, “What are you looking for in that candidate?” because it’s likely that a campus or church will take on the flavor or the characteristics of that particular leader.
We have some key qualities or things we look for. You may have heard Bill Hybels talk about the 4 C’s of leadership: character: competency, chemistry and calling. These are actually really good categories to use as you’re thinking through who’s the right person to take ownership for launching this new campus. You want to look for a track record of what a potential candidate has done, the legacy that they have left behind them. When you invite a leader into this new responsibility of launching a new campus, you want them to leave this trail of breadcrumbs of people they’ve invested in that have become leaders in other ministries.
What kinds of stories can they tell? One of the ways that we talk about it is, “Does he or she have an apprenticeship story to tell?” Can they talk about how they’ve been developed and how they’ve developed others? If they don’t have that story to tell, it’s a good chance they’re not the right leader candidate.
Chemistry is another factor that often gets overlooked. But I would argue that it’s likely one of the most important of all those C’s. Instead, it tends to be the one we just kind of like to not pay as much attention to. Identifying the right person to lead this new initiative is mission critical.
Multisite Move No. 4: Team
It’s not just about your staff team; it’s also your volunteer team. Who’s going to come alongside this new initiative? When it comes to building a staff team. you want to think about the key roles required to lead this new initiative. Ask yourself, “What ministries are we going to reproduce at this new location? And which ones will stay at the original location?”
I tend to think of these roles in terms of The Fab 5: adults, students, kids, first impressions and the arts. These are the five things we look at when we launch a new location. We want to look at these factors and ask, “Who will lead each of those initiatives when it comes to the staff team, either paid or volunteer?. What things do we need people to take ownership of when it comes to going after the mission that God called us to do in this new initiative?”
We all have to wrestle with that.
The other piece of team is what we call the matrix, which is really thinking through the questions:

•  “What roles are necessary now to fill those teams?”
• “What will it take to provide a quality children’s ministry?”
• “How many small group leaders will we need for that?”
• “How many people will we need in the arts for that?”
• “How many people will we need for set up/tear down if we’re in a portable experience for kids space?”
• “What will it take to fill the roles among those teams, whether or not these roles are in the creative arts, with the tech and lighting team, production musicians and vocalists?
• “How many different roles do we need to pull off the experience we’re hoping to pull off?”

We will literally list out these different roles and the answers to these questions. (The matrix is really just a glorified spreadsheet.)
We’ll actually make a pretty big deal out of these roles, sometimes referring to them as spiritual entrepreneurs. Who are the people that will jump on and jump in and help fill the matrix to take on these different responsibilities so that we can have a strong team when we launch this new initiative? It’s really a fun thing to do, and it can be as many as 75 different roles that it might take to pull this thing off.
When they jump onto these teams, we often coach and encourage our volunteers to consider wearing at least one and a half hats. So one hat would be, “I’m a leader, I have responsibility over people,” and half a hat would be, “I contribute on a team, I serve in a role. I don’t necessarily oversee people, it’s a task that I fulfill.”
The matrix is really trying to get to a place where you’re painting a picture for all those ways to get involved, and you’re being clear about that. So you think about staff and team, and you’re also thinking about what it takes to fill those teams with people to get involved.
Next week’s part 2 of this post will focus on Multisite Moves 5-7. Listen to the full podcast here. Jon Ferguson will be one of six leaders talking about multiplication as part of the Multisite Leadership Forum at Exponential West in October. Learn more about the Multisite Leadership Forum here. 

CATEGORY:: All News, Church Planting, Exponential, Featured | TAGS:: Exponential East 2014, Jon Ferguson, multisite

The Recruitment Factor

The church planting veteran shares 11 insights for expanding the Kingdom through church planters

Tom Nebel

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I remember speaking at a denomination’s conference on improving church planting. They were a positive group with many good attributes and a genuine desire to make Jesus known. Their church planting numbers were weak, as were their recruiting numbers, so I addressed the question of where to find church planters. I was aware that, culturally speaking, this group was not as assertive as some. It seemed to me that they probably weren’t too good at recruiting one another to anything. I teased them, “I’d like someone to come on stage here and try to talk me into anything!” But on a serious note, I summed up my thinking this way: We often ask where to find new church planters, but we ought to be asking how we’re going to deliver them when we find them. Today, with the planting of new works on the minds of more and more people, that statement is truer than ever.

While our job as leaders is not to talk people into doing something they shouldn’t do, I want to talk about improving our recruiting abilities, because this really matters. This is about the Kingdom of God and eternity. Here are some lessons I’ve learned along the way:

• Remember spiritual dependence: The battle is not against flesh and blood. 
• Develop a recruiting team: [Create] a culture where participants “tithe their time to mission.” In your organization, recruiting should be a family matter, shared by everyone, and not left just to the director. Who can help you recruit? Who would represent you and your mission well? Current church planters? Retirees? Who would give time and diligence to playing a role? Prayerfully consider men and women who are eager to see the Kingdom expand, especially those who are doing the work already. A day long or an overnight retreat will create more energy and intentionality than you could muster on your own. What roles are needed, and how will standards be met? 
• Be responsive: Anyone can have a flashy website, but we all know what it’s like to fill out a contact form and be neglected. Implement the 24-hour rule. Any prospective planter who contacts your organization needs a human touch within 24 hours— even if it’s a personal email (not automated) that says someone will contact them more meaningfully very soon. You want your church to be responsive to people’s needs. 
• Present well: Yes, your organization or network should look good on the web, on paper and in person. Stay current. A neglected website betrays a neglected organization. Dated or antiquated information is not permissible. Avoid hype, but present well. 
• Incentivize your constituency: Keep the need for church planters constantly in front of your constituents. Who do they know who could be used by God to plant a new congregation? Everyone knows someone. I regularly sent out a “spotter form” to our district pastors, offering them a $25 bookstore gift card for sending me a live contact. With that simple incentive, we found many church planters. Look for creative ways to do something similar with your community.
• Recruit both husband and wife: Even if your movement only has male pastors, you’re foolish to neglect “half the church” in your recruiting. I bristle at language that says, “We need a guy … .” In contrast, I love it when we refer to the “men and women” in our movement. When I’m talking with a potential male church planter, I will do everything possible to include the wife. “Could we arrange a phone call or meeting when the three of us can be together?” “Would your wife enjoy a call or a meeting with one of the women of our church planting movement?” (That question is always met with an eager “Yes!”) 
• Invite recruits on vision outings or attraction events: A drive through a potential target area and meeting some people along the way, can really open peoples’ eyes to the harvest. An invitation to attend a regular gathering of church planters will also help legitimize and solidify interest. 
• Learn to speed read people: Familiarize yourselves with basic self-understanding tools such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the StrengthsFinder, because this will help you understand others and serve them better. Even in the earliest conversations, we can pick up on the type of information that best helps the recruit. Some people need more detail and specifics than others, for instance. It’s easy enough to ask people, “Hey, do you know your Myers-Briggs type? And your top strengths? Or your DISC?” 
• Learn phrases: You and your team will develop your own recruiting vernacular, along with some phrases you’ll regularly use. I’ve got several. When people have legitimate questions, for instance, about how church planting impacts a young family, I will try to refer to someone who has done or is doing it. I often say, “In my experience … .” For those who are motivated by the vision, I find myself using words like “opportunity” and “impact.” The question, “Have you ever thought about planting a church?” is a good one. When potential planters are concerned about the risk of church planting, my response is usually, “Well, I guess it depends on how you measure risk. For some people, like me, it’s less risky than going into an established environment that has been plateaued for a long, long time.” And, when they say they’re trying to figure out how God is speaking to them, I’ve often used humor to relieve the tension by teasing, “Well, in my experience, God often speaks to church planters through me!” 
• Learn to write and draw upside-down: I’m serious about this. So often, recruiting appointments happen with participants across the table from each another. The power of pen and paper is especially true in recruiting. Drawing and writing have an amazing capacity to bring focus and to explain complex concepts.This is a learned skill, and I’ve used these hundreds of times in appointments. Most of the time someone says, “Boy, you write good upside down,” which always brings some usually needed levity into the conversation. 
• Don’t over recruit: Working too hard to recruit someone seldom works out. It’s too easy to over promise and under deliver, and it’s a setup for blame. Potential church planters need to hear about the difficulties, challenges and realities of planting a new church. Often those who have planted say, “It is more difficult, and rewarding than what we had imagined going into it.” The best version of recruiting is a work of the Spirit, with each side feeling the tug of His calling. When a promising recruit doesn’t join you, find space for God’s sovereignty, and trust that the Lord is doing His work His way. 

Exponential speakers Tom Nebel Steve Pike recently released Leading Church Multiplication: Locally, Regionally and Nationally. The book focuses on three areas: foundations for a church planting culture; essential planter support systems; and leader strategies, landmines, and booby traps. Nebel and Pike are also offering the exclusive webinar “Creating a Church Planting Culture” to anyone who purchases the book between now and Sept. 8. Learn more about the webinar here.

CATEGORY:: Church Planting, Featured | TAGS:: church plantng, recruitment, Steve Pike, Tom Nebel

10 Vision and Momentum Killers

How do you navigate the challenges and advance the vision for your church to reach your city?

Chris Lagerlof

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Chris Lagerlof is the executive catalyst for Mission Orange County, which is working with churches in 34 cities to collaborate for the good of their city and plant churches that have a city focus. In this guest post, Chris shares what he’s learned about helping others move forward with their vision—and offers 10 vision and momentum killers that every church leader should know about! Chris is one of five leaders who will be talking about city movements at Exponential West in the City Movements Forum. Learn more here.
I’m really good at math, but I don’t enjoy it. In ministry, most everything we implement boils down to simple math. For example if you want 500 people in small groups, you’ll need 50 small group leaders. If you want to take 100 junior high kids to camp, you’ll need 10 youth leaders (and a lot of prayer). If you want to increase your attendance, you’ll need more seats, parking spots, services, volunteers, etc.
The bottom line is that ministry success is often built on simple math. I would even argue that the implementation and execution of vision is built on simple math. To that end, I want to introduce a math formula that I think is critical to moving vision forward in seeing results, especially in church planting: Vision + Clarity + Focus = Performance
I love this! It gets my heart pumping. Here are five principles to seeing your vision move forward as you plant your church.
Your vision must be bigger than the church you’re planting, or your impact will be limited. There’s a huge difference between how you view what’s around your church when you look through a Kingdom lens as opposed to the lens of a church. The church lens is small thinking and tends to be focused just on the gospel of salvation as opposed to the gospel of the Kingdom, which is way bigger! A church lens focuses on producing people who attend church but not necessarily disciples. When you look at anything through a kingdom lens, it’s going to look differently. For church planters, I think that’s huge. Otherwise the church becomes the only thing we know, and the church is the only way we think we can get anything accomplished. When the church is about four walls and a meeting place, we make disciples for the church instead of making disciples for the world. Disciples for the church tend to show up for church. Disciples for the city tend to be focused on transforming the city and the world. Our vision must be bigger than the church we are leading or planting and our obsession must be the Kingdom, not the church.
Clarity is more critical than vision. W. Edwards Deming once said, “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.” This is so true. Too often I hear people share great vision that makes absolutely no sense. Vision is the big picture, a conception of an image, and it indicates where you want to go. Clarity is the filter for our vision, not the vision by itself. Clarity helps us to know our stuff and how vision will become reality.
I get pretty fired up when I hear a church planter share their vision, ideas and dreams. It’s compelling and exciting. At the same time, I become frustrated when they can’t back it up with strategy and tactics. Vision always needs a strategy and plan attached to it. Of course, Nehemiah is the great visionary. I love how when King Artaxerxes asked what Nehemiah needed to accomplish his vision. He just about literally pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket with a list of resources and plan needed to be successful. In the same way, we must have clarity on where we’re going and what’s needed to get there!
Relentless focus will help you avoid vision and momentum killers! First, I believe momentum is usually a byproduct of great vision, and great vision needs momentum to move forward. There is definitely a relationship between vision and momentum. I define momentum as a series of wins needed to move forward and vision as the ability to see forward (or into the future). Recently, I spent a few hours with a few church planters. In our conversation, we talked about the things that can limit (or kill) vision and momentum. I decided to come up with 10 vision and momentum killers I often see in church planting.

1. The belief that vision and momentum happen in a vacuum. Great vision only gets accomplished with great relationships.
2. Settling for the status quo. Believing what is working today will work well in the future. Many times vision and momentum are killed by our past and present successes.
3. Living in “maintenance mode.” Personally, I think this may be the greatest vision and momentum killer. Thinking we have arrived is the beginning of a long slow, painful death for any movement or organization.
4. Not inviting others into the journey. Vision leaks and needs to be shared recklessly.
5. Not effectively resourcing your vision. If vision is important, it needs to have fuel.
6. Not listening. Simple, listen to God and listen to those most relationally connected to the vision. Sometimes we need to simply sit down, shut up and listen!
7. Lack of evaluation. Do as Nehemiah did: Take time to pause, reflect, evaluate and make mid-course corrections.
8. The refusal to join God where He is already at work. Why try to re-create what God has already done or is in the process of doing?
9. Not bringing your “A” game. Vision and momentum requires hard work and excellence. Live with a Malachi 1 mindset.
10. Changing your mind. Too many times momentum and vision die because we don’t remain committed to it, or we become fearful if it doesn’t work as quickly as we hoped.

You need more than a church plant or launch strategy. I’ve blogged about this before because it’s important to me! Don’t mistake participation for transformation! We get so excited about events and people showing up that we sometimes mistake it for actual transformation. In church planting, a lot of the models that have been most embraced for the last 25 years are really event-driven; they’re about the big events, the preview services and the launch. You see church planters and their launch team become a bunch of event planners.
This is something we talk about all the time with our church planters. Often guys will start a church and have some success, but they don’t know what to do next. In their DNA, there’s not a discipleship strategy or growth plan. They’ve got all these people coming, but they’re actually making attendees, not necessarily disciples. It is vital that you think through everything and that you think way beyond your launch. If you don’t do this, you’ll either end up planting a worship service or planting on a strategy of hope.
Your personal plan and ministry plan must be in sync. Last year, I decided that I needed a personal mission statement, so I called a friend who charges over $1,000 an hour to help CEO’s discover just that. After a fun but strenuous exercise, I landed on my personal mission statement. Simply stated, “I exist to help leaders and organizations move forward.” Just typing that makes my heartbeat and creates intense emotion within me! I have walked with several high-functioning leaders through the same exercise and have watched them fill up with passion as they discover their personal mission. The bottom line is simple: If what you’re doing and what you’re passionate about aren’t aligned, then your passion bucket will be empty and ministry won’t be fun and successful. We are at our best when what we are called to be and what we are called to do are in total sync!

‘An Idea That Could Transform the Church’

 

Guest Post: ‘An Idea That Could Transform the Church’

What it takes to produce a genuine Jesus movement–and the necessary role of radical multiplication

Alan Hirsch

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Below, renowned missiologist and author Alan Hirsch offers his insights on how the primary principles explored in the new FREE eBook Spark: Igniting a Culture of Multiplication by Exponential Director Todd Wilson align with the movement-producing precepts Hirsch presents in his watershed title, The Forgotten Ways (theforgottenways.org).
I have had the privilege of working alongside Todd Wilson for a number of years now, and I can quite honestly say that I think he is a real genius when it comes to designing sustainable organizations that can go to scale.  I fondly think of my dear friend Todd as a rather zany scientist (he is a nuclear engineer after all) with an uncanny gift to be able to sense a challenge, imagine new organizations to suit, and then be able to design them in a matter of hours! He is what I call an imagineer—he can both imagine and engineer the organizational future of the church.
It should not be a surprise, therefore, that he has developed and leads an organization called Exponential. In fact, his new eBook, Spark, is a truly excellent example of Todd’s imagineering genius. In it, he powerfully articulates an idea, that if taken seriously, could transform the church, and beyond that the world—the elegantly simple idea of radical, systemic and exponential multiplication. I tend to call it apostolic movement, and I believe it’s the very thing that Jesus has called us to be as His people in the first place. It turns out that our greatest truths are remembered ones!
But make no mistake, this little eBook is more dangerous to our prevailing mindsets than its size and accessibility suggests. Not only does Wilson propose a radical vision of the church as a multiplying sending agency, but also he calls into account our standard metrics for success and exposes critical flaws in our thinking and culture that keep the church from being what Jesus intended us to be—a rapidly expanding movement with transformational impact.
The fact is that just about everything on our current modes, as well as in our inherited theologies of the church and mission, has worked against this very thing. Many of you are going to find this book personally very challenging as well as pretty confrontational in terms of the way we normally go about leading and organizing our churches. Hopefully you, like me, will be so absolutely thrilled by the vision of the church implied in these pages that you will be willing to swallow the sometimes hard medicine that is laced throughout. And because Todd completely believes in the power of “both/and,” and is a long-term advocate of church growth (along with the megachurch and multisite church movements), what he is proposing as actually within leaders’ grasp and capacity, regardless of their context. It is totally doable, but to do what Todd suggests will require significant unlearning (repentance) along with some wonderful new learning along the way. I expect that this little eBook will fuel the movement that is already within you and latent in your church.
The only word of caution is that in the climate of American pragmatism, many will be tempted to think of Spark as a silver bullet. I urge you not to see it as an easy, one-size-fits-all solution to all the spiritual and missional problems you ever had. There is more to becoming an authentic Jesus movement than simply a commitment to multiplication. In other words, while radical multiplication is absolutely necessary for movement to take place, it is not in itself sufficient. Other factors must come into play for genuine, transformative, apostolic movements to emerge in our day. As I have sought to articulate in all my writings, but particularly in The Forgotten Ways, the answer is always in the system itself, and systems have a dynamic and a complexity to them that defies one-dimensional solutions.
According to my own analysis of movements in The Forgotten Ways, to be a genuine Jesus movement will mean that…

• We have to be absolutely clear as to who it is we follow and why we follow Him. It’s our core message—I simply call it Jesus is Lord.
• We will need to have a strategic and systemic commitment to disciple making and discipleship all the way down the line.
• Following the ways of our Lord, we will need to be willing to be sent (missional) as well as be willing to go deep into culture and context (incarnational) to extend the movement—I rather geekishly call this the “missional-incarnational impulse” in The Forgotten Ways.  Sorry about that.
• We will definitely need the type of ministry and leadership that can both generate and sustain a movement over time and space. This is much broader than the standard ways of seeing ministry in terms of teaching and pastoring. The best description of precisely the kind of ministry needed is found in Ephesians 4; namely that of apostle, prophet, evangelist, alongside that of shepherd/pastor and teacher.
• We will also need to cultivate a culture that is willing to take risks, and so put some much needed adventure back into the venture of church. This I call liminality-communitas. Yes I know, another strange term that you will simply have to go check it out for yourself in the book.
• The final critical element in the system is exactly what Todd so brilliantly presents in this book. It involves the deep vision and commitment to multiplication and the willingness to develop the kind of organization that can generate and maintain it in a sustainable manner. Following my confessedly geeky nature, I call it organic systems. Todd simply calls it Spark. Whatever you call it, you need it to be a real gospel movement beyond the weekend service in church buildings.

The only other thing I would perhaps add to Todd’s analysis of what is stopping us from being a multiplication movement is the issue of structure. All of us know all too well the reality of trying to change something after it has started—especially if the model was conceived centuries ago in another time and place. Most of our ways of thinking about church are European derivatives. As a result, most churches and denominations in the United States can hardly be called highly adaptive organizations. Todd is right, you need to make the decisive commitment to multiplication and then you need to build the culture of the church around that. All I would add to that is the need to somehow develop an organizational model to suit.
Of course, all of this will involve necessary unlearning and new learning. But, as Todd envisions here, it can totally be done. Why? Because Jesus has given His church everything we need to get the job done. You are His ecclesia, and the gates of hell will not prevail against your advances. So get to it!
Missiologist and author Alan Hirsch is an award-winning writer on missional movements, including his watershed title The Forgotten Ways,  founder of Forge Mission Training Network and Future Travelers. Find more information at theforgottenways.org.

Add + Multiply

Why we need a micro and macro strategy to create a movement of multiplying churches

Todd Wilson

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In the blog post below, Exponential Director Todd Wilson focuses on the need for the U.S. Church to both add and multiply–to pursue a micro and macro strategy for the start and advancement of a movement of multiplying churches in the United States. 
My friend Rick Ruble loves to play the board game Risk. I don’t remember much about the game, but I do remember Rick’s passion in saying, “Think globally, act locally” repeatedly. The strategy fueled his nearly perfect winning record.
Another way of paraphrasing this strategy is, “you must have a micro or local strategy close to home for adding the next one, and simultaneously a macro strategy for multiplying your impact beyond your local context.” Like Rick knows so well, the two strategies must work in tandem.
This principles of this micro/macro strategy actually find their roots in Jesus’ Commission to make disciples (Matt. 28:19). The truth is that all multiplication has addition at its core: reaching the “next one.” Jesus handed down a model of personal discipleship and evangelism that is solidly addition growth. Our local or micro strategy in church must be to create environments where each and every follower of Jesus can participate in addition with a focus on their personal sphere of influence.
At the same time, we must simultaneously and intentionally have a “macro” strategy that looks beyond our local context and seeks to extend and multiply churches. The macro strategy recognizes that the most powerful way to multiply is to create new churches that become platforms for addition at the individual believer level. Macro results give new contexts and frontiers for micro strategies, and it’s the micro that wins new people to Jesus.
To begin to move forward with creating a movement, the micro (addition) and macro (multiplication) must work in tandem. Movements represent the intersection of a healthy balance between the addition and multiplication strategies; a movement multiplies through addition, with life-on-life and one-on-one relationships offering the best context for adding disciples. The micro (or local) does the heavy lifting of adding while the macro (releasing and sending) gives the context for multiplying. It takes a unique culture to fuel multiplication and movements thinking.
So how do we pursue the addition (micro) and multiplication (macro) simultaneously? It starts with intentionality. We must purpose to continually ask ourselves, “How do we help everyone in our church reach their ‘next one’?” while simultaneously asking, “How do we release and send people to reach the next 100,000?”
Unfortunately, our focus in the U.S. church has focused primarily on micro addition; we have neglected the macro multiplication.

Something Is Just Not Right

As we press into our Exponential 2015 theme of igniting a culture of multiplication, our team set out to identify 10 radically multiplying U.S. churches. When we use the word “radical,” we’re talking about churches that are multiplying in a way that’s so different and so aggressive—compared with our current paradigms and measures of success—that few people would argue whether it’s addition or multiplication. The fruit of these churches is such a testimony that these congregations are adding disciples while radically multiplying without the need for a definition.
We hoped to find just 10 of these churches that we could highlight and learn from. With more than 350,000 churches in the United States, that 10 represents just .003 percent of churches. We spent months looking and inquiring, but we couldn’t find 10. We couldn’t find even three.

Something is just not right. If the church is made to multiply, why don’t we see it?

Why is it easy to find wildly successful growing churches doing all the right things for growth for addition at the “micro” or local church level? It’s far more difficult to find radically multiplying churches like Ralph Moore’s Hope Chapel who are experiencing and igniting multiplication growth. Today, more than 700 churches can trace their roots to the seven churches Ralph started. That’s multiplication! Far more significant than the current numbers is the reality that those 700 churches have multiplication so deeply embedded in their DNA that the resulting additional churches—which will be started over the next 10 years—will likely be mind-blowing.
Church leader/planter, you are perfectly positioned, amid all your struggles and tensions, to be a change maker. That change starts with embracing new ways of thinking. Moving the needle from less than 0.005 percent to greater than 1 percent and then to 10 percent will take a groundswell of next-generation leaders like you who will look beyond the prevailing measures of addition growth and adopt new scorecards of multiplication growth.
Bottom line is that we can’t establish a multiplication culture without bucking conventional thinking and making some radical decisions. How prepared are you? Are you willing to:

• Plant your first church before building or buying your first building;
• Send your first church planter before accumulating your first two to three staff members;
• Commit the first fruits of your financial resources, tithing 10 percent or more to church planting, even before paying other essentials like salaries;
• Plant your first church before starting your first multisite;
• Come alongside and coach other church planters in your area who can benefit from your encouragement and experience;
• Start or join a church planting network, locally or nationally, to collaborate with others, find accountability for multiplying and building a multiplication culture, and get involved in more than you otherwise could?

This article is an excerpt from the new FREE eBook Spark: Igniting a Culture of Multiplication by Todd Wilson. Download your copy here.

How Do We Mix Church Growth With a New Paradigm of Multiplication?

Toronto planter Graham Singh shares how new eBook Spark surfaces important issues

Graham Singh

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How do we mix the church-growth perspective of the large North American church with a new paradigm of multiplication? Do we even know what multiplication looks like?
In the new eBook SPARK: Igniting a Culture of Multiplication (Exponential’s 2015 theme), Exponential Director Todd Wilson looks at the ways in which church growth paradigms dominate our expectations for church. He explains the reason we are seeing so many natural or inevitable glass ceilings in this kind of growth–and how easy it is for our newer church planting movements to fall into the same pattern.
I look at this eBook from two contexts:
1. The first is from my experience as an Anglican minister & church planter in the Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB – home of Alpha) network in the United Kingdom, where God allowed us to re-open 45 church buildings in the context of more than 8,000 having closed nationally. We had experienced multiplication in the UK all right–but with a negative integer! For at least two generations, we sat and watched the traditional models of church failing–only too late did we really wake up to the collapse of huge portions of the massive Church of England.  It was from that context (a lot of fear) that HTB’s church planting began, but was in many ways discouraged or even prevented by our denomination from having long-term control instruments. In other words, we were forced to release every plant to denominational oversight, rather than through our own network.  Or so it may have seemed!
In reading SPARK, I realize that what may have seemed a little cruel at the time was actually part of the secret sauce of HTB’s success–sending churches that had to be able to multiply themselves, because HTB simply  could not keep planting so many seeds, directly. In this context, multiplication has begun to happen, and I  pray that this year’s theme at Exponential will really help our network learn how to press the gas pedal (they  don’t call it that in the UK, but go with me here) even further, and see more plants planting plants who plant. Of HTB’s 45 plants, about half are plants from other plants already.
2. The other context is from where I’m serving now, in a large evangelical church near Toronto. We are an awesome mix of Willow Creek + Alpha + Celebrate Recovery. This church exploded in my small home town, and we stayed in touch via the Alpha network. We felt God calling our family to come back here to help out, and my HTB and Church of England leaders were gracious enough to give me a “hall pass” to head back and share what we had learned. At Lakeside, we see around 2,500 people at weekend services and 500-plus families per month coming through our care centre for food, clothing, haircuts and free dentistry. We are having so much fun as a church! So much so, that two years ago we thought we should buy an old downtown building from one of our mainline church friends,for $1 million.  Our whole church got so excited about this, and we raised the money fairly quickly. But now, raising money for other stuff is kinda … well, hard! We have so loved this adventure, but we can’t keep planting this way and the massive investment we made has given us an inbuilt hesitation to release what we’ve built:

• What if things drift?
• Why is there such strain on “our DNA?”
• Are we multisite?
• Is multisite good/bad/neutral?
• Where does leadership sit?

Help! Take us to a Leadership Network seminar–or give us a book on multiplication!
SPARK speaks right into our situation. This book, in a pre-elder-board-meeting-sized format, opens up some of the most important issues we as a sending/sent church mix need to be grappling with. My hope for our team is that this book will help whet the appetites for a much wider range of leadership in our church, beyond those who are already focused on church planting, and that we can learn together how to manage these tensions, into awesomeness.
Download your FREE copy of SPARK: Igniting a Culture of Multiplication here. 

Graham Singh is a church planter and speaker in the Toronto Area. He has an awesome blog that he accidentally deleted. His favourite project is a new Canadian Church Buildings Pact, which aims to bring Anglican, United (Methodist), Presbyterian and Catholic denominations together with more reformed and other planting networks, in learning about what to do with hundreds of closing church buildings in Canada. Follow him on Twitter @revgrahamsingh

What Inner Struggles Are Keeping You at Status Quo?

Larry Walkemeyer shares about the three huge walls in his heart he had to get over to commit to multiplication

Larry Walkemeyer

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In the excerpt below from the second eBook in Exponential’s new series focused on multiplication, Light & Life Fellowship planter Larry Walkemeyer shares about the inner struggle he experienced as he considered the commitment to be a church that multiplies. In Flow: Unleashing a River of Multiplication in Your Church, Community and World,  he shares about three huge walls in his heart he had to get over to move forward. As he writes, “My thinking needed to be adjusted toward truth in each of these three areas”:

1. The “Skewed Scoreboard” Wall

Imagine watching an NBA basketball game, but unbeknownst to you, the NBA has drastically changed the rules. Now, in addition to field goals being worth two or three points, every assist is worth five points. The game would be totally altered. The celebrity shooters would no longer dominate teams, but the effective passers would be of even greater value. High scorers could be those who never even made a shot. Team play would rise to a whole new level, with scores potentially surpassing 250 points.
I believe God scores the assists. He’s searching for “passers” even more than “shooters.” He’s looking for leaders who are more concerned about who they can launch than how many they can lead. For too long, the scoreboard has been skewed and leaders like myself haven’t played up to our Kingdom potential. The scoreboard, however, is shifting from addition to multiplication.
In my own journey, it has been a radical shift to transition my internal scoreboard from “size” to “impact.” This shift is ongoing because my ego has a tendency toward perpetual resurrection. My struggle is exacerbated by the modern church culture. For decades, the Christian scoreboard has tallied attendance as the criteria for “Most Valuable Player” in the wide world of church. Scant attention has been given to how those numbers arrived, or what those numbers did upon arrival. It was sufficient that they were present in the building.
For years, I have quoted Jesus to reassure myself that my local church was going to grow: “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18, KJV). Someone put a pin in my balloon, however, when they pointed out that this is a promise to the universal Church (big “C”), not my local church. Jesus is far more concerned about the growth of the global Church than He is with whether you hit 10 percent attendance growth this year.
When we start focusing on how we can “assist” the global Church to grow, we have crossed over to true Kingdom thinking. We care about scoring points by helping other churches start and expand. Even if the Christian media fails to recalibrate their scoreboard, we must ask for this renovation in our own hearts. To move the Kingdom forward, this wall must fall down.
2. The “Play It Safe Wall”
I built “play it safe” wall in my mind and in our church. I could have also named it “the wall of fear” or “the wall of risk aversion.” I wanted to build and live behind a wall that would keep our church safe from any threats to its survival or growth. The atmosphere was self-protective selfishness that said, “We have a good thing going; why risk it by giving some of it away?”
For our church and for me, inner fears were like mooring lines tying a boat to the pier. We could build a bigger boat as long as we didn’t have to untie the lines of fear that would let her sail to the world. We knew what it felt like to build the boat, but not what it meant to free her and let the wind of the Spirit take her where He wanted.

Fear always builds walls of protection, but faith builds bridges of freedom. Fear restrains us, but faith releases us.

The more I studied the Book of Acts, the more deeply I was overwhelmed by the bold fearlessness that marked the early church. “Risk” was the daily special on the church’s menu. They took risks for the “Big C” church, not just for their “little c” church. I became convicted that if we were to be a RIVER church, the dam wall must be torn down.
What was I afraid of? I prayerfully probed what type of fears had built this wall and discovered several:

• The fear of failure—What if we give away leaders, people and money, and then the projects fail? We were winning at addition; why risk losing at multiplication?
• The fear of rejection—I realized multiplication meant allowing allegiances to transfer from the “sending pastor” toThis kind of emotional exchange called for deep personal security. Insecurity is a form of fear, so I faced my own inner fears of rejection.
• The fear of loss of control—Multiplication is an empowerment of others, a divesting of the direct management of leaders and people. It is much like a parent who launches their child and must endure the pain of their poor choices. Did I trust God enough to hand over large groups of people to novice shepherds? Each time our church plants, we encourage everyone in our church to ask God whether they are being called to go. I have no control over who leaves on the mission. Could I trust God to replace key staff and lay leaders if they went?

To read about the rest of the fears Walkemeyer faced, download your FREE copy of Flow.

As church leaders, we want to build walls to protect what we look to for safety, but walls of fear do not make us safe or effective. Walls of fear must be attacked with faith, truth and freedom. Every church must dare to take risks that lead to the multiplication of the church.
3. The “YBH” Wall
When I fly for the first time to an international airport, the first item I look for is the terminal map. When I find it, I specifically look for the “you are here” sticker indicating my current location. I call these informative walls the “YBH” walls—the “Yes, But How?” walls. I know where I came from, where I am and where I want to go—“Yes, but how do I get there?”
As a senior pastor, after I was keen to trade in my skewed scoreboard and determined to tear down my walls of fear, I needed to deal with my YBH wall. This was a matter of knowing enough to head the right direction without demanding to know the details of the journey.
The YBH wall will only topple through a combination of information and trust. The more you learn about multiplication cultures, the clearer your destination will become. The further you move forward, the more you will discover you have to trust God for answers along the way. It requires both knowledge and dependence.
As we prepared to become a multiplying church, I started researching “church planting” and “multiplication movements.” I learned from the successes and failures of others. I asked questions of the pioneers. Throughout the process, I pursued three specific types of knowledge:

• Vision knowledge I wanted to understand the “WHAT” I was being called to. I learned what it looked like for churches to plant churches. If I could get a picture of what the future might look like, then we could begin to build toward it.
• Motivation knowledge I also grew in my knowledge of the “WHY.” Why was the risk of planting churches worth it? Why was it biblically, sociologically and ecclesiological vital to plant churches? Why was it essential to the health of my local church to plant churches? If I had a clear vision of “WHY,” we could figure out the “HOW.”
• Skills knowledge Then I started to research what skills and technical knowledge would be vital to planting. What “HOW” questions needed to be addressed, even if they couldn’t be fully answered at the outset?

The YBH wall is a tall one that can quickly seem overwhelming. However, the more you develop a vision, know the compelling heart of God behind it and learn what you can about it, the smaller that wall becomes.
The potentially discouraging news is that “wall-busting” is not a one-time thing. However, this recurring challenge forces us to continue to confront those internal enemies that block us from expanding the Kingdom to the maximum territory possible.
Download your FREE copy of Flow: Unleashing a River of Multiplication in Your Church, Community and World by Larry Walkemeyer. 

How to Use Your God-given Influence to Be a Kingdom Builder (Part 1)

By Rick Warren

Everyone has influence. We all influence someone. And God expects us to be good stewards of that influence for His kingdom’s sake. He didn’t give us our influence for selfish purposes on our part, but so that we might share the good news about him – so that we could be Kingdom builders.
What exactly is a “kingdom builder?” It’s someone who has…

• A great purpose to live for. And for the Christian, we have the greatest purpose of all – to rescue people for eternity through Jesus. Kingdom builders demonstrate a great commitment to the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.
• Great principles to live by. A Kingdom builder is one who has a different source from which to draw wisdom – God’s eternal truth revealed in the Bible.
• Great power to live on. A Kingdom builder operates in a different power that the rest of the world – the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit who offers guidance every step of the way.
• Great people to live with. A Kingdom builder gathers with God’s people and joins up with a small group for encouragement and accountability.

There are at least a dozen principles we learn from Scripture about how to use our influence as a Kingdom builder. I’m going to share six this week and six next week. First of all,
1. Everybody has influence.
What you do with the influence you currently have will determine whether or not your influence grows more. And you have far more influence than you realize. You influence people everyday through your smile, conversation, email, voting, etc. In order to understand what influence is, it’s helpful to understand what influence is NOT.

• Influence is not a position.
• Influence is not authority.
• Influence is not fame.
• Influence is not wealth.

You can have any one of those and not actually have influence.
2. God expects me to use the influence he’s given to me.
Influence is like a muscle. The more you use it, the more it grows. It takes courage. You’ll have to get out of your comfort zone, speak up when you’re intimidated, and serve others when you don’t feel like it. Jesus challenged us to let our light shine and to be like salt that preserves and flavors the world around us. In other words, you have to decide to put your influence to use.
3. My influence is for the benefit of others.
When God gives you influence, it isn’t for the purpose of making you rich or famous, especially for your own pleasure. He gives you influence because He uses people to help other people. It’s about others. And the blessings of your influence are not for you to consume but for you to share.
4. If i’m not influencing them, they’re influencing me.
This is one of those truths naive leaders miss. Not only do we all influence others, but we’re all influenced by others as well. And when we’re unaware of the power that others have to influence us, we’ll allow our hearts to compromise. Just as Lot failed to influence the cities of the plain in Genesis, we too can become attached to the values of the culture we’re hoping to change.
5. The purpose of influence is to speak up for those that have no influence.
Psalm 72 is a prayer for leaders, and it says, “Please stand up for the poor, help the children of the needy, come down hard on the cruel tyrants.” In other words, God, please help leaders to use their influence on behalf of those who have little voice or platform of their own – the poor, the fatherless, the diseased and isolated, the slave and the oppressed.
6. I will answer to God for how I used my influence.
I am eternally accountable for how I used the influence God gave me in this life. What I do with my influence in the temporary world matters forever, and the Bible is filled with proof of this. The question God will ask every human being in His judgment is, “What did you do with my Son, Jesus?” And the question He will ask everyone who is a member of His family is, “What did you do with the time and the resources and the influence I gave you?”
I want to influence this world in light of the next. That’s our calling as Kingdom builders!