Multiplication—it sounds bold, ambitious, risky… maybe even unrealistic. But is it? Should every church, including yours, be involved multiplication. Derek and Scott unpack what holds churches back from multiplying, whether you’re in the city or regional areas, in a large church or a small church.

  • What do we mean by multiplication?
  • What stops people thinking about multiplication in terms of convictions, culture and constructs?
  • What are the options for a church to be involved in church planting if they are not ready to plant?

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TRANSCRIPT:
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

00:00:08:17 – 00:00:09:21
Scott
Good. I am Scott Sanders.

00:00:09:21 – 00:00:10:06
Derek
I’m Derek.

00:00:10:06 – 00:00:29:18
Scott
Hannah. Welcome to the One Thing, a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for gospel centered ministry every week. And the one thing is brought to you by rich Australia. We want to see thousands of healthy, evangelistic, multiplying churches. What does that mean? It means new churches need to be launched and started and kicked off. And it means existing established churches need to get healthy.

00:00:29:20 – 00:00:43:12
Scott
And we want to see them grow and revitalized and taking the gospel out to the regions that they’re a part of. But for now, you’ve pressed on another episode of The One Thing. What’s holding back church multiplication?

00:00:43:14 – 00:01:02:23
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00:01:03:00 – 00:01:07:22
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And now back to the podcast.

00:01:07:24 – 00:01:23:15
Scott
Yeah, Derek. Multiplication is kind of one of those funny, funny words because, you know, it has this kind of I think this, this picture of exponential growth and five times ten times, which just doesn’t seem realistic often.

00:01:23:17 – 00:01:42:09
Derek
Yeah. It is a funny word. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It’s a word that can certainly turn people off. But I don’t, it’s not an unbiblical word. It’s not an unbiblical idea. And so I think we we need to work out what it looks like in that context, and that that’s a part of part of it is a nuance how we understand the word.

00:01:42:09 – 00:01:49:04
Derek
But we have to grapple with what that word means, because there is a biblical, drive in nature, I think, to the idea of multiplication. Yeah.

00:01:49:06 – 00:02:02:06
Scott
I think when we hit the way we think, kind of rabbits, not, you know, horses and elephants and giraffes in terms of multiplication, you know, slow gestation periods. Not, you know, massive amounts of rabbits running around the place.

00:02:02:07 – 00:02:18:21
Derek
Yes, yes, except in Queensland, where they’re illegal. But, yeah, that is, I think there is that sense of, how do you if you if you’re really large, what does multiplication look like? If you’re really small as well, like if you’re in a regional area country, what is multiplication like, how do we grapple with that in that kind of area.

00:02:19:00 – 00:02:24:21
Derek
So yeah, I think there there is a nuance to this understanding of what multiplication looks like, where we do need to grapple with it.

00:02:25:02 – 00:02:32:23
Scott
And I’m sure a number of people listening and just saying, well, why can’t churches just grow? Why do they need to multiply?

00:02:33:00 – 00:02:52:08
Derek
Well, I suppose I think I’d nuance that by saying, I think we all need to be involved in multiplication. And so with that’s at a local church level, or whether that’s at a, being involved in multiplication across the country or the world. I think we want to be involved in praying for and, and it where we’re where else we can.

00:02:52:08 – 00:03:20:04
Derek
We’ll talk about later other aspects of multiplication because we want to see the gospel multiply at every level of, consciousness all the life. We want to see people become Christians. That’s multiplying disciples. We would love seeing our own church as well, where possible. The multiplication of, you know, small groups. We’ve got them. It’s it’s growth in that context is, hopefully a natural expression of, the Christian faith of sharing one on one like this, my personal growth.

00:03:20:06 – 00:03:25:06
Derek
Maturity. But this multiplication, hopefully of numbers in there as well. So I, it’s not a either all. Yeah.

00:03:25:11 – 00:03:49:06
Scott
And shifting conversation to not being this sort of big multiplication exercise of planning a mother daughter church or, starting a new congregation, doubling in, you know, splitting a congregation in the morning. These are all like, I guess, harder multiplication exercises, but actually helping people see they can start start small. So what do you think is holding back churches in Australia from multiplication?

00:03:49:08 – 00:04:04:16
Derek
Again, I think initially my conversation with them, it’s probably three. Let me put in three categories. First of all. And I talk about these categories in other context as well. Sometimes it’s conviction. Sometimes it’s the culture and sometimes it’s the kind of constructs.

00:04:04:16 – 00:04:09:10
Scott
Okay. Well, let’s let’s go back to first one conviction. These three cities.

00:04:09:12 – 00:04:31:11
Derek
The convictions I it part of this started conversation was, oh, do people have the conviction around what it looks like to multiply and healthy? Why do we want to reach the lost? Are we willing to push into being uncomfortable in our own church if it means the ability to see more people become Christians? And so this we have to grapple with the conviction that, people are going to hell.

00:04:31:17 – 00:04:46:18
Derek
This is the only way people need to hear him. And so what are we going to do in this moment? We find ourselves in salvation history, in order to see that happen. So there’s a conviction piece that has to happen there. If people are if we get to the point of multiplying in a healthy way for healthy reasons.

00:04:46:20 – 00:05:07:22
Derek
So that’s where we, we want to start. People can multiply for really unhealthy reasons. That’s why I want to start a conviction. That’s one reason why people don’t get there. The, the second one is the culture piece. And so sometimes churches don’t have a culture of multiplication, or sometimes the history of the church pushes back against, multiplication in that sense.

00:05:07:22 – 00:05:32:06
Derek
So there’s been a number of churches, that we’ve worked with in the network that’s been interesting that the history has been one in the past 20, 30 years. The history has been one of multiplication, where they’ve historically landed a number of churches off or done these things, and it hasn’t quite worked. And so the last maybe, you know, five, ten years has been the bane of of unwind ING them and seeing the impact.

00:05:32:06 – 00:05:48:12
Derek
Yeah, I want to say this is a different conversation, but I want to say there’s a whole number of things. I went on picking that in that narrative, because the narrative that has emerged, I’ve seen is playing doesn’t work. And that drives me absolutely bananas because I think there’s a better diagnosis. We can do that, but whatever, that’s a different conversation.

00:05:48:12 – 00:06:09:05
Derek
But the culture piece has been no, no. Planning doesn’t work. And so we want to we’re really hesitant about we’re all about making disciples. We’re happy to multiply within our church. But multiplication of sort, church planting in in its forms, there’s a culture that pushes back against that, even if people might not say that unless there’s a culture piece that we need to grapple with about.

00:06:09:07 – 00:06:13:12
Derek
Sometimes the church is the narrative. Church planting doesn’t work that level.

00:06:13:14 – 00:06:19:15
Scott
So conviction culture thirdly constructs.

00:06:19:17 – 00:06:41:20
Derek
This is the, the ability to have models in their head about what obligation looks like. When I talk about multiplication, I know I’ve used it slightly differently in a number of different contexts in this conversation, but generally I want to talk about multiplication. Is is the multiplying of church congregation church committees offsite? That’s normally what I want to say, but we work with churches congregation multiplication as well.

00:06:41:22 – 00:06:57:10
Derek
But the constructs run saying, how is it that my church mission, where we are to multiplying an off site community, off site church, whether that is a kind of pioneer plant in the middle of nowhere where we’re sending a couple who are going to plan there, whether it’s a kind of mother daughter we send down the road.

00:06:57:12 – 00:07:19:00
Derek
And we they’re heading towards independence, or whether it’s a kind of multi-site campus, whether it’s a ministry, it’s reaching marginalized communities across culture. How do we multiply that? The actual, skills and constructs and understanding principles behind how we do that? That is probably the third piece. The reason we don’t say churches are moving towards multiplication.

00:07:19:02 – 00:07:36:24
Scott
And it, it’s a it’s helpful to kind of, finish there in the sense to sort of say you need to have the vision for multiplication, but then actually it’s going to require change. It’s going to require you to, think, you know, the competency in leaders thinking that your competency is as a senior leader or as a group of, a group of elders who are wrestling with this decision.

00:07:37:01 – 00:08:02:22
Scott
You’re going to need to actually remove some, significant barriers, potentially, so there’s, it’s helpful to have that as a separate area just sort of on peak and, and unpack, but also potentially say, actually, it might not be too, too hard to remove some of those barriers in order to, support a church panel, the sending of a couple, which, which, which is a group, you know, sending in a K family and church and a number of K families and, and supporting them in prayer and with finances.

00:08:02:24 – 00:08:10:08
Scott
But it’s, perhaps, you know, less, you know, less worth than splitting a service within a church. At times it.

00:08:10:08 – 00:08:22:12
Derek
Is, it is. And this is where the kids. So this is why we put together just a page in some tools. Rigid. Right. Accommodate you. Forward slash multiplication. That’s. Bring it up, Jim. Like, we don’t do that in the do all we to do.

00:08:22:14 – 00:08:30:10
Scott
Registrar.com that I use forward slash multiplication well known Australian podcast. Sorry.

00:08:30:12 – 00:08:48:17
Derek
So that we put together this page so that people can, understand a couple of things. One is, how they can be involved, no matter where they are, across the spectrum of things, how they can be involved in multiplication. So everyone can be playing, praying for church plants across Australia. Doesn’t to be this is not in your many context, but anywhere across Australia.

00:08:48:17 – 00:09:03:06
Derek
So we want to let people know what’s happening in that. Praying for it. We would say some churches are in the position financially as well where they can financially give to church plans, even though they may not be able to church plan and actually make that church funding possible and partner with them in that way so you can be involved.

00:09:03:07 – 00:09:21:12
Derek
Multiplication. Some church plans will be able to send maybe 510 families out, even though that Denver planter, some churches will have a plan to and be able to plant themselves, and some churches will be those incubators of planting continually. So we want to say to churches, just jump on that website, see where you might be. That’s the first question.

00:09:21:12 – 00:09:32:05
Derek
Where are you? How can you right now, everyone right now can be involved in multiplication. And we want to ask churches, maybe, maybe there is a way which you could move towards that next step of multiplication.

00:09:32:05 – 00:09:51:04
Scott
Okay, you get it. You’re getting you’re getting you’re getting ahead of yourself to slow down. Sorry I be passionate, because I reckon a whole bunch of people are thinking, yeah, there’s a whole bunch of myths. I think we believe in the church. Yeah. So, you know, my church is just so small. We’re barely getting things done.

00:09:51:06 – 00:09:54:01
Scott
How can we resource something outside of ourselves?

00:09:54:03 – 00:09:54:20
Derek
Yeah.

00:09:54:22 – 00:10:16:14
Scott
Well, we’re about growing. You know, we’re actually about growing here, and. And that’s going to actually take heat energy momentum away from, you know, from our ambition and our local mission. That’s really important where in this context or actually, we tried we tried church planting and it doesn’t work. Unpick some of those myths for us.

00:10:16:16 – 00:10:17:13
Derek
Just feeling annoyed.

00:10:17:14 – 00:10:24:13
Scott
Let’s start with it. Let’s start with the first one, that church. But it doesn’t work. And the reality is, yeah, it’s right. It doesn’t work sometimes. And.

00:10:24:18 – 00:10:25:16
Derek
That’s the very nature.

00:10:25:16 – 00:10:26:21
Scott
Of what we need to own.

00:10:27:01 – 00:10:44:03
Derek
Absolutely. Just like me sharing the gospel with my friend doesn’t something I don’t become a Christian every single time that that look there is a there’s an uncertainty to these things in church planning has a higher degree of uncertainty than other things. That is absolutely right. But that doesn’t mean we don’t do hard things. Mean we don’t, do we?

00:10:44:03 – 00:11:02:21
Derek
Y up the cost, we’re y stewards, but we still do those things. And so that’s why as a network as well, we want to keep talking to each other and learning from each other about what is it that didn’t make this thing work. And that’s that’s the challenge of all this narrative flying around at the moment. I don’t think the right diagnosis is being done about what didn’t work.

00:11:02:21 – 00:11:14:04
Derek
Yeah. And so this narrative that’s been created and I don’t think it reflects reality. And so all I’m saying is a network. Yeah. Things are hard. They don’t work sometimes. Doesn’t mean we don’t do them, just means we work out why they didn’t work and we do them differently next.

00:11:14:04 – 00:11:35:00
Scott
So it’s helpful. Do the autopsy. If you have seen a church plant, ask the questions. What you know, what are some of the reasons why it didn’t work as a as a network? We’ve got like a better 9,090% success rate or 89.2% success rate at the moment. You know, under God and because of a great, generous network, that’s that’s working hard to assess.

00:11:35:00 – 00:11:49:05
Scott
Coach. Implant. We’ve seen we’ve seen the survivability, you know, score increase over time. What about what? Just about growing. Yep. What’s behind that kind of kind of miss, you know, look, and growing is more achievable, too. You.

00:11:49:05 – 00:12:01:20
Derek
Talking about numerically, right? That narrative. Yeah. Yeah, I guy yeah. It’s funny, I it, I don’t think any church really believes that narrative. Like in a way just building straw men here. So I, I understand that, in order that,

00:12:02:00 – 00:12:05:16
Scott
Straw man could, you know, can we can we can push him down and not here in the room.

00:12:05:17 – 00:12:29:10
Derek
That’s our argument. Now, I no one, no one really thinks that when push comes to shove, if they, desperately believe that salvation history is coming to a point where everyone lives with God, because we pray for the world, we we use our energy as a church to support missionaries overseas. Outside our context. And so, yes, of course, we want to grow here.

00:12:29:10 – 00:12:40:09
Derek
These two things are not in opposition. Of course we want to grow here. But I want to say that that doesn’t at any point restrict us from being involved in the work of the gospel elsewhere as well. Yeah.

00:12:40:11 – 00:12:56:24
Scott
Now, the first to my church is still too small and we’re barely getting things done. I feel like your wheel of multiplication, and already your passion and push to say it doesn’t need to look like too much. Just praying. And perhaps, you know, sending some, sending some some resource. Yeah, yeah.

00:12:57:05 – 00:13:17:24
Derek
And look, you know, I don’t want to the first point of praying is not a not a concession. I’ve can’t do anything else. Just pray. I want to say no. We want to read the Bible. Absolutely is the foundation for everything. And I think it does a number of things. One is it begins to, engage with what God is doing, not just in our own context, but the rest of Australia as well, and praying for the rest of Australia.

00:13:18:01 – 00:13:40:19
Derek
I think it opens our eyes the fact that, yeah, God is working differently in different places as well. So I think it works on a number of levels. I think also I would say, it can that, that heart investment in praying for multiplication in other contexts, it will over time lift our eyes and, and reshape our heart to seeing opportunities in our local contexts that we might take up.

00:13:40:21 – 00:14:06:22
Derek
Not every context, you know, not in every context. Will your church be able to plant and offsite church. That’s just the reality. And that’s okay. That’s not, moral judgment. But we want to say every church can be involved in multiplication in some ways. Through praying. Absolutely. And maybe financially as well. Like that, that actually imagine if your church could financially partner every two years with a new church plant just to get them off the ground?

00:14:06:24 – 00:14:13:17
Derek
You would be directly involved in church planning and reaching Australia across the country. So it’s not a small thing.

00:14:13:17 – 00:14:31:20
Scott
So I had to reach Australia to accommodate. I use for multiplication to see the wheel of multiplication. Some of those days we talked about is where you can be church informed and praying. You can be a resourcing church that gives financially, materially to churches. You can be a sending church. It’s actually sending out people to, to plant a church.

00:14:31:22 – 00:14:55:03
Scott
You can be a hub church. So a church which has a conviction capacity and context to plant multiple churches, or you can be a multiplying church. They’ve got the commitment and the capability to plant churches to train and send out, church planners. So really helpful diagnostic tool. What’s your hope and, prayer just from having this conversation and, and talking about it across a network.

00:14:55:05 – 00:14:56:09
Scott

00:14:56:11 – 00:15:20:22
Derek
Yeah. The big picture was what unite our whole network talks about. We want to see Australia reach for cross. That’s what we want to see. We want to see, hundreds of churches and hundreds of new ministries that reach hundreds of all different kinds of people in all different ways of life across Australia. And so that that’s my prayer to kind of national level at that kind of personal level, I want to see it was heart oriented towards the lost in the gospel.

00:15:20:24 – 00:15:27:22
Scott
So give me a picture. If I’ve dropped in on a church that has this multiplication attitude. Yeah. What would I say? That’s different.

00:15:27:24 – 00:15:49:01
Derek
What you’ll see differently is, people who don’t find multiplication easy because I’m not sure anyone finds that sacrificial nature. Most guys do multiplication easy. But you will find a people who are willing to do the hard thing, to reach the lost rather than the comfortable thing for themselves. So just for example, I was talking to a church plant the other day.

00:15:49:03 – 00:16:11:21
Derek
They’ve got a number of growth groups who are too big now. They’ve grown too big for their room. And so they have to find this, challenge of of splitting and multiplying. It’s not comfortable, but they realize if they don’t do that, new people can’t join their groups. So this is that’s the kind of nature they will make that decision for the good of the new person coming in for the good of the lost in order to reach them.

00:16:11:23 – 00:16:25:18
Derek
That’s the kind of church you’ll see that has a an attitude towards multiplication. It’s more about the lost. It’s more about the sacrificial nature of doing the hard things for the gospel rather than their own comfort.

00:16:25:20 – 00:16:29:06
Scott
So, Derek, what’s the one thing you want to say about multiplication?

00:16:29:10 – 00:16:37:12
Derek
Everyone can be involved. Multiplication, fact. Everyone should be involved in multiplication at some level, because we are desperate to say the lost reached across Australia in the world.

00:16:37:14 – 00:17:01:21
Scott
Excellent. Appreciate your passion. And also I appreciate your desire to actually help churches think into this and what it looks like in, in their, in their context, their ministry context. I’m just gonna open up the toolbox really quickly. We talked about the multiplication page. Head to tweet reach australia.com drive forward slash multiplication also I want to point out the church planting podcast Planting Australia.

00:17:01:23 – 00:17:32:05
Scott
That’s a great podcast to to share with someone who’s thinking about planting. That’d be a great podcast. If you’re a church and you’re trying to work out where you’re on the multiplication wheel, how you can kind of start and be, engaged from the beginning. And if you’re a church that has the capacity to be multi-site, so, so your full your maximize just your facilities or you’re moving towards that, and you want to get, ahead and start planning and be intentional about starting a new site or new campus, or potentially someone just giving you the opportunity, by, by sharing a building that’s actually been unused.

00:17:32:07 – 00:17:50:05
Scott
Then head to the playlist on multi-site, from this year’s, conference. If you think this is helpful episode, we would love it if you would pass it around. I share it within your team. Share it within your church. Pass it on to your elders. We want to see a culture of multiplication happening across the church all over Australia.

00:17:50:07 – 00:17:51:12
Scott
I’m Scott sanders, I’m.

00:17:51:12 – 00:17:52:05
Derek
Derek Hannah.

00:17:52:07 – 00:17:52:19
Scott
Jackson.