A Church That Multiplies

Our shared objective is 30 new Kingdom advancing environments in the next 10 years. This is not merely my job or the job of our office, but rather it is a goal that we all are pursuing together. To better pursue this goal, for the next few months I am going to outline a few qualities of a church that multiplies. You can engage these qualities on several levels. First, you can engage them intellectually, allowing yourself to learn what a church that multiplies looks like. Second, you can engage them emotionally, allowing how you feel about the qualities described to inform your posture. Hopefully, you are willing to engage these qualities transformationally, where you take a moment to evaluate the degree to which your ministry embodies the qualities described and make some shifts to better embody these values.

At the center of a church that multiplies is an embedded belief that God is at work and we are invited to join God in that work. This quality is “Divine Expectation and Engagement”. A church that expects divine activity and actively works towards pursuing engaging in activity with the divine is a church that has potential to multiply. At the center of every fruitful, Kingdom-oriented, life-transformational multiplying ministry is a profound dependence on God. Apart from God we can do nothing.

An interesting phenomenon that I have observed is that often when we have low expectations we end up with those results. In parenting, when I expect little from my kids, they often end up giving little. Yet when I raise the expectations, they often are able meet them. If my posture in my spiritual life is that the spiritual life is a struggle often that is what my experience will be, yet when my posture is raised to a higher expectation informed by a victorious Jesus who died and rose again who I now can live in intimate relationship with somehow my experience often is heightened. Our expectations inform our outcomes.

When it comes to your church what do you expect from God? When you gather for worship is the posture of your church more routine or do you expect that God might do something special and unique? What about when your staff meets? Or when you have a board meeting? How might your church look different if everyone had the expectation that God is at work and God is inviting us to join in that work? The first quality of a church that multiplies is “Divine Expectation and Engagement”.

Kyle Magstadt

Associate Superintendent for Church Multiplication
North Central District of The C&MA