A few years ago, Ed Stetzer and I co-wrote a resource to catalyze movemental church planting. It’s called “1,000 Churches: How Past Movements Did It—And How Your Church Can, Too.” This is the final chapter.

In order to experience a movement of multiplication and plant 1,000 churches in your lifetime, you need to multiply everything: disciples, leaders, groups, ministries, and churches. Multiplication needs to literally become the core value for your church. It has to be so core that it becomes viral—spreading, infecting, and reproducing everywhere.

From the foundation of a church, success needs to be redefined from addition to multiplication. It requires a fundamental shift of metrics and celebration in the culture of your church. Part of how you do that is by carefully evaluating what you celebrate, what you mourn, and the stories you tell. When those three things in the life of your church tie back to multiplication from the beginning, it will help develop both a tangible culture (in what is measured) and an intangible culture (in what is felt) to drive toward a new way of approaching success.

There are steps we can take now to help increase our church planting passion and capacity. They will help us get there but only as part of a broader movemental focus. For example, churches and denominations can and must:

1. Welcome the Planter

Let’s be transparent. If you are a church planter, just look at yourself in the mirror. You can be a pain at times. You are a maverick and a self-starter, an entrepreneur. You can also be hard to work with. That drive is part of what makes you successful, and that same drive can kill or stagnate your church if left unchecked or unfocused. You had a vision of the way church should be when you planted, and it was obviously “better” than others you experienced. This is the God-given dissatisfaction that leads visionaries to plant churches.

The first principle to move toward viral multiplication is to not be offended when church planters you raise up and send out feel the same about you. When others don’t want to work out of your playbook, it is easy to become offended or cut capable leaders off from the pipeline because of a perceived lack of alignment (for more information about pipeline, see point three below). In these moments, self-awareness and a kingdom mindset are vital to holding fast to multiplication.

Remember that you likely felt the same way when planting your church.

Instead, begin listening to the dreams that God has laid on the heart of capable leaders in your church. Default to openness, and seek to be a leader who equips others for gospel ministry. Part of an equipping leader mentality involves helping budding leaders harness their holy discontent and channel it toward kingdom ministry. Instead of criticizing pre-existing systems, listen to their ideas and celebrate their passion, but be open to critique. Help them redirect it from theory to practical next steps, disciple them toward personal maturity, and guide them toward a wise course of action.
If you want to plant rabbits, you need to learn how to let go and welcome the planter who wants to hunt for carrots in a different way than you have.

2. Start a Network

In order to create movemental energy where you can continually influence daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter churches, starting a network is incredibly effective in aligning multiple churches onto a similar page. It cannot be about power or control; the motivation must be gospel partnership and a transferrable vision. The team must be stronger together than separate. After all, the only way you are going to get to 1,000 churches in your lifetime is if you take a rabbit approach, rather than an elephant one.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, and in the same way, it must take a network to raise a movement. As you think about a network, it’s important to remember principle number one: there is a fine balance between alignment with vision and theology versus an openness to a wide-variety of approaches and systems. If your network is too closed, it will never reach viability and be able to multiply because there will not be enough people able to fit into your model. However, if your network is too open, it will be so broad that major theological differences will cause more division among the team than alignment. It requires a fine balance, with much prayer and intention, but creating a network will give you the medium to be able to continually add coals onto and fan the flames of multiplication. More on this later.

Creating a network, for those wondering, does not mean you can’t be a part of a denomination. Actually, smart denominations are encouraging networks, as we explain in the book we co-authored, Planting Missional Churches. Take a look at the two largest evangelical denominations (neither of whom generally likes to be called a “denomination”), the Southern Baptists and the Assemblies of God. They have intra-denominational networks (The SEND Network in the Southern Baptists and The Church Multiplication Network in the Assemblies of God), both of which help church planting nationally and locally.

3. Implement a Leadership Pipeline.
Unless you have a way to develop leaders at every level of your church (volunteers, leaders, coaches, ministry directors, and senior leaders) you will never get to 1,000 churches, let alone reproduce your own church at least once. We’re not talking about leadership placement; we’re talking about leadership development and there’s a difference.

Leadership development versus leadership placement becomes an unseen force that, like driving while the emergency brake is activated, can greatly hinder a church from effective multiplication and movement. With placement, you take an already strong leader and place them in a position or role. And in budding church plants, where a planter is desperate for any help, this is often the easiest, simplest, and quickest way to fill in the gaps.

But it’s near impossible to change that culture as the church begins to grow. Recruitment focuses on the placement of the right leaders in the right positions, and prayer for qualified leaders becomes prominent in staff meetings. Those in the wings who are humble and teachable, yet inexperienced, are left without an opportunity. On the other hand, leadership development looks for the humble and teachable person who has the potential to grow into a leadership role. Metrics are less about experience and more about willingness. Prayer for qualified leaders is more about humble people over experienced professionals. This allows all God’s people, and especially those who are young and passionate for ministry experience, to have an opportunity for growth. Often the most qualified and passionate leaders in a culture of multiplication are the ones that have been raised up from within that culture. It becomes less about adopting someone else’s vision and more about being shaped within and in the vision of your church. When churches crack this development versus placement code, they release the parking brake, shift into first gear, and burn rubber on the multiplication highway.

Over a two-year process, LifeWay Leadership convened 18 leadership experts. These were leaders in the church and outside of it, from different backgrounds, perspectives, and positions. Through a series of meetings, we wrestled through the idea of leadership development and if there were a core set of competencies that leaders shared, regardless of position. As outlined in the book, Leadership Code, 60-70 percent of leadership is transferable from position to position. In other words, up to 70 percent of what makes a leader effective in one organization, role, or position, is transferable to another organization, role, or position. In the course of these meetings, we uncovered over 280 competencies that effective leaders shared. While studying and filtering through this data, we uncovered a pattern. There were six broad categories that stood out as common themes:

• Discipleship: Theological and spiritual development
• Vision: Preferred future
• Strategy: Plan or method for the preferred future
• Collaboration: Ability to work with others
• People Development: Contributing to the growth of others
• Stewardship: Overseeing resources within one’s care

These are the six core competencies for any and every leader within your church. Of course there are ministry-specific competencies, like rhythm for a musician or the ability to ask questions for small group leaders. However, regardless of the ministry area that leaders serve in, these six shared core competencies will guide their growth and development.

So, have you implemented a leadership pipeline in your church that develops new leaders and doesn’t simply train those already qualified?

4. Start a Residency Program

This is the bread and butter of a larger reproducing church. A residency program is the pathway to raise up and release your first church planter. Unless your church is churning out church planters left, right, and center, how do you expect to catalyze others to do the same? Training church planters involves more than just training on how to send out a mailer. This must be a sustainable, reproducible, and simple residency that trains in spiritual maturity, practical ministry competencies, and theological knowledge. Church planters need to be generalists, and a residency that is robust enough to give potential planters experience in every area of ministry benefits the church and the planter. You need to model being a church planting church so that all of your daughter churches will do the same, and their daughter churches, and their daughter churches. Through this residency program you will assess, train, fund, and coach your future army of church planters. And if a planter has been raised up within your system and has personally benefited from it, they will become the chief evangelist and the strongest advocate for doing it in their church. Whatever impacts us the most is what we will champion, celebrate, and share.

5. Plant by Multiplication, Not Primarily by Funding, but Care About Funding

You can’t buy your way into a church multiplication movement. If 1,000 churches were for sale, you can bet there would be a firestorm of people vying to buy! You can’t get into this scale of reproduction with money alone. It’s important to remember that money is definitely a factor. After all, networks like Acts 29 and ARC have large churches with big budgets that have funded their operations. So, if you’re going to create and facilitate a national or even a global network to plant 1,000 churches, then you’ll need to put a disproportioned amount of funding in. But, the key factor is having multiplying churches that will support churches, because you will never have enough. There are typically two ways to do this.

Pay It Back: When you send out a church planter with money, you can ask them to give a percentage back into the network’s church planting fund, in order to resource future church plants. We prefer that you ask planters to give back in perpetuity so that they feel like they’re a part of the team, stay connected to the network, and are continuing to resource other church plants, instead of simply paying back a loan.

Pay It Forward: You can also tell planters to pay it forward. In other words, when you give them money, you can ask them to commit to continually giving a percentage of their budget into church planting. This would be something that the leadership of their church would direct and lead, rather than a centrally controlled fund by the network or the mother church.

This keeps churches relationally connected with their church plants and deeply vested in their success. Where the money goes, that’s where the heart goes, too. Churches that directly fund other churches develop a heart connection.

Funding is a sacrifice, especially for a church plant. But the benefit of funding new churches as a budding church is the DNA that it instills. Remember, whatever is measured is accomplished, and whatever narrative is celebrated or mourned shapes the culture. So the sacrifice of money will reap far greater-reaching rewards in shaping a multiplication culture.

6. Be Born Pregnant

Imagine if every church plant you sent out was born pregnant? What if, in every church planting prospectus, church planters outlined their plan for planting their first daughter church? This can be a plan for recruitment, filling the residency in the formation stage, or setting aside resources to draw planters in. The most important factor in this idea is simply having a plan. For example, on the very first Sunday at Grace Church—the church I (Ed) most recently planted—we announced that 100 percent of our very first offering was going to go to our daughter church plant. This is what essentially shaped our DNA from the beginning. And when we planted, that’s what we did. Subsequently, we’ve sent out two of our leaders and elders to plant churches—one in Nashville and one internationally. The seeds at the beginning of a church and a movement determine so much of the outcome.

7. Open More Lanes

In addition to developing a traditional path to assess, train, fund, and coach church planters (your residency program), you need to open other lanes in order to plant 1,000 churches in your lifetime. For example, what’s the path to plant for bi-vocational planters? Your training needs to be adaptable enough for the 20-something-year-old barista steaming drinks for rent money, as well as the 65-year-old retired individual who has his financial freedom, but has received a call from God to plant. It needs to be layered so that a bi-vocational family-man can be trained in the same system as a full-time, newly married resident. Maybe it would take longer, but a graduated, inclusive program will train a wider array of people. What about planting a church among immigrants? Or what about planting house churches outside the edge of town? The training must work in multiple cultures, socioeconomic categories, and geographic locations. In other words, don’t make the mistake of only funding and training one type of church planter. Your default tendency will be to reproduce yourself and your unique style of ministry. This is who will initially be attracted to you. But realize that reproducing yourself alone will not lead you to planting 1,000 churches.

What If Everyone Leaves?

People in your church are going to be nervous. They’re going to say, “Now, wait a second. If we send people out, won’t our church decline?” Statistically, the most likely scenario is that it won’t. Jeff Farmer (researcher and professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary) did a comparison study of 75 churches and found that churches who planted, when controlling for other factors of similar size and passion, actually grew. When you send people out to plant, others will show up and step into leadership roles.

When I (Ed) planted a church in Erie, Pennsylvania, we decided to start two daughter churches. We said we were going to have twins, so we planted two daughter churches on one day with residents. For six months, these residents were on staff where they walked with us and we trained them. We then gave them a three-month transition period where they had a fishing license to anybody in our church. We blessed and encouraged them to approach anyone in the church with a challenge to come and plant with them. At that point, we were running 350–400 in attendance, so when they got about 50–75 people to go with them, it hurt. It was a lot more than we expected.

One whole worship team and a drummer—we had two worship teams—got a vision for church planting and decided to leave. This meant we now had no drummers in our church when they would leave. We said to our church during one of the preview services, “Listen. We’re so excited about what’s happened and how you have rallied around these church plants we’re sending out. But did you notice there’s no drummer today? We had to use a track.”

After the service, one of the members came up to me and said, “You know, I could be the drummer.”

And I said, “That’s awesome, man. But have you ever been a drummer before?”

He said, “Yeah, yeah. I used to tour professionally as a drummer.”

“What?” I was shocked because our previous drummer struggled. I mean we had a drummer all these years and he was painfully bad, but at least we had a drummer. And now this guy, who was a professional drummer, who had played for a couple different famous bands, comes up to me
and tells me this?

“Are you serious?” I asked him, “Why have you never said anything?”

“Well, you know, I just wanted the guy to have a shot who was up there.”

“Dude, you’re killing me.”

This is what happened throughout the church. After we sent out people, others began stepping up to the challenge and taking on leadership responsibilities. So, cast a vision for this and allow God to send people to fill the void!

Start a Network of Networks

One of the seven principles of multiplication is to start a network. In order to plant 1,000 churches in your lifetime, this is a must. However, our purpose in this book is not to discuss the nuts and bolts of starting a singular network but to share the need to start a network of networks. This takes the principle of multiplication up from leaders, groups, and churches and into how we think about organizing mass groupings of churches.

Take the NewThing Network for example. They are not simply one of the fasting growing networks out there, but they are a network of networks that have undergone tremendous growth by thinking in terms of multiplication rather than addition. In 2016, they grew from 267 to 1,176 churches in one year. They were able to do this because in that same year, they went from 29 to 50 networks within their larger NewThing Network. While NewThing still maintains a distinct DNA, they have released leadership and multiplied themselves so that each local network is finding, planting, and training planters they know and can be accountable for. NewThing then resources each network around their common vision, values, and strategy.

This network multiplication strategy allows you to open up new lanes to planting, since you’re going to have some networks within yours that are better at training bi-vocational planters, others focused on rural areas, and still others focused on highly dense urban centers. This strategy also gives you the opportunity to think and plant globally. Now before you go and fly to Ulaanbaatar in Outer Mongolia and start planting churches, remember that you need indigenous partners. This is one of the characteristics of a movement!

Since NewThing was able to find indigenous partners in Africa, India, and around the world, they’ve seen explosive growth in their network this past year. However, NewThing didn’t just partner with whoever had a pulse. They made sure that their partners shared the same values and DNA. They then did trips both ways—the NewThing leaders going over to those countries and those indigenous leaders coming over to the United States. After all, the further you are—culturally and socioeconomically—the harder it is going to be to stay on the same page.

Three-Self Churches

When you plant globally, both through indigenous partners and by going to Unengaged Unreached People Groups (UUPG), you need a sound missiological strategy that produces three-self churches. In this last century, two missiologists, Henry Venn and Rufus Anderson, discovered that when churches thrived long-term on the mission field, they always shared these three-self values: self-governing, self- propagating, and self-supporting.

In a global network, it is vital to ensure that the churches you start always have a plan in place to become self-governing, self-propagating, and self-supporting. Raising up a team of godly leaders to self-govern the church gets it to the place where it is its own church. This is also where a leadership pipeline gets its first provable experience—in raising up a governance body regardless of your specific ecclesiology.

Self-propagating is another key factor in planting globally and should be here as well. In a multiplying culture, churches need to be seeded with the right DNA that motivates them to be a part of planting other churches.

Finally, self-supporting churches are another value that needs to be consistently championed and expressed. Church plants can’t be continuously supported or else you cannot support the next church plant. Most new churches are not going to start that way. However, you need to have a plan to move them toward this, or you will get into a partnership that will feel like a never-ending black hole and it will ultimately prevent you from planting 1,000 churches in your lifetime. Supporting dormant and dependent churches will hinder the vision and keep you from the ultimate goal, so it’s important to clearly define church partnerships with expiration dates for funding, and clear measurable goals for planting churches and raising up leaders. It’s helpful to set up defined partnerships with expiry dates and clear faith outcomes that are relationally driven with quantifiable outcomes that meet the expectation of donor and dependent ministry.

A 20-Year Focus

No one in recent history has been able to get to 1,000 churches unless they stayed focused on it for at least 20 years. One hundred years ago, we got there in 10-15 years. But nobody in our lifetime has seen it without a sustained 20-year focus.

When John Wimber with the Vineyard focused on church planting, they experienced astronomic growth. Yet as their focus drifted to other issues, that’s when the momentum began to wane (though they are refocused again today). Most of the Calvary Chapels were planted within the first 20 years of that movement, and now the movement is in transition after Chuck Smith’s death. Now Hope Chapel has been able to extend a little longer as well. But when looking at recent history, it seems to us that you have to pull this direction for at least 20 years.

So, what story are you going to write? What are the next 20 years going to be like for you? Will you start down this road so that you can be a part of a movement that plants 1,000 churches in your lifetime?

We are ready to not just rejoice at movemental Christianity around the world—we want it here. And, we believe it can happen. Yes, it will require change and sacrifice, but what worthwhile thing does not? So, join us. Let’s provoke one another to “love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24) and toward exponential church planting in the form of Church Multiplication Movements.

As you look at your plans, don’t just go to one place—we are at “the end of the earth” now (Acts 1:8). You need to think that way. Recently, I sat down with a church like an investor would with a client, and I encouraged them to have a balanced portfolio. Some of it is hard but can pay great rewards, like an unengaged and unreached people group. Other parts will be easier, but with more than one approach, the 1,000 churches you see planted in a lifetime will change a whole lot of other lives.

As such, we leave you with an investment roadmap for church planting. You won’t be able to do it alone, and you will need partners, networks, denominations, and other mission agencies, but it’s the kind of investment that changes everything.

Practical Path to 1,000 Churches

To get your strategic planning and creative juices flowing, consider this practical roadmap to help you plant 1,000 churches in your lifetime.

1. LOCAL MOVEMENT: 10 CHURCHES

• Plant locally
• Develop your leadership pipeline
• Create a residency program
• Start a network

2. REGIONAL MOVEMENT: 100 CHURCHES

• Identify future network leaders among your residents and equip them to start their own network within your network
• Plant through new lanes
• Have each network host a quarterly gathering where network churches come together for encouragement and training

3. NATIONAL MOVEMENT: 600 CHURCHES

• Gather your network leaders and help them start their own residency programs within their networks
• Keep the movement focused for twenty-years
• Host an annual gathering for everyone in all of your networks for vision and training

4. GLOBAL MOVEMENT VIA INDIGENOUS PARTNERSHIPS: 260 CHURCHES

• Have indigenous partners
• Reproduce three-self churches via missiologically sound principles

5. GLOBAL MOVEMENT VIA UNENGAGED UNREACHED PEOPLE GROUPS: 30 CHURCHES

• Have indigenous partners
• Reproduce three-self churches via missiologically sound principles

You can download this entire resource as a PDF here 1,000 Churches: How Past Movements Did It—And How Your Church Can, Too.”

A few years ago, Ed Stetzer and I co-wrote a resource to catalyze movemental church planting. It’s called “1,000 Churches: How Past Movements Did It—And How Your Church Can, Too.” Over the next few weeks, I will re-post a chapter at a time. The following is Chapter 3: Movement Characteristics.

In order to start a movement and plant 1,000 churches in your lifetime, you need to think about church planting through the lens of rabbits and elephants. Years ago, I (Ed) remember preaching at a conference where I felt like the odd man out. It was like that song from Sesame Street, “One of these things is not like the others…” The conference was on church planting, but it seemed like every speaker had started a church that had grown to at least 5,000 people—and some 25,000.

When it was my turn to preach, I decided to shoot straight and say it like it was. “Now listen. This is probably not what you’re going to experience when you plant a church. When you drove onto this campus, you drove on four lane roads called ‘Purpose Drive’ and ‘Saddleback Parkway.’ When you got out of your car, people greeted you and music was playing in the background. And now look, you’re with 5,000 people in this room. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t want to deter your faith. I don’t want to be that guy. But I need to be honest with you. This here can actually distract you from what God has called you to do. If you’re not careful, this conference can become ministry pornography for you— an unrealistic depiction of an experience that you’re never going to have, and one that distracts you from the real and amazing thing.”

As long as your goal is to plant a single, solitary elephant church like Saddleback, you’ll never get to 1,000 churches in your lifetime. We need more rabbits, without dismissing the elephants. (The Saddleback “elephant” has planted lots of churches, too.)

Yet, for a movement, we need rapid reproduction, not slow addition. Churches need to be planted and then quickly need to plant other churches. And, yes, they can grow to be elephants, but they need to start with a stronger focus on reproduction, early and often.

Consider this fact. Elephants have the longest gestation period in nature. After getting pregnant, a female elephant will carry her calf inside of her for nearly two full years! It’s almost unheard of for more than one calf to be born at a time. Upon birth, the calf is able to immediately stand up on his or her feet and walk a few steps.

This 260-pound “baby” will feed on his or her mother’s milk for about six months. At that point, the calf will begin transitioning to solid food, while continuing to nurse until age three. This whole cycle won’t start again for the mother until her calf is fully weaned. And for the calf, it will take 15 years before he or she begins his or her own reproductive life.

Let’s now take a look at the reproductive lifecycle of a rabbit. The gestation period for a rabbit is usually a month. At birth, a single female rabbit will typically expect not one, but up to 14 babies per litter. Within minutes after giving birth, it’s possible for a female rabbit to be impregnated again. That means a female rabbit can potentially have one litter per month! And as early as six months into their life, rabbits will begin reproducing.

What a difference! Let’s just take a moment and do the math. If a rabbit has an average of three female babies per litter per month, then at the end of year one, there will be 37 female rabbits (including the mother). If all 37 reproduce at the same rate, then at the end of year two, there will be a total of 1,369 female rabbits (including the original 37). At the end of year three, it jumps to 50,653 and so on and so on.

Compare that to elephants. At the end of year one, there’s only one, as the calf is still in the mother. At the end of year two, there are now two elephants: the mother and the calf. At the end of year three, there are still two. If the female elephant gets impregnated after weaning her calf at the end of year three, then it wouldn’t be until year five that the number of elephants jumps to an astronomically high number—three.

Now, don’t paint us as anti-megachurch here. As I (Ed) write this, I am the interim pastor of the oldest extant megachurch in the Protestant world, Moody Church. It has 3,700 seats and occupies entire city blocks in downtown Chicago. But, I can assure you, Moody Church knows that in its church planting strategy, the goal is not to plant more Moody Churches (though we would not be offended if some ended up that way!).

While there is definitely still a place for lengthy, elephant-like approaches to church planting, if we want to see movements of churches that birth 1,000 each in their lifetime, then we need to “breed like rabbits.”

Take a look at the following lists of movement characteristics and barriers from the perspective of various authors and practitioners. What do you see present in your church? What’s absent? Take note of the differences in what you’re seeing before we present ten characteristics of movemental Christianity as a means of comparison and encouragement.

6 Characteristics of Movements by Steve Addison

1. White-Hot Faith
2. Commitment to a Cause
3. Contagious Relationships
4. Rapid Mobilization
5. Adaptive Methods
6. Pioneering or Apostolic Leadership

10 Universal Elements Found in Every Church Planting Movement by David Garrison

1. Extraordinary Prayer
2. Abundant Evangelism
3. Intentional Planting of Reproducing Churches
4. The Authority of God’s Word
5. Local Leadership
6. Lay Leadership
7. House Churches
8. Churches Planting Churches
9. Rapid Reproduction
10. Healthy Churches

10 Factors Frequently Involved in Church Planting Movements by David Garrison

1. A Climate of Uncertainty in Society
2. Insulation from Outsiders
3. A High Cost for Following Christ
4. Bold Fearless Faith
5. Family-Based Conversion Patterns
6. Rapid Incorporation of New Believers
7. Worship in the Heart Language
8. Divine Signs and Wonders
9. On-the-Job Leadership Training
10. Missionaries Suffered

26 Movement Killers by Sam Metcalf

1. Requiring formal education for the leadership
2. Demanding conformity to methodology
3. Refusing to provide the necessary administrative and logistical support, without which a movement will suffocate under its own weight
4. Downplaying the validity of supernatural phenomena outside our paradigm
5. Not allowing room for younger, less experienced leadership
6. Being obsessed with theological purity
7. Valuing the safety of the people involved more highly than the mission itself
8. Centralizing the funding
9. Punishing out-of-the-box thinking
10. Managing instead of leading
11. Rewarding faithfulness more than entrepreneurial ability
12. Being tied to property and buildings
13. Being defined by critics
14. Being threatened by giftedness that’s unlike our own
15. Creating an endowment so there is no need to raise money
16. Treating creativity as heresy
17. Refusing to exercise discipline when it is needed
18. Relying on existing institutions for credibility
19. Promoting people on the basis of seniority and longevity
20. Insisting that decisions be based on policy instead of values
21. Focusing on nurture and the conservation of gains
22. Not giving proper attention to the selection of leaders
23. Being risk-averse under the guise of stewardship
24. Justifying a reluctance to raise money
25. Recruiting people who have a big need for approval and affirmation
26. Trying to control the movement of the Spirit when He actually shows up

10 Characteristics of Movemental Christianity

In the West, if and when we see movements of churches planting 1,000 churches in their lifetime, then we believe the following ten characteristics will be present. Based on our observations, movemental Christianity will have some of these characteristics.

1. Prayer

Prayer will need to be more than a habit or a discipline. It must be a conviction that establishes its priority and be expressed in a consistent rhythm of repentance and renewed faith. Before we see movemental Christianity where we are moving from addition to reproduction, we will have to be fervently praying and asking God to change us first.

2. Intentionality of Multiplication

We will also need to show the intention of being movemental (see the next eight elements). This involves an outward vision instead of inward, raising up others instead of increasing ourselves, and seeking the kingdom of God and not building or protecting our personal kingdom. As of now, I believe our focus is primarily defensive and incremental, not intentional and exponential.

3. Sacrifice

Change will not come without giving something up. No movement will happen until pressure is applied to move the church from the place of being static to a body of believers in action—from addition to reproduction. Just as the body grows muscle and changes with the tension of weights being lifted, so the church will change and grow in the midst of tension. Denominations, individual churches, and believers must pay this sacrifice.

4. Reproducibility

Movements do not occur through large things (big budgets, big plans, big teams). They occur through small units that are readily reproducible. If you want to see a movement, things need to be accessible and reproducible at every level. Accessible means that the average person can understand and participate in the vision without any advanced knowledge or special training. Reproducible means that the concepts are reduced from complexity to simplicity to virally spread. This is a challenge to resist the grandiose in favor of the reproducible.

5. Theological Integrity
Churches wanting to be involved in transformative, movemental Christianity hold firm and passionate positions on biblical views. These views are rooted in something that goes deeper than a charismatic leader or visionary but are planted in firm convictions that flow out of the Bible. This transitions the motivation for movement from the temporary (a leader or a model) to the permanent (the Scriptures). The Baptists and Methodists won the Western Frontier (1795–1810) because they were passionate about their beliefs. The Pentecostals are not de-emphasizing what they believe to win Central America. Movements are found among people with robust beliefs, not generic and downplayed belief systems.

6. Incarnational Ministry

Movemental Christianity recognizes that the gospel is unchanging, but the expressions and results of the gospel will vary from culture to culture. It also recognizes that as the sent people of God we are called to appropriately identify with those to whom we have been sent. The unchanging truth of the gospel needs to translate to the changing language and values of people around us. Within this environment, Christians speak and act in a way that directly addresses the environment in which we live, work, and recreate with the good news of Jesus. All of this means that we must understand both the gospel and culture in order to be a biblically faithful and culturally relevant countercultural movement of God. Movements will look like, and be owned by, ordinary people in ordinary life that are compelled by an extraordinary vision for the world.

7. Empowerment of God’s People

Movements only occur when the disempowered are given the freedom, and then take up the responsibility to lead. In our case, the clergification of the Church has marginalized those God has called—all people. As believers, we are equipped with the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, and the Bible calls all Christians a “royal priesthood.” Yet, the disempowerment of church members simultaneously satisfies and disturbs many pastors. Frustration results from not being able to get others to do the work of ministry, but satisfaction comes from being affirmed in doing the work others should be doing. Some pastors want people to shoulder the grunt work of ministry without having much say in leadership or vision, and this disempowers and disillusions qualified leaders to look elsewhere to exercise their gifting and calling. Such codependency and suppression is the death knell of movemental Christianity.

8. Charitability in Appreciating Other Models

Movemental Christianity is messy. Those involved in it make mistakes, overemphasize certain things, and even believe different things than we do. But no one gives his or her life for a bland belief system. It takes a wide net to gather the most fish, and it takes a wide variety of perspectives and ideas to reach a wide portion of culture. A movement of God cannot be contained in a single movement or theological tradition, and no one has it completely figured out. Therefore, movemental Christianity requires charity to maintain our firmly held convictions while rejoicing for and speaking well about those with whom we differ but are being greatly blessed by God.

9. Scalability

Movements often are stifled within smaller communities because of the small-mindedness and lack of preparation of local leaders. When God begins to move and believers allow movemental Christianity to begin to grow, leaders and structures must be able to rapidly reorient and resize to not stifle such movements. In many cases, movements will break out of structures rather than mold within them. More frequently, non-scalable structures (like some training programs or denominational structures) will actually hinder the movement. So, leaders need to plan at the foundational level for movement and growth, building structures that are flexible to a variety of leadership and adaptable to a variety of demographics. These structures become bottlenecks rather than catalysts, so hold them loosely.

10. Holism in Overall Approach

The modern evangelical separation of gospel proclamation and societal transformation is a historical oddity. Jesus spoke directly to the idolatry and hypocrisy in the culture around Him. It takes hard work to turn the dial from theoretical concepts to real-life action, and Christians are notorious for talking more about serving the poor than actually doing it. But movemental Christianity must practice holistic ministry in the way of Jesus to see real, lasting, multiplying success. Current movements and historical awakenings were and are accompanied by societal transformation.

We believe these ten characteristics will be present in the movemental Christianity to come—and have been proven historically to be effective measures where there’s been movement, reproduction, and multiplication.

Next week, we will unpack movemental principles and practices that will help your church move from addition to reproduction—so that you can be a part of planting 1,000 churches in your lifetime and stirring a movement of kingdom multipliers.

A few years ago, Ed Stetzer and I co-wrote a resource to catalyze movemental church planting. It’s called “1,000 Churches: How Past Movements Did It—And How Your Church Can, Too.” Over the next few weeks, I will re-post a chapter at a time. Here is the Introduction. The following is Chapter 1: A Brief History of Recent Movements.

Join us on a short journey exploring the recent history of significant movements that have shaped what we’re seeing in the West today. This history is important to digest as we look forward to the possibilities that lie ahead—with God! Less than 50 years ago, a movement was birthed to reach a specific subculture in the United States: the hippies. At a time when America was infatuated with drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll, there was a great awakening of individuals who decided to reject that lifestyle and seek God instead. This was the Jesus People movement of the 1960s and 1970s. When Kenn Gulliksen was sent out by the Calvary Chapel in 1974 to start a church in West Los Angeles, no one would’ve guessed or even imagined that less than 50 years later, there would be over 2,400 churches in 95 countries that would share the same name: Vineyard.

Eight years after Gulliksen planted the first Vineyard church, there were at least seven Vineyard churches in this loosely defined network. It was at this point, in 1982, when John Wimber, who is one of my (Ed’s) heroes (I even named my WIFI network after him), became the first director of this growing Vineyard movement.

Sure, your church may not be Vineyard and may not affirm all they do, but you can’t deny the tangible, movemental impact they have had planting new churches. This impact is, without question, one of their greatest attributes. In fact, here are seven constants to church planting that John Wimber outlined and lived by as he led the Vineyard movement to plant over 1,000 churches in their lifetime:

1. Constantly Tell Your Story

When church planters were getting ready to launch, Wimber would commonly teach them to share why they were there.

“Tell everyone why you are there. And once you’ve told them ten times—tell them five hundred more…The problem is many pastors get bored of telling their own story—so they quit telling it. And then they wonder why their church quits growing. People thrive on narrative, that’s how God created us as humans, and a powerful narrative becomes the key factor of vision-casting and leadership. Not telling your story can be a contributing factor to lack of church growth, because people lose focus when you’re not consistently telling who you are and where you’re going. And they lose their reason for existence.”

2. Constantly Tell His Story

As important as your story is, the true priority is His story—Jesus’ story. Because people thrive on narratives, you need to consider how to share your story in a way that connects
with God’s grand narrative for the world. How does Jesus fit into why you are there? Wimber would teach church planters that, “Every occasion ought to have His story in it. Jesus is the Son of God. It’s always in there, always wrapped up in the midst of any exchange with people.”

3. Constantly Explain the Mysteries of Life

This point was twofold for Wimber. On the one hand, he emphasized the importance of calling people to a deeper commitment to Christ—not just to salvation but also to mission. Then he elaborated on the importance of metrics to help you know how you’re doing in ministry.

“We have to have ways of measuring where we’re at in ministry. Most people play church like guys playing basketball without a ball and without a hoop. They play without the very things which provide a measurement, or standard, for who’s winning the game…So when it comes to church leadership, I keep putting in the ball and the hoops. I keep bringing out things that are concrete ways of measuring how you’re doing: Is the church growing numerically? Is there tangible fruit? Are people getting saved and assimilated into the church? How many of the poor are you caring for? How many new leaders have you developed? Is the quality of ministry and body life and love amongst people growing? Those kinds of questions make some people mad. They don’t want you introducing those kind of elements, because if you start actually measuring, things don’t look so good. Some would rather appear to play than actually play.”

4. Constantly Disciple

There are two types of family members in your church, those serving in the army and those healing in the hospital. Part of your church’s long-term plan for movemental growth involves consistently advancing the front line of the gospel into new territories. You need disciples to dig in the trenches and fight for ground with their friends, neighbors, and coworkers. Wimber taught that it was okay to be in the hospital temporarily to get healed, but it wasn’t okay to stay there permanently.

5. Constantly Expand the Infrastructure

At the beginning of a church plant, it’s okay to not have much infrastructure because you don’t need it. But as you grow, Wimber emphasized that you need to have the discipline to structure toward growth. Sustainable, repeatable, and scalable structure that allows people to connect and care for others is vital for the health of a church.

6. Constantly Live in Brokenness

The New Testament calls us to a high level of character, and the worst thing you can do is to put on a religious façade and pretend you have it all together. The mark of a maturing believer is self-awareness when you fail and transparency within community to cling to Jesus with others. Wimber regularly exhorted his church planters to “live constantly with the awareness that we just don’t measure up” so that we can rely on and trust Jesus to make up the difference.

7. Constantly Re-evaluate and Be Flexible in What You Are Doing

This isn’t a license to continually tweak things that aren’t broken, but the awareness that evaluation is critical for growth and the health of a movement. Wimber said it well: “But whatever you do, don’t hold onto things for their own sake. Programs are a means to an end. Evaluate their effectiveness. Keep what works; get rid of what doesn’t. Do whatever is necessary to help the church of Jesus Christ to advance.”

These seven constants are as applicable today as they were 30 years ago and represent two primary commitments. First, a commitment to perseverance in faith, believing
the promises of God that He will build the church. Second, a missional intentionality evident in the movement of people directed toward a kingdom of God objective.

Calvary Chapel and Hope Chapel

In 1965, when Chuck Smith came to Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, he was disillusioned by the latest church growth strategies. With a resolve to preach the Scriptures, rather than compete with neighboring churches for the saints, he showed up that very first Sunday to a staggering 25 people. Though the hippie subculture was not one that he was comfortable relating to, he decided to focus on preaching the truth and let the Scriptures stand for themselves. Less than two years later, his church had grown to almost 2,000 members, and now, 50 years later, the Calvary Chapel movement finds itself with more than 1,700 churches around the world.

Hope Chapel, while similar to Calvary Chapel, is another example of a modern day movement that has planted in excess of 1,000 churches in their generation—actually, more than twice that number! Ralph Moore, starting with 12 people in 1971, now has over 2,300 churches globally that tie their roots back to this church. After reflecting upon their process to get there, Moore states, “Disciple-making is at the heart of Hope Chapel…I’d say that making disciples is 90 percent of this movement.”

Church Planting Movements

It is possible to plant 1,000 churches in our lifetime because in our lifetime we’ve seen movements that have planted more than 1,000 churches.

Their legacy reminds us of the possibilities that exist if we would step out in obedience and allow the Holy Spirit to use us to make disciples and multiply ministries of mercy. In other parts of the world, and with some different descriptions, these are technically called Church Planting Movements. David Garrison defines this as “a rapid multiplication of indigenous churches planting churches that sweeps through a people group or population segment.” While this may be common today outside of the West, here they are few and far between. As of this moment, there are no Church Planting Movements (as Garrison described them) among majority peoples in any of the 34 Western industrialized democracies in the world.

If you’re going to plant 1,000 churches in your lifetime, you’re either going to do one of two things: you’re going to accidentally stumble into it, which is what happened in Calvary Chapel’s case; or you’re going to intentionally work through it, which is more of what happened with Hope Chapel. In either case, you’ll never plant 1,000 churches out of a single church. To get there, you need to plant churches that have a reproducing DNA so that when you plant them, they will plant other churches that will then plant others. It’s not rocket science; it’s kingdom multiplication.

Just think about Bob Roberts at Northwood Church in Keller, Texas. He has planted over 200 churches out of his church, a countless number of granddaughter churches, and many more in partnership with GlocalNet. What you may not be aware of, however, is that Northwood Church was planted out of North Richland Hills Baptist Church, which was planted out of Richland Hills Baptist Church, which was planted out of Lonesome Dove Church that was started by a man named John Freeman—a Texas Ranger and a Baptist pastor who planted hundreds of churches from Texas to California in the 1800s and early 1900s.

A vision for church multiplication and disciple making transcends generations and serves as an honoring legacy to the glory of God that stands the test of time. Before we get to the nuts and bolts of starting a movement and planting 1,000 churches in your lifetime, we need to first explore the reason why there are no Church Planting Movements in the West today. And that’s the topic for next week.

A few years ago, Ed Stetzer and I co-wrote a resource to catalyze movemental church planting. It’s called “1,000 Churches: How Past Movements Did It—And How Your Church Can, Too.” Over the next few weeks, I will re-post a chapter at a time. The following is the Introduction: Mass Gatherings and Movements.

The year 2011 was the year of social media, mass gatherings, and movements, or as we now know it, The Arab Spring. It’s believed to have all started in Tunisia when a 26-year-old man, who was trying to sell fruits and vegetables in order to support his widowed mother and six siblings, had his cart confiscated and was slapped by a policewoman. Humiliated and full of rage, he set himself on fire in front of a government building.

This wasn’t the first time an instance like this had happened, but when it was captured by cellphone cameras and shared on the Internet, everything changed. This act of injustice, which led to the President of Tunisia fleeing the country a month later, awakened a sleeping giant across the Middle East. Just consider what else happened that year:

• January 14, 2011: Government overthrown in Tunisia.
• February 11, 2011: Government overthrown in Egypt; President Mubarak resigns facing charges of killing unarmed protestors.
• February 15, 2011: Anti-government protests begin in Libya. On October 20, Gaddafi is killed.

And the list goes on and on with Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Oman.

Mass gatherings, riots, and movements are nothing new. Just consider when over 200,000 people gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to hear Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech in 1963. Or what about the L.A. Race Riots of 1992 and the Ferguson, Missouri, riots of 2014? Then there are the riots that I (Daniel) am personally most embarrassed of—not because I was there, but because this was my home city—when, in 2011, the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup 4-0 against the Boston Bruins. Fans went insane. Police cars were set on fire, shops were looted, glass was broken, and cars were overturned. It was chaos. And at the end of 2016, let’s not forget the massive movement where millions came out protesting and calling for the impeachment of Park Geun-Hye, then President of South Korea.

We remember moments like these because people gathered. And when they gathered, they did something together they wouldn’t have been able to do by themselves. They saw both the difficulties and possibilities so clearly that they were able to visualize a different reality. This vision for a golden tomorrow has fueled movements in the past and is what will spark a church multiplication movement today.

A Golden Tomorrow: Planting 1,000 Churches

Subtract your age from the number 80. Now take that number, and add it to this year’s number. What year do you get? 2050? 2070? 2090?

What if we told you that it’s possible to plant 1,000 churches before you get to that year? 1,000 churches in your lifetime? Would you believe us? In fact, before you move any further, in the space below, try reverse engineering what you would need to do in order to plant 1,000 churches in your lifetime.

It’s happened before, and it can happen again. We live in exciting times where we have the capability of reaching multitudes of people—more than any other generation before us. The world has grown smaller, and our capacity for knowledge transfer and multiplication has dramatically expanded.

Historically speaking, 1,000 churches have been planted in the average lifespan of an individual in China and Korea, as well as in the West with the Calvary Chapel, Vineyard, and Hope Chapel movements. Although this figure seems overwhelming, recent history has proven that when God is in the mix and the church is stirred to action, anything is possible! It is our prayer that this concise book will increase your optimism and vision for church planting possibilities in a way that becomes catalytic and contagious for the kingdom’s sake.

In chapter one of this book, we will take a closer look at each of these examples given as we explore movements and what’s taken place in recent history. This chapter’s aim is to inform so that reform and movement may be catalyzed. In chapter two, we’ll explore why there are no church planting movements currently in the West. Chapter three is where we’ll examine the characteristics of movements and their barriers with a view to greater impact and missional impetus. We’ll then conclude with an outline of the systems and principles required to plant 1,000 churches in your lifetime.

Let’s stop longing for the past, when things were better and when churches grew and expanded en masse in the West. Instead, let’s look forward and pray that God would do it again in a fresh way. Let’s lift our eyes above what we see and allow our vision of the glory of God to shape our present realities and direct our future paths.

The Five Levels

LEVEL 1: SUBTRACTING // LEVEL 2: PLATEAUING // LEVEL 3: ADDING // LEVEL 4: REPRODUCING // LEVEL 5: MULTIPLYING

From the beginning, we’ve been working with our friends at Exponential to define, outline, and articulate clear language and levels to help the Church move toward multiplication. These five levels were first presented in Todd Wilson, Dave Ferguson, and Alan Hirsch’s Becoming a Level 5 Multiplying Church. Below, you’ll see the way we articulated these levels in Multiplication Today, Movements Tomorrow, our previous book detailing our State of Church Planting research on multiplication. In Dream Big, Plan Smart, Todd Wilson and Will Mancini continued the conversation by laying out ten characteristics of a level five culture, and the pathways to get there.

Instead of championing an addition scorecard, let’s move toward multiplication by first figuring out how to reproduce ourselves 1,000 fold. Let’s begin by seeing how others have done it in the past.

Level	Title	Description of a Church at this Level
1	Subtracting	Struggling to survive, tension in finances, congregants leaving, scarcity mentality, and there’s no plan for developing leaders. Multiplication is not happening in any form or fashion.
2	Plateauing	Living in tension, since they are struggling in some areas and growing in others, while ultimately being constrained by their scarcity thinking. Multiplication is a distant hope rather than a current reality.
3	Adding	Increasing attendance, focused on growing the church, lots of resources allocated towards the weekend service, program and event driven, and staff led. Multiplication is about adding services or sites.
4	Reproducing	Living in tension between releasing/sending and accumulating/growing. Multiplication is more activity- based than values-based. Multiplication is more deliberate and planned than spontaneous.
5	Multiplying	More focused on multiplying new churches than growing their attendance. Intentional with finances, vision, and strategy towards church planting. Multiplication happens spontaneously and is not limited to paid staff. Every disciple is a potential church planter/team member.

Next week, we’ll continue by unpacking A Brief History of Movements.