From An addition mindset to multiplication in the church

Here is a comparison of seven common features of the difference between an operating paradigm of addition instead of multiplication in the American church today.

Mutation

Addition
The church with an addition mindset tends to downsize the original job description of the Great Commission. They can gather Christians or attenders who are limited in their discipleship under Jesus and are seldom disciple-makers.

Multiplication
The church with a multiplication mindset trains disciples of Jesus to reproduce after their own kind, making direct generations of more disciple-makers as well. Mutation is prohibited; no downsizing to make it easier for members. Stewardship of lives to their full gospel potential in view.

Expectation

Addition
The church with a lower target/goal of addition will drift into subtraction and decline over time, or average smaller ups and downs over ten years on a plateau.

Multiplication
The church with a high target multiplication goal may drift at times into rapid addition instead, but seldom subtraction. If disciple-makers fall short of getting to their third and fourth generations (2 Timothy 2:2) they still have steady growth of second generation disciples at least.

Contextualization

Addition
The church with an addition mindset tends toward attractional behaviors in relationship to the broader culture. The magnetic pull is to extract people from other places into their organization, and then want to keep and sometimes control those people over time. An inward focus can permeate the group. One-dimensional thinking about quantity: how to collect and keep our numbers up. Keeping our best instead of giving our best.

Multiplication
The church with a multiplication mindset tends toward incarnational behaviors in relationship to the broader culture. The focus is on empowering and sending capacity, not seating capacity. Less of the “come and see (and stay)” vs. more of the “Go and Be (and transform society). An outward focus permeates the group, more mission-driven and self- sacrificing, seeing the need in the harvest around them. This is multi-dimensional thinking in terms of quantity, quality, acceleration into receptivity, and alignment with Kingdom of heaven culture.

Innovation

Addition
The church with an addition mentality tends toward following patterns over decades that “worked” well in the past, gradually becoming less relevant to the needs now in the culture around them. The church can drift toward settled ways, and manage the organization with common human methods and wisdom. These structures in turn can be manipulated by dark forces of evil more easily (i.e. religious spirit, legalism, liberalism). With a life expectancy of 100 years for the average Protestant church in America, there tends to be one life cycle of incline headed into decades of plateau and decline.

Multiplication
The church with a multiplication mindset exhibits high innovation tendencies, expressing uniqueness with each new plant and person sent. There is constant improvement with continual contextualization, creating flexible and permeable walls like a new wineskin for holding new wine. There are fresh expressions of ecclesiology in development, pioneering methods, remaining nimble on problem solving and change dynamics. There is a tangible dependency on the creativity and wisdom of the Holy Spirit in mission, consistently anchoring back into the blueprint of Jesus and the New Testament for design.

Saturation

Addition
The church with an addition mindset has a narrow scope of a potential market among those people who will come and join the “church mountain” of culture. Additionally, this separates them into a subculture more often where their association with non-Christians is diminished. In severe cases, a fortress mentality develops and the distance of separation from the culture is a measure of holiness (like the Pharisees thought). On average, 40% of the American culture is probably reachable to “come and join” the church subculture.

Multiplication
The church with a multiplication mindset has a wide scope of a potential market, working on all seven “mountains of culture” and with 100% of the human population. This maximizes association with non- Christians and prioritizes the incarnational model of holiness that Jesus exhibited (and his disciples after him). Saturation church planting seeks out “empty fields” where a disciple- making movement is not already started and intends to plant a reproducing church among every 1000 people in the world.

simplification

Addition
Complex organizations are hard to reproduce. If the church in order to prosper needs many well- developed programs that require lots of staff and volunteer time, money and dedicated space in buildings owned by the church, and a professionally trained leader, that church will seldom reproduce churches or disciples in reality.

Multiplication
More simple = more reproduction. If you have a few disciple-makers who make more disciple-makers, you always get the church. If you aim to have a church, you often don’t get disciple-makers, but more members and attenders with the majority tendency toward consumerism. We need more and better people, not programs.

identification

Addition
There are advantages in a supportive culture to being visible with church buildings and public worship times. But there are vulnerabilities too, as many nations in our world show us. Persecution, pandemics, recessions, and government control can interfere externally with the model, and internally the tendency to drift from a New Testament church identity that functioned powerfully house-to-house in favor of the efficiencies and ease of public gatherings can re-shape the church (more clergy-centered, professionalized, expensive, less relational, less missional, and less reproductive for everyday disciples, leaders and churches.)

Multiplication
There is lots of evidence historically that persecution can spread the church further and faster by de-centralizing a people-movement of ordinary disciples of Jesus filled by the Holy Spirit. Like the book “Starfish or Spider”, the church that can regenerate from any part of the DNA under the Spirit’s lead is persecution proof, economic deprivation proof and far more mobile and reproducible. Underground or “guerilla” tactics make it much harder to stop a house to house church movement than to shut down the church building with a public address. Or if you take away the 501c3 status for tax exempt giving, or round up all the pastors for hate speech....If the church’s identity is less in a pastor, a place, or expensive programs, it can expand even in less than favorable situations of the culture. That seeds multiplication potential by empowering and training the hundreds more than the one or few.