Starting Small and Growing Large (Mark 4:30-32)

As I mentioned in my last post, Cole’s book on the Organic Church:Growing Faith where Life Happens offers some VERY challenging perspectives on movement building. I’ll be interacting with several excerpts that I found particularly insightful.

Based on Christ’s Parable of the Mustard Seed:

The growth of the Kingdom of God must start at the smallest of levels. Jesus is instructing us that the Kingdom of God must start small and grow via multiplication to have great and expansive influence. . .

Trying to multiply movements is starting at the wrong place. A church (or local movement??) is a complex entity with multiple cells. We must go further down microscopically, to the smallest unit of Kingdom life if we want to start the multiplication process.

If we cannot multiply churches (local movements? local ministries?), we will never see a movement. If we cannot multiply leaders we will never multiply churches. If we cannot multiply disciples, we will never multiply leaders. The way to see a true church multiplication movement is to multiply healthy disciples, then leaders, then churches, and finally movements–in that order.

. . . The Bible never instructs us to start churches…The reason is quite clear: we are not to start churches, but instead make disciples who make disciples…

Jesus gave us instructions that is on the molecular level of Kingdom life, for a very good reason: it works. Trying to multiply large, highly complex organisms without multiplying on the micro level is impossible.

…The basic unit of Kingdom life is a follower of Christ in relationship with another follower of Christ. The micro form of church life is a unit of two or three believers in relationship. This is where we must begin to see multiplication occur. – Neil Cole

Questions:
Do our movement building efforts attempt to skip the most basic “level of multiplication”–disciples making other disciples?

Are we failing to build movements because we’re failing to build leaders?

And are we failing to build leaders because we’re failing to make disciples?

One response to “Starting Small and Growing Large (Mark 4:30-32)”

  1. Steve van diest Avatar

    jay, you are awesome. Thanks for the challenge and insights.

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