A Glimpse into the New eBook Multipliers

"Church planting leaves quite a legacy."

August 29, 2017

Exponential’s new ebook Multipliers goes along with our 2018 HeroMaker theme. The book will come out early September. Below is the foreword by Carl George. 

I’ve been leading ministry and working with church planters for more than thirty years now, and I could not be more excited about what I’m seeing going on with Exponential. This is the finest program for church planters that I’ve ever seen. I organized my first church planter conference with Peter Wagner at Fuller in 1983, but only this year (2017) did I get to attend my first Exponential event. I was newly energized by what I saw there as I realized what Exponential represents to the Church.  Dave Ferguson and Todd Wilson are encouraging and exhorting young pastors to find ways of galvanizing action toward new church plants from the very beginning of their ministry during those initial formation stages before they hit various attendance plateaus.

With this important focus on multiplication, Exponential is attempting to accomplish what we were hoping to do at the birth of the Church Growth movement. We really wanted to see multiplication happen, but we were missing a key ingredient that is the essence of Exponential. Going forward, my dream is to see the fulfillment of their vision and move beyond the prevailing addition scorecard in the U.S. Church to a scorecard focused on multiplication.

In my younger years, my wife and I started several church plants by accident. In retrospect, I wish I had understood then that we could have built multiplication into our ministry DNA. What I’m now seeing is that church planters can actually be intentional (and should be intentional) about planting and sponsoring new churches even as they are starting. After studying what Exponential is doing, I realized that the notion that a new church planter could simultaneously be a new church plant sponsor had never entered my mind. Our ministry led to both planting and sponsoring, but the sponsored churches were results of solving other disciple making issues.  We were focused on obedience to make disciples, but the planting of more churches was almost incidental to that. It did not occur to us to focus on it.

If I could go back and start over again, I would want to imitate Ralph Moore and be intentional from the very beginning about having a scorecard for multiplication. So I encourage you, church leader, to take advantage of what it took me thirty years to wake up to. With Exponential’s Level 5 concept, you get the benefit of creating a scorecard of multiplication and starting out with a multiplication orientation from the earliest days of your ministry.

This book you are holding is a fantastic roadmap for you as you begin or move forward on this multiplication journey—if you’ll take it to head and heart. It’s the manual I wish I had when we were starting out. I’m excited that Exponential has taken several years of multiplication content and has cohesively pulled it into this single handbook that every church leader aspiring to become a Multiplier can use to guide them as they create a scorecard and vision for multiplication, and ultimately a culture of multiplying churches.

Church planting leaves quite a legacy. The idea that a newly planted church can have among its intended purposes the starting of additional churches is a tremendously important mind and heart shift, as you’ll learn through this book. When a pastor and a group of church leaders determine that they’re going to deliberately and intentionally plant and sponsor church plants, more new churches result, and the Church advances.

I look forward to seeing and learning about you and the churches you multiply as you pursue what God has called and gifted you to do!

 

Click here to join us for Exponential 2018 and the HeroMaker theme. 

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