As a community of activists devoted to church multiplication, Exponential is continuing the multiplication conversation in 2018 as we look at what it means to be a HeroMaker—a shift from being the hero to making others the hero in God’s unfolding story.
“Level 5 multiplication requires that we become hero makers,” says Exponential Director Todd Wilson. “The personal scorecards of hero makers are measured not by what they do, but rather by how they release the potential in others.”
Throughout this year, Exponential will be talking about becoming leaders who multiply leaders via various gatherings and resources.
Exponential 2018 National Conference and Regional Gatherings
At Exponential East and regional gatherings in Southern California, Northern California, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Houston, we’ll look at five essential practices for becoming a hero maker.
Dave Ferguson, Exponential president and co-author of the new book Hero Maker: Five Essential Practices for Leaders to Multiply Leaders (releasing February 2018), stresses that these five practices derive from the characteristics we see in the life and ministry of Jesus, the ultimate hero maker, and in the leadership of contemporary hero makers.
“While a hero maker will use these five practices in the life of developing an individual apprentice,” Ferguson says, “these values also continually show up as leadership values in everything hero makers do.
The five main sessions at each live gathering will focus on the following five conversations:
HeroMaker Practice 1: Multiplication Thinking
The first practice is a shift in thinking, as leaders move from thinking the best way to maximize ministry is through their own individual efforts to understanding that effective ministry actually happens through developing the leadership of others.
HeroMaker Practice 2: Permission Giving
The second practice is a shift in seeing. Hero makers take the focus off their leadership and begin to see the leadership potential in the people around them.
HeroMaker Practice 3: Disciple Multiplying
The third practice is a shift in sharing. Leaders begin to share not just what they know to help others follow Jesus, but to also share their lives and invest in the development of leaders who become disciple makers and then do the same for other leaders.
HeroMaking Practice 4: Gift Activating
The fourth practice is a shift in blessing. Not only do leaders ask God to bless the gifts He has given them, but they also ask God to bless the leaders they have developed and sent out.
HeroMaking Practice 5: Kingdom Building
The fifth practice is a shift in counting. Hero makers are no longer only concerned with who’s showing up at their thing; they also count who’s doing God’s thing!
The 2018 Exponential East conference (Feb. 28-March 1) will feature more than 100 speakers (main sessions and workshops), 100+ workshops in nine individual tracks and 11 pre-conference sessions. Main session speakers include Andy Stanley, Carey Nieuwhof, Dave Ferguson, Oscar Muriu, Asian ministry leader Jossy Chacko, Danielle Strickland, Matt Chandler, and D.A. Horton, with more to be added. (For a list of main session and workshop leaders, go to exponential.org.)
2018 Book Multipliers: Leading Beyond Addition
On Monday, September 25th, Exponential will be releasing its new book, Multipliers: Leading Beyond Addition by Todd Wilson. It is an anchor resource supporting the 2018 Exponential HeroMaker theme. In it, Wilson looks at what it takes to move from being a hero focused on building a Level 3 addition-based church to becoming a hero maker who pursues Level 5 multiplication by investing in and releasing others.
This new resource pulls the core and best content from Exponential’s previous resources into a single new resource, while adding important new thought leadership for leaders who are pursuing Level 5 leadership. Multipliers pulled from and aggregated the best of the learnings from Exponential’s last three multiplication-focused anchor books: Spark: Igniting a Culture of Multiplication, Becoming a Level 5 Multiplying Church, and Dream Big, Plan Smart: Finding Your Pathway to Level 5 Multiplication. Multipliers combines content from the three titles into one single handbook for aspiring leaders that are committed to seeing the Kingdom advance.
“Multipliers … embrace a scorecard that prioritizes releasing and sending over accumulating and growing,” he writes. “They are intentional about Jesus’ ‘go and make disciples’ command and fully embrace the leverage that comes from building capacity for disciple making through the multiplication of healthy, reproducing churches.”
Join us in 2018 as we dive into what it takes to shift your scorecard from hero to hero maker and become a Level 5 Multiplier who moves the needle on church multiplication and carries out Exponential’s “4-10 mission”—to see the number of U.S. churches shift from 4 percent of U.S. churches reproducing to a tipping point of greater than 10 percent.
