In this session from the Exponential conference, Tom Planck insightfully and practically explores what it looks like to challenge yourself and your church to ask the profound, right multiplication questions, specifically as we flip the question from “Should we multiply?” to “How will we multiply?”
As the multiplication catalyst for the national network Healthy Growing Churches and lead pastor at Journey Church in West Chester, Ohio, a multisite church he and his wife, Andrea, planted in 2005, Tom is deeply passionate about engaging leaders to multiply. In the podcast excerpt below, he shares what he has learned about the starting points of multiplication, one of seven key moves he believes are critical to making the transition from “should” to “how.” Our call, he says, is crystal clear—to multiply!
“Multiplication begins with you, the leader! You pouring your life into one who then pours his life into another and so on. … Pick and pass along some transferable concepts, some simple ideas about Jesus that you can teach to someone who can effectively teach that to someone else.
“Key questions to ask as you think about multiplication:
- Who are you sending?
- How many disciples are being made?
- Where are you reproducing leaders?
- Where are you reproducing groups and ministries?
“Honestly ask yourself: Are we producing cultural Christians or biblical disciples?
Are we producing cultural Christians or biblical disciples?
“… You have to cast a clear and compelling multiplication vision. It has to be about more than just putting one more person in a seat. Proverbs says it so clear: Where there is no vision, people die. Part of this is creating culture. The biggest cultural change that needs to take place in our churches is a settling in of a deep passion for people who don’t know Jesus.”
For more than 20 years, Tom Planck has served in ministry, coaching dozens of pastors and church planters. Currently, he serves as the multiplication catalyst with Healthy Growing Churches, and is the founding and lead pastor at Journey Church in West Chester, Ohio, a multisite church with a growing campus in Guatemala. Tom married his beautiful wife, Andrea in 1991. He and Andrea have two children, Tytus and Hannah.
