A number of years ago, Community Christian Church carried a dream for Chicagoland that felt both holy and slightly crazy.
We wanted to see hundreds of new expressions of church scattered across our city and suburbs – churches in neighborhoods, correctional centers, coffee shops, living rooms, and places where people desperately needed to find their way back to God.
By God’s grace, we saw real progress. Community Christian Church multiplied locations. New churches were planted. New leaders were developed. The dream was moving forward.
But eventually, we did the math. At our current pace, we were not going to reach the dream in our lifetime.
The vision was not too big. It was just too big for us.
That realization has become one of the most important leadership lessons of my life: what God wants to do in a city will almost always be too big for one church, one leader, one network, or one organization to carry alone.
That is why the 16% Mission matters. And that is why networks need collectives.
The truth is, our experience in Chicagoland wasn’t unique. We were simply discovering something the early church understood from the very beginning.
Jesus never gave His followers a mission they could accomplish alone. In fact, the mission was always designed to require His people working together.
A Mission Bigger Than Us
Jesus gave us a mission that has always been bigger than our capacity.
In Acts 1:8, He told His disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
That is a bigger vision.
Every church has a Jerusalem – a neighborhood, city, community, or people group God has called them to love and serve. But Jesus never intended His followers to stop there.
The mission widens.
Jerusalem becomes Judea. Judea becomes Samaria. And Samaria becomes the ends of the earth. No single church can carry that mission alone.
And here is the reality: we are not keeping up.
More churches are closing than starting. Too many pastors are isolated. Many churches are doing good work, but doing it alone. In most neighborhoods, gospel presence is thin. And only a small percentage of churches are reproducing or multiplying.
This should create urgency in us.
Not panic. Not pressure. Urgency rooted in love.
Because every church that closes is one less place where people might encounter the hope, healing, and grace of Jesus.
We need more churches. But not just churches that gather. Churches that go.
Not just churches that add. Churches that multiply.
And not just churches that multiply alone – but churches that multiply together.
Why 16% Matters
The 16% Mission is rooted in a simple but powerful idea.
Everett Rogers, in his work on the diffusion of innovation, observed that when innovators and early adopters reach roughly 16% of a population, a tipping point begins to occur. What was once embraced by a few starts becoming the practice of many.1
At Exponential, we have begun asking:
What if 16% of churches became reproducing and multiplying churches?
What if multiplication moved from the exception to the new normal?
What if enough churches in a city began making disciple-makers, developing leaders, planting churches, and forming networks so that the spiritual landscape of that city actually began to change?
In the United States, 16% represents roughly 60,000 multiplying churches.
That is a huge number. But there is another way to think about it.
There are about 346 cities in the U.S. with populations over 100,000. What if every one of those cities had multiplying networks of churches? What if in every city, region, denomination, or affinity, churches began forming networks as friends on mission?
That is not just a strategy. That is a movement horizon.
Many leaders have embraced multiplication at the church level. Fewer have embraced multiplication at the network level. But if 16% is ever going to become reality, multiplying churches will need multiplying networks, and multiplying networks will need a shared vision that brings them together.
START: Friends on Mission
If 16% is the horizon, networks are one of the most important pathways to get there.
A network is a small group of churches who become friends on mission to multiply healthy disciple-making churches together.
That definition matters.
A network is not a mailing list. It is not a conference. A true network is relational, missional, and multiplying.2
It begins when leaders stop asking only, “How do I grow my church?” and begin asking, “What might God send through us together?”
That question changes everything.
It changed things in Kansas City, where a handful of pastors chose collaboration over competition and eventually helped launch dozens of new churches by sharing leaders, resources, and responsibility for the mission.
It changed things in Chicagoland, where our earliest attempts at citywide collaboration failed because we gathered influential leaders before trust had been built.
In workshop at Exponential last year, Pete Greig said it this way: we often assume movement works like this:
Vision + Task = Friendship.
But it actually works the other way:
Friendship + Vision = Task.
That is how networks start.
Not with impressive structure. Not with a brand. Not with a platform.
A few leaders pull up chairs. They pray. They begin to trust one another. They dream. They become friends on mission.
SUSTAIN: Friendship Becomes Infrastructure
Starting a network is one challenge. Sustaining it is another.
Many networks begin with energy. Leaders are encouraged. Gatherings feel life-giving. Relationships form. But over time, even healthy networks can drift.
What began as a launchpad can become a living room. Leaders keep gathering, but the mission stops moving outward. That is why networks need sustaining rhythms. Monthly network meetings. Network leader huddles. Collective gatherings.
These rhythms are not bureaucracy. They are friendships scheduled for the sake of mission. Because movements do not stall only because the vision is unclear. They stall because the relationships are not strong enough to carry the weight of the mission.
In Chicago, we have seen this again and again. The deepest moments in our collective have not always been the most strategic. Sometimes they have been moments when a pastor confessed discouragement, a leader shared a diagnosis, or a church planter needed prayer and people gathered around them.
Friendship is not sentimental. It is structural.
It is the infrastructure that allows multiplication to endure.
SEND: Networks Become Launchpads
But friendship is not the destination. It is the beginning.
Healthy networks eventually ask a different question: Are we gathering simply to sustain one another, or are we gathering so we can send one another?
That question determines whether a network becomes a movement or a club.
Sending always sounds inspiring until it becomes personal.
It is one thing to celebrate multiplication in theory. It is another thing to release a gifted leader, a trusted staff member, a generous family, or a promising church planter you hoped would stay.
Sending always feels like loss before it feels like multiplication. But this is the pattern of the New Testament.
Paul tells Timothy, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.” (2 Timothy 2:2)
That is four generations in one sentence: Paul. Timothy. Reliable people. Others.
The mission moves by entrustment.
The church in Antioch understood this too. In Acts 13, while they were worshiping and fasting, the Holy Spirit told them to set apart Barnabas and Saul. These were not marginal leaders. They were among the best. And the church sent them.
Antioch became a launchpad, not a holding tank.
That is what healthy networks do.
They apprentice leaders. They entrust responsibility. They release people. They celebrate fruit, even when it grows on someone else’s tree.
SCALE: The Collective Advantage
This is where collectives become essential.
A network helps a small group of churches multiply together, and a collective helps multiple networks take responsibility for a shared city, region, denomination, or affinity.
Tim Keller often reminded church leaders that cities are culture-forming centers and that gospel movements emerge when churches pursue the flourishing of an entire city together.3
Networks are where multiplication becomes relational. Collectives are where multiplication gains a wider horizon.
A collective does not replace networks. It strengthens them. It aligns vision. It clarifies the mission field. It helps leaders see beyond their own church and even beyond their own network.
In Chicagoland, we have seen this happen.
What began with a few tables of pastors has become a growing collective of networks across the city and suburbs. Today, the Chicagoland Collective includes 18 networks, more than 80 churches, and by God’s grace, has helped start more than 90 new churches in the last seven years.
We’re seeing similar patterns emerge in other places as well. In Colorado, Corey Garris and the Front Range Network has helped leaders across the Denver region build relationships, align around multiplication, and pursue a shared vision for gospel impact.
In Idaho, Brian Taylor and the Valley Network have connected churches throughout the Treasure Valley through simple relational rhythms, collaborative leadership, and a commitment to church planting. Different contexts. Different structures. The same principle: multiplication accelerates when networks stop operating in isolation and begin pursuing a shared mission together.
But the real story is not the numbers. The real story is the shift in imagination.
Pastors from different denominations, ethnic backgrounds, church models, and neighborhoods are beginning to ask collective questions: What would it look like for the love of Jesus to reach every community in Chicagoland?
What would it take for 16% of churches in our region to become reproducing or multiplying churches?
What if we stopped measuring only what grows in our own church and started celebrating what God is multiplying across the city?
For Chicagoland, with roughly 4,500 churches, 16% would mean about 720 multiplying churches. If the average network includes five churches, that means we need about 140 networks across the region.
That is not something one church can do. That is not even something one network can do. That requires a collective.
Owning the Lostness of Our Cities
One of the gifts Christ Together has brought to this conversation is a simple but powerful challenge: take responsibility for the lostness of your city.
That is what collectives and networks help us do.
Networks are at their best when they help churches move beyond their own success and embrace a shared mission. Collectives are at their best when they help networks embrace a shared responsibility for a city, region, denomination, or affinity.
The goal is not simply more churches. The goal is that every man, woman, and child would have repeated opportunities to see, hear, and respond to the gospel.
That is why the 16% Mission matters. Not because 16% is a magical number. But because reaching a tipping point of multiplying churches could fundamentally change the spiritual trajectory of a city.
No single church can accomplish that. No single network can accomplish that. But networks working together as a collective just might.
That’s what we’ve seen emerging in Chicagoland. And increasingly, it’s what we’re seeing in cities across North America.
The path forward is surprisingly simple:
Start with friends.
Sustain those relationships.
Send leaders.
Scale through networks and collectives.
If we want to see 16% become reality, we will need more than multiplying churches. We will need multiplying networks working together for the flourishing of their cities and the advancement of the gospel.
And that is a mission worth giving our lives to.
NOTES
- Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5th ed. (New York: Free Press, 2003). Rogers identified innovators (2.5%) and early adopters (13.5%) as the groups that often create the tipping point for broader adoption.
- Damon Centola, Change: How to Make Big Things Happen (New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2021). Centola’s research demonstrates that significant behavioral change spreads most effectively through clusters of trusted relationships rather than isolated exposure.
- Tim Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 148–154, 320–338.
