"Go and make disciples...."
-Jesus
I just returned from attending the annual Exponential Conference in Tampa, Florida. With me, were 10 LCMC church planters and their planting teams--- for a total of 23 souls amongst 4,000! Exponential is where church planters and missionally-minded existing church leaders gather for God's inspiration and direction to multiply gospel impact for their cities.
For example, the group was introduced to a Dan Smith, pastor of Momentum Church in Cleveland, Ohio. He was wearing a t-shirt that read: "I liked Cleveland before liking Cleveland was Cool." I'm not totally sure what that means, perhaps it has something to do with LeBron James....?!
Anyway, Dan's planting story is quite intriguing and really out of the box for most conventional pastors. You see, instead of measuring accumulation (that is, determining success/failure by the size of buildings, the number of butts in seats and budget numbers), Dan intentionally birthed a church that is all about the SENDING impact. In just a few short years, Momentum Church has sent out more than 100 people to plant churches, while still running several hundred in regular worship attendance. Dan says the day will soon come when they've SENT OUT MORE people to impact the city of Cleveland, than they will have in their own congregation. Now that, is multiplication! Unselfish. Kingdom-centered. Biblical. It breaks the scarcity mentality that many plants have for years. It's Jesus-like.
Momentum Church is not about a model or a method, but a scripturally-based heart-commitment that purposefully designs the DNA culture of Momentum's people. They don't wait back and say, "Someday we will do _____ once we get: more people, more staff, more money, etc". Instead, they created the future in order to break from an unhealthy, or limiting culture, that many churches wind up becoming.
I greatly admire the faith courage of pastors like Dan Smith of Cleveland. To him, kingdom expansion is not about how big an individual church can grow, but how big an impact God grows through a planting culture of sending out leaders to be the church of the city! Dan's focus is not on accumulating staff and programs within buildings, but rather about training, equipping and encouraging disciples to multiply themselves so that different kinds of churches can be established to reach different kinds of people.
How about you? Will you settle for doing church as usual (which, if you haven't noticed, is losing momentum in the culture), or will you actually "follow Jesus" in such a radical way that creates multiplying momentum?
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