More Performance from an Unexpected Source

by Rob O’Neal, director of Church Multiplication

When I was a teenager, my father bought a Buick Regal T-Type. This performance car was better known as a Grand National. It was fast. When I stepped firmly on the accelerator (which I did more than once), the car would shoot down the road like a rocket. It was fun to take off from a red light in my home town, and it was even more fun as it hugged curves on the county roads.
When he got the car, I assumed that the engine was gigantic. It had the speed that a great big engine would give, and it made all the deep roaring noises that I had come to expect from something massive under the hood. But when he opened the hood and showed me what was inside, I was surprised. The engine was smaller than I expected. It just happened to be augmented with a turbo-charger that made the smaller engine more powerful than its size would indicate.

Opening up the hood shows us more clearly what is really going on in a car, and the same can be said for the church multiplication movement. At first glance, it seems to be very different from other things we do as a Conference like Church Development and Conference Care. Church Development seems to help churches be healthy, Conference Care seems to help pastors be healthy, and Church Multiplication seems to be all about starting new churches. Then you open up the hood on Church Multiplication and look

inside. What you find may surprise you.
Under the hood of Church Multiplication is a mission and commitment to make healthy disciples in a systematic kind of way. That’s actually the same engine driving Church Development and Conference Care. Church Development seeks to develop healthy churches that make disciples effectively. Conference Care seeks to make healthy disciples out of pastors and to help them make more disciples. Church Multiplication makes more healthy disciples by starting more churches who make more disciples.

Most churches birthed by the Conference involve a long period of helping people understand up front what a disciple is. Our planters disciple their core groups from the beginning and develop systems to do so consistently as their congregations grow. Our planters are committed to the church’s mission to make disciples as we go. It is the heartbeat of what we do.