Simon Cox Blog: Eight Barriers To Multiplication, Part 2

Tuesday, 13 September 2016

Eight Barriers To Multiplication, Part 2

Is something stopping you from starting a new church plant?

In the previous article, we addressed the first four barriers to multiplication:

Fear
Perceived and Actual Scarcity
Bad Math
Church Centricity

In today’s article, we will address the next four barriers to multiplication.

5. Don’t See the Need for Multiplication

Before churches can multiply, they need to see it first. The problem is, many churches don’t see the need for multiplication. They assume that multiplication is not for them. Their reasoning is predicated on the assumption that other churches will multiply. While they may understand the vision behind multiplication, they just don’t have a personal conviction to multiply.

We believe every church should not only embrace a vision of multiplication, but personally engage in multiplication. Leaders do need to assume that even some of the most committed Christians will not have a pre-existing favorable disposition towards multiplication, and will see multiplication as the church’s responsibility and not theirs. This is why it’s vital to share the vision for multiplication, consistently, clearly,  and in different forms and fashions each time.

We saw this clearly in our research. You can click here to get the State of Church Planting Research Report that this is based upon. Churches who regularly communicated a commitment to multiplication were more likely to multiply within their first five years than those who didn’t.

Until your church sees multiplication  as a personal conviction that they should embrace and enact, you will  be facing an uphill battle. So work on communicating Jesus’ commitment to multiplication to the entire congregation through different means, like vision talks, sermon illustrations, state of the union addresses, ...