Multiplication… The Only Math that Works

Dear Discipleship-first Friends,

Josh Howard recently joined our team at Discipleship.org.  He has spent the last 10 years of his work in Southeast Asia, focused on coaching and equipping disciple making movements.  Josh will be moving to Indianapolis and will be starting with us in August, so we wanted to take the next two newsletters and help you to get to know him better.  Here is an important post, telling you about their work.

Bobby Harrington

We had a math problem. It was a little over ten years ago, and my team was praying and dreaming about how to reach 1.3 billion South Asians.

To be clear, there were about 8 of us in this meeting. And, again, our goal was to reach 1.3 BILLION people. (Do you realize that a country like India could lose a billion people and still be in the top five largest nations in the world)?

How do 8 people reach 1.3 billion?

More math: We realized every day at least 25,000 people die in India, and over 150,000 around the world. That began to break our hearts. So, as a team we began to pray, “God, how do we reach the planet with the gospel and see the Great Commission completed in our lifetime? But we’ll start with South Asia, God. Show us how to reach these nations.”

In that meeting one team member said, “Hey Josh, what if we could reach 100,000 people a year with the gospel? Wouldn’t that be incredible”? I was like, “Absolutely!” Another guy said, “Yeah, it’d be great! They’d write books about us.”

I pulled out my calculator and excitedly plugged 100,000 into 1.3 billion. That’s when I realized that it would take us 13,000 years to reach India if we did it 100,000 people per year.

Reality smacked us in the face: Addition was never going to get the job done. Even addition on steroids would fall woefully short. If we added a zero to our “incredible” proposal and reached a million people a year, it would still take us 1,300 years just for India.

What do you do when you realize addition doesn’t work?

We got down on our knees and prayed. We started fasting. We asked God, “The way we’re currently doing things is never going to get the job done. We’re never going to see this nation reached. What do we do, Lord? Please show us how to finish your task.”

A few weeks later I stumbled across a little book by a guy named Ying Kai. Ying and his wife Grace moved to South China and rather than focusing on addition – adding people to their church so they could grow their little piece of the Kingdom – they focused on God’s big Kingdom and started multiplying disciples and mobilizing as many Christians as they could send out into the harvest fields. In just ten years they saw 200,000 churches started and a million people baptized.

Tears began to well up in my eyes. I shut the book and was only able to mutter out a stammering prayer, “God, if you can do that in China, I know you can do it here. I know you long to move this way in South Asia, Lord.”

Our team decided to give it a shot. To forget addition and focus on multiplication. We decided to multiply disciples and churches. That led to us changing, well, just about everything.

• We revolutionized our job descriptions. We went from “players” to “coaches.” Our job was not only to do ministry, but to train everyone else to do ministry as well.

• We flipped our structure. Instead of the leaders being at the top, the leaders would be at the bottom–lifting up as many as they could, supporting everyone else as they do ministry.

• We focused on training. In fact, we started training everyone who moved. If you were breathing, you were receiving training on how to share the gospel and make disciples who make disciples.

• We changed the focus of Sunday mornings. Instead of thinking of our gatherings as “the game,” we would use them as a strategic “locker room” time with our team, preparing them to go out and play in the real game.

• We realized control is the enemy of movement, so we gave up control and in return exponentially increased our influence.

• And I could list many, many more…

Ever since, multiplication has become our focus and our filter. For instance, pastors sometimes ask me at what point we have one of our house churches become two house churches. I always smile and say, “No, that’s addition. (Or possibly division). We’re in the multiplication game.” How does multiplication happen? We don’t tell people, “When your group gets to 30, it’s time to split it in half so you have two groups.” No, we cast vision and train every person to go reach their friends and family with the gospel, to make disciples, and to hopefully start their own house church when that happens. We want every person in every house church sharing their faith with non-believers and seeking to start Bible studies with them, which will become new churches.

The result of our math conversion from addition to multiplication? Last year our team started 9,439 churches. Started. That’s not how many churches we have in our ministry. That’s the number of new churches we launched in just twelve months.

Let’s break that down with some cool math:

• 9,439/12 = 786 churches started per month.
• 9,439/52 = 181 churches started per week.
• 9,439/365 = 25 churches started every day.

Wow. That’s not us. That is all God. And that is the power of multiplication.

Want some more math? You’ve probably heard this kind of thing before, but let’s say I was the only Jesus-follower in India, and I led only one person to the Lord and discipled him the first year. And then the next year we both led only one person to faith. The third year all four of us each led one more person to become a follower of Jesus and disciple maker. How long would it take to reach all of India? (Pulling out calculator–doing math). About… thirty-two years.

We’re in the middle of that. The first year we started a few churches. The second year a couple dozen. About five years in we were seeing several hundred churches launched a year. Last year, 9,000.

If we started a church that reached 100,000 people a year, it would take us 13,000 years to reach India. But with a multiplying movement of disciple makers, only thirty-two years! That is the power of multiplication! And when it comes to our mission, multiplication is the only math that works. 

If you’d like help shifting from addition to multiplication, stay tuned… I will be sharing more of what we have learned through Discipleship.org in the months and years ahead. 

For King Jesus,