The other day, I was listening to a podcaster interviewing a church leader in New York City. The church leader reported that God is doing something amazing in his city: Jesus has been appearing in people’s dreams and urging them to repent. It was an amazing testimony indicating that God is doing the sort of things he has done for years in other places around the world, but even as I rejoiced in this, I felt the Holy Spirit poking me in the side.
Quite irritated that God would ruin this moment for me, I impatiently demanded to know what he wanted, and as I drove in my car, the Holy Spirit whispered, “It’s like what Jesus said about the stones on Palm Sunday.”
In Luke 19:28-40, Jesus entered Jerusalem to great fanfare. The disciples found a donkey for him to ride and threw their cloaks on the ground before him, and all the people shouted, “Hosanna!” That is, all the people except some of the Pharisees. They shoved their way through the crowd and stopped the whole procession to demand, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.”
In verse 40, Jesus aswered, “I tell you, if they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out.”
The Holy Spirit was telling me that Jesus appears in dreams like this because either (a) there are no Christians left to share the gospel or (b) the Christians who are left are not sharing the gospel.
In that moment, I resolved that Jesus would not need to take matters in his own hands because I was not sharing the good news that he saves people from their sin and draws near to those who draw near to him, and I knew that our church needs to make the same commitment. To that end, New Foundation Church will be a multiplying church, and here is what that looks like.
Followers multiplying followers
We are going to challenge each other to share our faith so that others will follow Jesus, too. We will focus our attention on the people in our own circle of friends and family. We call these people our +1s, and they are the people who are most interested in what God is doing in our lives. To that end, we will pray daily for the people we know who don’t yet know Jesus. We will endeavor to engage them in some meaningful way at least weekly. And we will invite them as often as possible to put their faith in Jesus and join us in fellowship. Ideally, everyone in the congregation will have nine or ten +1s at any given moment, and as our +1s get saved, we will add new +1s (without dumping the old ones, of course). In this way, we will see the number of Christ-followers in Des Moines grow!
Churches multiplying churches
It is not enough for followers to multiply followers. The fact is that there are 750,000 people in the Des Moines metro area, and at least 70% of them have no church home. Moreover, there are people sitting in churches across the metro who do not really follow Jesus. Our one church cannot do this alone. Therefore, New Foundation Church will endeaver to plant more churches in other parts of Des Moines and beyond. These churches won’t be huge. They may even meet in homes. They will focus their ministry efforts on the neighborhoods surrounding their locations, adapting their methods and strategies to best reach the people they are ministering to.
Please do not misunderstand. This is not the same as planting campuses of New Foundation Church. The churches we plant will be fashioned in our likeness, but they will not be carbon copies. Instead, they will be autonomous congregations with their own leaders and styles so they can best reach their own communities for Jesus.
Yes, New Foundation Church will be a multiplying church. Christ followers will multiply Christ followers, and our church will multiply churches. Together, we will share the gospel with the people of Des Moines so Jesus won’t have to do it himself.