Gathering for Asking Questions
I and eleven other senior leaders from some of the most highly visible and fastest-growing churches across the United States agreed to gather in Chicago to explore new questions. Each of us had spent the last ten years or more asking the Level 3 question, “How can I grow my church?” I remember laughing a lot and learning a lot, but I also remember that every one of us felt like there had to be more than what we were experiencing. We formed a two-year cohort we called Future Travelers, which I wrote about with my friend Alan Hirsch (Alan is a recognized expert on multiplication movements) in On the Verge.13 Over the next twenty-four months, we asked new questions about multiplication and movement making and pursued answers together.
Steve Andrews was typical of the leaders gathered. He had planted Kensington Church in the Detroit suburb of Troy, Michigan, and in less than twenty years, the church was exceeding ten thousand people in weekly worship across several campuses. Yet, as Steve said, “I found myself pretty empty. I was feeling like I had in a big way missed some of God’s purposes in my life. We had thousands and thousands of people coming to church, but without the New Testament results that I knew God longs for.”
Steve realized that the problem was that his current leadership practices wouldn’t allow his church to do all God wanted to do. “There’s not enough years in my life to keep growing this thing bigger,” he said. Steve got so busy staffing his church’s programs that there seemed no escape from Level 3 growth by addition, even though it was rocket-speed growth. “How could I champion releasing people as missionaries when I can’t even staff my own programs?” he shared.
“All these good things hold me back from Level 4 reproduction and Level 5 multiplication,” Steve explained. “I am more interested than ever in changing our conversation from finding the next person to add to our numbers, shifting instead to how to release 150 leaders to start new churches and ventures and impact our city through multiplication.”
I found myself pretty empty. We had thousands and thousands of people coming to church, but without the New Testament results that I knew God longs for.
—STEVE ANDREWS
Steve and the rest of us were done asking only, “How do I grow my church?” An angst of regret lingered in the room as the group realized that for years (even decades), we had been asking the wrong questions and implementing the wrong practices.
Sometimes Better Questions Start with a Personal Calling
It’s not just pastors who learn to ask better questions. Joanne Russell is passionate about seeing women come to know Christ. When she and her husband relocated to Southern California, they found a church and began building relationships in their new community. After two years of meeting people through the PTA, a book club, and other community activities, she began a women’s Bible study in her home.
What began with nine women in her living room became the next year twenty-four women, and as of this writing six years later, there are 350 women in thirty-four groups. The ministry is now based at one of the campuses of her church, North Coast Church. She has become a staff pastor there and is known as the founder and leader of a ministry that brings women together in small groups to build relationships with each other and to study the Bible together.
One trigger for this amazing ministry growth is Joanne’s dissatisfaction with the lack of confidence that many women live with, which in turn limits their ability to boldly share the love of Christ with others. “I long to help women see their lives as God sees them,” she explains. “One of my life verses is 1 Thessalonians 2:8, which says, ‘Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.’ ” So her focus has been on creating an environment where women can do just that: share their lives as well as the gospel. In doing so, she helps them believe that they can facilitate a group. She invests in them, encourages them, and in turn helps them invest in and mentor other women.
If Joanne had fixated on “how can I share my life and faith with others?” she certainly would have had an eternal impact on many. But she asked a far better question: “How can I help other women share life and faith with others, who will in turn do likewise with still others?” That shift of question has translated into a much greater impact.
Addition or Exponential Multiplication?
To understand the dramatic difference between addition and multiplication, imagine two people on the first day of a month each receiving a dollar. The first person gets more dollars each day by addition, and the second person benefits from a multiplier effect. The first receives money this way: two dollars more on day 2, three dollars more on day 3, four dollars more on day 4, and so on. But for the second person, the running tally doubles on day 2, triples on day 3, quadruples on day 4, and so forth. The payout would look like Table 3.1.
Table 3.1: Addition versus Exponential Multiplication
DAY ADDITION MULTIPLICATION
Day 1 $1 $1
Day 2 $3 $2
Day 3 $6 $6
Day 4 $10 $24
Day 5 $15 $120
Day 6 $21 $720
Day 7 $28 $5,040
Day 8 $36 $40,320
Day 9 $45 $362,880
Day 10 $55 $3,628,800
Day 11 $66 $39,916,800
Day 12 $78 $479,001,600
Day 13 $91 $6,227,020,800
Day 14 $105 $87,178,291,200
Day 15 $120 $1,307,674,368,000
Day 16 $136 $20,922,789,888,000
Day 17 $153 $355,687,428,096,000
Day 18 $171 $6,402,373,705,728,000
Day 19 $190 $121,645,100,408,832,000
Day 20 $210 $2,432,902,008,176,640,000
Day 21 $231 $51,090,942,171,709,400,000
Day 22 $253 $1,124,000,727,777,610,000,000
Day 23 $276 $25,852,016,738,885,000,000,000
Day 24 $300 $620,448,401,733,239,000,000,000
Day 25 $325 $15,511,210,043,331,000,000,000,000
Day 26 $351 $403,291,461,126,606,000,000,000,000
Day 27 $378 $10,888,869,450,418,400,000,000,000,000
Day 28 $406 $304,888,344,611,714,000,000,000,000,000
Day 29 $435 $8,841,761,993,739,700,000,000,000,000,000
Day 30 $465 $265,252,859,812,191,000,000,000,000,000,000
On day 30, the first person has a total of $465, while the second person has an astounding $265,252,859,812,191,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s thirty-three figures). If you’re curious, this number reads as two hundred sixty-five nonillion, two hundred fifty-two octillion, eight hundred fifty-nine septillion, eight hundred twelve sextillion, one hundred ninety-one quintillion.14
This second person has gathered all of the planet’s wealth by day 17 alone! The second person’s tally is exponentially larger because of where multiplication can lead.
When leaders and churches change from additive models to multiplicative models, they suddenly have the potential in a short time to reach every person on earth.
Steve’s problem—the glass ceiling caused by his church’s growth by addition—does have a solution, and one with infinite impact. It comes through asking questions about multiplication. And the answers to those questions will lead to practices that maximize the church’s influence.
When leaders and churches change from additive models to multiplicative models, they suddenly have the potential in a short time to reach every person on earth.
My friend Eddie Yoon, author of Superconsumers: A Simple, Speedy, and Sustainable Path to Superior Growth and someone who has helped his clients achieve more than $1 billion in growth in annual profits over the past two decades, told me the following over a conversation about hero making:
A lot of my work with growing companies has led me to believe that the vast majority of businesses try to grow by pie-splitting vs. pie-growing. All my data and experience says that pie-growing companies grow faster, are more profitable and are far more valuable to Wall Street.
I bet the same is true f
or churches. If they focus on church shoppers (pie-splitting) I suspect they’ll experience far less growth potential than if their focus is, “Am I actually multiplying God’s kingdom?”
He also made one more observation:
My guess is that too many leaders think “glory” is a zero-sum game: If I help someone else get glory, then there’s less for me. The truth of hero making may be that you’re choosing to defer glory until your rewards in heaven. But it may be that there’s actually so much more glory on this side of heaven if we help more people make more disciples. (“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples,” John 15:8).15
Level 4 and 5 Questions Lead to Level 4 and 5 Practices
Here’s the reality: 96% of all U.S. churches have never reproduced themselves.16 They may be young or old, little or big, denominational or nondenominational, urban, suburban, or rural, but the overwhelming majority of churches that you and I know about have never birthed a new church or launched a new site or sent out a leader to start one, whether ten, one hundred, or one thousand miles away. They might have led many people to Christ, and that’s terrific. They might have discipled many new believers—children, youth, and adults—and that’s huge. They might have been involved behind the scenes, praying for and helping fund missionaries at home or abroad, and that’s really important.
Yet something is missing in the 96%: they’ve never gotten on the front lines and trained and released a person or team to give life to a new church that will “go and make disciples of all nations.” They’ve never experienced Level 5 practices.
How does that reality translate into Level 5 church thinking? It means that 96% of all U.S. churches are either declining (Level 1), plateauing (Level 2), or growing (Level 3). Only 4% are at Level 4 (reproducing) or Level 5 (multiplying). And that 4% is lopsided on the Level 4 side, with extremely few truly multiplying.
Imagine what would happen if the needle on the gauge moved from 4% of churches in America reproducing or multiplying to greater than 10% doing so. After an Exponential conference, I had a late-night conversation with Pastor Tim Keller, who is a student of movement making, and he is convinced that 10% represents the tipping point. This same tipping point is confirmed by Levitt and Dubner, the authors of Freakonomics.17 Bottom line: people who study movements say if 10% of all churches were reproducing or multiplying, it could dramatically influence the spiritual landscape of America. Every 1% increase represents tens of millions of lives changed for eternity.
Clearly, that would be a move of the Holy Spirit. But have you ever considered this: what if this kind of kingdom-advancing, Great Commission multiplication is what God already wants to do, and we’re holding it back by asking the same old Level 3 questions? Could it be that the vision of becoming a multiplying church is consistent with the original vision Jesus had for his church in Acts 1:8—that the church would start and multiply other churches who would move from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and to the ends of the earth? Jesus knew that through the fulfillment of this vision, his mission would be accomplished.
Michael Marquardt has spent more than twenty-five years training leaders. In his book Leading with Questions, he wrote, “Good leaders ask many questions. Great leaders ask the great questions. And great questions can help you become a great leader.”18 My translation? The better question gets a better answer, and here are the best questions of all for a leader and for a church:
What if this kind of kingdom-advancing, Great Commission multiplication is what God already wants to do, and we’re holding it back by asking the same old Level 3 questions?
• Leader: “Am I trying to be the hero, or am I trying to make heroes out of others?”
• Church: “How do we multiply God’s kingdom?”
You’ve Likely Found Partial Answers Already
Many church leaders have found partially right answers to questions on how to move from addition to reproduction or multiplication.
• The missional movement asked questions about how to get Christians out of their holy huddles and back into the neighborhoods and into relationships with the people they live, work, and play with each day.
• The multisite movement asked questions about how to reproduce one location’s effective ministry in another community or city.
• The recent church-planting movement has asked questions about releasing leaders and resources to start new churches in order to reach new people.
Overall, many leaders, churches, and denominations are searching for more-profound questions that can help us make more disciples.
Many are discovering that reproduction is even more strategic than growth (addition). Reproduction happens when a church plants a new church or starts a new site or location. When we start a new group or team, reproduction equally happens at all other levels of ministry. For example, a grief support group can grow in size, which is great. But it can also birth a new group (and then both groups can grow). I call that Level 4 reproduction.
Some examples of questions Level 4 churches ask are shown in Figure 3.2.
FIGURE 3.2
At Exponential, we have worked to create simple, sticky language such as “leadership resident,” which is a church planter in training, or “level 4 church” or “level 5 church” to describe churches that are reproducing or multiplying. I’m encouraged to see a growing number of leaders and churches adopting this new vocabulary, which Exponential has also been promoting through our excellent ebooks, such as Becoming a Level 5 Multiplying Church and Spark: Igniting a Culture of Multiplication.19
“Level 5” describes a multiplying church. This is a church—or ministry within that church—that not only reproduces (Level 4) but also builds into that reproduction the DNA of continual reproduction. It’s the question, “How many apples are in this seed?” versus “How many seeds are in this apple?”
The thirty thousand leaders who have attended an Exponential conference in the past couple years (plus tens of thousands more who have participated online) are growing more interested in the issue, “How do I begin to ask Level 5 questions?”
A few of the questions that Level 5 churches will ask are shown in Figure 3.3.
FIGURE 3.3
*By the way, that’s what the entire middle section of this book is about.
Is There a Level 5 Church or Ministry Inside You?
If you’re feeling a bit scared right now, a bit anxious about the seriousness of playing a leadership role in developing a Level 5 church or ministry within the church, I’ve got great news. You’re only in chapter 3. The next chapter paints a picture of how to lead as a hero maker, of what kind of person God will use (hint: if you love Jesus, it’s probably you!).
Then the section to follow shows you step-by-step how to embrace the five practices of a hero maker. If that’s not enough, the final section of the book walks you through challenges and questions that often arise as people embrace the kind of hero making that results in a Level 5 multiplying ministry.
Say a prayer, and then jump into the next chapter.
Hero Maker Discussion Questions
OPEN
• Would you rather ask questions or answer questions? Why?
• What is your reaction to Albert Einstein’s statement, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would use the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes”?20 Agree or disagree?
• Ever had an experience, or observed one, in which a lot of work was put into asking the right questions?
DIG
• Read Matthew 21:23–25 and Mark 11:27–29, and notice that Jesus responded to some questions with a question. Why do you suppose Jesus did this?
• What would it sound like for you to ask Level 4 or Level 5 questions? Give an example.
REFLECT
• What is your biggest deterrent from consistently asking Level 4 and L
evel 5 questions?
• Take time to pray, asking God to remove whatever it is that keeps you from asking Level 4 and Level 5 questions.
CHAPTER 4
Leading as a Hero Maker
Big Idea: Hero makers shift from being the hero to making others the hero in God’s unfolding story.
“Five . . . four . . . Ferguson picks up his dribble . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . Ferguson shoots and scores! They win! They did it! Ferguson’s last-second shot has won the championship!” With my hands raised in victory, I shouted those words in the driveway of my house as a kid. In fact, I created a heroic drama like this hundreds of times every summer.
I bet you did too.
If it wasn’t a game-winning last-second shot, how did you imagine yourself as the hero somewhere? My wife, Sue, who became a teacher, saw herself being like Anne Sullivan: teaching the next Helen Keller and helping her students discover how to learn.
Maybe you dreamed of taking a spaceship into outer space as the whole world watched to see whether you would land safely.
Perhaps you envisioned yourself in front of ten thousand screaming fans, nailing a face-melting solo on your electric guitar.
Or maybe you imagined dancing so beautifully that when the music stopped, the crowd erupted with a standing ovation.
I believe God put that dream to be a hero within each of us as our way to make a difference and to leave our mark on planet Earth.
Jesus’ death on the cross was heroic. Jesus told his Father, “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42), and then he stretched out his arms and gave his life for us.
But Jesus didn’t stop with being a hero. He made heroes out of his closest followers. We know that Jesus was a hero maker by how he allocated his time and energy as a leader.
Hero Maker Page 5
