Scalability Matters

This year I’ve learned more about Jesus through the new forms and structures the Holy Spirit has led us and our partners into through the limitations of COVID-19. I’ve known for a long time that God loves multiplication. It’s clear from our Creator’s earliest instructions of to all living things in his creation, first to the birds, animals, fish, and plants, then to us: “Be fruitful and multiply …” (Genesis 1:22, 28). 

And I’ve believed that God’s desire for all living things to multiply includes the Church, the living body of Christ around the world. But often our forms and structures have inhibited multiplication or scaling to the need. So, when the limitations of COVID-19 interrupted our normal ways of doing church around the world, I was intrigued to see what innovations and adaptations would result.

A large church body in an urban center in South Asia, along with their recent church plants, have been using Global Disciples approach to equip and send out their disciple-makers and church planters. When the larger church body was no longer permitted to meet due to COVID-19 restrictions, they split into ninety-seven small house churches and continued to meet a few times a week.

Often Hindu neighbors in nearby apartments and houses would hear the believers singing songs of hope and joy. And they couldn’t understand this. They asked, “Don’t you realize what is going on with this pandemic! How can you be singing?” The disciples of Christ explained the hope, peace, and joy Jesus gives and invited their neighbors to join them – and somewhat to their surprise, many of them did.

When restrictions were lifted a few months later, the church leaders discovered that many of the house churches now included at least one Hindu family that had come to faith in Christ and were worshipping in the home fellowships. They had never seen so many Hindus acknowledge Jesus Christ as their only Savior and Lord! Many had stories of how God had worked miraculously in their family.

The church leaders decided not to go back to meeting in the big church building. They combined some house fellowships. Plus, they started two new churches, each with about fifty new believers. The disciple-makers they had trained led these small fellowships. It was the greatest multiplication of new Christ-followers they’d ever seen – all out of a time of intense lock-down!

Praise the God of new wineskins!

Key Quotation

Often Hindu neighbors in nearby apartments and houses would hear the believers singing songs of hope and joy. And they couldn’t understand this.

Question

How do our structures or patterns of being church/doing mission limit multiplication or scalability? 

Galen Burkholder, Global Disciples