From the beginning, God told us to be fruitful and multiply, as I’ve written about before.

• This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. — Mark 4:26-27
• Look, the world has gone after him. — John 12:19
• the number of the disciples multiplied greatly — Acts 6:7
• the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria… multiplied — Acts 9:31
• the word of God increased and multiplied — Acts 12:24

Are we multiplying? We’re going to look at the 4 basic math operations: subtraction, division, addition and multiplication. The others can be good, but let’s long for multiplication.

1. Subtracting is not multiplying

• someone too apostolic for the church sets out on their own, and afterwards we say we sent them
• a group of disgruntled people leave the church together, and afterwards we call it a church plant
• a group of churches leaves their denomination to start something new

2. Dividing is not multiplying

• a small-group grows enough in number to split into two groups
• a church outgrows its building and creates satellite campuses or a new church plant
• a group of ethnic churches inside a denomination is granted their own governing rights

3. Adding is not multiplying

• more people coming to Christ every day (like in Acts, they were “added to their number” – great! but not multiplication)
• a training center sending off an increasing number of church planters each year
• sending more missionaries out who are seeing people come to Christ in more nations

4. Multiplying is multi-generational

• disciples makes disciples who make disciples
• churches start churches that start churches
• nations receive the gospel and go to other nations

Church is like a family. Although we can somehow count each of the following as growth, only option 4 is multiplication.

1. Subtracting – a parent runs away from the family and starts a new family
2. Dividing – each parent takes half the kids and you now have two families
3. Adding – the parents keep having more kids until the family is huge
4. Multiplying – the kids have kids who have kids who have kids