Multiply // Advance the Church
by Mike McDaniel, Director of SendRDU
One of the great subplots in the Book of Esther is the story of Mordecai. Mordecai comes from pretty humble circumstances. Apart from his name, he’s a pretty ordinary guy. But he chooses to take in his orphaned niece Esther and invest in her life. It’s Mordecai’s decision to speak into Esther’s life that provides the turning point for the whole book of Esther. When the time comes, he recognizes the sovereignty of God in her circumstances, and calls out her opportunity to leverage her life for God’s kingdom. Because of Mordecai, God uses Esther to save the Jewish people.
On the same note, I’m often struck by the irony of how Jesus chose to do his personal ministry. Jesus is the Son of God, sent to earth to redeem all of mankind – He’s got 3 years to initiate a movement that He’s going to task with reaching the world with the gospel. And yet he chooses to spend the majority of his time with 12 guys. Just ordinary guys. None of them had a seminary education. Few had any education at all. These guys were scrubs, JV. Jesus chose the B-team, spent 3 years with them, charged them with the most important task in the entire world, and left.
But he spent those 3 years investing in them, teaching them, speaking into their lives. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, they founded the greatest movement of history. Jesus’ entire strategy for fulfilling the Great Commission was making disciples – disciples that would go and plant churches.
Right now we’re in the middle of a series on the mission of the church. We’re talking about our vision to plant 1000 churches in the next 40 years (find out more here). If we’re going to fulfill this mission, it’s going to come through making disciples…by choosing to invest in the lives of people…by speaking truth…and by pointing out God’s purpose for them. The best thing about this is that anyone can do it. You can be a part of the mission, by investing in the people that God has put around you.
On that note, on October 8th, we’re co-hosting Advance the Church Regional with Vintage21 Church at their campus in downtown Raleigh. The topic for the afternoon is Multiply: Becoming a Church Planting Church. We’ll be talking about how the key to multiplying churches is multiplying leaders, and it will be a great opportunity to find out how you can invest in the lives of people so that one day, who knows, God may use them to plant a church. Steven Furtick of Elevation Church in Charlotte, Tyler Jones of Vintage21, and Chris Atwell of Portico Church will be teaching.