Multiplying To the Ends of the Earth

Culture can be confusing but not insurmountable if we learn to adapt.

Americans celebrate Christmas by decorating houses, lawns and trees. Brits eat plumb pudding. In Estonia, families gather in their saunas. Liberians decorate palm trees with bells. Ethiopians celebrate on January 7.

So what’s this all about?

I’ve been looking at a chart of the churches multiplied from the original Hope Chapel and discovered an interesting phenomenon. The most significant clusters of church plants are in other nations, but the kicker is that those were instigated by smaller churches back home in the U.S.

My theory, and it is only a conjecture, is that larger churches have a more deeply ingrained culture, often reflecting American ideas commingled with Christianity—a form of religious syncretism.

Smaller congregations espouse the same form of Christianity, but the struggle of smallness makes them more open to change and adaptation. Hence, their members seem to adapt better to foreign cultures.

Neediness As An Asset

Lack of funding also seems a blessing.

The churches I’m watching most often establish a beachhead in another country through short-term missions. They followed up by remaining in contact with disciples made on these trips.

Our larger congregations could afford to send and support missionaries from their churches. The smaller ones maintained contact via email, and annual trips were often limited to the pastor or another individual.

The effect of smallness was to build through local people more than building on the shoulders of an imported foreigner. These clusters sometimes number two or three hundred small churches, mostly planted because of simple disciplemaking. Larger congregations can afford to build institutions in search of quality. However, those institutions tend to process people institutionally rather than relationally.

To the Ends of the Earth

From the three churches I planted and led, we charged every planter to multiply while praying for a link to another culture or country. We added Acts 1:8 to Matthew 28 and saw the “ends of the earth” as a possibility for every congregation, regardless of size.

Many never did, but those who reached across national boundaries did good things.

The largest daughter church we planted in Hawaii planted a congregation of more than five thousand people in Manila. That church now multiplies itself. A small great-grandaughter New Hampshire church plant not only reproduced widely across New England but now boasts more than two hundred church plants across the Philippines.

This gets more interesting when you consider a man who is slowly dying of cancer. He’s so weak that he no longer holds a job, but he’s been discipling two men in Kenya via daily WhatsApp conversations for two years. Between them, the Kenyans have planted and multiplied more than ninety congregations in Kenya and four adjoining African nations. They’ve only met the man discipling them electronically.

Adaptability vs Control

Crossing cultures requires patience and adaptability. Whatever we do, we must adapt ourselves to the people most equipped to finish the task. Those people are locals who live the culture we’re trying to reach. Adaptability suggests surrendering control so we don’t replicate American syncretism in a different land.