Church Planting & Multiplication Archives

Always and Never Ready to Reproduce

Someone recently asked me how could they know that they were ready to launch a new church. My answer was “always and never.” Consider giving birth to your first child. After achieving puberty I was always ready in one sense but never ready in another. In fact, I was so immature that I held my…

Words Have Meaning

Well, “Duh,” you say. But not just meaning(s) but meaning. Vocabulary changes so much about what we allow or don’t. What we encourage. Who becomes a hero in our church family. How we embrace or reject opportunity. Consider This We were 13 years into a church planting operation when Carl George entered our lives. We’d…

Doing What You Though You Couldn’t

It’s cold in the California desert. A warm winter shirt served me well on my morning walk. Along the way, I bumped into an old friend—actually, it was a tree. It’s a plumeria tree typically found in the tropics. I’d seen it before, but it was a welcome surprise today. There are just…

Why I Quit Pastoring

I’m not your pastor, and this is not a church. One Sunday in early 1984, I informed Hope Chapel Kaneohe Bay that I was no longer their pastor and that we were no longer a church. Their church was their microchurch. Their pastor was their microchurch pastor. Were a convention of churches. My job was…

After-action Appraisal of Church Planter’s Network Meeting

Join my son, Carl and myself for a short after-event rundown of our attempt to kick-start more church multiplication in Hawaii. The impetus to plant churches has significantly slowed since I lived in the state. We hosted a meeting to gather and network those still focused on church multiplication. Many of those who attended lead…

Revitalizing Church Multiplication in Hawaii

Thirty-nine years ago, Aaron Suzuki and I moved our families to Hawaii from Southern California. We had a strong church behind us yet had plans to start an automotive repair service as a bivocational fallback. We didn’t anticipate strong spiritual hunger among the people we would meet. I would now admit that our years there…

Lightning Can Strike Twice

I was told that lightning never strikes twice – in nature and in church. But I don’t believe it. There have been instances of people struck by lightning twice while standing on the same hilltop, though years apart. It also happens in church multiplication. God blesses whoever he calls, whenever he calls. And when I…

Why Grandma Quit Having Kids

Let’s think about why my grandmother quit having kids. The truth is she was pregnant, probably 20 percent of her entire life as she lived to just age 58 when a stroke took her away from us. I calculate that she was pregnant for about 14.5 years. She had 16 kids. All of them lived,…

Cannibalizing the Church

I’m worried that we’re cannibalizing our churches. A few days ago, Lifeway published data about more churches closing than opening during the pandemic. That week, McKinsey Co. stated that more businesses opened than closed during the same period. We’re losing ground. But that’s not the worst of it. For decades big churches have swallowed smaller…

Some Things Don’t Change, Nor Should They

This week, I posted a video clip someone sent me from a TV interview I did 37 years ago. I appeared on the show about seven months before our move to Hawaii. I had more hair then (this was the 1980s). As I watched the video, I realized that some things never change, which is…