A Journey of Multiplication — Vance Pitman, Hope Church Las Vegas

 Vance Pitman is the Senior Pastor of Hope Church Las Vegas, a church plant of First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Georgia. His expositional teachings and command of the diverse biblical vernacular captivate his audience and urge them to ask, “How can I be more involved in the Kingdom?”In this podcast, hear from Vance as he shares his heart behind his journey through church multiplication over the years.“You've got to get to that place of surrendering and realizing that that as a church planter and pastor, your job is not to grow a church,” Vance says. “Your job is to introduce people to the King, disciple them in kingdom living, and then send them out for the expansion of God's kingdom — which is a radically different mindset than I'd come from… our calling is the expansion of his kingdom and we're to surrender everything — daily surrender in ministry, surrender of the ministry, all of that is what it's really all about.”Check out this podcast, and why not go ahead and subscribe and leave us a review to help others find our podcast? It’s a small way that you can be a part of helping us accelerate multiplication!

Multiplication Bingo — Kevin Barnhart of Calvary Evangelical Free Church

Kevin Barnhart has a passion, and if you listen to the podcast, you’ll hear it come through on almost every question. As a matter of fact, it’s actually one of the keys to multiplication.It’s where multiplication either bottlenecks or accelerates… but I’m not going to tell you what it is. You’ll have to listen and play Multiplication Bingo with us on the Reproducing Churches Podcast to hear what the key was for Kevin Barnhart, pastor of Calvary Evangelical Free Church in Spring Grove, MN.Here are a few other things to play with for your Bingo game:Church plantingResourcesTransitionsAll of these are covered in today’s podcast, but if you’re paying attention, you’ll hit Bingo with our mystery topic.It’s the secret sauce of multiplication, and we’ve covered it as a leading theme at our annual Exponential conference."You might plant," says Kevin, "But if they die as fast as you're planting them after 10 years, you're really not changing the region.”Paul had four principles:Proclaiming the gospelForming biblical communityMaking disciplesRaising up and sending out leadersAll contribute to sustainable multiplication. Without all four of those working, eventually a movement starts to break down.Check out this podcast, and why not go ahead and subscribe and leave us a review to help others find our podcast? It’s a small way that you can be a part of helping us accelerate multiplication!

How to Start a Residency — Ray Chang of the Ambassador Church Network

Many churches dream of starting a church planting residency, but never do.What are the first steps to starting one?In this podcast, you’ll hear from Pastor Ray Chang, former assistant to Chuck Swindoll, and Director of the Ambassador Church Network, as he gives advice on how to run a successful church residence.As a Korean-American leader, Ray has been instrumental in planting multi-ethnic churches, and founding a multi-ethnic network of planters.In this podcast we tackle:DiversityThe nuts and bolts of church planting residenciesHow to get startedListen today to take your next steps in developing others to foster multiplication.

Prepping for the Future of Church Multiplication — Peter Mueller of the ACTS Church Network

Do you ever wish that you had a time machine? What would you go and tell your younger self when you got started on this ministry journey all those years ago? Or, if you’re just starting out, what questions would you want to ask your future self if you could get your hands on an affordable DeLorean that could go “Marty McFly” on the future?Well, thankfully, God has provided the church with leaders who are humble enough to know that they don’t have the answers to every question, yet realize that they have something to offer the generation behind them! When you’re starting out, your questions, challenges, and struggles aren’t the same as they will be ten years in. But what if somebody could help you right now save a lot of time, energy, and wasted resources to start prepping for the future so that you don’t have to make all of the same mistakes that they did?Enter Peter Mueller. Peter and the ACTS Church Network are looking back to ten fruitful years of switching their focus from a "church" to a church multiplication network. But more importantly, they’re looking forward. Over the years, they’ve put some amazing systems in place to help the next generation coming behind them get straight down to business. You don’t have to waste time rediscovering the pioneer routes over the mountains. These guys have already done that, and they’ve made maps! Blaze a faster route with some of the wisdom from today’s guest: Peter Mueller of the ACTS Network in Austin, Texas.Today’s episode covers some of the following:You never know when some life-changing thing is going to be saidHow to make sure you don’t just “think about multiplying” but actually do itWhy we need to collaborate togetherWhat multiplication networks look like for LutheransThe ACTS Network processHow to see 100 churches planted in the next 10 yearsAll of this and more will be found in the Exponential Reproducing Churches podcast with Peyton Jones. Listen now!

A Church of House Churches — Jason Shepperd of Church Project

What do you think of when you hear the words “house churches”?

Do your palms get a little sweaty? Do you start to get nervous, and look around for an exit? Do you get twitchy, and wonder if somebody is going to convince you that this is THE WAY?

In recent years, Exponential has been asking church leaders to review their score card, and take stock of what they value and celebrate. What if our scorecard valued multiplication over anything else? Would it help us to be open to other models that God is using in church multiplication?

Regardless of your chosen model, today’s episode will help you to think outside the box and learn some important lessons from what a reproducing house church movement looks like.

Today’s guest is Jason Shepperd of Church Project. Church Project began in 2010 with 40 people in an obscure warehouse, and quickly grew to thousands. We were pursuing a New Testament elemental DNA of discipleship, simplicity, generosity, diversity in community, reproduction, and a “declergyification” of the centrality of the church. We were attempting to return to a biblical and Spirit-led church planting pursuit, and to resist most common elements of churches and church planting – massive marketing, mega overhead, and attractive and attractional elements.

Church Project isn’t just a church. It’s a church of house churches, that has also become a network of churches of house churches. Confused yet? After few minutes into today’s episode, you won’t be.

In fact, you’ll be refreshed by Jason’s commitment to strip everything back to the barebones of multiplication and “do things the easy way.”

Perhaps you thought that house churches did things the hard way, but after today, you’ll see a network of multiplying house churches that has plenty of money to spare and give, simply because they have very little overhead.

Here’s some of today’s topics:

Why you might need to reconsider the house church model

How house churches multiply

The benefits of space, and paid staff to a house church movement

How you can rewrite your church’s scorecard

What can established and traditional churches learn from house churches? Listen to today’s podcast and find out from Jason Shepperd.

A New Set of Blueprints — Jeff Leake of Allison Park Church

Some people think that multiplication is just the “new hotness” for people who plant. But the reality is that established churches can plant just as well, if not better, than newer churches.

Sometimes, becoming a multiplying church is simply a matter of focus.

For Jeff Leake of Allison Park Church in Pennsylvania, his focus couldn’t have been more different. When he took the pastorate there after the church had been through a rough time, he was focused on merely surviving, and not getting too crunched in the process. Church growth would have been nice, but he wasn’t counting on it.

But, the church slowly did begin to grow, and when they hit a space capacity issue that turned into a dead end, Jeff began to seek God like never before. Out of this “sink or swim” mentality, God began to share his heart with Jeff, and focus his vision on something completely different.

You could say that the story of Allison Park Church in Pennsylvania is a story of God interrupting a leader’s plans, and giving him a new set of blueprints. Today, Allison Park Church is focused more on its “grand-daughter churches” than its “daughter” churches. The church even has some great-grandchildren because it has multiplied out 31 times in the last 24 years.

This episode’s topics include:

How God uses desperation in a leader’s life

Creating a multiplication culture within your church

Modeling multiplication for the next generation

How to deal with the pain when those you send seem ungrateful and hurt you

How to know when your vision for your church is “too small”

Tune into this Exponential Reproducing Churches Podcast as Jeff Leake helps refocus our vision to what God is doing, and possibly wants to do in your city.

Have you ever been written off? Were you voted most likely NOT to succeed in high school? Well, today’s guest on the Exponential Reproducing Churches Podcast has!Jeff Ludington was a troubled young man who bounced to five high schools in three years, got involved in drugs, and spent some time in prison. That’s where people thought he’d end up, but what they didn’t expect was for Jeff to find salvation in Christ there.When others saw a dead end life, God only saw the dead end of his old life. Reaching down to Jeff, and pulling him out of the hole, God gave Jeff a passion for people like him. Most of all, Jeff became a living breathing example of God’s mercy and grace. Today, Jeff is a strong leader in a multiplying church.Today, Jeff pastors a church in Los Angeles county called Generations, and is a part of Acts29 and the RCA.Taking a Legacy church in the RCA, Jeff and the elders came to a difficult decision. The best use of the resources the church had acquired over the years was to sell them off and replant. That’s not an easy decision, and people who had sacrificed over the years to make that happen had to be brought along. In today’s podcast we dig down into what it looks like to bring the generations of your church with you.Generations truly lives up to its name, and Jeff has been instrumental in joining two generations on mission together.When Generations was only four years old, it planted out again with a team of 30 people. Now, that’s a significant number of people when you’re a small church, but in this podcast, Jeff talks about what he wishes he knew when he started out.That was the start of something that’s continued to today.“We began about three years ago birthed out of a replanted old, dying denominational church full of senior citizens," Jeff says. "We replanted and got it healthy, paid off all debt, trimmed all the staff, and then sold all property netting us about $6 million that we could invest. We began preparing to be a mobile church that was missionally engaged in our city and worked with another planter to launch out of us, which became two planters, then three planters.""We have planted three churches in three years. We have sent out MANY more leaders than that. We have probably sent out close to 100 people in three years and have given away close to $1 million in church planting money. We have funded gifts to church planting networks, and to planting groups within denominations. We helped fund and start Gospel Ventures and provided staffing and offices for them.”In this podcast, you will hear about:How to lead a church through difficult decisions that lead to greater multiplication.Positioning yourself financially to become a multiplication church, and a catalyst to help others become multiplying churches.What to strategically do with $6 million.How you can create a culture of multiplication and not lose sight of everything else.Find out why Jeff Ludington is truly ministering to multiple generations, to reach multiple generations.

From 30 Members to 30 Churches - Mark Hallock of Calvary Church

 Exponential wants you to consider making the shift from a Level 3 (addition) mindset to a Level 5 (multiplication) mindset. But this type of thinking takes faith.We are told in Romans that Abraham had to hope against hope to believe that God wanted to birth a nation through him.His body was as good as dead, we’re told. This is how Calvary in Englewood, CO felt in 2010. In fact, they almost closed their doors after shrinking down to less than 30 people. The church was nearly 60 years old.So how does God take a church from being old, and unable to keep itself alive to becoming a powerhouse of multiplication?This is a story of faith, and today Peyton Jones interviews Mark Hallock, lead pastor of Calvary Church Englewood and founder of the Calvary Network.  Prayer and the faithful preaching of the word played a big part in what happened. The faith of the congregation was monumental. After growing to 300 people, they carved off nearly 100 to plant out, and this process continued repeatedly. But don’t underestimate this story. This has been a story of faith, true, but there has been intentionality and wisdom hardwired into this process. Despite the simplicity of what has happened, there’s a lot of missional strategy to dig into.Listen to today’s podcast here and take multiplication with you into your day. Maybe right now you’re just trying to hold the doors open. Perhaps you can’t even begin to think about multiplication…or that’s what you’re telling yourself. What if beginning to think about multiplication would be what turns the tide for you as it did for Calvary?Listen in and see what God may be saying to you about becoming a Reproducing Church!

What if you knew that the only way to multiply as a church would take a huge amount of sacrifice?How far would you be willing to go?How much would you be willing to give?We often hear that multiplication takes a willingness to sacrifice:A chunk of your peopleA chunk of your budgetBut what if it meant your entire paycheck?That’s the crossroads that Stu Streeter and the team at Disciples Church in Folsom, CA, came to five years into their journey of multiplication.Desiring to reproduce 10 churches in 10 years just didn’t look possible at the rate they were going.The overwhelming majority of their budget was going to paychecks and personnel.The team made a bold move. They decided to model to their congregation the degree of sacrifice that multiplication requires.It lit a fire in the people there, and Stu Streeter and his team have never looked back. Stu and his entire team are now intentionally bi-vocational planters, a choice that they feel has been a radical shift in helping them catalyze planters.In Episode 3 of our Reproducing Churches Podcast Series, we interview Stu Streeter, Lead Pastor and Elder at Disciples Church in Folsom, CA. Listen to today’s podcast here and take multiplication with you into your day. Who’s to say what great things might come from humble beginnings in your life? God wants to enlarge your sphere. Perhaps out of pain, and brokenness, death and defeat, will come a resurrection of purpose, and a greater power to see the impossible achieved.

Over the years, Exponential has had one goal; to help you to become a level 5 multiplying church. We realize that this won’t happen overnight. Change must start somewhere. Where will your starting point be? What will be the catalyst for change for you?It’s not the same for everybody.In fact, it can be very different.That’s because change is very personal.For one planter, it was the Sifted conference Exponential launched years ago. Josh experienced the unthinkable, not just for any leader, but for any human being. When Josh’s life fell apart in the midst of a church plant, God began to do a deep work within him.Today we interview Josh Husmann, the lead Pastor of Mercy Road Church in Indiana, a 1,000-person church that has been instrumental in launching 16 other churches in under four years.But don’t let the size of Josh’s church fool you. Josh has a unique story, but any unique story usually has a unique process that evolved out of it as well. In this podcast, among other things, you’ll learn about:•Missional outposts•The importance of starting a network•A unique funding modelListen to today’s podcast here and take multiplication with you into your day. Who’s to say what great things might come from humble beginnings in your life? God wants to enlarge your sphere. Perhaps out of pain, and brokenness, death and defeat, will come a resurrection of purpose, and a greater power to see the impossible achieved.