Have you noticed that there’s a church-planting frenzy in America right now? And honestly, I get it. As a former church planter myself, I know how exciting and faith-stretching it can feel to launch something new for the Kingdom.
But here’s a question we need to wrestle with:
Is more churches all we need?
According to the Hartford Institute, the United States already has approximately 332,000 Protestant churches. But according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are only around 19,500 cities and towns. That’s an average of 17 churches for each city and town.
The answer isn’t simply more and more churches. It’s more churches—and more effective churches. Yes, we need more churches in more areas of our cities, but what we desperately need are more evangelistically effective churches everywhere.
Are you doing bad math?
According to Lifeway Research, the average Southern Baptist Church baptizes 5.4 people annually (maybe that 0.4 is an elementary-age kid). Although baptism isn’t required for salvation, if we use that as a rough measurement for the number of salvations each year, it’s about 1.8 million annually. Which sounds like a lot.
But consider this:
- The U.S. population is 340 million.
- The number of annual deaths in the United States is 3 million.
Even if we doubled church plants from 5,000 to 10,000 per year, that adds only about 54,000 more believers. 1.85 million new disciples a year is barely over half of the death rate. People are dying faster than they’re being saved. As the kids like to say: The math isn’t mathing!
What’s the solution?
The solution can’t be just planting more churches. We have to increase both sides of the equation:
+ More churches everywhere
AND
+ More disciples made in every church
What if the 332,000 existing churches each led 10 people to Christ a year instead of 5? That’s 3.32 million new disciples annually. Add 10,000 new churches reaching 10 people each, and now we’re at 3.42 million new disciples every year. Now we’re finally beating the death rate.
Simple addition isn’t going to be enough to fulfill the Great Commission. Our churches have to multiply disciples. That’s the kind of multiplication we see in the book of Acts.
Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Acts 2:46-47 (Emphasis added.)
How do you multiply disciples instead of just adding?
At Dare 2 Share, we advocate an approach we call Gospel Advancing. It can be summed up with seven biblical values that create a culture of evangelism and disciple multiplication:
Intercessory prayer fuels it.
They all joined together constantly in prayer. Acts 1:14
Relational evangelism drives it.
When Priscilla and Aquila heard him [Apollos], they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately. Acts 18:26b
Leaders fully embrace and model it.
When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished. Acts 4:13
A disciple multiplication strategy guides it.
But the Word of God continued to spread and flourish. Acts 12:24
A bold vision focuses it.
‘But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ Acts 1:8
Biblical outcomes measure it.
[Barnabas] saw what the grace of God had done. Acts 11:23
Ongoing programs reflect it.
So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God in order to wait on tables. … We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the Word.’ (Acts 6:2, 4).
When churches embrace these values, disciples multiply, churches thrive—and the math finally works.
So let’s do more than just addition. Let’s start multiplying.
