You Can’t Multiply Alone — Building A Reproducing Culture

There is a quiet temptation in disciple-making, and it is especially strong for gifted, motivated leaders. It is the temptation to do things yourself. To be the one who disciples, the one who reaches, the one who carries the vision because you can see it most clearly and care about it most deeply.

I understand the pull. I have lived it. It often rears its head. And I have watched it limit more disciple-making efforts than almost anything else in my own life and in the lives of others.

The fact is: you cannot multiply alone. Multiplication is, by its very nature, something that happens through a team, church or movement’s culture, not through a person.

The Difference Between a Producer and a Culture Influencer

A gifted individual can produce a great deal. They can disciple many people, start many groups, and bring about remarkable fruit. This is good. It is also fragile in some ways that aren’t immediately obvious.

When the fruit depends on one person’s gifting, energy, and presence, it stops when that person stops. The moment they burn out, move, take a sabbatical, or simply run out of capacity, the whole thing slows. I’m right in the middle of this with my sabbatical. Will the organization I founded do well without me? That test will tell me a lot.

I have seen genuinely fruitful ministries plateau the instant the central person reached their limit — because there was never a culture of multiplication underneath, only a producer on top.

Org, team, or church culture multiplies whether or not the founder or catalyst is present. The vision, values, and practices live in the group, not in the leader. The often hidden goal is not to be a more fruitful disciple-maker. It is to build a culture where fruitful disciple-making is simply what people do.

Building It Around You

So how do you build a culture rather than just be a producer of new disciples, teams, or pioneering efforts? It starts with refusing to be the only one who does the work.

Every time you disciple someone, you bring someone along to watch and assist. Every time you start a group, you do it with the expectation that the people in it will start their own. You celebrate, loudly and specifically, when someone else does what you do — because what gets celebrated gets repeated. The culture forms in those small, repeated signals far more than in any formal training.

Let me give you an example. I recently ran a training where two groups were being formed that would continue to meet together to learn and grow until I came back to train again. We needed leaders.Facilitators.But I told them this.“You will facilitate this session of 14 weeks. But during that time, you will identify who will facilitate next time. Everyone in your group is a leader.”

For those working in diaspora and immigrant communities, this principle takes a specific form that is worth noting. The cultural insiders — the Persons of Peace from within the immigrant community itself — are key to the strategy and vitally needed. A movement among a people group will not multiply if it depends on an outsider, however gifted and well-intentioned. Finding and investing deeply in those insiders is the difference between an outsider-led program and a genuinely multiplying culture. The aim is always to start something that will eventually not need you.

Where Freedom Comes

There is real freedom available for anyone carrying the weight of disciple-making alone. You were never meant to be the source of all the ministry. You were meant to be one part of something God is building — something that, if it is healthy, will outlast and outgrow you.

That is not a demotion. It is the purpose of discipleship. The leaders I most admire are not the ones with the most impressive personal fruit, they are the ones who have equipped many others. They are the ones who built a culture that kept multiplying long after they left.

You can’t multiply alone. And the good news is, you were never supposed to.

Building this kind of culture is hard to do in isolation — which is part of the point. If you want to do it alongside others who are building the same thing, come join us in our community. We’d love your input and questions. And if you are a practitioner who wants more meaty input, you’ll find the Exploring Further articles and Deeper Dive videos do exactly that. Find out more at multipliersmindset.com/dtmmembership.

Something to Think About and Discuss:

•Are you currently functioning more as a producer of ministry or as a culture-builder in your context? How can you tell?

•What resonated with you most in this article?

•What is one specific thing you could do this month to build culture of multiplication rather than just produce the fruit yourself?

Share in the comments below or on our Dare to Multiply community.