The mission of Christ will only be realized when the church of Christ gets serious about multiplying!

The church is the hope of the world!
There’s nothing like the church when the church is working right!
The eternal destiny of my neighbor hangs in the balance so we better get it right!

Reach 1 – Coach Up – Multiply

The first-century church refused to pause in order to consolidate…One of the keys that moved Christianity from an outlier to a dominant force in less than three centuries was its habit of multiplication. – Dr. Jeffery Christopherson

Acts 2:47 NIV
…the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved

Acts 4:4 NIV
…many who heard the message believed; so the number of men who believed grew to about five thousand.

Acts 5:14 NIV
…more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.

Acts 6:7 NIV
…the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly

Acts 8:12 NIV
…they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.

Acts 9:31 ESV
So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

Acts 1:8 NLT
…you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

The mission of Christ will only be realized when the church of Christ gets serious about multiplying!

Acts 11:19-21 NIV
Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

If we ever let the church be about us instead of Jesus, we are slipping into irrelevance!
We are going to be held responsible for coaching up the next generation!

Acts 7 & 8, something happens, one of the new leaders, Stephen, was preaching and the Priests attacked him (They were threatened), and they killed him, this emboldened others and the church in Jerusalem started being attacked, so many of the Christians left…but they didn’t multiplying…

So Jewish people who fled persecution in Jerusalem went to Cyprus (only to the Jewish Population), and some of the people who got saved in Cyprus connected with some that got saved in Cyrene and they decided that they would go over to Antioch to tell them about Jesus and start a church there! But it wasn’t just a Jewish thing anymore, it was a Jesus thing, they wanted EVERYONE, even people that looked different, talked different, had different backgrounds than them. They wanted everyone to know who Jesus was!

Antioch 300 miles; Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbour…then some places you might actually want to go like Nashville, Lexington, Louisville, St. Louis.

Within 10 years of the crucifixion there were churches planted and growing in every major city within 300 miles of Jerusalem…within 50 years of the crucifixion there were churches in every major city in Europe, Africa, and a large part of Asia.

You might be thinking, “How in the world is this possible?” And the answer is that multiplication is unbelievably scalable. Which is a fancy way of saying that it works on every size.

You see the first century church didn’t just multiply with people, they multiplied with house meeting (small groups), then they multiplied with multiple times that they met, then they even multiplied churches!

Let’s go back to my amazing graphics to illustrate how this will look in our context.

Atticus & Nico start a small group in their neighborhood!

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