Partnerships

Because Multiply is a resource or accelerator organization, most of the work we do is through partnering. We partner with indigenous church leaders in areas the world-over and with individuals and churches who have a heart for supporting those indigenous churches.

But at Multiply, we don’t believe in a fundamental division between our donors and the indigenous church leaders we partner with around the world. While we may at different times play different roles, we are all a part of one vision and one calling and working towards one goal together. This idea is why we refer to ourselves as a family instead of a network or affiliation. Ultimately, we all desire to see the name of Jesus glorified in every corner of the world.

While many international missions organizations worry about the potential messiness that can occur when donors are directly connected with resource recipients, we are fighting for deep connection between family of church congregants and leaders. One reason for this is because our model encourages everyone to be on a pathway to being a mature believer. Our resources for helping people grow in their faith and become better followers, leaders, and church multipliers are freely available to everyone in local and international churches. If you are a donor to Multiply you likely care enough about the Kingdom of God to also want to work on your spiritual life. What’s more is that the Multiply programs don’t just lead donors to be followers, leaders, and an active part of growing churches but also expect the family churches to move from under-resourced churches to donors themselves. To build bridges between Mission Partners and Resource Partners, Multiply actively works to host events and trips that bring the two together. We believe that all of our partners can grow from interactions with one-another, especially our international partners. This will, of course, result in even more new churches reaching the lost!

All these things being true, it can be helpful to have consistent language for identifying who is playing what role and any particular time. The following language helps us to do just that.

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Mission Partners

Mission Partners are members of the Family of Churches who are currently receiving help from Multiply. They are under-resourced. These are churches or organizations that are being helped with the funds given by our generous donors. At any time it may be a rural church in Africa or a Norfolk resident in the beginning stages of their church plant. Whatever stage they may be in, these Mission Partners are on the receiving end. They are busy building capacities by implementing the 3F System so that they can grow and multiply to a self-sustaining and giving capacity. Mission Partners are developed in or adopted into the Family of Churches through assessment, action plans, and applying those plans to their context.

Assess

Before being adopted into the family of churches and becoming a Mission Partner, planters and pastors are vetted extensively. Since Multiply is responsible for stewarding the funds donated from our Resource Partners we must ensure that they are the right fit for our shared goals. To this end, each potential family member is assessed in three categories: Followership, Leadership, and Multiplication. 

From the beginning of the growth process, we want to know that what is being multiplied is rooted in healthy followership of Jesus. Applicants will be assessed on their knowledge, understanding, and experience in following and leading others to follow Christ. We want to know that multipliers have a system for developing followers and that they themselves are healthy followers. 

Similarly, the leadership assessment ensures the planter or pastor candidate has a process in place for developing leaders. If they do not, [Multiply] will give access to our development pathway, designed to move leaders from leading self, to leading others, leading leaders, and leading organizations. Developing leaders who follow Jesus well and know how to develop new leaders sets the stage for multiplying followers, leaders, and churches. 

The multiplication assessment allows candidates and [Multiply] staff to align on their plans to multiply. Assessment for multiplication helps identify the needs of leaders and churches who are ready to plant new churches or send out leaders to a new context to shepherd and develop new followers and leaders. Leaders who are identified through assessment as “multipliers” not only have a plan in place for developing interns, residents, and planters/pastors, but they may also be catalysts for new [Multiply] hubs and network expansion.

Action

After assessment in Followership, Leadership, and Multiplication, candidates are given an action plan tailored to their context in each category. This action plan will identify areas of growth where the candidate needs improvement as a follower, leader, or multiplier. The action plan may have resources to study, comprehension exams to complete or simple alignment tools to help ensure an ongoing healthy partnership. Each partner who is ready to work with [Multiply] will be assigned a coach who will walk with them through the application of their action plan. 

Application

The application plan for each follower, leader, or church will vary by context. Simple Churches are largely concentrated in an international setting and will apply the action plan to their environments based on level of knowledge, understanding, and experience appropriate to their context. Like the other church models, Dura Churches will apply their action plan to develop multipliers through coaching and implementation strategies unique to [Multiply]. Prevailing model churches will be able to leverage their action plans to help their people multiply followers, leaders, and churches. Beginning with followership, our leaders develop into multipliers in any context.

Resource Partners

Resource Partners are valued members of the Multiply Family of Churches that love the Church and the mission of God and want to financially support gospel multiplication with followers, leaders, and churches throughout the nations. Resources can be gifted in a variety of ways: cash, stocks, cryptocurrency, etc. as well as in-kind through donations of cars, boats, and real estate. Planned giving options will be available in the future. Resource Partners can be individuals, churches, or organizations such as charitable foundations. Multiply and all of its work is supported 100% by donations.

These donations typically come in two (2) forms. The first is an individual donor. These are the people, mostly congregants in Family Churches, who give over and above their local church tithing to support the work of multiplying followers, leaders, and churches. The second is Family Church Donors. These are churches that have moved past the under-resourced designation. Each year we ask these churches to make a pledge to cover the full cost of the services that Multiply Central provides to them. They donate the money to Multiply in these amounts. A church that can’t cover their Ministry Capacity pledge is considered under-resourced and will be supported until such time that they become a Resource Partner themselves.   

Multiply has two programs for our resource partners.

The first is called The Harvest. The Harvest is Multiply’s global, recurring, giving community. It is composed of generous, passionate, and determined people from all around the world. Members of this community make weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly commitments to Multiply to be used as needed by the organization. These donations are absolutely crucial to the success of Multiply because they allow us to find and execute on new opportunities for church multiplication. They also give Multiply the stability to do strategic planning for vision execution on a yearly basis.

The Harvest is based on the Gospel of Matthew 9:35-38: 

35 And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

There is an incredible need for help from Multiply in the Global Church. The Lord has opened up tremendous opportunities and gifted us with the vision and tools to meet this incredible need. We see Multiply Harvesters as the people Jesus is speaking about in Matthew 9. They see the opportunity, that the harvest is ready and plentiful and they are determined to empower those who are reaping it for the Lord.     

Those who join The Harvest get a free T-shirt made especially for Harvest Members. They also receive regular newsletters updating them on how their funds are being used. There is no limit on how much or how little one can give through The Harvest. Every dollar is appreciated, significant, and impactful.

The second program is called Progress Giving. Progress Giving is when donated funds are allocated for specific followers, leaders, or churches on the 3F pathway. At the Resource Partner’s request, their gift will be used to multiply ongoing or future initiatives. Typically, this means a specific initiative within a church, in a specific location that is actively executing the 3F System. Resource Partners who give in this way receive several updates on the specific pathway to which they allocated funds. These updates will allow Resource Partners to follow along the pathway with the Mission Partner as they build a culture of followership, develop those followers into leaders and help those leaders multiply churches!  Project Giving is available to anyone who gives at least $500 in a single gift.  

Whether you’re a Mission Partner seeking to transform a church into all God intended it to be or you’re a Resource Partner denying yourself a dinner out one time a month to make room in your budget to be a member of The Harvest, we want you to know that you’re part of the family and together we can multiply! 

— the [multiply] team