More leaders within The Wesleyan Church are convinced that God is on the move and the world needs more indigenous church communities to rise up and proclaim the gospel. It is common for these leaders to express the desire to be a multiplying church, but they have a difficult time figuring out what it looks like in their context.
The Church Multiplication Collective of The Wesleyan Church has created an initiative to help leaders develop a church multiplication strategy. Known as the Exponential Multipliers Cohort, the initiative is a Wesleyan-specific community of emerging multipliers formed in partnership with Exponential Conference.
In the fall of 2017, 25 Wesleyan leaders committed to go on a year-long multiplication-oriented journey together. The learning community will engage online and have three face-to-face gatherings in Houston, Los Angeles and New York. The learning community will travel with leaders who specialize in church multiplication: Will Mancini, Tim Hawks, Alan Hirsch, Larry Walkemeyer, Ralph Moore, Dave Ferguson and Todd Wilson.
The Exponential Conference has served The Wesleyan Church (TWC) as a hub for church multiplication training and resourcing for the past several years. Exponential initiated and designed these learning communities in order to help forward-thinking leaders engage in peer-to-peer conversations about the future of the church. Participating leaders have tasted success in the context of prevailing church metrics. However, these leaders are experiencing a “holy discontent” partially rooted in the reality that the prevailing methods and measures in the U.S. church are not producing the outcomes Jesus intended.
All of the Wesleyan leaders committed to the cohort are moving beyond “addition” thinking and embracing multiplication mindsets and “movement” thinking when it comes to connecting people to the grace of God and making disciple-making disciples of Jesus. They are leaders who are no longer interested in simply growing attendance, but long for a greater impact in God’s kingdom around the world.
In the end, these 25 Wesleyan multipliers will make new friends while experiencing an innovative learning community, uniquely shaped by the whispers of the Holy Spirit, and will feel confident implementing their church multiplication strategy. TWC is serious about celebrating disciples making disciples and churches multiplying churches until The Wesleyan Church has a transforming presence in every ZIP code and community.
For more information about Exponential Conference, click here.
