A few years ago, Ed Stetzer and I co-wrote a resource to catalyze movemental church planting. It’s called “1,000 Churches: How Past Movements Did It—And How Your Church Can, Too.” Over the next few weeks, I will re-post a chapter at a time. The following is Chapter 3: Movement Characteristics.

In order to start a movement and plant 1,000 churches in your lifetime, you need to think about church planting through the lens of rabbits and elephants. Years ago, I (Ed) remember preaching at a conference where I felt like the odd man out. It was like that song from Sesame Street, “One of these things is not like the others…” The conference was on church planting, but it seemed like every speaker had started a church that had grown to at least 5,000 people—and some 25,000.

When it was my turn to preach, I decided to shoot straight and say it like it was. “Now listen. This is probably not what you’re going to experience when you plant a church. When you drove onto this campus, you drove on four lane roads called ‘Purpose Drive’ and ‘Saddleback Parkway.’ When you got out of your car, people greeted you and music was playing in the background. And now look, you’re with 5,000 people in this room. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t want to deter your faith. I don’t want to be that guy. But I need to be honest with you. This here can actually distract you from what God has called you to do. If you’re not careful, this conference can become ministry pornography for you— an unrealistic depiction of an experience that you’re never going to have, and one that distracts you from the real and amazing thing.”

As long as your goal is to plant a single, solitary elephant church like Saddleback, you’ll never get to 1,000 churches in your lifetime. We need more rabbits, without dismissing the elephants. (The Saddleback “elephant” has planted lots of churches, too.)

Yet, for a movement, we need rapid reproduction, not slow addition. Churches need to be planted and then quickly need to plant other churches. And, yes, they can grow to be elephants, but they need to start with a stronger focus on reproduction, early and often.

Consider this fact. Elephants have the longest gestation period in nature. After getting pregnant, a female elephant will carry her calf inside of her for nearly two full years! It’s almost unheard of for more than one calf to be born at a time. Upon birth, the calf is able to immediately stand up on his or her feet and walk a few steps.

This 260-pound “baby” will feed on his or her mother’s milk for about six months. At that point, the calf will begin transitioning to solid food, while continuing to nurse until age three. This whole cycle won’t start again for the mother until her calf is fully weaned. And for the calf, it will take 15 years before he or she begins his or her own reproductive life.

Let’s now take a look at the reproductive lifecycle of a rabbit. The gestation period for a rabbit is usually a month. At birth, a single female rabbit will typically expect not one, but up to 14 babies per litter. Within minutes after giving birth, it’s possible for a female rabbit to be impregnated again. That means a female rabbit can potentially have one litter per month! And as early as six months into their life, rabbits will begin reproducing.

What a difference! Let’s just take a moment and do the math. If a rabbit has an average of three female babies per litter per month, then at the end of year one, there will be 37 female rabbits (including the mother). If all 37 reproduce at the same rate, then at the end of year two, there will be a total of 1,369 female rabbits (including the original 37). At the end of year three, it jumps to 50,653 and so on and so on.

Compare that to elephants. At the end of year one, there’s only one, as the calf is still in the mother. At the end of year two, there are now two elephants: the mother and the calf. At the end of year three, there are still two. If the female elephant gets impregnated after weaning her calf at the end of year three, then it wouldn’t be until year five that the number of elephants jumps to an astronomically high number—three.

Now, don’t paint us as anti-megachurch here. As I (Ed) write this, I am the interim pastor of the oldest extant megachurch in the Protestant world, Moody Church. It has 3,700 seats and occupies entire city blocks in downtown Chicago. But, I can assure you, Moody Church knows that in its church planting strategy, the goal is not to plant more Moody Churches (though we would not be offended if some ended up that way!).

While there is definitely still a place for lengthy, elephant-like approaches to church planting, if we want to see movements of churches that birth 1,000 each in their lifetime, then we need to “breed like rabbits.”

Take a look at the following lists of movement characteristics and barriers from the perspective of various authors and practitioners. What do you see present in your church? What’s absent? Take note of the differences in what you’re seeing before we present ten characteristics of movemental Christianity as a means of comparison and encouragement.

6 Characteristics of Movements by Steve Addison

1. White-Hot Faith
2. Commitment to a Cause
3. Contagious Relationships
4. Rapid Mobilization
5. Adaptive Methods
6. Pioneering or Apostolic Leadership

10 Universal Elements Found in Every Church Planting Movement by David Garrison

1. Extraordinary Prayer
2. Abundant Evangelism
3. Intentional Planting of Reproducing Churches
4. The Authority of God’s Word
5. Local Leadership
6. Lay Leadership
7. House Churches
8. Churches Planting Churches
9. Rapid Reproduction
10. Healthy Churches

10 Factors Frequently Involved in Church Planting Movements by David Garrison

1. A Climate of Uncertainty in Society
2. Insulation from Outsiders
3. A High Cost for Following Christ
4. Bold Fearless Faith
5. Family-Based Conversion Patterns
6. Rapid Incorporation of New Believers
7. Worship in the Heart Language
8. Divine Signs and Wonders
9. On-the-Job Leadership Training
10. Missionaries Suffered

26 Movement Killers by Sam Metcalf

1. Requiring formal education for the leadership
2. Demanding conformity to methodology
3. Refusing to provide the necessary administrative and logistical support, without which a movement will suffocate under its own weight
4. Downplaying the validity of supernatural phenomena outside our paradigm
5. Not allowing room for younger, less experienced leadership
6. Being obsessed with theological purity
7. Valuing the safety of the people involved more highly than the mission itself
8. Centralizing the funding
9. Punishing out-of-the-box thinking
10. Managing instead of leading
11. Rewarding faithfulness more than entrepreneurial ability
12. Being tied to property and buildings
13. Being defined by critics
14. Being threatened by giftedness that’s unlike our own
15. Creating an endowment so there is no need to raise money
16. Treating creativity as heresy
17. Refusing to exercise discipline when it is needed
18. Relying on existing institutions for credibility
19. Promoting people on the basis of seniority and longevity
20. Insisting that decisions be based on policy instead of values
21. Focusing on nurture and the conservation of gains
22. Not giving proper attention to the selection of leaders
23. Being risk-averse under the guise of stewardship
24. Justifying a reluctance to raise money
25. Recruiting people who have a big need for approval and affirmation
26. Trying to control the movement of the Spirit when He actually shows up

10 Characteristics of Movemental Christianity

In the West, if and when we see movements of churches planting 1,000 churches in their lifetime, then we believe the following ten characteristics will be present. Based on our observations, movemental Christianity will have some of these characteristics.

1. Prayer

Prayer will need to be more than a habit or a discipline. It must be a conviction that establishes its priority and be expressed in a consistent rhythm of repentance and renewed faith. Before we see movemental Christianity where we are moving from addition to reproduction, we will have to be fervently praying and asking God to change us first.

2. Intentionality of Multiplication

We will also need to show the intention of being movemental (see the next eight elements). This involves an outward vision instead of inward, raising up others instead of increasing ourselves, and seeking the kingdom of God and not building or protecting our personal kingdom. As of now, I believe our focus is primarily defensive and incremental, not intentional and exponential.

3. Sacrifice

Change will not come without giving something up. No movement will happen until pressure is applied to move the church from the place of being static to a body of believers in action—from addition to reproduction. Just as the body grows muscle and changes with the tension of weights being lifted, so the church will change and grow in the midst of tension. Denominations, individual churches, and believers must pay this sacrifice.

4. Reproducibility

Movements do not occur through large things (big budgets, big plans, big teams). They occur through small units that are readily reproducible. If you want to see a movement, things need to be accessible and reproducible at every level. Accessible means that the average person can understand and participate in the vision without any advanced knowledge or special training. Reproducible means that the concepts are reduced from complexity to simplicity to virally spread. This is a challenge to resist the grandiose in favor of the reproducible.

5. Theological Integrity
Churches wanting to be involved in transformative, movemental Christianity hold firm and passionate positions on biblical views. These views are rooted in something that goes deeper than a charismatic leader or visionary but are planted in firm convictions that flow out of the Bible. This transitions the motivation for movement from the temporary (a leader or a model) to the permanent (the Scriptures). The Baptists and Methodists won the Western Frontier (1795–1810) because they were passionate about their beliefs. The Pentecostals are not de-emphasizing what they believe to win Central America. Movements are found among people with robust beliefs, not generic and downplayed belief systems.

6. Incarnational Ministry

Movemental Christianity recognizes that the gospel is unchanging, but the expressions and results of the gospel will vary from culture to culture. It also recognizes that as the sent people of God we are called to appropriately identify with those to whom we have been sent. The unchanging truth of the gospel needs to translate to the changing language and values of people around us. Within this environment, Christians speak and act in a way that directly addresses the environment in which we live, work, and recreate with the good news of Jesus. All of this means that we must understand both the gospel and culture in order to be a biblically faithful and culturally relevant countercultural movement of God. Movements will look like, and be owned by, ordinary people in ordinary life that are compelled by an extraordinary vision for the world.

7. Empowerment of God’s People

Movements only occur when the disempowered are given the freedom, and then take up the responsibility to lead. In our case, the clergification of the Church has marginalized those God has called—all people. As believers, we are equipped with the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, and the Bible calls all Christians a “royal priesthood.” Yet, the disempowerment of church members simultaneously satisfies and disturbs many pastors. Frustration results from not being able to get others to do the work of ministry, but satisfaction comes from being affirmed in doing the work others should be doing. Some pastors want people to shoulder the grunt work of ministry without having much say in leadership or vision, and this disempowers and disillusions qualified leaders to look elsewhere to exercise their gifting and calling. Such codependency and suppression is the death knell of movemental Christianity.

8. Charitability in Appreciating Other Models

Movemental Christianity is messy. Those involved in it make mistakes, overemphasize certain things, and even believe different things than we do. But no one gives his or her life for a bland belief system. It takes a wide net to gather the most fish, and it takes a wide variety of perspectives and ideas to reach a wide portion of culture. A movement of God cannot be contained in a single movement or theological tradition, and no one has it completely figured out. Therefore, movemental Christianity requires charity to maintain our firmly held convictions while rejoicing for and speaking well about those with whom we differ but are being greatly blessed by God.

9. Scalability

Movements often are stifled within smaller communities because of the small-mindedness and lack of preparation of local leaders. When God begins to move and believers allow movemental Christianity to begin to grow, leaders and structures must be able to rapidly reorient and resize to not stifle such movements. In many cases, movements will break out of structures rather than mold within them. More frequently, non-scalable structures (like some training programs or denominational structures) will actually hinder the movement. So, leaders need to plan at the foundational level for movement and growth, building structures that are flexible to a variety of leadership and adaptable to a variety of demographics. These structures become bottlenecks rather than catalysts, so hold them loosely.

10. Holism in Overall Approach

The modern evangelical separation of gospel proclamation and societal transformation is a historical oddity. Jesus spoke directly to the idolatry and hypocrisy in the culture around Him. It takes hard work to turn the dial from theoretical concepts to real-life action, and Christians are notorious for talking more about serving the poor than actually doing it. But movemental Christianity must practice holistic ministry in the way of Jesus to see real, lasting, multiplying success. Current movements and historical awakenings were and are accompanied by societal transformation.

We believe these ten characteristics will be present in the movemental Christianity to come—and have been proven historically to be effective measures where there’s been movement, reproduction, and multiplication.

Next week, we will unpack movemental principles and practices that will help your church move from addition to reproduction—so that you can be a part of planting 1,000 churches in your lifetime and stirring a movement of kingdom multipliers.