Healthy things grow and multiply!

Church family,

Healthy things grow and multiply! Whether it is in the plant world or the animal kingdom, healthy things grow and multiply. Jesus often asked His disciples to look at their world of agriculture to teach them a lesson. Some of His favorite illustrations came from the harvest, the seed, and the plants and trees. He even references farmers and the work they do and the trust they demonstrate as the harvest occurs.

Jesus’ disciples demonstrated they understood the multiplication principles. When the Holy Spirit came upon them, they began to preach the Gospel, men, women, boys, and girls began to profess their faith in Him. As they did, the number of disciples grew. I love to read in the book of Acts about the growth and multiplication of the number of disciples. (I also love to see their spiritual growth too, but I will write about that another time.) G. Campbell Morgan in his commentary on the book of Acts traces out the numeric growth of the disciples and says, numbers are not the church’s only concern, but it is a concern.

Just as the Apostles saw the number of disciples grow and multiply, the church today should seek to multiply the number of disciples by growing the number of our groups and reaching people through our discipleship efforts. That is why I am so excited about Vic Summey’s class sending out Robert and Pam Keown to start a new group, and about Trea Whiten, Byron Morgan’s classes sending new members into this new class to reach new people. Obviously, we want to see each of these classes reach new people as seats are open in their classes and see Robert and Pam’s class filled up too. Then all the healthy, maturing groups can then multiply again. This has been Jesus’ way of disciple multiplication from the beginning of the Christian church.

Pastor Mike has shared with me that it has been a long while since we have had a group multiply and give birth to a new group, so I hope you will celebrate the work God is doing in His church. I also hope that all our Grow Group leaders will be working to grow healthy followers of Jesus growing together in healthy small groups that can, in the right time, multiply and grow more disciples. Let’s commit to pray for, support, and send new members to this new Grow Group and then let’s commit to growing healthy groups that multiply in God’s time to reach more people.