Ideas

We’ve done lots of teaching and consulting around the country using the Readiness 360 reports and this little cartoon.

We tend to ask two questions of groups who are seeing the The Rabbit and the King video for the first time:

What did you learn about multiplication?

• Its exponential
• Doesn’t take but 1 to start
• It looks like fun:)
• You sometimes don’t understand how important/big it is until later in the game
• If it is healthy, there are no deformed rabbits

What does multiplication have to do with your church?

• While we are fiddling around with creating a plan, you don’t know what is multiplying behind the scenes.
• It is biblical. We need to be multiplying disciples.
• We shouldn’t wait two years to get something done.
• Jesus talked a lot about multiplication so we should probably be doing that too.
• We don’t have to wait until we are big to start thinking about multiplying ministry. As a matter of fact we probably would never think we are big enough until we start to understand the power of one and the power of multiplication.
• We need to be very careful about what attitudes and behaviors are multiplying.
• Are we behaving like the stingy king or the innovative rabbit?
• Disciples take longer to multiply than rabbits–and they don’t all look the same.

This past weekend while working with leaders at Mount Vernon Place UMC, I heard something I hadn¹t heard in the 13 months since we’ve been using the video. After someone in this young, justice-oriented congregation teased about the uprising and someone else pushed back on the notion of becoming big enough to form an army, the Lead Pastor, Donna Claycomb Sokol, spoke a prophetic word: What if the king represented injustices we see in the world? What if our presence was great enough to overthrow hunger? Or if we were big enough to topple homelessness? Or if we could end sex-trafficking?

We seek to provide tools to congregations so that they might multiply their kingdom impact. What does kingdom impact look like for you and your congregation?