(Today’s post is from Ben Sternke, who functions with his wife Deb as 3DM’s Director of Content.)

On a coaching call the other day I was using the Heptagon tool (one of our LifeShapes) to help some leaders evaluate the spiritual health of their communities. A campus pastor for a multi-site church told me this:

We know how to add new campuses on a macro scale, so there’s a lot of movement in our church, but we don’t know how to reproduce on a micro scale, so we really don’t have much reproduction.

This comment has some great implications for those of us who are trying to cultivate multiplying movements of discipleship and mission. The church in question knew how to create a new campus (not a bad thing in and of itself, of course), but is still learning how to reproduce disciples. The difference is kind of like the difference between mass producing a statue and reproducing a human being.

Mass producing a statue is a repeatable process that results in a consistent product that appears to be human on the outside, but doesn’t have any of the functionality of an actual human. The statue has no power in and of itself to reproduce after its own kind. It needs to be maintained or it will fall into disrepair.

But human reproduction is a completely different kind of process. It is repeatable, but the “product” is an actual human who has the potential to reproduce after its own kind. Eventually you “get more out of it” than you put in, because you’ve created a human being who can work, produce good, create value, maintain itself, and eventually reproduce!

Here’s the thing: the reproductive process is messier, and takes a lot longer to produce a mature “product.” Because of this, I think the temptation for most church leaders is to invest in a mass production process instead of a reproductive process. It yields a quicker and more visible “payoff” (a new campus, a few more people at services) and gives the church a general feeling of satisfaction about its fruitfulness.

But ultimately it’s not “fruit that will last,” because it’s not a reproductive process. It’s not making disciples who make disciples. It’s mass production on a “macro” scale (implementing systems to produce a weekly event) versus reproduction on a “micro” scale that results in “macro” change (eventually) and continued reproduction (DNA present in every cell, making disciples who make disciples).

To get fruit that lasts and start a movement, you need to invest in the “micro” process of reproduction, making disciples of Jesus who can actually make more disciples of Jesus, because you’ve trained them to reproduce.