We have structured We Are Church to build a culture of people spending time with God every single day for themselves. Many Christians look to Sunday morning as the time where they will be “fed” by someone preaching a sermon, but we expect everyone in our church to read through the same portion of Scripture (we have a set reading plan) during the week each day. This is the primary place that they are “fed,” through spending time with God in His word and in prayer. Then, as we are doing life together, we can easily discuss the passages we are all reading. When we gather as a church, we have a discussion led by the pastor around what everyone read through the week. Instead of coming to consume, people have the expectation that they should be bringing insight from their personal time with the Lord throughout the week. This helps build a culture of people taking time in the word seriously and being devoted to the Scriptures.

In order to help us truly love each other, we’ve committed to having churches of 10-20 people meeting in a home. We’ve seen that once we get to 30 or 50 or 100 people in a church it becomes increasingly more difficult to live like a family, truly know each other, carry each other’s burdens, and build each other up. Many churches will do this in the form of a community group, which is great. But far too often people view a Sunday morning big gathering as the primary context of church, and the community group as optional. For us, we want to everyone to opt into sharing life, and therefore the primary context of church for them is a spiritual family of 10-20 people.

When things started getting out of control in Corinth, Paul reminded them of how he started the church. In 1 Corinthians 2 he states that he intentionally held back from using “eloquence,” “human wisdom,” and “wise and persuasive words” when starting and building the church. He didn’t want their walk with Jesus to be built on anything other than the power of the gospel. Likewise, Jesus was unwilling to draw people with anything other than Himself. Are we willing to do the same in our churches? Are we willing to strip everything away to make sure people are being drawn by Jesus and Jesus alone?

Everyone is called to make disciples. We are all called to share the gospel with non-believers in hopes that they would follow Jesus. We are all called to take responsibility for the spiritual care of other believers. But discipleship is hard and messy. It involves intentionally getting to know someone, having hard conversations when sin is evident, working through conflict, and spending extra time with them when life gets hard.

Paul said “to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Cor 12:7). He goes on to list many different types of gifts that the Spirit gives to believers for the sake of the body. Then, he explains how every part of the body is needed and that we must be careful not to develop a mindset that some gifts are more necessary than others. But is that truly how we function in the church? Does every single believer in a church realize that they are just as needed and important as anyone else in the church? Or do they tend to think that the preacher and worship leader are more important?

So many churches begin small, relational, and discipleship-focused, but aren’t able to maintain those characteristics as numeric growth happens. Before they know it, they have become more and more of a machine rather than a healthy family. Meeting in homes sounds great, but what happens as the church grows? How does a church adapt as the Lord adds to their number? One word: Multiplication. The true fruit of an apple tree isn’t apples, but rather more apple trees. The true fruit of a strong leader is not followers, but more strong leaders. The true fruit of a healthy church is not congregants, but more healthy churches. God has designed the world to be one that reproduces and multiplies.