I LOVE MY CHURCH!

Our church is currently in the midst of a series called "Invasion: I Love My Church!" The premise is this: our pastors just show up at members' homes unannounced with a video camera and interview them about why they love their church. If you have time, I'd really encourage you to check out these stories.

Well, the Tulsa Campus LifeGroups Pastor, Aaron Swensen, took it to a whole new level by invading LifeGroup Leaders or members and asking them why they love their LifeGroup. So, with that said, here is the video of Michele and myself being invaded by Aaron. By the way, the videographer is a guy named Bill Aycock. He's a real cool guy and super talented.

I pray you catch the message of this video: God is a MULTIPLIER! He loves to take something small and MULTIPLY it exponentially. Our campus is just one example of this. Others are 5 loaves and 2 fish. small, then LARGE. The widow's flour and oil supply. small, then LARGE. The Acts 2 church. small, now LARGE.

So, what "small" thing can YOU offer to God so that He might MULTIPLY it?

1x1x33=THE WORLD

Raise your hand if you like math. Sickos. Me? I'm not a particular math lover. However, since it's an integral part of my job, I've had to become cozy with it. In fact, I even had to minor in it while majoring in Chemistry. I know. I just outed myself as a geek.

Jesus on the other hand, loved math. He was particularly good at multiplication. For example:

5 loaves x 2 fish = 5000 men well-fed (not to mention the women & kids) + 12 extra basketfulls.

Jesus was a multiplier. He expects His disciples to be multipliers too. It was part of His charge before ascending into the Heavens (wouldn't that have been cool to see by the way?): "Go...make disciples of all the nations...". Making disciples was His way of multiplying Himself, and we are called to do it also.

So, let me give you something to ponder. Let's say I take one guy and invest one year in him. I spend one year teaching him to study Scripture, how to pray, how to evangelize, and how to teach others the way I was teaching him. At the end of the year I tell him "Congrats! You've graduated, now go do what I've shown and taught you to do." At the end of year one, how many disciples are there? 2. He and I.

So we both go find one person that next year and do it all over again. At the end of year two we now have....4 disciples. Exciting, huh? So, now all 4 of us go at it the next year and at that year's New Year's party there will be....8 of us. See where I'm going? Each year the disciples double. If we kept this going for say...15 years we would have...wait for it...32,768 disciples! That's the size of a small city. Well, it we kept at it for 23 years we would have...8.4 million disciples or the equivalent to the population of New York City. In 23 short years! So what if we did it for 33 years? We would have 8.6 billion disciples, or roughly the population of the ENTIRE PLANET EARTH! 33 short years. We could essentially evangelize the world. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but what was that phrase JC used? Oh yeah! Make disciples of all the nations.

What do you think? Can we do it?