Multiplication Through Subtraction?

The Need to Recapture Depth Over Breadth in our Spiritual Formation

Hi there, and welcome to our batch of new subscribers.

It’s a delight to have you along as we explore what it means to be a deep disciple.

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A Familiar Tension

Last year, I attended an online discipleship conference, and the speaker tried to encourage us with a familiar phrase: “Our job is not to be successful but faithful.”

I wryly noted that I’ve only ever heard of it from people currently experiencing success. It’s far easier to proclaim faithfulness over success when you’re the one others admire, not the one wondering why God feels silent and distant.

This word, “success,” is a potent force in the modern era. So potent, in fact, that those following Jesus often find themselves tangled between it and the slow, winding road of faithfulness.

David Benner writes:

“In spite of how central the cross is to the Christian story, Christians are always tempted to minimize its importance in their own journey. We want a spirituality of success and ascent, not a spirituality of failure and descent. We want a spirituality of improvement, not a spirituality of transformation. But the way of the cross is the way of descent, abandon, and death. This is the foolishness of the gospel.”

Ouch.

The Secret to My Success?

At Soil & Roots, we’re exploring the practice of uncovering the hidden ideas that shape our lives. These powerful, often invisible forces govern our thoughts, relationships, churches, and culture.

Jesus lived and taught in the realm of ideas. He relentlessly exposed and transformed the assumptions of His day—especially those wielded by religious power structures. And we are still living in the fruit of His transformation.

One of the most unchallenged ideas in the modern church is our definition of success.

It mirrors corporate America in many ways: productivity, Return on Investment, numerical growth, systemization, infrastructure, and scale.

I suffer from this idea in profound and debilitating ways. The first several decades of my life were characterized, at least in part, by personal, relational, ministerial, and business “success.” The last five years, however, have been anything but: betrayal, rejection, depression, uncertainty, financial losses, a host of unanswered questions, chronic illness, and the uncanny sense that I’m just not “getting it.”

That’s because I’m really not “getting it.” A deeper man would experience peace, trust, and rest in the midst of a long period in the wilderness. I struggle to sense any of those things.

I frequently mutter, “Jesus, if this is some sort of test, can we just agree I get an ‘F’ and move on?”

This isn’t the picture of the “successful,” middle-aged American Christian man. It’s awkward. Not only do I feel it, but most of my friends do as well. When you’re “successful,” people want to be around you because of what you can give them. When you are no longer successful, you are no longer useful.

I’m not the only one. Many of my peers—men and women who once appeared “successful”—feel the same.

I launched Soil & Roots to help cultivate deep disciples—those who center their lives around becoming more like Jesus. But make no mistake: this depth comes at a cost.

Benner said it well: descent, abandonment, death.

The invitation of Jesus is not to climb a ladder of spiritual improvement. It’s to lose your life in order to find it.

The descent is lonely.

But maybe it’s also sacred.

The Multiplication Obsession

This week, I was reminded of the power of this “idea of success” as I reviewed some Bible study materials from a local mega church. As with most modern literature regarding discipleship, the theme of multiplication was heavy throughout.

This philosophy of multiplication is so embedded in our Christian culture that most of us don’t give it a second thought. Of course, we are supposed to multiply. That’s the whole point.

But is it? And who, exactly, are we supposed to be multiplying?

I’m treading on some sacred ground here, so allow me to lay out my concern.

Few would question the marvelous inventions, industry, efficiencies, and economic growth spurred on by the Industrial Revolution. If you live in an industrialized society, chances are you enjoy the fruits of its efforts in some form or fashion.

However, it also planted some ideas that have seeped into every area of human existence, including the church.

There is nothing inherently wrong with systems, efficiencies, operations, assembly lines, productivity, and time management. In fact, there is a lot right with them.

However, when those concepts become so concretized into a culture that human beings are unconsciously treated like TVs, phones, automobiles, and widgets, we trade the depth of the human heart for counting numbers, bodies, and dollars.

Western Christianity seems to have absorbed these ideas to a startling degree and exchanged spiritual formation for shallow multiplication.

Perhaps our motivations are in the right place. After all, shouldn’t we be telling people about Jesus? Shouldn’t we evangelize, share the Gospel, and invite people to church? Isn’t that the point of the Great Commission?

Let’s dig under the surface of those statements.

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For example, finding a church in our area that allows small groups to last longer than a few weeks to a few months is difficult. One local discipleship pastor friend forces his small gatherings to break up after 6 months. Why?

Because we need to multiply, the lost need to be found, friends need to be invited in, and people need to be trained and groomed to be leaders and quickly mobilized to start new groups.

This is what Christian success often looks like. Fast, efficient multiplication. Isn’t that what we see in the book of Acts?

We need a good, tight sales script, trendy marketing materials, a solid product, and rapid scalability.

If that process sounds familiar, it’s because the same underlying ideas drive the modern network marketing company (think skin creams, nutritional supplements, real estate education, or top-quality knives). Introduce the product or service to a broad swath of people through a wide, aggressive marketing effort, sign them up as fast as possible, accept attrition as a fact of life, and try to keep them engaged, even when their sales are falling.

The Western zeal for Christian multiplication may produce more attendees, money, institutions, social media accounts, and books, but is it producing disciples?

Or replicating consumers of religious goods?

A Bad Reaction

Intermingling post-industrial ideas of success with the appropriate desire to see the kingdom come is problematic for at least three reasons.

1. Spiritual formation is highly individualized, messy, long-term, and painstaking. It involves some suffering and an inward journey, and the Western multiplication model is ill-suited for it. Systems, efficiencies, and productivity bristle against inefficiency, particularity, and patience.

2. The current multiplication model is not designed to make disciples. It’s intended to make converts and then educate them. But, as we’ve explored, education and formation are not the same thing. Such a model ignores the complexity, intricacy, and wonder of the human person.

3. The current multiplication model forces breadth, not depth. In one congregation we visited, the qualifications to become a leader of a small group, ministry, or volunteer effort were that you completed a 6-week Bible study and had a pulse. The results were predictable: constant turnover, spiritual abuse, harmful doctrine, and disunity. Yet the church continues to grow.

If becoming deep people requires us to know Jesus, others, and ourselves more intimately, we may struggle to overcome what we call the Formation Gap. We may not have access to small gatherings of people who explore spiritual formation together for the long haul.

Because that seems to be a secret to depth—laying ourselves bare to God and others in safe, trusted environments. And that doesn’t happen overnight or in six months.

As David Brenner notes,

“Growth in love always involves movement beyond the hardened boundaries of the isolated self to the selves-in-relationship that make up communities. Conversion always points us toward fellow human beings, not simply toward God. Like the grain of wheat that must fall into the earth and die if it is to flourish (Jn 12:24), the person who is becoming love leaves behind the broken husk of the isolated self and embraces the new possibilities of life in human community.”

It’s relatively easy to remain isolated and protected, even when we join a Bible study or small group for a limited number of sessions. It’s not so easy when we journey together through the ups and downs of life, over time.

In America, this quest for multiplication is played out at pastoral conferences. Inevitably, the mega-church pastors are invited to be the speakers and leaders, and the smaller-church pastors come to learn how to grow their churches into larger congregations. Even those who do not wish to grow institutions feel pressure (from within and without) to add numbers, dollars, and bodies to their groups. The underlying message is clear—the mega-church leaders have it figured out, while those shepherding 500 or fewer need help.

I’ve politely suggested that perhaps we have it backwards. I’d love to see some small church pastors help those entangled in the current multiplication system return to individualized, messy, non-efficient, lower ROI spiritual formation.

Depth is the New Multiplication

If discipleship is about becoming like Jesus, our metric must shift from attendance to transformation, reach to rootedness, platforms to presence.

Dallas Willard once said (paraphrasing), “If people truly centered their lives around becoming more like Jesus, evangelism would take care of itself.”

Yes, let’s multiply.
But let’s multiply people of depth.

And people of depth are best formed in small, committed gatherings of people who think, act, love, and relate differently than other communities. They look radically different because they are radically different, even from other good Christian collectives.

If you feel like you're descending, like the world doesn’t make sense anymore, or your version of success has crumbled, you're not alone. In fact, you may be right where Jesus wants you.

Let’s keep going, find each other, pursue depth over polish, presence over performance, and love over leverage.

Duc in altum—

Brian
Soil & Roots

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New Chat Thread

In the spirit of today’s post, let’s just introduce ourselves. I’ve opened a new thread titled: “Who are you, you wonderful human being?”

Jump in and tell us your name, where you’re from, why you chase after Jesus, or whatever else comes to mind.

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