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The Multiplication Proclamation
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In Acts 2, God brought people to the church to see what was going on and believers were added to their numbers daily. In the church in Acts 13, rather than God bringing people to the church, He asked for people to be sent out from the church. That was the biggest difference I found in these two accounts.
Personally, durring my teen years when I focused a lot on evangelism, multiplication was not a big focus for me. I remember meeting people and sharing the gospel and leading them to the Lord, but in lots of cases I didn’t ever follow up with them, and that is something I wish I could have done better. I have faith that I’ve done my part and the Lord will do His part in the lives of those people, but it really put into perspective for me that I was looking at growth in the Kingdom as addition rather than multiplication. Recently, as I’ve been learning more about being a disciple who makes disciples and the principle of multiplication, I have struggled to reframe my thinking of how evangelism is done. Multiplication in the Kingdom and discipleship making seems to be a longer process than the street evangelism I am familiar with. I am excited to be learning and practicing multiplication because I want to see the the most fruit I can in the Kingdom of God.
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I think I have seen multiplication through Street Invaders. As a student I was taught that I was able to walk out my faith as my own and share my faith in my own life. My two leaders on my Street Invaders team taught 10 of us students what it means to be a disciple. Later on I became a leader and I taught the same thing to my teams, and now I see multiple students I led teaching that to multiple new students.
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In my own life I have seen multiplication be incredibly powerful. My faith and my family’s faith is a product of disciples making disciples. In my own life I have seen people I have discipled become disciple-makers themselves and therefor my impact has expanded way beyond anything I could have imagined!
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in acts 13 there is a certain recognition of gifting from God that the church didn’t have in chapter 2. Yes there is a praise of God and great things are happening, but in chapter 13 there is much more growth to the point where the people are going out and sharing the good news. My mind goes to Song of Solomon where the bridegroom is calling to the woman to come with him up to the mountain after already having such a great relationship. in Acts 2 the response of the Gospel is amazing and the people are praising God, but in Acts 13 the relationship with God is to the next level and there is a fruit to the relationship. The difference between acts 2 and acts 13 is that of disciples vs. disciples making disciples.
I personally haven’t yet had the opportunity of seeing my ministry bear fruit in the way multiplication principle, but I hope to see that in my future very much. However I have technically been “victim” of it in a sort of way. By that I mean someone has shared the gospel with me and I went on to share the gospel with others in my life. I hope the influencers and leaders in my life know the impact they have had not just on myself, but on others they influenced and the disciples that come after that.
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