Indiana Ministries

How Church Planter Thinking Can Renew Any Church

For more than two decades, my wife Andrea and I have lived the church planting story in one city—West Chester, Ohio. Over those years we’ve launched two churches and navigated a merger, all under the same call to reach one community with the gospel.
It was not twenty years of leading a stable, well-resourced church. It felt like two decades of pioneering—of wondering if we’d make budget this month, of asking whether anyone would show up next weekend, of living more in “start-up mode” than “status-quo mode.”
I’m not complaining. That’s just our story. And buried inside that story is something I didn’t recognize at first: God was slowly teaching us to think like multipliers.
What we’ve learned is not just for church planters. It’s for any pastor who loves their church, loves their city, and refuses to believe their best days are behind them. It’s for established church leaders who sense there is more—more people to reach, more leaders to raise up, more expressions of church to be born.
At the center of it all is not a model, but a mentality.
If we’re going to see a fresh wave of multiplication across North America, we need pastors and leaders who think differently. We need what I call the mentality of a multiplier.
Why Mentality Matters So Much
In sports, coaches talk about mentality to describe the toughness, resilience, and aggressive edge certain players bring to the field. That mindset doesn’t just show up in one play; it permeates everything they do—how they practice, how they respond to adversity, how they play the game.
The same is true in ministry.
Mentality is more than a mood. It’s your default operating system as a leader. When the pressure rises, you fall back on it. When you hit barriers, you interpret them through it.
Over time, your mentality:

Creates your baseline. When things get hard, you instinctively go somewhere mentally. That “somewhere” shapes how you respond.
Influences your perspective. The way you see people, money, opportunities, and problems is filtered through your mindset.
Impacts your behavior. Mentality leaks into your preaching, your meetings, your decision-making, and your calendar.
Shapes the way you lead. How you set direction, handle conflict, and allocate resources all trace back to your underlying mindset.
Oozes onto those you lead. Your staff, elders, and key volunteers eventually reflect your mentality—for better or worse.

We see this in Paul’s charge to young Timothy:
“Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them…” (1 Timothy 4:15–16)
Devote. Don’t neglect. Be diligent. Give yourself wholly. Persevere.
That’s mentality language.
Paul understood that if Timothy’s mind and heart weren’t set in the right direction, his ministry would not be either. The same is true for us. If we want multiplying churches, we need multiplying mindsets.
So what does a multiplier mentality look like?
Multipliers Are Clear on Call and Dream
Before multiplication strategy, before models or methods, there is call and dream.
When Andrea and I left the comfort of a large church staff to move to Cincinnati, we walked away from stability: great facility, strong budget, established staff, plenty of volunteers. We arrived to the Northside of Cincinnati with a modest amount of financial support, a handful of people, and a big dream in our hearts.
In those early years, I lost track of how many times I wanted to quit, how many weekends I wondered if we would financially survive, how many seasons I doubted we would ever have a significant kingdom impact.
What held us? It wasn’t momentum. It was clarity of call and dream.
Over the years, when things were tough, I found myself standing in front of our church saying, “God isn’t finished with us yet.” That wasn’t blind optimism; it was rooted in Philippians 1:6, “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
I’m convinced many pastors walk away too soon—not because they’re disobedient, but because they lack the mentality of a multiplier when it comes to call and dream. Multipliers keep showing up because they are anchored.
Ask yourself:

Am I clear on what God has called me to be and do?
Does our church have a compelling, shared picture of a preferred future?
Is that vision driving who we are and who we are becoming?

If those answers are fuzzy, it’s time to pull away, get on your face before Jesus, and ask Him to clarify your call and reignite His dream for your ministry. Multiplication grows best in the soil of a settled call and a Spirit-breathed dream.
Multipliers Treat Mission as Mandate
Our mission isn’t unclear.
Jesus was explicit: go and make disciples of all nations. Reach people far from God. Build communities of faith that reproduce themselves.
Yet in practice, many of us drift. We get busy with programs, facilities, and internal expectations. Over time, maintenance creeps in where mission used to live.
Every multiplier I’ve met is relentlessly clear about mission. They aren’t casual about reaching people; they are consumed with it. Their mentality sounds like this:
“It’s more about who we will reach than who we will keep.”
That conviction shapes how they allocate staff, spend money, design ministries, and measure success. Their driving question is:
“How are we going to reach the next wave of people?”
Not just “How do we keep who we already have?”
When mission becomes a mandate, multiplication stops being an optional strategy and becomes the natural outcome of obedience.
Multipliers Stay Flexible on Method, Ruthless on Message
Church planting bakes flexibility into your DNA. You don’t have the luxury of assuming “this is how we’ve always done it.” Everything’s on the table.
Established churches often lose that muscle.
Tony Robbins once said, “Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.” For multipliers, I’d translate that this way:

Committed to the gospel.
Flexible in the model.

The message never changes. The “glass” we pour it in must.
The mentality is simple: “We will keep adjusting our methods until our methods match our mission.”
Multipliers Refuse Scarcity and Choose Abundance
If you’ve planted or revitalized anything, you know that raising money and doing more with less is a daily reality. In the early days, nearly every conversation can feel like a potential funding conversation.
But there’s a deeper mentality issue underneath the dollars: scarcity versus abundance.

A scarcity mentality sees life as win-lose. There’s never enough—enough people, enough money, enough volunteers—so you cling tightly to what you have. You protect, hoard, and resist risk.
An abundance mentality sees life as win-win. You genuinely believe there is more than enough in the kingdom of God. You celebrate other churches’ successes, share resources, release people, and speak well of others.

Put simply:

Scarcity clenches its fists.
Abundance opens its hands.

The best multipliers I know lead with open hands. They’ll tell you they don’t have all the answers. They’re hungry to learn from others. They invest in other leaders and churches, believing that their success doesn’t diminish their own.
That mentality not only changes how you feel; it changes what you do. You become more willing to risk, to invest in future leaders, and to send people and resources away from yourself for the sake of the kingdom.
Multipliers Innovate Until They Find Their Sweet Spot
One of the most energizing characteristics of multipliers is their bias toward innovation. They’re not trying to be cool. They’re trying to be faithful—to steward the gospel in fresh ways that connect with people no one is currently reaching.
If you look at some of the most impactful multiplying churches, you’ll discover something important: they didn’t start where they are today. They began with clunky music, rough kids ministry, and makeshift systems. Over time, they iterated and improved.
Innovation in a multiplying church isn’t an event; it’s a culture. That culture grows when:

You embrace a theology of creativity. We reflect our Creator when we create. Innovation isn’t a side hobby; it’s part of bearing God’s image.
You create a creative atmosphere. That might look like whiteboards, sticky notes, good coffee, background music, and a diverse team willing to think differently.
You give permission to fail. If your team never makes mistakes, you’re probably not trying anything new. Innovation requires experiments—and experiments sometimes flop. Celebrate learning, not just winning.
You think beyond what you can control. Set goals big enough that if God doesn’t show up, you’re in trouble. Multipliers are not reckless, but they are bold.
You aim at something that matters. As Erwin McManus has noted, you don’t need creativity if you’re not trying to accomplish anything meaningful. We innovate because lost people matter and the gospel matters.

Multipliers keep asking, “What if?” and “Why not?”—and then they actually try things.
Multipliers Make Multiplication the Goal, Not the Bonus
At the end of the day, the mentality of a multiplier comes down to this: multiplication is not a nice add-on; it’s the goal.
Multipliers are constantly thinking:

How do we multiply disciples, not just attenders?
How do we multiply leaders, not just hire them?
How do we multiply groups, teams, and ministries?
How do we multiply congregations, campuses, micro-expressions, and new churches?

They don’t see sending as loss; they see it as fruit. They don’t simply ask, “How big can we grow?” but “How far can we send?” They measure success not just by seating capacity but by sending capacity.
So… How’s Your Mentality?
You don’t have to be a church planter to think like a multiplier.
You can be in a 150-year-old church and still adopt this mentality. You can be in a small rural congregation, a mid-sized suburban church, or a large urban campus and still decide: “I will not be a manager of decline; I will be a multiplier of kingdom life.”
So here are a few reflection questions to sit with:

Where do you naturally default when things get hard—toward multiplication or maintenance?
Which part of a multiplier’s mentality do you resist the most: call and dream, mission as mandate, outsider focus, flexibility, abundance, innovation, or making multiplication the goal?
What is one concrete change you can make in the next 30 days that would better align your mentality with that of a multiplier?

You may not be able to change your church overnight. But you can ask Jesus to change your mindset today. And when a pastor’s mentality shifts, it is only a matter of time before a church—and eventually a city—begins to feel the ripple effects.

Response to CHOG Affirm from Indiana Ministries Board of Directors

How Church Planter Thinking Can Renew Any Church