For the next several blogs I’d like to quote from Leadership Explosion. The three paragraphs come from chapter three, Cell Reproduction: The Guiding Start of Leadership Development.
The church will only expand its influence in the world by reproducing its most powerful unit, the cell group. Therefore, just as a family guarantees its legacy by producing children, so a cell group must seek to reproduce life in others by producing new groups.
God’s desire for reproduction is seen in the first chapter of Genesis: “God blessed mankind saying, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground’†(Gen. 1:28).
In a similar fashion, God blessed Abraham at the age of ninety-nine saying, “I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers†(Gen. 17:2). Jesus commands the same type of fruitfulness in John 15:8: “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.†At the end of His ministry, Jesus said to His disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit†(Mt. 28:18-19). The only viable way to reap the harvest is through the reproduction of cell groups, and this demands more leaders.
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Small Groups are wonderful, but they can become stagnant and inward focused. Reproduction helps the group push forward and exercise spiritual muscles that would normally, naturally lie dormat.
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