Jeff Finley

Jeff Finley

Jeff Finley is this magazine’s executive editor. He joined the Light+Life team in 2011 after a dozen years of reporting and editing for Sun-Times Media. He is a member of John Wesley Free Methodist Church where his wife, Jen, serves as the lead pastor.

By Jeff Finley

As Easter approaches, the Free Methodist Church USA’s strategic catalysts for multiplication have a reminder for church planters and other members of the denomination that emphasizes Christ-compelled multiplication as one of the values of The Free Methodist Way.

“The resurrection power of Jesus is what makes multiplication possible,” Larry and Deb Walkemeyer wrote in a recent email to the Free Methodist Multiplication Network (FMX). “His power opens tombs and doors, then empowers us to go through them and to take back what the enemy has stolen. The gates of hell cannot prevail against the power of the risen King!”

The Walkemeyers also reflected on the FMX Summit held March 6–7 prior to the start of Exponential Orlando Global 2023, an interdenominational church multiplication conference held at First Baptist Church of Orlando. The summit attracted 140 Free Methodists including 10 superintendents, nine conference church planting directors, one Free Methodist World Missions area director, and many pastors and church planters along with some of their spouses.

“The Holy Spirit showed up in powerful ways during our fellowship, worship, prayer, time in the Word, resourcing time, and testimonies,” the Walkemeyers noted.

One of those powerful moments occurred near the beginning of the summit when Marianne Peña — co-lead pastor of Essential Life Church, a bilingual church plant in Spring, Texas — prayed passionately for the conference superintendents and church planting directors.

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“We are believing, God, that this small grain that we’ve begun to plant is going to come, and it’s going to grow over one hundredfold.” – Marianne Peña

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“God, we thank you for every superintendent who is here because they have a vision and a heart to see multiplication happen, that wants to see dead bones come to life, that wants a river to flow where there could be endless life, where every single thing that touches the river comes to life. That’s what we want to see — rivers flowing from our conferences, from our pastors. We pray for every multiplication director, for every multiplication network,” Peña said. “We are believing, God, that this small grain that we’ve begun to plant is going to come, and it’s going to grow over one hundredfold.”

(Click here for a video with more of Peña’s prayer.)

Call and Send for a Lost Cause

The summit’s theme was “Call and Send” based on Acts 13:2–3, “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.”

That corresponded with this year’s Exponential theme of “Lost Cause: Reviving Evangelism” based on Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Starting in the Upper Room

J.R. Rushik, the director of strategic alignment for the Church Development Network, discussed the Upper Room of Acts 1–2 where the disciples were “praying and anticipating for what He promised He would do among them.” Despite the importance of the Upper Room, there must also be a Lower Room — “the processes or the systems of the church” — that also requires attention but shouldn’t be the starting point.

“Our challenge is to be a people that start in the Upper Room, and from this place of the fullness of God, you then leverage the Lower Room to reach the entire world, and from that place, you fulfill what God has called you to do,” Rushik said. “What the world desperately needs is a people that would leverage all the things in the Lower Room but invite the world into the Upper Room.”

Dustin Weber, executive director of Mission Igniter, shared how early Methodism was a movement of church planting that “spread across the frontier empowering lay people and women.”

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“Do we believe in true multiplication like the book of Acts, like early Methodists, and like what the church around the world is experiencing today?” – Dustin Weber

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“The Free Methodist Church was birthed out of that, starting in a little apple orchard in New York, all across New England, jumping to the Midwest, and then eventually all the way out to the West, across the country,” said Weber, who noted that growth stalled around 1900 in the United States while the global Free Methodist Church has grown dramatically in the past two decades — especially in portions of Africa and Asia. “Churches were reporting numbers that could not quite be explained by any of our Lower Room explanations.”

Weber asked, “Do we believe in true multiplication like the book of Acts, like early Methodists, and like what the church around the world is experiencing today? … Is that a different Holy Spirit working in the book of Acts than the Holy Spirit we have now? Is that a different Holy Spirit that touched the heart of John Wesley and the hearts of early Methodists? Is that a different Holy Spirit at work around the world today?”

He noted the same Holy Spirit is present now, and we must receive the Spirit’s empowerment and be obedient to our work as witnesses. If that happens, he predicted, we will also see a movement of the Spirit.

“It’s something we can’t quite see, but it’s going to be big. It’s going to be incomprehensible to where we are right now. It comes when we pray,” Weber said.

Necessary Shifts

Reflecting on Acts 13, Larry Walkemeyer told summit participants, “I believe there are four shifts that are really necessary for us to become a multiplication movement, and these shifts are evident even in this short account of the first commissioning of church planters. Now it’s not the first church plant, but it’s the first recorded sending of church planters that we have in the New Testament. I think embedded in it are key principles of the shifts that we must experience.”  

He said we must:

  1. Call on God in a shift to radical prayer.
  2. Listen to the Spirit’s call on us in a shift to supernatural Holy Spirit direction and empowerment.
  3. Call others into their callings in a shift to mobilizing believers into God’s personal calling.
  4. Send them into those callings in a shift to radical generosity — where multiplication through sending everyday missionaries and church planters becomes the bull’s-eye.

A Step of Faith

Bishop Keith Cowart reflected briefly on his own experiences planting Christ Community Church and other churches in the United States and South America.

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“You are the future. You are vital to this movement that we call the Free Methodist Church.” – Bishop Keith Cowart

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“I know what it’s like to take that step of faith into the unknown, where you don’t know how it’s going to happen, but you know God’s calling you. You don’t know where the resources are coming from, but you know God has promised to provide what you need, and you take that step of faith, and you begin to see the hand of God moving the prize,” Cowart said. “You are the future. You are vital to this movement that we call the Free Methodist Church. If we’re going to be a movement, it will not happen without a deep commitment to church planting, and you are right in the heart of that.”

Cowart also shared about what he and the other bishops experienced at the Asbury outpouring. Cowart said one of the things they witnessed in the revival was “immediate obedience. People were hearing the voice of the Lord and, before they could talk themselves out of it, were just doing whatever He said. Crazy as it may be, they said, ‘Lord, I heard your voice. I want to do it.’” (Click here to listen to a “Light + Life Podcast” episode in which Cowart and others share more about their Asbury experiences.)

Empowering Women to Lead

Deb Walkemeyer told summit participants that “it definitely takes a church to raise healthy leaders, and it requires every single one of us, male and female, to commit to this cause. Currently, we have approximately 170 women clergy identified. These are elders in the Free Methodist Church, but the majority of these women serve in more supportive roles rather than lead pastorate roles, and those who are in higher level leadership, like superintendents or bishops, I can count on one hand, so we’ve got a little work to do. Our founder, B.T. Roberts, was a champion of equal leadership for all people, and my current efforts are channeled on raising up that next generation of empowered women clergy who aren’t afraid to say, ‘Yes, here I am. Use me. Send me.’”

She asked, “Would you be a part of the solution to our current female deficit by working to empower our sisters into higher positions of leadership?”

Bishop Cowart prayed for 36 female summit participants who came to the front of the room.

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“Lord, you have called them, and we thank you that you are gifting them.” – Bishop Keith Cowart

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“I just want to ask on behalf of our church that You would forgive us for both the unintentional and intentional hurdles in place for the women in our denomination. Lord, forgive us, and just set us free from everything that is rooted in that,” Cowart said as part of his prayer in which he also asked for healing from past mistreatment. “Lord, I know that the enemy wants to make that hurt as deep as possible in order to shut them down or to limit them in the future. … Thank you for your call on each of their lives. Lord, you have called them, and we thank you that you are gifting them. We pray that you would pour out spiritual gifts and spiritual power on these women that they would be able to lead effectively, fruitfully and freely.”

Church Plantology

Summit participants learned from a church planting expert who recently became part of the denomination — Peyton Jones, the co-founder of NewBreed Training (along with his wife, Andrea, who’s pursuing ordination in the Free Methodist Church in Southern California) and the author of several books including “Church Plantology: The Art and Science of Planting Churches.”

Jones shared how he and his wife were living in Wales when they accidentally began planting churches. While working on his master’s degree in theology there, he worked in a Starbucks where his manager asked him to lead a religious discussion group as one of the store’s social events. Thirty people showed up at the first gathering to discuss the popular novel “The Da Vinci Code.” Jones brought in a New Testament scholar who shared why the novel wasn’t biblically accurate. The group members kept requesting to meet again and learn more about Jesus.

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“Every time you plant, it’s ground zero with the Holy Spirit all over again.” – Peyton Jones

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“I don’t know if you know about Rick Warren via the ‘The Purpose-Driven Church.’ We were the ‘Accident-Driven Church,’” Jones said. “If you really study the book of Acts, a lot of things happen accidentally. They weren’t planned. They weren’t on purpose, but they were Holy Spirit divine opportunities.”

While planting churches, Jones has worked bi-vocationally in positions as varied as registered nurse and firefighter.

“Every time you plant, it’s ground zero with the Holy Spirit all over again,” he said. “It is full-on, 100%, all-out dependence upon God, and maybe that’s why church planning is a little addicting to certain people.”

Jones highlighted “church plantology principles” that are found in Scripture, church history, and global missionary practices. He revealed “keys to spontaneous kingdom expansion” that include:
1. When new converts immediately tell their story to those who know them.
2. When, from the beginning, evangelism is the work of those within the culture.
3. When true doctrine results from the true experience of the power of Christ rather than mere intellectual instruction.
4. When the church is self-supporting and provides for its own leaders and facilities.
5. When new churches are given the freedom to learn by experience and are supported by experience and are supported but not controlled.

FMX at GC23

FMX will be leading the multiplication focus group at General Conference 2023. Here’s the group’s planned schedule: 

Tuesday, July 25: “Multiplication and God-Given Revelation” with John Teter, international Bible teacher, planting pastor, and the former national director of church planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church. 

Wednesday, July 26: “Multiplication and Life-Giving Holiness” with Peyton Jones. 

Thursday, July 27: “Multiplication and Cross-Cultural Collaboration” with Free Methodist World Missions Latin America Area Director Ricardo Gomez and Community Church Planting Director John Jairo Leal

Friday, July 28: “Multiplication and Love-Driven Justice” with Robert Marshall, the senior pastor of Los Angeles Community Church and the former director of the African Heritage Network, plus a panel of next generation multiethnic Free Methodist leaders. 

Click here to read more about the identity, purpose and beliefs of FMX.

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Jeff Finley

Jeff Finley

Jeff Finley is this magazine’s executive editor. He joined the Light+Life team in 2011 after a dozen years of reporting and editing for Sun-Times Media. He is a member of John Wesley Free Methodist Church where his wife, Jen, serves as the lead pastor.