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Josh Howard (India / Multiplication Section) You are called by Jesus to be disciple of his first. Who then goes and makes more disciples. And we’ve got to decide, or we will, to be the people that got to go astray. It was in 2008 when I moved to the country of India, to go overseas in order to actually be a missionary to start movements of multiplication. Actually, I lied. I didn’t go there to start movements of multiplication. I went there because I married an Indian woman. That’s why I went there. When I got to India, we realized really quickly that what we were doing, we were building very much on a traditional church planting strategy—addition. Basically, in the five levels, we were doing a really good level three strategy—adding a lot of people to the church. But what we realized really quickly, about three or four years in, that if we continued to do that in a nation like India, it would take us roughly—give or take—13,000 years to reach India. There’s 1.4 billion people. No matter how many people we reached every year, it was never going to saturate that country with the gospel. Unless we started to actually see multiplication and reproduction begin to happen. And so I stumbled across a book by a guy named Ying Kai. Anybody heard of Ying Kai? Yeah, him and his wife Grace are actually here today. Where are they? Can you stand up really quick, Ying Kai and Grace? Let’s give them a hand. Ying Kai and his wife Grace moved to South China and started a movement in South China that literally in a 10-year period saw over a million people come to faith and hundreds of thousands of churches started. And I began to weep at my desk in India. And I began to pray: “God, if you can do that there, I know you can do it here.” And that’s when we began actually putting into practice disciple-making movement strategies in India. Why am I telling you this story when we’re talking about this book, seven practices, and you just saw that video up there about what they do? It’s because of this: For so long, missiologists, leaders, pastors, missionaries—they said for so long: “It can happen in China, it can happen in India, but it’s not going to happen here in America.” And it’s a lie. Okay? It is a lie. Because like Jim said just a few minutes ago: The same Jesus The same Bible The same principles Are working all over the world. The question is: Are we going to have the conviction to actually shift our consumeristic culture to an actual disciple-making culture? Which is why we began to study these churches in the United States. And we began to find that although all of them had radically different pathways—none of them had the same model or methods— But when we boiled it all down, there were these biblical principles that every single one of them lived by. And that’s what you find in these seven practices. And so for my time in the next few minutes, here’s what I want to do: I want to show you how movements have spread globally, and why I believe they’re being stopped here in America. Not only because people are not putting these into place—but I think there are some major roadblocks of why it’s not happening. And my hope is, in the next few minutes, we can break those roadblocks down together in our hearts. And consecrate our hearts and say: “Jesus, no more.” Like this is not just going to be a China-India-Africa thing. We are going to go hard after it together for the big K Kingdom—for Jesus’ glory—until this nation as well is saturated with the gospel. Amen? Half of you agreed with that statement. I loved it. Thank you very much. But here it is—I’m going to go quickly, okay? In India, listen—our guys and gals—I mean these are just like Jim said—ordinary, unschooled, everyday people. And we’re seeing that same thing happen right here in North America. When we reclaim the priesthood of all believers and go away from this professional vs everyday Christian division—and we start saying: Every person is a believer Every person is a disciple Every person is a disciple maker It begins to shift the culture inside of churches across the world. And I’ve been asked my entire ministry: “Which by the way—let me just share with you what God did after we started implementing what Brother Ying taught us and what many others across the world taught us.” This is what God did through ordinary everyday people in the nation of India: We have just now crossed ten years. E3 partners has helped us. Ying has helped us. Several other organizations have helped us. And we have now seen between 50 and 60,000 house churches started in the last ten years. Isn’t that crazy? There are now well over a million disciples meeting in those house churches that have actually been led to faith. And God is moving in radical, unbelievable ways. Just in the last three months, we saw over 26,000 people come to Christ. In three months. Isn’t that crazy? Now—why is it happening there and not at that scale here? Why? I’m going to give you really quickly what I believe are the three main reasons they’re not happening. And these seven practices actually combat these three reasons. Okay? Reason #1: Lack of Prayer + Fasting Culture All over the world, our brothers and sisters in China and India and Africa—they have developed a radical culture of prayer and fasting. And we do not live like that here in America—most of us. And I don’t just mean leaders. I’m talking about the people of the church together. Going after it together. That’s why one of the convictional principles here is: Prayer and scripture are the foundation of everything. And every church that is multiplying has prayer, fasting, and scripture as the foundation. My friends in India—they are fasting two, three days every week. They are praying all night long. They have lists of lost people they pray for daily. Guys—listen to me: If we start praying and fasting like our brothers and sisters overseas—we will begin to see breakthrough. We’re fighting spiritual problems with business ethics instead of spiritual power. Reason #2: Not Sowing Gospel Seeds Our guys and gals in India—and these multiplying churches—they are radical, generous seed sowers of the gospel. They are sharing constantly. And it’s a farming principle: Your harvest is directly tied to the amount of seed you sow. You plant one seed—you get one result. You plant a thousand—you get a harvest. Why are we not seeing impact? Because we’re not sowing. We’re not engaging lost people consistently. We’re not speaking the gospel in everyday life. I can’t tell you how many pastors I’ve talked to that cannot remember the last time they’ve shared the gospel off the platform. And it’s not just a pastor problem. If leaders don’t model it, people won’t do it. Reason #3: Not Empowering the People The third thing is this: Our guys and gals are reclaiming the priesthood of all believers. They are putting disciple making back into the hands of ordinary people. They are training them, equipping them, and sending them. Why is it happening globally—but not here? Because we’ve got to get back to the simple instructions Jesus gave us. We’re not going to be clever and innovative anymore. We’re going to go back to His blueprint. We are going to: Pray Fast Preach the gospel Empower people And we will see fruit. Jesus said: “The harvest is ready—but the workers are few.” The problem has never been the harvest. It’s been us. Owning the mission. And it’s time to take it seriously. Amen. Thank you. Josh Howard (Short Transition / Banter) If you will not return with laser focus today—it’s to be a disciple who makes disciples. # PDF Visual Extracts [[BONFIRE_PDF_VISUAL page=7 kind=page_render index=1 provider=gemini model=gemini-2.0-flash]] DESCRIPTION: This image contains only a blank white background and doesn't convey any information. OCR_TEXT: STRUCTURED_DATA_JSON: {} [[/BONFIRE_PDF_VISUAL]]