Multiplying Disciples at Multiply Church, West Des Moines

A Vision to Multiply

Adam and Brianna moved to Des Moines in September of 2019, a few months before Covid arrived. The vision was to plant a church that would multiply disciples in West Des Moines. They identified a handful of communities in a specific area that they wanted to reach. After putting a circle around the western side of West Des Moines, Adam and Brianna moved into that area and began assembling their Core Team of leaders. They began having regular meetings to grow together, develop as leaders, and plan the public launch of Multiply Church.

“Even before launching we knew that it was always going to be difficult to find good meeting space because the area we are focusing on is pretty affluent and growing every year. That’s why we intended to go into the school system.” The church was having very encouraging meetings about renting facilities from the local school district. Pastor Adam said, “The school in our community had never partnered with a church before and they were excited about what that partnership could look like.” Unfortunately, their ideal launch date was right when the shutdowns started. “It was discouraging when that was completely taken off the table. It really took wind out of our sails for a while.”

Unique Challenges During Covid

The church leaders had to regroup and figure out a new model for launching the ministry. As a new church plant with very young leaders, they found it challenging to build momentum. “We were relying on getting out into neighborhoods, meeting with people, and building relationships face-to-face. The quarantine really shook us up and it tested my leadership as pastor.”

Although they had originally intended to launch in spring of 2020, the leadership decided to push it back to the fall. Even then, it was difficult to pull off because many places were still shut down. Eventually the launch was pushed back a couple more months. They wrestled with whether they should forego the large in-person gathering and instead launch online or in members’ homes. “We had long conversations about whether we needed to launch with a house church model.”

Failure to Launch? 

Pastor Adam vividly remembers a time earlier in the process when the future of the fledgling church was in doubt. One Thursday night in July at one of their Core Team meetings, Adam shared his heart with the team, “We are in not a place financially, numerically, and maybe even spiritually to launch this church right now.” They were discussing postponing again. But the other leaders were committed to moving forward. They said, “We respect you and understand your hesitation. But we believe that we should push forward and make this happen.” Adam’s concerns were alleviated when he considered how he had seen those leaders continually stepping up to share the burden of ministry. “Their passion to make disciples was just so evident in the way they were inviting people into their lives. The commitment level they brought to making disciples gave us the confidence to move forward with the launch.”

Key Leaders Push Vision Forward

Once the decision was made, it was all hands on deck to launch weekend worship services. “No one on our core leadership team is sitting idle. Church planting is a team sport, for sure.”

They started meeting together on weekends in October and the official public launch of Multiply Church was on November 7th. With the difficulty of finding space in their focus community in West Des Moines, they had to look outside their circle to find a suitable venue. They eventually began meeting on Saturday evenings at 5:00pm at Harvest Bible Chapel in Grimes. “Pastor Nick Lees and the Harvest Grimes leaders have been so good and gracious to us. They are letting us use their building free of charge. Their support really shows the value of Kingdom partnership.”

Help from the Network

Harvest Grimes is not the only church that has had an essential role in planting Multiply Church. Multiply was planted in partnership with several churches and church planting organizations including the Baptist Convention of Iowa, Send Network, and Coram Deo Bible Church in Davenport. Pastor Adam said, “I could give you a list of churches that have influenced us through financial support, providing advice, mentoring, and leadership. The list is long and I love seeing churches partnering with churches.”

Pastor Adam sees the value in having a tight network of churches that know and help each other. “One role BCI can play is to help ensure that churches are all on the same wavelength in regard to church planting. They can communicate about church plants so that other churches can be involved, at the very least in praying for new churches. The network also has been a huge help to us in developing leaders, especially young leaders, and we also had a lot of help with understanding church finances.” 

Simple Disciple Making Process

From the beginning we wanted to keep things very simple and focused on “multiplying disciples. We said, Let’s just gather disciples together and then we’ll figure the rest out.” Multiply Church places an emphasis on in-home small groups, called Community Groups. “It’s interesting but we’ve seen our best growth in making disciples, not in our weekend worship services, but in our Community Groups.” That was not what they were expecting. Another surprise was that the new church is almost exclusively reaching people under 30. “We are glad to have a lot of young people but our real desire is to be a multi-generational church. We feel like we are missing that wisdom from the older generation. All we can do is be faithful with whom God has brought and leave the growth to the Lord.”

Next Steps to Multiply

What are the next steps for Multiply Church? Since they took such an unexpected route to launching their weekend worship, they are searching for a new meeting space in their target location. “We are for a specific community and we want to bring the blessing of the gospel to that community. We’re working hard to figure out how we can get our weekend service back into our community, deepen our relationships, and be more ‘present’ in serving our community and school system. In making disciples, Multiply is planning to double down on multiplying our community groups. How can we invite new members. For me as a pastor, how can I invest in our leaders?”

Faithfulness of God

Throughout the process of planting Multiply Church, the Lord has been faithful. Reflecting on the past year, Pastor Adam says, “This whole process has tested my leadership, patience, and trust in God.”

They saw God’s faithfulness when they were able to baptize one of their new team members during their first service. Emily, a young lady in our church, had moved from Quad Cities to their community just before they launched their leadership team. Having grown up in a traditional Catholic home, Emily knew about God but not a relationship. Through participating in Multiply, she understood and grew in her relationship with the Lord which led her to want to be baptized. Pastor Adam said, “What’s been amazing to see is her faith being lived out. She’s having conversations at work. She works at a school and she’s great opportunities to have conversations with coworkers about Jesus. Several years ago, she was a nominal Christian at best and now she is thriving in following Jesus. She wants her faith to be visible in her life.”