Eleazar Martinez • Reproducing Leaders
In 2018, God called me and my family to plant a new church. The idea was clear: a space in which people could find Christ. We believed in a big church, like those that appear in magazines. We started with 7 people, and just one month before our planned launch for Easter 2020, the Mexican government announced the indefinite closure of all public spaces because of Covid-19. It was a critical moment. I was like a baby whose time has not yet come, but must be born or die. Canceling the launch was the only option we had. This was a hard blow for us, because no matter the size of the building, none could be used in the next two years. There we were, without a building, without a strategy, and in survival mode.
It was just in this season of crisis that NewThing began to do small virtual support meetings between leaders to support us in the midst of this crisis. Something big happened during those days! Listening to the testimonies and experiences of a large number of pastors with churches large and small, the definition of a “big dream” completely changed for me and my team. We began to see things as God wanted us to see them, the lack of four walls was no longer an obstacle and a full church no longer represented what we dreamed of. In that walk we learned that multiplication was God's way to reach the whole world. In that instant, the street and our houses became the temple in which the church met.
Suddenly the vision was more homes and more heroes. We wanted to change the way we measured the church. We wanted to see Christ everywhere. We began to send disciples to their own environments, letting their influence be an opportunity and thus we had formed two communities led by believers passionate about God. Today our first community has been born outside our immediate environment, 1000 kilometers from our city.
In this season, when most friends in the ministry saw their churches empty, they began to see how we multiplied heroes and disciples. This was a good testimony for those leaders of the denomination to which we belong. The doors were opened so that an increasing number of pastors began to be interested in multiplication. To this day, I lead the area of church multiplication in the southern part of the State of Chihuahua. During the time of crisis we managed to plant three churches, today we are planting 12 more churches in urban and rural areas with the help of friends who have believed in God's dream. This had not happened before, at least not with the intention of multiplying the kingdom of God on earth before our own castles. Little by little our influence grew so that now we influence a network of more than 200 churches in the state of Chihuahua which are beginning to see a different way of multiplying heroes and communities, and not just growing in number. What was crazy before is now the birth of a culture that is growing exponentially.
Today I dream of a community of level 5 churches throughout our country. I dream of friends on mission who become one with God's vision and can present Christ in a different way. I dream of heroes who create heroes, not just full temples. This is the story of how in the midst of the worst crisis that we have experienced as a church in many years, God has opened our eyes to see beyond four walls.
