The multiplying power of a united effort

By Larry West

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts!  Six horses harnessed and placed correctly together can pull more than six times the weight than can each horse times six.  It has multiplying power.  It’s called synergism. 

Multiplying power occurs with horses.  It occurs with church growth! 

Have you ever put a pencil to it?  If one person converted one other person per year, and each new convert also converted one person per year, the entire world … all six billion of us people … would be converted in only 33 years.  That is multiplicity.

But while it is true with horses, while it is true with church growth, it is also true with simple Christian zeal!  I’m talking about even just the air of enthusiasm.   

Two Christians deciding to do God’s business of winning souls produces animation, oh, sure, delighting both.  That’s because “one is the loneliness number you will ever do!”  One Christian focused on God’s mission always welcomes another like-minded.  But it’s more than the old adage, “many hands make light work.”  Add more to the equation!  Then it becomes the tally of compounded power!  Two-plus-two may equal four, but ten-plus-ten multiplies into a hundred!  A thousand!  It’s synergism!

What we see on our We Care Campaigns simply illustrate it.   Christians who attend them for the first time are awestruck at the intense energy.  That’s because the air is poignant!  It bites with power!  For our Cadre of trained soldiers who come from all over the United States and even Canada bring with them both training and determination.  Paul calls it “knowledge and zeal” (Romans 10:2).  They bring both those things with them!  And with that kind of equipping, when they get together, the effect multiplies into explosive action and results.

But it is amazing, when “home alone” the air just isn’t there! 

I’ve seen this happen time and again.  Example:  Some of our trained workers absolutely struggle when at their own home congregations in their efforts to win even one soul to Christ.  They try.  They truly love the lost.  They deeply love the Gospel and know of its power to save.  Intimately.  But by themselves the end results are often zero …zilch … zip … nada!  Yet, when they come together to participate in a united front, when they look up and see other soldiers like themselves suited up for the battle against Satan, then all of a sudden, it’s war!  It’s a movement of soldiers sweeping across enemy territory, courageous and determined!  To them there is no “DMZ!  It’s more than a football team on a power drive!  It’s an earthquake!  They are animate warriors again.  A living, breathing, vicious war machine, hating the enemy, destined to save all the captured civilians they can!

It’s as one of our Cadre members confessed to me.  He told me one day, “Larry, I can get a good six weeks momentum out of each of these Campaigns!”  His is a simple testimony, one saying that as Christians we need each other … and we need each other hot!   

While his statement is a compliment to our operation, sadly it is an indictment to a home church.  Where’s the united front at home?  Where’s the zeal for lost souls?  Isn’t their mission the same as that given to every church?

The answer is obvious, but so is reality.  Some churches, regrettably, are clones of Laodicia (Rev. 3:14-22).  And like Laodicia, they are far from changing.  Meanwhile, however, Christians exist in them who too, like those at Sardis, have not defiled their garments (Rev. 3:4) and are still set on their mission.  Their first work is still their first love (Rev. 2:1-7).  But they need help.  And they have found it!  They come.  They join our teams.  They are swept up in the movement.  And God gives the increase.  It even multiplies.

How many Christians are there in our congregations across the land who never experience Christian heat in all their years of being Christians?  And to simply say to them, “You don’t know what you are missing,” means nothing!  It’s like the eagle saying to the rabbit, “You ought to see this land from up there!”  The rabbit will never know even remotely what he means … until the eagle takes him!

I believe negative preachers, elders and editors among us through the years have done more damage against God and to both the brotherhood at large and brothers and sisters in their particular lives than the innocent hearers and readers will ever know.  And that includes throughout eternity in Heaven.  I fear they will even sit in Heaven and listen to a Peter and a Paul, and even some I know today on earth, talk of their experiences while on earth, and they will sit there gaping, staring into space, trying to figure out what it was they missed on earth.  For the fears negative leaders create, stopping kingdom growth, are of the devil.  

Synergism … it’s real.  And what an experience it is!  Mountains high?  Oh, yes, in the midst of it, you will be taken to them.  Valleys low, yes, we have to march through some of those too.  But Christians are in it together.  Yoked up with one another our eyes are on the cross, our arms are around each other, and … nothing negative, everything positive …the kingdom is on the grow.

Alone, it is nigh-unto-impossible to even add it up to any sum.  Together, it multiplies from a square root and rises to a higher Power!