A gospel-focused healthy church, local to every person in New Zealand.
That’s our prayer. And it’s the reason Multiply exists.
About Multiply
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New Zealand is one of the most secular nations in the world, and is becoming more so with every census. Most New Zealanders today are not connected to any worshipping body, and many have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed clearly.
At the same time, the local church in this country has not, by and large, developed a strong culture of training the next generation of gospel workers. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few - and unless something changes, they will remain so.
Multiply exists, by God’s grace, to help change that. We are convinced that a long, patient work of strengthening local churches - so they train new gospel workers, develop their leaders, and plant new churches - is one of the most important things that can be done for the spread of the gospel in Aotearoa.
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When it comes to healthy ministry, we’re convinced of several key truths, drawn straight from the New Testament.
The local church is God's primary instrument for the advance of the gospel. It is also the primary place where new gospel workers are formed - through life lived alongside faithful pastors, in the ordinary work of ministry, with the Word of God at the centre.
Healthy churches are both word-centred and missionally fruitful. The two belong together. Faithful teaching of Scripture and a deep care for those who are far from Christ are not in tension - they are the same heartbeat.
And healthy churches are connected. Leadership development, the training of new gospel workers, and the planting of new churches are not separate programmes - they are facets of one calling: that the gospel would go further, deeper, and to more people through the local church.
These convictions sit beneath everything we do.
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Multiply serves the local church in three connected ways.
New gospel worker training. We help local churches run internships - structured opportunities for men and women to be trained for gospel ministry inside a church, under godly leaders, while serving in real ministry. This is the engine of our work and our heart for the future of gospel ministry in New Zealand.
Leadership development. We come alongside church leaders - pastors, planters, and those preparing for ministry - to help them grow as faithful, fruitful leaders of God's people. Healthy leaders are the soil in which apprenticeships flourish.
Church planting. We support healthy churches and healthy leaders to plant new churches in places where the gospel is not yet clearly heard. Church planting is, by God's grace, one of the most fruitful ways the gospel reaches new ground.
These three strands belong together. Healthy church leaders lead healthy churches. Healthy churches train new gospel workers. And those workers, in time, plant new churches. Under God, the cycle compounds.
Our posture
Multiply is a network, not a denomination. We work with and for existing denominations and church networks, not in competition with them. Our trustees and partner churches are drawn from across Confessing Anglican, Grace Presbyterian, FIEC (Fellowship of Independent of Evangelical Churches), and other gospel-faithful contexts.
We are clear on the gospel and what healthy ministry looks like. But we are generous about how local churches actually work things out - the shape of an internship programme, the structure of a staff team, the rhythm of a church’s week. We want to help churches solve their own problems with their own wisdom, not to impose a single model on every context.
The work of seeing the gospel advance through the local church is slow, relational work, especially in New Zealand. We are in it for the long haul, by God’s grace, and committed to building something that will still be bearing fruit decades from now.
To understand more of what we’re about, take a look at our Convictions and Statement of Belief.