Networking to Find Movement Catalysts

An update on my 2026 strategic plan

Networking or Making Friends?

The word networking feels as lifeless as a graveyard in a ghost town. If I could squish networking with my foot, everything terrible about corporate America would ooze out between my toes.

I would rather lie facedown on my concrete driveway for two hours breathing in the chalk from my toddlers’ artwork than doing whatever networking is. At least that’s how the word makes me feel.

I only say the word because you know what I mean when I say it. But every time the word leaves my mouth, I feel a piece of my soul leaving with it. Right now, networking is my highest value activity to accomplish our strategic plan for 2026, but networking doesn’t capture the heart of what I’m trying to do.

When I read the Word, I don’t see leaders networking. I see them making more and more friends. So that’s how I think about it: I’m trying to make more friends who want to team up in God’s mission.

Let me explain.

Vision Recap

Before we dive into networking, here’s a quick recap of my ministry direction for this year.

The overall vision God put on our heart:

The gospel to every person and a multiplying church in every community of RDU¹ until there is No Place Left.

The current 5 year strategic objective:

Our goal is to have 10 networks of multiplying disciples and churches using movement principles by Dec. 31, 2030.

The current short term objective:

Identify 6-10 potential church planting multipliers, which will lead to 3 more actual multipliers by August 1, 2026

For more explanation on this, read the previous post

Paul’s Example

For the longest time, I thought there weren’t any examples of networking to find leaders in the New Testament because there were so few believers at that time. The Holy Spirit showed me I was wrong. Almost every person who Paul teamed up with had been his friend for at least a year before they started working together.

Barnabas

Paul met his first teammate, Barnabas, soon after his salvation (Acts 9:27). If anything, Barnabas was a mentor to Paul and they worked alongside each other for years in Antioch before God called them to be sent out at the beginning of Acts 13. They brought along John Mark who was Barnabas’ cousin, so another close, years-long relationship (Colossians 4:10).

Silas

Paul met Silas during the Jerusalem council and worked alongside him as they delivered the message from the counsel to Antioch (Acts 15:22-35). When Paul chose Silas to team up with him on his Second Journey, they had already known and worked with one another for some time.

Timothy

Paul didn’t know Timothy before they teamed together in the Second Journey, but he did know Timothy’s church and probably his mother and grandmother for years (Acts 16:1-3, 2 Timothy 1:5). Timothy joined Paul and Silas after a strong recommendation from the churches in Lystra and Iconium.

Aquila and Priscilla

I believe Priscilla and Aquila were already believers when Paul met them in Corinth at the workplace.² They were all tentmakers together. After a year and a half in Corinth, the couple accompanied Paul in his travels. (Acts 18:1-3, 11, 18)

My Takeaway

There is a pattern of Paul teaming with people who he had known for some time, or who was recommended by someone he was close to. He also spent time working alongside them before they traveled together.

From Paul’s example, I should expect to build relationships for some time with many people before I find a leader who will want to team up and catalyze more networks of multiplication.

Lessons on Finding Leaders From A Cambodian CPM

I picked up Bruce Carlton’s book, Amazing Grace, while doing some research for a missionary biography I’m planning to release later this year on Bill and Susan Smith. Bill supervised and coached the Carltons as God worked through them to birth a Church Planting Movement in Cambodia.

One pivotal moment for the Carltons came in 1992 when God led them to invest in leaders who would multiply. Bruce received this directive, but told God that He would have to bring the leaders. Bruce wouldn’t go find them.

To his amazement, the first leader came to Bruce a few months later, Rith. Rith and Bruce had known each other for a couple of years and had built a relationship like Paul had with people in Acts. At this crucial moment, Rith told Bruce that he felt led by God to be trained by Bruce.

This captures the heart of what I’ve learned about networking to find catalytic leaders. It’s less about me finding them and more about them finding me. God has to bring the leaders.

This is why I think it’s so important to build relationships for a while. There needs to be good trust before another leader would agree to team up.

Sharing the gospel alongside friends from other ministries

The Last 3 Months

I have been shocked. I doubted that God would bring 6-10 potential network catalysts this year, but yet again, He has proved my doubts wrong. The Holy Spirit has introduced me to 7 potential catalysts and April is not even done yet. Most of them came through long standing relationships (like Paul) and they found me, I didn’t look for them (like Bruce).

Here’s a quick rundown of these families:

• 4 have already started a church in their home

• 1 has started a hybrid church. Trying to have a simple Sunday gathering and focus on multiplying from the home.

• 2 plan to start a church soon

• I’ve gone out evangelizing with 2

• Only 1 was a cold-call reach out from me

• All have said that they want to multiply using movement principles

Here’s a snapshot of how I met one of these people.

The German at the Library

As I was posting about the Western Europe Church Planting Movement last month, I ran into someone from this movement in my own city. It was an act of providence.

I was catching up with a friend at the library of a local seminary. He works behind the desk and has a big heart for evangelism. He was asking me about my church then pointed to his co-worker next to him and said, “this guy has a church in his home too”.

I thought he was joking, so I tried to humor my friend and asked the man about it. I realized it was serious. This German man had seen a few people come to Christ and gathered them in his living room with his wife to disciple them as a church.

I was stunned. I asked, “Why did you do that?” He replied, “I’m a disciple of Jesus and that’s what you do.” I agreed, but I told him that most people would still not do that. As we kept talking, I mentioned the CPM above, and he said that he had been a part of that in Germany, and was now here studying at the seminary. God had answered our prayers and placed an already-trained church multiplier in my city.

He gave me a sly look out of the side of his eye and said that we had actually met a few years earlier. My eyes grew wide because I couldn’t remember him at all. He told me that he had come over to my house for a meeting. Now I was downright embarrassed. I vaguely remembered the meeting he was talking about, but still didn’t remember him.

He had enough grace to not shame me too much more than this, and even though I didn’t remember him, he remembered me and that meant we had already known each other for over a year. We planned to meet for lunch a couple of weeks later. He shared the celebrations and struggles with his church and welcomed me to visit sometime.

Time Is Key

The only reason the German was so open was because of time. That’s what I believe. If we had not met a year and a half earlier, I don’t think there would have been as much trust. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t talked between then and now.

One of the couples that invited me out evangelizing was in the same place. I met them one time, two years earlier. They remembered me—it’s hard to forget the guy who walks around your apartment complex barefoot—and immediately invited me outreaching.

I’ve met with people many times over the course of a few months and have not had this level of openness. It’s like I always need a few years of connecting and communicating with someone before getting to collaborating.

When I was in Houston, my team would try to network with ministry leaders and set up trainings in the first or second meeting. We did this for three and a half years, and it led to only a few one-time event trainings. More often, we didn’t even get that far.

Even though my team had high level leaders with magnetic personalities, we still only got long-term ministry partnerships via references from other close, trusted friends. I can’t get around the conclusion that time is essential to get to collaboration in ministry.

Conclusion

The top three lessons in making friends and avoiding networking:

1. Focus on building relationships, and not pushing for collaborating right away.

2. Be findable so the right leaders can reach out to you.

3. While doing 1 and 2, pray that God would send the right people.

I will keep connecting and communicating with each of these 7 friends and prayerfully discern how God might want us to collaborate. My desire is for each of them to succeed in the vision that God has placed on their hearts. If they do this, then I’ll be closer to accomplishing my vision as well.

In the meantime, I’ll avoid networking and instead focus on making friends until there is no place left. I’m doing everything I can to be findable so when the right leader comes along, they can reach out to me.

I daily repeat the prayer that Bruce prayed, “God, you need to bring the leaders to me.”

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1. RDU stands for Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina

2. Priscilla and Aquila had to leave Rome after the edict of Claudius. Suetonius wrote that this expulsion came because Jews were causing such an uproar because of “Chrestus”. Most scholars believe this is a reference to Christ-following Jews. Also, there is no mention of the couple repenting or being baptized anywhere in Acts. This leads me to assume that they had already believed and been baptized before meeting Paul.