I read somewhere that the first person to do a \u201cmic drop\u201d was Eddie Murphy in 1983. Maybe. I believe the first mic drop should have happened on May 25, 1961.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s the day President John F. Kennedy stood before Congress and announced that America would land a man on the moon before the decade was out. I want to jump in a time machine, go back to that moment, and tell JFK, \u201cDrop the mic! Just trust me. Right now, drop the mic!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The mission he gave was bold and audacious, and in the middle of the Cold War, with the Soviet Union already ahead in the space race, it seemed nearly impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NASA\u2019s engineers got to work. But they hit a wall. The math simply didn\u2019t exist yet to plot a trajectory to the moon and back. One miscalculation, and astronauts would burn up on reentry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s when Katherine Johnson enters the story. If you\u2019ve seen Hidden Figures<\/em>, you know her\u2014one of the Black female mathematicians NASA hired as human \u201ccalculators.\u201d They were brilliant, and they were overlooked. In one scene, Katherine is mistaken for a janitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it\u2019s Katherine who makes the breakthrough. Staring at a blackboard full of equations that wouldn\u2019t work, she has a realization: everyone has been searching for new math, when the answer was old math all along. That shift\u2014not a total overhaul, just a shift\u2014unlocks the problem. A few years later, we land on the moon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus stood before His disciples and gave a mission of His own: \u201cGo and make disciples of all nations… And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age\u201d (Matthew 28:18\u201320).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sadly, there was no possibility of a mic drop, as it happened about 1,840 years before the invention of the microphone. It was a revolutionary mission, and many would have called it impossible, especially because Jesus gave it to a motley group of very ordinary people who would later be called unlearned and ignorant \u201cidiotai\u201d (read: idiots) (see Acts 4:12).<\/p>\n\n\n\n These Bad News Bears got to work and made miraculous progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But can I suggest that 2,000 years later we\u2019ve hit a roadblock? Look at the numbers, and you see the church\u2014especially in the West\u2014is not growing. The number of disciples seems to be regressing. For a people who believe everyone needs to hear the good news, that is the worst news possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have the right desire, but is it possible we\u2019re not doing it the best way? The question isn\u2019t whether our strategies are wrong. It\u2019s whether there\u2019s a better way\u2014a shift, not a revolution. I want to show you that shift. But first, let me tell you my story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In college, God began pulling my attention off the United States and onto the nations. I knew I was an idiotai, but I felt called to the most unreached places on earth. At a missions conference, I got on my knees and prayed, God, I don\u2019t care if I\u2019m in Haiti for fifty years or a gas station for five minutes. I just want to be used by You.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t expect an answer. I got one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n God whispered, \u201cJosh, I don\u2019t need you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was stunned. I\u2019d just surrendered my life to His call\u2014what did He mean He didn\u2019t need me? I had assumed God had a massive task and needed my help to pull it off. That day I realized He doesn\u2019t. He\u2019s God. He\u2019ll raise up rocks to praise His name if we won\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then came the second half of that sentence, the part that changed my life: \u201cI don\u2019t need you. But I need you to know that I want you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a lot of us, pride convinces us we\u2019re God\u2019s solution\u2014that our ministry, our church, is the answer. It isn\u2019t. Jesus is the answer. The moment we stop believing we\u2019re needed and start responding to being wanted, everything changes. That\u2019s what sent me, eventually, to India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n About ten years ago, eight of us sat in a room dreaming about reaching 1.3 billion Indians with the gospel. (India could lose a billion people and still be one of the five largest nations on earth.) Every day, at least 25,000 people in India die without knowing Jesus\u2014over 150,000 worldwide. That number broke our hearts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Someone floated an idea: \u201cWhat if we reached 100,000 people a year? That would be incredible!\u201d I did the math. At that rate, reaching India would take 13,000 years. Add a zero\u2014a million people a year\u2014and it would still take 1,300 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Addition, even addition on steroids, was never going to finish the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So we got on our knees. We fasted. We asked God to show us another way. A few weeks later, I stumbled across a book by a man named Ying Kai, who moved to South China and, instead of adding people to his own church, focused on multiplying disciples and mobilizing every believer he could into the harvest. In ten years: 200,000 churches started, a million people baptized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I closed the book in tears. God, if You did that in China, You can do it in India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our team decided to make the shift\u2014from addition to multiplication\u2014and it changed nearly everything about how we operated:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Multiplication became our filter for every decision. Pastors sometimes ask me when we split a house church into two. I tell them: that\u2019s addition\u2014maybe even division. We\u2019re after multiplication. We don\u2019t wait for a group to hit thirty people and split it. We cast vision and train every single person to reach their own friends and family, make disciples, and start their own house church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last year, our movement started 11,525 churches. Not churches we have\u2014churches we launched in twelve months. That\u2019s 960 a month. 221 a week. 31 every single day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s not us. That\u2019s God. And it\u2019s the power of multiplication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s one more piece of math. Say I\u2019m the only believer in India, and I disciple one person this year. Next year, we each disciple one more\u2014four of us. The following year, each of those four disciples one more, and so on. How long to reach all of India that way? About thirty-two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Addition at 100,000 people a year: 13,000 years. Multiplication starting with one person: thirty-two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it comes to the Great Commission, multiplication is the only math that actually works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Picture a plus sign: +<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Now turn it 45 degrees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You get a multiplication sign: \u00d7<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not a 360-degree overhaul. Not even a 180-degree reversal. Just 45 degrees\u2014and the output changes completely. 100 + 100 = 200. 100 \u00d7 100 = 10,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What if the shift your ministry needs isn\u2019t a total demolition and rebuild, but a 45-degree turn in how you think about disciple-making? What if a few small shifts in mindset could produce an exponential increase in your results?<\/p>\n\n\n\n They can. I\u2019ve watched it happen in a nation of 1.3 billion people, through a team of ordinary, unreached-minded believers who decided to stop adding and start multiplying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Are you ready to make the shift?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Josh Howard is the co-author of<\/em> The 7 Practices of Disciple Making Churches (Renew.org, 2026). The book profiles the seven principles shared by every Level 5 multiplying church in North America\u2014and shows how any church can begin the journey.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I read somewhere that the first person to do a \u201cmic drop\u201d was Eddie Murphy in 1983. Maybe. I believe the first…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21594,"featured_media":178721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"inline_featured_image":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAn Even Bigger Mission<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI Don\u2019t Need You\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A Math Problem in India<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
From Addition to Multiplication<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
The 45-Degree Shift<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n