Why Does Multiplication Matter?

Where in the Bible is God’s heart for multiplication first seen?

Genesis 1:22 reads, “and God bless them saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill… the earth.” These are, perhaps, well-known words – but in Genesis 1:22, God does not say them to humans! God will give a similar charge to Adam and Eve just a few verses later, but in Genesis 122 he is speaking to birds, fish, and animals! The full verse says, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply across the earth.” Before God created humans, he designed his good creation to multiply.

But that’s not even the first time we see this theme in the Bible: just before this, Genesis 1 tells us that God put in each plant, "seed according to its kind” (Gen. 1:11-12). Why would God do that? Because he designed creation to multiply! God created ferns and flowers and oak trees that propagate and multiply and fill the earth, just like God made birds and fish and animals to multiply and fill the earth. 

Multiplication is laced into God's creation design. God created all healthy things to multiply. So if we fast forward a couple more verses and see God apply the same thing to humans, many theologians would say that God's charge for humans to “multiply and fill the earth” is not just a physical thing; it's not just about going out and making lots of babies. It's also – and perhaps more importantly – a deeply spiritual thing! As the pinnacle of God's creation, created in God's image, our Father and Creator charges us to fill the earth with his image: “multiply the image of God throughout the earth; multiply the good news of a good Father across the world!” 

And when we fast forward again – this time a few hundred or thousand years – then we see that in some ways, God’s charge to Abram and Sarai, Jeremiah’s exhortation to Israel while exiled in Babylon, and even Jesus's great commission all simply pick up on God the Father's creation theme. When Jesus says, “Go and make disciples,” he is, in a way, echoing Genesis 1: physically, spiritually, and frankly emotionally and otherwise, God's design for us is to multiply. 

Healthy plants make more healthy plants. Healthy platypus and giraffes make more healthy platypus and giraffes. Healthy humans make more humans. Healthy disciples make more disciples. Healthy leaders make more leaders. And healthy churches make more churches! No healthy entity is an end unto itself; God created good things and designed them to multiply. That’s God’s heart for multiplication, from Genesis 1 and still today!

Now to be fair, unhealthy things multiply too. Thorns and brambles multiply. Cancer multiplies. Unhealthy leaders multiply their unhealth. So it's important to ask, how do we multiply healthy things? If we’re going to see churches planted, how can they come about from healthy churches, who raise up healthy leaders, for a healthy pursuit of mission and ministry? How can we create bold but healthy metrics and expectations on roles within our churches? How can we ensure holistic health and celebrate different giftings among our leaders? How can everyday followers of Jesus make disciples, not through their striving and guilt but as an overflow of abiding deeply with Jesus and confidently pursuing his kingdom by the power of his Spirit?

I shared these thoughts at the beginning of 2025’s Plant Fort Worth Conference. This organization is simply a collection of churches who collaborate to saturate greater Fort Worth with the good news of Jesus – and we believe we're better when we do so together. Our unapologetic goal is to see 200 churches planted for our city and from our city. But church planting cannot happen in a vacuum. Church planting has to be part of a larger ecosystem, a vision of multiplication in every church. 

And that vision for multiplication doesn’t start with planting new churches; it doesn’t even start with forming new ministries or installing new leaders in our churches. It starts in the everyday lives of everyday disciples, as each embraces their gifting and lives into the role God calls us to: displaying and declaring the good news of Jesus, helping those around us thrive, inviting them into who God made them to be, and making disciples. And so if you're a disciple of Jesus, make more disciples! If you're a leader, train more leaders! if you serve a church, start more ministries send more missionaries, and plant more churches! It’s all intertwined! (As an aside, if you need help taking any of those steps in your church/organization, that’s literally why The Equipping Group exists!) 

But we don’t pursue these things just because they’re the right things to do (though they are); we certainly don’t pursue these things because they’re easy (often, they ain’t). We pursue these things because every form of healthy multiplication is an act of worshipful obedience to God. Each time someone multiplies something good, it’s one way that we as God’s children display the image of our Father across the earth. 

So where in the Bible is God’s heart for multiplication first seen? It’s in Genesis 1; it’s in the very fabric of God’s creation of the earth. So just like plants, animals, and humans multiply for God’s glory, followers of Jesus, leaders, and churches pursue these things for God’s glory. Multiplication is near the center of God’s heart, and as we embrace that fact, we reclaim part of the very purpose God wove into his earliest creation: as part of God’s creation and his image bearer, you were made to multiply.