From Oikos to Everywhere: How Jesus Multiplies the Kingdom

When I was a kid, my parents decided we would leave the suburbs in search of more space. They bought a piece of land, and the six people in my family moved into a three-bedroom RV. Just outside the door was an open, undeveloped field – tall grass swaying in the wind providing a home for field mice, guinea hens, snakes, and rabbits. It was in that home that a new home grew. We cut down a section of grass, tilled and removed dirt, added sand, dug trenches, leveled, compacted, laid rebar, installed plumbing, and built forms in preparation for the foundation. Then the concrete was poured, the foundation was finished, walls were erected, and the roof was shingled. Those nine months had an immeasurable impact on my life. I experienced firsthand the importance of the beginning. How you start determines what can be built on that foundation.

In How Jesus Started we explored the foundation that Jesus laid for multiplying the Kingdom. He was already connected with His very first disciples before He started His ministry. They were part of the same community with overlapping relationships. Jesus started with His relational network – oikos – and invited them to come with Him. From the very beginning, He laid a foundation that the Kingdom of God multiplies through relational networks.

But Jesus didn’t only go to His oikos. He had His eyes set on every town in Galilee (Mark 1:38-39) to reach “the lost sheep of Israel” (Matthew 15:24) for the sake of every people and place (Matthew 24:14). So how did He start in these new places with new people that didn’t already have some relational connection with Him?

A NEW WAY?

At some point early in Jesus’s ministry, He went with His disciples to Capernaum – a little fishing village along the Sea of Galilee – the hometown of James and John as well as Matthew. Peter also lived there with his wife, his mother-in-law, and his brother Andrew. At this point, Jesus had started proclaiming the Good News broadly in Judea and parts of Galilee (Mark 1:14-15). In Capernaum, He taught about this Good News in the synagogue. He cast an unclean spirit out of a man (Mark 1:25-26). He healed Peter’s mother-in-law, and He stayed with them at the house: “The whole city was gathered together at the door [of Andrew and Peter’s house that evening]. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons” (Mark 1:33-34). This all happened in a small fishing village (population ~1,500) that was home to at least four people who quickly believed the Good News (Peter, Andrew, James, and John).

This new start centered around the home of two of these men – Andrew and Peter. Just like those in Jesus’s relational network gathered with Him and believed, Andrew and Peter’s relational network gathered with them, and it appears that many of them believed. Jesus didn’t sow seed broadly and leave. Jesus didn’t tell Andrew and Peter to go tell everyone. Jesus found a family who believed, went with them to their people, proclaimed the Good News in their relational network along with them, showed the power of the Kingdom, and helped them gather (by staying at their home and meeting people there). It’s almost as if He was helping others do the same thing that He did with His oikos. And then He left.

We see this same pattern when He met the Samaritan woman at the well, Matthew in Capernaum, and Zacchaeus in Jericho:

1. PREACH the Gospel in word and power to find a person or people who repent and believe and who are connected to a community of people.

2. TEACH about the Kingdom in this community that is gathered together by these first disciples.

3. LEAVE a gathering of disciples to continue in the faith.

But how could He ever get to the whole world like this?

MULTIPLYING THE WAY

Have you ever sat so close to another couple in a restaurant that you could hear their private conversation? They’re speaking quietly, but they’re so locked in with each other that it’s like they’re unaware you’re right next to them. I don’t know about you, but I get a bit uncomfortable hearing those thoughts that aren’t intended for me.

Sometimes I feel the same way when I read John 17. Jesus was so locked in with the Father that the disciples around Him overheard the conversation, and He was talking about them. In that conversation, He said something really strange. He said, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do,” but He hadn’t died or resurrected yet. We know that His justifying work wasn’t yet completed, but there was something that WAS completed. For the rest of the conversation with the Father, He talked about the disciples. THEY were the work that was completed because they were confident, competent, and committed to remain in Him and take the Good News to many others “who will believe…through their word” (John 17:20). He was leaving behind these leaders and praying for them, “so that the world may know that (the Father) sent (him) and loved them” (John 17:23).

Jesus was able to say that the work was completed because there were disciples who could reproduce the foundations that He laid. He always had a group of disciples with him who watched, experienced, and participated with him in the effort to start among a new people or place. He modeled what it looked like to reach his own oikos and to help others reach their oikos. And, while He was still with them, He sent the 12 to do what He showed them to do (Luke 9:1-6), and later the 70 (who you could argue were a product of the 12 doing what Jesus showed them to do). They didn’t know everything that they would need to know, and they couldn’t yet do everything they would need to do, but He had trained them in the foundation for multiplying the Kingdom. And He would send the Holy Spirit to remind them, correct them, and guide them.

Jesus was confident that the whole world would be reached through these disciples. He hadn’t given them a formula, but it seems to me that Jesus did give His disciples a pattern that they followed. And if He gave them a pattern that they followed, shouldn’t we do the same? I’ll leave you with this challenge: If you want to see the Kingdom of God multiply…

1. Go to your people first. You can’t determine the fruit, and the fruit doesn’t define success. Obedience to Jesus is success. The process of obedience in your own relational network lays the foundation for helping others go to their oikos.

2. Don’t wait until you see fruit in your own oikos to start trying to find others who will believe and open their relational network. Go with them to THEIR people to share the Good News, and keep going to YOUR people. You can do both at the same time.

3. Train others in the simple beginnings – how Jesus started. Model how the Kingdom multiplies, give away simple ways, send them to do the same, and trust the Holy Spirit in the disciples of Jesus.

Are you laying the same foundation that Jesus laid?