In school we are taught that 3 - 1 = 2. If you have three apples and you give one away to a hungry fellow student who forgot his lunch, you are left with only two apples for the rest of the week. Therefore the logic goes you should only give away something that you don't really need in the first place (and that it won't hurt you to lose).
This same math is applied to church planting. You shouldn't start a new church until your current one is well established enough so that "losing" some people to a new work won't hurt you. If you are, as it turns out, a new church plant yourself (such as Iglesia de la Resurrección) this means waiting a long time before you, in turn, start something new (Read: never).
Iglesia has only really been going for about a year and a half, and we are anything but "established." It seems somewhat silly to be starting a new church. But this is where Kingdom math comes. Kingdom math says 3 - 1 = 4. You grow by giving away. You gain by "losing." You receive by releasing. (And truly, in Kingdom terms, there is no such thing as "losing" someone that is not yours to lose in the first place).
So here we are foolishly starting a new church, with somewhat unfavorable circumstances (which I'll save for a future post), and with scant resources. And, in true Kingdom logic, at our first service we ended up having more people than we did the previous day at our "established" service at Iglesia! Go figure. Even more importantly than numbers, though, the Lord met us in a wonderful way, and we were able to celebrate his miraculous work. There were many un-churched and new faces there. Praise the Lord!
