Before they can assist you, you must remodel, retool, and/or retrain near neighbors. They intuitively realize that what they already know to do will not succeed. Doing it harder, faster or in greater quantities will only produce reprisals. Getting Christians to reach out to the unengaged is a demanding work. Just telling them they “ought to” will not produce positive change. If that is all you have–don’t!

Realize you are going to have to remodel this house, while you live in it. You must be a part of this church, or you will not change it. Sure, you can pick up some of the malcontents who have already left, but they bring their own set of problems (many have not left the strategies of “the church” from which they departed, they are upset that they could not lead the coup to overthrow the dictator to become the new dictator).

But all of this remodeling work is a means to an end–if your goal is movements. Real replication is only possible when it starts happening among the lost. That is where multiplication takes place. These near neighbor believers are critical because of proximity, cultural awareness, language capacity and the potential that you can replicate yourself in them. But the real work has to be done among the currently lost people group.