How the Church Can Recover the Multiplying Heart of the Father

There is a hidden tension pulsing beneath the surface of the modern Church—a
tension few name, but every leader feels.
It is not primarily about programs or strategy. It is about love and fear… and legacy.
It’s what might be called the Father Complex of Church leadership—the fear of
releasing those we have raised.
The Tension Between Retention and Reproduction
Every pastor, mentor, or ministry leader knows the ache. You invest in people, you
teach them to hear God, you see their gifts take shape—and then comes that
moment when they begin to sense a call that might take them beyond your circle.
Do you release them joyfully—or tighten the reins, just a little?
Every spiritual parent feels it: the risk of letting go.
This is not new.
Decades ago, a mission leader named “Robert” was asked to lead a group of young
volunteers while their base director was away.
He loved them well. He taught them to hear and obey God in their personal calling.
When the director returned months later, he was shocked to find most of the team
gone—each had followed a personal call to serve in other parts of the mission.
Robert’s quiet reply has stayed with me:
“I only taught them what I was called to teach—how to hear and obey God.
To do less would have been disobedience to my own call.”
It was a disruptive moment—but perhaps the right kind of disruption. The Kingdom
grows not by keeping people, but by releasing them. And yet, most of our systems
are built for keeping.

The Divine Pattern: The Father Who Sent the Son
The pattern of the Kingdom begins not with retention, but with release.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” (John 3:16)
The Father’s love expressed itself through sending. Jesus was the seed released into
the soil of the world—a seed that would multiply into the Body of Christ across time
and nations.
Then, Jesus repeated the pattern:
“As the Father has sent Me, so I send you.” (John 20:21)
Release is not an afterthought of leadership—it is its defining mark.
When Paul released Timothy, Titus, and the churches he planted, he wasn’t losing
influence; he was gaining spiritual lineage.
In Acts 13, when the Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul,” the church of
Antioch was giving up its best people—and launching a movement that would
reshape the world.
Every true father releases what he loves most.
Why We Resist It
The human heart hesitates. We are afraid that if we release people into their callings,
our churches will shrink, our programs will weaken, or our teams will scatter. We tell
ourselves we’re protecting them; sometimes we are protecting our own sense of
significance.
We call it prudence, but it is often fear.
Fear of loss. Fear of being forgotten.
Fear that the sons and daughters we’ve poured into might grow into something
beyond our reach.
This fear is understandable—but it is also unsustainable.
Because in trying to keep, we prevent the very growth the Father desires.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if
it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)

When leaders clutch, movements stall.
When fathers release, multiplication begins.
From Father to Network: The Creative Continuity of Level 7
True fathering never ends with loss; it matures into multiplication through connection.
The Church was never meant to be a system of retention but a family of
release—fathers and mothers raising sons and daughters who carry the family
values and likeness into every corner of culture.
This is the essence of what might be called apostolic fatherhood: leaders who equip
others in identity and purpose, then empower them to live it out—in business, in the
arts, in classrooms, neighborhoods, and households—not only in distant mission
fields.
Some will go far; many will go next door. But all are sent.
Release, in this sense, doesn’t always mean sending people away. It means sending
them forward—into their God-given sphere of influence—with the Church remaining
a constant source of prayer, wisdom, and fellowship.
The pastor who releases in this way doesn’t lose his people; he gains partners on
mission, on purpose. The local church becomes what it was meant to be: an
incubator of calling, a launchpad for purpose-centered discipleship.
As those callings mature, the connections among them naturally form an apostolic
network—not hierarchical, but relational.
Each node in the network is a hub of obedience, creativity, and grace, and together
they embody a living tapestry of the Kingdom in motion.
This is what Level 7 looks like: churches and leaders joined not by program
alignment but by shared DNA—the heartbeat of the Father who loves to see His
children fully alive in their design.

“The glory of God is man fully alive.” — St. Irenaeus
And the glory of the Father is sons and daughters flourishing in their
callings, still connected by love, still co-laboring for the harvest that
begins right where they live.

The New Measure of Legacy
In the old paradigm, legacy meant leaving something behind.
In the new paradigm, legacy means sending something ahead.
Every person you equip in their calling becomes a seed of future harvest.
Every disciple who finds their voice carries your spiritual DNA into new soil.
The Church’s greatest multiplication won’t come from adding programs or perfecting
structures, but from re-embracing the Father’s way: forming people who hear, obey,
and go.
“I have finished the work You gave Me to do.” (John 17:4)
Jesus said that before the Cross—because His work was the raising and
releasing of sons and daughters.

The Courage to Let Go
For pastors and leaders reading this:
Your fear of release is not a flaw; it’s a sign of love.
But love perfected casts out fear.
You are not called to keep people forever.
You are called to form them for a forever growing, expanding kingdom..
You are called to raise, to empower, to bless, to send.
Every act of release is a rehearsal of the Father’s own heart—a Father who trusted
His plan enough to send His Son, and now sends us.
So when your best people begin to sense God’s new direction, don’t
panic—empower, send and partner with them. Because your church is doing exactly
what it was designed to do.
When you bless their going, you multiply your own impact.
And when you release with joy, you prove you are a true father in the Kingdom of
God.

And maybe then the long silence will break, and the voice of fathers will be
heard again—
“For though you may have ten thousand instructors in Christ, you do not have
many fathers. Through the Good News I became your father in Christ Jesus, so I
beg you, please follow my example.” (1 Corinthians 4:15)

Vision Prayer
Father of lights,
teach us the courage to release what we love most.
Make us fathers and mothers of movements, not managers of crowds.
Let our hands open easily and our hearts trust deeply.
Let every son and daughter we raise become a living letter of Your
grace—
written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, who calls us all.
May our churches become incubators of purpose, our homes
greenhouses of grace, our networks woven with love.
Until the famine of fathers ends, and the sound of sending fills the earth
again— for the glory of Your name, and the joy of every calling fulfilled.
Amen.

This article was written by my friend and colleague in ministry, Mike Johnson.