The Rope of Sand

Building a System That Will Outlast You

By Ashley Evans

The year is 1740.

George Whitefield stands on a platform in the open air. Thirty thousand people gather to hear him speak. Benjamin Franklin, standing in the crowd, calculates that Whitefield’s voice can reach that many people clearly. The newspapers call him “the marvel of the age.” He’s the most famous man in the English-speaking world. He crosses the Atlantic seven times—in the 1700s, when most people never left their village. Over his lifetime, he preaches 18,000 sermons to an estimated ten million people.

And today? Almost nobody knows his name. Why? Because he built a crowd. Not a movement.

Near the end of his life, Whitefield said something devastating—something that should be carved into the wall of every megachurch in America:

“My brother Wesley acted wisely. The souls that were awakened under his ministry he joined in societies, and thus preserved the fruit of his labor. This I neglected, and my people are a rope of sand.”

A rope of sand. The greatest preacher of his generation—and he calls his legacy a rope of sand. It looks impressive but has no strength. You can’t pull anything with it. You can’t build anything with it.

When Whitefield died, his movement died with him. Zero Whitefieldian societies. Zero churches. Zero movements. The celebrity died, and the crowd disappeared.

Eighteen thousand sermons. Ten million people. Zero multiplication rate.

Meanwhile, John Wesley—a man everyone agreed was not as good a preacher—built structure. Societies. Class meetings. Circuit riders. Lay leaders. It wasn’t sexy. But it multiplied. And it’s still multiplying 250 years later.

I read that story 20 years ago. And I’ve spent every day since trying to make sure I don’t die with a rope of sand in my hands.

Multiplication isn’t about what you accomplish. It’s about what outlives you.

THE GRAVEYARD

But before I tell you what I built, I need to show you what I buried. I don’t trust leaders who only show me their wins. Here’s the graveyard, fast.

The Judas

Year seven. One of my closest leaders decided he wanted what I had—not alongside me, instead of me. He’d been flattering me for months while meeting with staff privately, building his own coalition. My wife, Jane, warned me. I didn’t listen. Two hundred people left. Another hundred drifted away. I’d been investing in charisma instead of testing for character. Flattery blinds you. Discernment saves you.

The Wrong Investment

Over the years I developed a savior complex—endless coffee meetings trying to rescue drifting staff, convinced my loyalty would transform them. It almost never worked. I poured eight years into one talented young pastor who could preach, could lead, but was unteachable. Jane asked me in year two: “How long are you going to carry him?” I didn’t listen. Eight years later, I let him go. Within six months he was out of ministry entirely. Every hour spent resuscitating someone who doesn’t want to be resuscitated is an hour stolen from someone hungry to grow.

The Burnout

In 1995, I was 31. Leading the largest youth ministry in Australia. A thousand young people. And I was living by addition—eighty personal contacts every week, out six nights a week, thinking if I just did more, I’d get on top of it. I didn’t collapse the ministry. I collapsed myself.

Every grave taught me the same thing: addition thinking doesn’t just limit your growth. It buries you.

THE REVELATION THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

The real breakthrough didn’t come from failure. It came from watching someone else succeed.

I was 42 when it hit me. I’d grown up in church culture where success meant commanding a stage—the powerful speakers, the prophets, the conference preachers. That was the goal. But during that time, there was a church growing like crazy. Multiple campuses. Exploding growth. Real multiplication. And the pastor? A good preacher. Not a great one. He’d preach the same message again and again—and despite average preaching and repeated content, the church grew. And grew.

Sound familiar? Wesley all over again.

This pastor had a massive training college. He wasn’t focused on being the best preacher. He was focused on developing the best leaders. He wasn’t building a crowd. He was building a system.

And then the sentence landed that rewired my brain: Preaching is the catering department.

People need feeding. That’s important. But it’s just the bottom of the hierarchy. Systems create multiplication. Sermons create attendance. And I’d been pouring my life into attendance.

PUT YOUR STICKS IN FRONT OF THE RIGHT SHEEP.

In Genesis 30, Jacob had no land, no inheritance, no capital. Just sticks. He peeled branches and placed them in the watering troughs. But here’s what most people miss: he only put sticks in front of the stronger females—the ones in heat. The fertile ones. The ones with reproductive capacity.

He didn’t waste his sticks on weak sheep. Neither should you.

I call it the H.E.A.T. scorecard—four markers that identify someone ready to multiply.

Hungry: Do they chase growth without being asked?

Effective: Do they produce results, not just activity?

Adaptable: Can they lead through chaos?

Transferable: Can they teach what they know to someone else, and that person can do it?

When all four are present, you’ve found someone worth your deepest investment. When they’re not, you’re wasting sticks on cold sheep. That’s what eight years of investing in an unteachable pastor taught me. That’s what the savior complex cost me. I was putting sticks in front of every sheep in the field instead of the ones that could actually reproduce.

PUPPY FEET

Thirty years ago, I saw a young, bubbly teenager across the room. No degree. No obvious talent. No developed skills. But she had what I call puppy feet—oversized capacity waiting to be grown into. I invited her to a training course. She became a sponge.

Her name is Janine. For years, nothing visible happened. Small group leader. Ministry director. Campus team member. Nothing flashy. Like bamboo—four years of invisible root growth, then it explodes 90 feet in six weeks.

We gave her a campus. One month later, COVID shut the world down. The previous campus pastor had also left, taking dozens of people with him. She inherited a pandemic and an exodus in her first 30 days.

Most leaders would have crumbled. Janine multiplied. She leaned into her mentors, pivoted to Zoom within a week and led with extraordinary prayer and genuine love for people. Five years later, that campus has doubled.

But here’s what really proved the system. I challenged her: “You’re a great leader. But you need to become a great developer. Stop doing everything yourself.” She took it seriously. Built a leadership pipeline on her campus. Then she left for six weeks. The campus didn’t just survive. It thrived. Attendance up. Giving up. New leaders emerged.

10,000 MILES AWAY

But Janine was one campus. I needed to know: could the whole system multiply without me?

So I tested it. I left the country.

In Australia, I’d been the pastor of one of the top four churches in our movement. For 12 years, I’d served as a National Director, overseeing 1,000 churches.

Top vote-getter. Respected. Influential. Then I told my church I was moving to America to plant a second hub.

Within three months, I was 10,000 miles away, setting up chairs at 5:00 a.m. at the Gwinnett Convention Center. Vacuuming carpets. Hauling cables. Doing sound checks in an empty room.

I went from speaking to thousands every weekend to speaking to 50, then 200. I lost my profile. My influence. My flesh missed the momentum.

But I chose this. Not because I had to. Because I wanted to prove that multiplication actually works—that the leaders I’d developed could carry it without the founder in the room.

And they did. Josh—who grew up in our church and came back as lead pastor of Australia—diagnosed problems, made calls, executed fixes, stewarded results.

Without me. The church stabilized. Then it grew. Then it multiplied.

THE SCORE CARD

I had one campus. Three thousand people.

One campus became 21. Three thousand became 19,000. Four countries. Four languages. Campus multiplication: 2,100 percent. Leader development: 100% internal. My son Mark developed an entire new generation of leaders starting at age 20. Josh created the systems to manage the people Mark developed. Jane and I provided the structure and the vision.

We weren’t training people to do tasks. We were developing multipliers. Leaders who could lead leaders who could lead leaders.

Recall the parable of the talents. Five became ten. Two became four. Identical praise—because God doesn’t measure total output. He measures multiplication rate. Did you multiply what you were given? That’s the only question that matters.

Jesus took the same approach. Twelve men. Three years. No advertising budget. No social media. Just strategic multiplication. Two thousand years later: over two billion followers. From 12 to two billion. That’s not addition. That’s multiplication.

• • •

Jane and I have been married 39 years. Our three sons—Mark, Nate and Ben—are all in ministry. Not because we pushed them. Because they watched multiplication lived out in our home and chose it for themselves. Two married women who serve alongside them. Seven Grandchildren and counting. Many pastors’ kids leave the church. Ours are leading it. That’s multiplication at home before it’s multiplication in the church. Because you can’t give away what you haven’t built at home.

I’m writing a book called Multiply or Die because that’s not a metaphor. It’s the law. Every leader, every church, every organization is either multiplying or slowly dying. There is no neutral. Addition feels like growth. But addition dies when you die.

Multiplication outlives you.

So stop building a crowd. Build a system. Stop investing in cold sheep. Find the ones in heat. Stop measuring how many people hear you. Start measuring how many people you multiply.

Don’t leave with a rope of sand in your hands.

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Ashley Evans serves as global senior pastor of Futures Church, a rapidly multiplying movement spanning four nations. What began in 2000 as a single campus in Adelaide, Australia, has grown into 21 campuses across 4 countries with 19,000 members. Ashley and Jane have been married for 39 years and are partners in life and ministry. Together they have three sons—Mark, Nate and Ben—all serving in ministry, along with a growing tribe of grandchildren. His new book is Multiply or Die: The Hidden Law That Builds Empires and Buries Leaders, from which this article is adapted