Thursday of last week I spent a good 90 minutes on the conference call with some of the most innovative pastors in Illinois as we discussed “Developing a Second Worship Site: the Methods, Pitfalls and Advantages”. I want to share with you my notes on that conference call. It is an emerging trend that growing churches will develop a multi-site ministry as a part of its outreach strategy. Why not build or relocate rather than go to multi-site?
a) First, the cost of acquiring land and space to build larger buildings is an inhibiting factor.
b) Second, the time required for members to drive greater distances to be a part of a mega church is an inhibiting factor.
Advantages of a Multi Site
Pastor Rob Smith served as co pastor with Eddy Pullen at Cornerstone Community in Marion. A few years ago they decided to begin “Cornerstone Community/North Campus” at West Frankfort. They choose West Frankfort because they believed they could offer an exciting and new church experience to the people living in that community. Rob shared his experience and learning with us.
Pitfalls
1. State clearly your intentions—they made the mistake earlier of calling it a new church plant when in reality they did not have that intention. The result was he had to have a frank discussion with one of his key givers, telling him they would not be a new church they were going to continue to be a part of the congregation in Marion.
2. Avoid terminology like “second site” because it leaves the members with the idea that their campus located 12 miles north of the main campus was some how second rate.
3. Staff selection is vital to the success of the ministry. Their team looks for servant leaders. Michael Nave is the lead pastor; he recognizes people will be attracted to the pastor they see each week. The lead pastor builds trust between the other pastors to the point that it is almost a co-pastor relationship. That is why the selection of staff is very important. There is a risk that a misguided person could take the church in a direction different from the original purpose and the main campus could lose the thousands of dollars that they invested in the multi-site.
Advantages
1. The development of new leaders by seeking volunteers and having in place a mentoring process to develop these volunteers, the church is able to bring into the leadership persons who are now on the fringe of the ministry. The volunteers have caught the vision for what the church is attempting to do and make excellent candidates for staffing the multi-site church. They are loyal to the congregation and vision of the church.
2. The multi-site church can be more cost effective. The same high quality, trained staff is available at both locations.
3. The multi-site can be a more effective use of time. The worship team can plan services for both locations. He mentioned while he was spending time preparing their first building (an old store front building on main street as a suitable worship center) having a staff at the main campus working on Sunday’s worship was a big time saver. He is able to use the creative energy and synergy of the team to develop worship services that allow people to experience God’s creativity afresh each week.
4. Their worship services are series driven. While some discussion was given to one main pastor preaching via video it seems the consensus of our group that our worshipers prefer a live worship service. Especially the music, dramas, etc need to be live even if the preaching is presented in a video format. Each campus develops its own personality, and this freedom is encouraged.
How to Start a Multi-site
- Rob and others who have considered multi-site campus seemed to agree that the best way to start was to target a community where many of your current members live. Begin by gathering a small community in a home bible study. Continue meeting until there develops a core group of 70 persons who demonstrated commitment and share the vision of a multi-site campus. They have targeted an area about 12 miles south of Marion for the next multi-site.
- Rob said they started with a smaller group of 40 but they most likely would not do that again. He hopes the next site which may be south of the main campus in Marion will start with about 70 committed participates.
- Start big, they are even considering not holding services at the main campus and asking everyone to participate in the new start. So that people get excited about what God is doing and so visitors can see they are a part of a movement that is bigger than their local congregation. They did not do this in West Frankfort at the first launch and lost some of the excitement and momentum of their first service.
- Rob believes this is an example of what the early Baptist Association was to be at its best, an encouragement of fellow churches.
Resource
The Great Commission Network “Guiding Christian Leaders for Ancient Mission in the Contemporary World” April 28, 2008, Speaker: Bill Easum “Transformation and Reproduction Across Denominational Lines”
P. O. Box 780
Port Aransas, TX78373-0780
Phone: 361-749-5364
Fax: 361-749-5800
easum@easumbandy.com
http://www.easumbandy.com/
The simple definition is “one church in many locations.” In most cases, this means one mission, same values, budget, staff, structure, etc. (Do not confuse multi-site with any form of cluster or circuit type gathering of churches for the sake of survival.) Multi-site is about redesigning the shape and boundaries of a church to more resemble the way the early church lived and multiplied.
Multi-site includes the following: an on-premises venue with a video sermon in a place other than the regular auditorium; an off-premise venue in another location in town that requires a satellite or CD sermon; a sponsored church, whether in the same community or not, where the staff, content, and style comes from the parent church and where the church identifies itself as a site of the parent church. At the moment, one out of three churches are considering a multiple site. The estimate is there will be 30,000 multi-site churches in the next few years.
1 out 4 mega churches is now multi-site.
Examples:
· Community Christian Church in Naperville, IL - eight locations (2006) with 20+ services
· New Life Christian Fellowship in Chesapeake, VA - eight locations
· North Coast Church, Vista, CA - twenty services in five locations
· North Point Community Church, Atlanta, GA - three locations
· Evergreen Community Church, Minneapolis, MN - five locations
· First Baptist Church, Arlington, TX - 247 locations
· St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, Indianapolis, IN - three locations - The Garden
· Sedalia United Methodist Church, Sedalia, MO - two locations
· Lord of Life Lutheran Church, Fairfax, VA - two locations
· Upper Arlington Lutheran Church in Columbus, OH, - two locations
· Spirit Garage (from Bethlehem Lutheran Church), Minneapolis, MN - offshoot of Bethlehem Lutheran
· Gulf Breeze United Methodist Church, Gulf Breeze, FL - three locations
· Christ the King, Mt. Vernon, WA – 10 locations. “We’re a “Rurban” church", states Pastor Browning, “not urban and not rural.” And he is right. The largest town in their area is 20,000 with most of the towns being 5,000 and 10,000 in population
· New Hope Christian Fellowship, Honolulu
Easum predicts in 20 years it will be the norm and may become more important than church planting for a variety of reasons.
· Many established churches with little room begin to grow
· The additional sites have a seasoned coach and DNA to guide them
· Resources are more abundant than in a church plant
· It is ultimately cheaper and keeps all of the options open
· More non-Christians attend
· Multi-sites are responsible for more converts than churches that relocate
· Targeting a new age group (usually younger) or different psycho graphic groups
· Do a different kind of worship without upsetting the long timers
· Churches choose to start new campuses in friendlier confines
· A growing number of mainline churches are going Multiple-Site in order to get around the system
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