Insights from the Multi-Site Church
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Sun, October 10, 2004
- Viewed 85
- (17) comments so far
2) Keep it personal. Since the venues will be video preaching, you must have a strong campus pastor that can keep it personal. People connect with people, and church needs to be relational. The power of small groups, bible studies or core relationships are critical for these venues to be successful.
3) Keep it excellent. All aspects of the campus must be excellent. This is a core principal of FC anyway, but in a remote campus you must stay focused on the excellence factor. This is again why keeping it simple is key. Do a few things and do them with excellence. Example, the venue is video preaching, so the video feed better be excellent!
4) Keep it connected. A remote campus must stay connected to the big picture and the overall vision. For example, the slogan One church, multiple locations is great. Keep the vision white hot for the members, attenders and the staff.
5) Keep it cultural. Know your audience and the culture of the area. A remote campus my have a different audience or culture then the main campus. A remote campus may give you an opportunity to do different music, programs or events. Don't fall into the trap of not adjusting your methodology.
6) Keep it purposeful. Know your purpose for the site and keep it on target. Is it to relieve space at the main campus? Is it to reach a new audience? Both? If you are trying to relieve space then get on purpose and strategic about challenging your membership and attenders to move to the new campus. This is hard work if you do it right! Promote, promote, promote. Cast vision... people don't follow your need, they will follow their own felt need. Vision will create the felt need.
7) Keep it goal oriented. Know your definition of success going in and set tangible goals throughout the organization. Do not assume that all things will just happen because you expect them too. Attendance, life-change, small groups, etc will not just happen because you open the doors. Stay strategic, and goal oriented and measure your results with numbers!
8) Remember, its a start up. Staff selection is key to the success of a remote campus. Why? Because more than likely if you are starting a remote campus then your main campus is fairly successful. If your staff has only seen the glory or wonder years of your church they might not be aware of what hard work it took to get their.
9) Keep it strategic. Centralize everything that you can, personalize ministry, and outsource the rest.
10) Keep it structured. Staff alignment and structure is very important. Staff must know who is in charge, and the person in charge must be a "company" guy. The campus pastor or whoever is in charge at the remote campus must be trusted, and must be a great leader. Poor communication in a remote campus could create an implosion very quickly. The staff must feel apart of the bigger picture (vision) and must have great support from the main campus. In my opinion this is the hardest part of all, and also the most UNDER ESTIMATED! Do not make the mistake of thinking that this will just work... Please excuse my candid nature here, but most churches are out to lunch when it comes to this topic! I would look more to corporate america for a great model that can be adjusted to your church. For example, Chick-fil-a or Starbucks, both of these models have a great scalability plan, great accountability, and great brand consistency that can easily be tweaked to fit your church.
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Is your church currently involved in multi-site ministry? What have you learned? If you have questions about multi-site ministry, please post them in our comments section... I'm sure we'll have some people here that can help answer your questions!
The multi-site church is quickly becoming a growth and outreach model that many churches are starting to successfully use. Multi-site churches take on many different shapes. Fellowship Church in Grapevine, TX (pastored by Ed Young, Jr.) recently announced that they are going to a multi-campus, multi-site approach. This decision comes, of course after much research. Terry Storch, Fellowship’s person in charge of technology shares some insights that he has gained from visiting a large number of multi-site churches. Hopefully this will be helpful to you if you are thinking about this approach for your church, or if you just want to keep up on what others are trying. Here are his suggestions and comments about multi-sites:
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Comments
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David Curtis on Tue, October 12, 2004
Good rhetoric, clearly doing church is something that we are all passionate about otherwise we would have so many insightful comments.
I am currently an associate pastor in a small church and I can appreciate Todd’s comments on the small church/mega church friction. It can be hard to keep a perspective on my ministry when I see the size and success of some of the churches nationwide and in our own backyard. Now that may sound wrong but it is honest and it is probably something other pastors of small churches aren’t willing to admit. It is difficult when much of the material written as pastor helps and ministry tips come from pastors of large churches or address issues being dealt with by the large churches.
What I would like to see is what did it take you to break through and experience the growth. I love what Kevin is doing with his church plant. Those are the stories that I want to hear about.
On the small church/mega church friction I read something from Rick Warren that meant alot to me. Basically what he had to say was that the size and success of your ministry doesn’t impact the significance of it. All ministry is significant especially to those who are in those small churches. I don’t think we can say that small is better of mega is better, but what is true is that both are significant and that faithfulness to the call is what God is after. Jesus has said that I will build my church (Matt. 16:18), what does it matter if he builds it through a mega church or a small church, God is the one who brings people to himself.
Keep up the good work
Jason Nelson on Sat, October 16, 2004
How is this much different from televangelists that have been using TV to spread the Word of God. Or, if you break it down, they are using a camera and a DVD (or other form of recordable media). My point being, for years televangelists have used video teaching to spread the Word. But, as Emeril would say, we just “kicked it up a notch”. How? Not only are we using video to spread the Word of God, but now we are also offering community by bringing people to a central location to watch the video (instead of people sitting at home by themselves). I wonder how much flack Hollywood got from play houses and opera houses when they started showing “stories” on the big screen?
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