Multi-Site News:  Conference in San Diego / McLean Bible Church Announces NINE New Campuses!

Orginally published on Sunday, February 04, 2007 at 6:05 AM
by Todd Rhoades

I'm here in San Diego for the Coast to Coast Multi-Site Church Conference today and tomorrow (along with a bunch of meetings and appointments with Leadership Network). I'm really excited about what's happening with the multi-site movement. Did you know that there are over 1,500 churches that are now using the multi-site model? And today and tomorrow, over 700 people from a couple hundred more churches are here to learn more about what's happening in this area of the church. All this as McLean Bible Church, a huge church already, announces plans to open up nine different campuses in the D. C. area. Here's part of a report published over the weekend in the Washington Post...

With 13,000 worshipers, a $93 million campus and multimillion-dollar budget, can McLean Bible Church—the Christian colossus in Tysons Corner—possibly get any bigger?

Yes, it can.

McLean Bible Church is one of the largest in the country and has launched a campaign to create a “spiritual beltway” with satellite churches in the D.C. area. Above, Angelica Mendoza and John Van Auken attend a Rosslyn service. (By Marvin Joseph—The Washington Post)

The evangelical megachurch, one of the country’s largest and fastest growing, is launching an ambitious expansion. It plans to build a “spiritual beltway” around the D.C. region by opening nine satellite locations to bring tens of thousands more into its fold. Through televised broadcasts, congregants at each location would see and hear portions of the same service at the same time.

The church is hunting for space in the District and in Prince George’s, Montgomery, Loudoun and Prince William counties—as well as farther north in Maryland and south in Virginia.

Two weeks ago, the first satellite church was launched, with a regular Monday night service aimed at young adults, in leased space at the Rosslyn Spectrum after holding three preview services there in the fall.

McLean is on the vanguard of churches in the Washington area that employ this new growth strategy. Unlike the traditional church-growth strategy, where houses of worship spun off—or “planted”—independent entities, an increasing number of large churches in the Washington area are growing by opening multiple locations under the same name and considering themselves one church.

If successful, senior pastor Lon Solomon told worshipers in a sermon last month, “we can keep expanding our impact for the Lord Jesus in this town until we have touched the entire town for Christ.”

You can read more of the article here...

Have a great week!

Todd

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Hi... I'm Todd Rhoades. I'm a Christ-follower, husband, father and I love to connect leaders with other leaders. Hopefully you'll find something here at MMI you like and will return often. If you want, you can find out more about me or follow my every step on Twitter.

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