Number 71, August 2003
  The Emerging Multi-Site Movement
    Delivering Good Feedback
    Odds and Ends
 
The Emerging Multi-Site Movement

 

by Warren Bird

The Spring 2003 issue of Leadership Journal announced that "the multi-site church is a phenomenon that you will no doubt be hearing about in the future." 1 Church consultant Lyle Schaller says "the success of . . . multi-site ventures has changed the context for ministry."2

The core idea of multi-site is simple: "one church meeting in many locations," as Elmer Towns describes it in Ten of Today's Most Innovative Churches.3 These alternate venues go by a wide variety of names including digital church, extension sites, video-café congregations, multiple campuses, and satellite ministries. A church becomes multi-site by extending itself to more than one location: across town, across the state, and/or literally around the world. In short, the multi-site movement is about a new way of re-assigning the physical boundaries of a church.

Greg Ligon, director of Multi-site Leadership Communities for Leadership Network, believes at least 1,000 churches across North America could currently be described as multi-site, with many more considering the concept.

Multi-site congregations occur in all sizes, with many off-site campuses averaging under 100 in weekly worship. Although megachurches with multiple-location strategies garner the most media attention, multi-site isn't solely a megachurch phenomenon. Multi-site churches can be found across the size spectrum, with churches in the 250 to 500 attendance range as a frequent multi-site sponsor.

Motive Is Usually Outreach, Yet Rarely a Growth Strategy

Bill Easum and Dave Travis observe that the genius of multi-site is not that it grows a church, but it keeps it growing. In their new book, Beyond the Box: Innovative Churches that Work, they comment, "The key to understanding the multi-site movement is to remember that fulfilling the Great Commission drives these congregations, not a growth strategy." 4

In short, multi-site is a means toward an end, not an end goal in itself. Many churches do generate growth through multi-site, but just as importantly, multi-site keeps them from capping the growth they're experiencing.

Churches that use a multi-site approach tend to evolve into it, rather than starting with it. Typical is the 25-year-old Chartwell Baptist Church, in a suburb of Toronto, Ontario, where Peter Roebbelen is pastor (www.chartwellchurch.org).

"We backed into multi-site," says Roebbelen. "It's not something we intentionally tried to do. It was more like a disruptive moment where we faced a problem and saw an opportunity." In essence, their problem became an opportunity.

For Chartwell, the initial motivation was to accommodate growth. "We needed to go to a third service, but we wanted to do it during the optimal Sunday-morning time." So, Chartwell began experimenting with the use of additional campuses. That was 1993. Ten years later, Chartwell offers 6 Saturday-night or Sunday-morning services on 4 campuses. By early 2003, more than 1,000 regularly attended one of the Chartwell congregations, and yet, the main church's seating capacity was 260--and still is--consistent with their particular strategy of creating a sense of relational intimacy within each local worship setting.

Trigger Event Varies, Most Often a Space Issue

According to Leadership Network's surveys, the most-cited trigger reason for launching multiple campuses or multiple venues is lack-of-space issues. These range from a lack of seats or parking spots at optimal service times to zoning/building restrictions on future growth. The second most-often cited trigger reason is a vision to impact through "more" instead of "bigger"--i.e., a desire to avoid certain downsides of megachurches.

One example is Seacoast Church (www.seacoast.org) near Charleston, S.C. Their primary trigger for going multi-site was lack of space; but they faced other motivators too. The town had shut down any expansion hopes, so they became really imaginative about how to use existing spaces: college campuses, theaters, closed churches, and warehouses. It currently worships 5,500 total in 10 services on 5 campuses.

Additional Resources Are Emerging.

April 2002 saw the launch of a Multi-Site Leadership Community involving 12 pacesetting churches from the U.S. and Canada. With help from www.wildworksgroup.com, which designed a creative, interactive learning process, these innovative churches formed a peer community of innovators working together toward a significant leap in achieving their multi-site goals. For a summary of findings from this gathering, go to www.leadnet.org/resources/resources.asp and select the "Extending Your Church" multi-site report.

Interest was so strong among additional churches that a second Multi-site Leadership Community will be launched in November, and a third in 2004. For more details, contact greg.ligon@leadnet.org.

Also, several church websites provide extensive sections of Frequently Asked Questions about multi-site issues. Three of the best examples are:
  • North Coast Church, Vista, CA, lists its FAQ section at www.videocafes.org.

  • Willow Creek Community Church, S. Barrington, IL, has FAQ sections on each of its regional campuses. Go to www.WillowCreek.org and click the sections (currently at lower left) for the various regional campuses.

  • Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, MN, models how they presented the multi-site idea to their congregation at www.bbcmpls.org/goingwogoing.htm.
Endnotes:

1See the opening sentence, written by the editors, to this article: Ferguson, Dave. "The Multi-Site Church: Some of the Strengths of This New Life Form," Leadership Journal, Spring 2003, 81. It may be found online at www.christianitytoday.com/leaders/

2Schaller, Lyle E. Discontinuity and Hope: Radical Change and the Path to the Future. Nashville: Abingdon, 1999, 176. See also Schaller, Lyle E. The Very Large Church: New Rules for Leaders. Nashville: Abingdon, 2000, 110-112, 135-136, 192-194; Schaller, Lyle E. Innovations in Ministry, chapter 6 "Off-Campus Ministries" and chapter 8 "The Multi-Site Option, Nashville: Abingdon, 1994, 86-97, 112-133; Schaller, Lyle E. Forty-Four Questions for Church Planters, chapter 4 "The Multi-Site Option", Nashville: Abingdon, 1991, 56-58.

3Towns, Elmer. Ten of Today's Most Innovative Churches, Regal, 1990, 239. Although the book is out of print, it is available at www.elmertowns.com, currently at no charge.

4Easum, Bill, and Travis, Dave, Beyond the Box: Innovative Churches that Work. Loveland, CO: Group Publishing, 2003, 85.

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