Through the research LifeWay conducted surveying multisite pastors, we discovered a trend among many pastors considering multisite. For them, “the multi-site strategy [did] not replace any other method of participating in kingdom growth. It [did] not replace church planting, personal evangelism, visitation programs, investing and inviting, servant evangelism, or evangelistic training.”[1]
For them it was merely another strategy to reach their city:
Planting churches, building larger buildings, adding services, adding venues at your current site, and relocating a campus are all still viable solutions today. Multi-site does not replace these other solutions. It adds one more possibility for consideration.[2]
Some once believed this move to grow via multiple campuses was a temporary trend, but it appears to be a trend that’s here to stay. After all, there are more than 8,000 multisite churches in the US alone with more than 5 million people worshipping in them![3] While it was once the domain of only the largest megachurches, multisite is now a common option for smaller churches to consider. In fact, although a thousand is the average size of the church that goes multisite, many have gone multisite at eighty.[4]
What’s interesting though, is the number of churches that utilize a multisite methodology and are also committed to church planting. The two are definitely not exclusive of each other.
Take a look at these three different models that are committed to both multisite and church planting:
1. Both/And
The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina, is passionate about multiplication and is using both church planting and multisite as strategies toward that end. Albeit The Summit did “stumble” onto multisite more than anything, as David Thompson, the lead pastor of executive leadership at The Summit explains:
When the church began running out of room at the high school, they decided to try a third service in the two hundred-seat church building [that was four miles down the road]. Pastor Greear would preach the first service at the high school. As soon as he finished preaching, he would walk off stage and jump into a car prepared to drive him to the old church. Four miles, a Mountain Dew and a Snickers bar later, he would walk immediately onto the stage and preach again. Immediately after preaching, he would get back in the car, return to the high school, and preach the second service. These were long and taxing days, but the church was committed to reaching people, and God continued to bring people.
When The Summit Church moved to a warehouse fifteen minutes away, they decided to keep the service going at the two hundred-seat church building in north Durham. They were determined to give it a shot and asked one of the pastors to consider hosting the service each weekend. They had no idea what a “campus pastor” was and had little vision for multisite, but they were willing to try just about anything. Around four hundred people took them up on the opportunity and thus began their journey down the multisite road.[4]
For The Summit, “multisite is not a substitute for church planting; it’s a substitute for a large auditorium.”[5] That’s why they are committed to both. J. D. Greear, the pastor of The Summit, explains their multiplication strategy: “It is our prayer that by 2050, God will allow us to put campuses within 15 minutes of everyone in Raleigh-Durham (with some rare but notable exceptions in places where a Summit campus might hinder the work of another local church), as well as 1000 churches planted in cities around the world.”[6]
2. Both/Then
Instead of the both/and approach to multisite and church planting that The Summit is employing, The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, is taking a both/then approach. Back when The Village Church was known as Highland Village First Baptist Church, Matt Chandler, the lead pastor, always had a vision that this church would be a church planting church. As the church grew, the elders at The Village decided to employ the multisite model instead of building one giant campus. As they continued to start new campuses, their existing ones began to mature to the point that the elders began praying about the possibility of seeing their campuses roll off and become their own autonomous churches. This first happened for them with their Denton campus in 2015. They see this as an opportunity to do both multisite and church planting by first establishing and strengthening campuses and then spinning them off as church plants when those campuses are ready. The Village is essentially “leveraging the typical multisite approach to, instead, plant more churches.”[7]
3. Both/Equal
Churches like NewLife Community Church in Chicago and Trinity Grace Church in New York are using the both/equal approach. Churches like them are allowing each of their campuses to have a considerable amount of autonomy with their own campus pastor who preaches, leads, and shepherds their campus like any church planter would their church. So in that sense the campuses are equal to church plants. However, those churches are then taking advantage of the benefits of multisite by cultivating a community of pastors where they can learn from one another, prepare their sermons together, and also draw from central administrative services.
Conclusion
I am not anti-multisite or anti-megachurch; after all, I’ve been a pastor at multiple multisite and megachurches, and am currently serving in a multisite church at the time of this writing!
What I am is anti-consumerism.
Church is not about being the best purveyor of religious “goods and services.” And if a megachurch or a multisite thrives by appealing solely to the “come and see” mentality that is so prevalent, we will all regret it.
No matter the number of campuses your church has, reproduction NEEDS to be the goal—reproducing believers, ministries, groups, and churches. That can be in a megachurch, multisite church, or, for that matter, in a simple church. So, if you are going multisite, make sure you stay focused on multiplying the mission of God—not just your brand of church or the reach of one person. Let’s make it more than projecting the image of a pastor on another screen.
*This is a modified excerpt from Planting Missional Churches: Your Guide to Starting Churches that Multiply.
Footnotes:
[1] Scott McConnell, Multi-Site Churches: Guidance for the Movement’s Next Generation (Nashville: B&H, 2009), Kindle ed., locs. 228–29.
[2] Ibid., 222–24.
[3]Warren Bird, “Leadership Network/Generis Multisite Church Scorecard: Faster Growth, More New Believers and Greater Lay Participation,” Leadership Network, accessed July 14, 2015, http://leadnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2014_LN_ Generis_Multisite_Church_ Scorecard_ Report_v2.pdf.
[4] McConnell, 222-24.
[5] David Thompson, “Propelling a Movement of Multiplying Churches from the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina” (DMin Final project, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2014), 41.
[6] Ibid., 42.
[7] J. D. Geear, “Why The Summit Church Is Multi-Site,” June 3, 2013, accessed September 19, 2015, http://www.jdgreear.com/my_weblog /2013/06/why-the-summit-is-multi-site.html.
[8] “Campus Transitions,” The Village Church, August 17, 2014, accessed September 19, 2015, http://www.thevillagechurch.net/ sermon/campus-transitions.