If Hamlet had been a 21st century American pastor, perhaps this would have been a big question on his mind, and on his lips.

In 1997, the church I served began a concerted effort toward planting a second campus. I was chosen to become the campus pastor. By the time I left that congregation in 2002, we were three years past worship launch on that campus, and in the midst of launching a third site. Those two campuses now exceed 1000 worshippers a week, in addition to the people gathered at the original campus. Over the years I have worked with numerous churches developing multi-site ministry – and also worked alongside churches who were simply planting a new church that would be independent of them. Both of these are excellent models for expanding faith community.

In both cases…
*the planting church gives away people and money to start the new thing
*this investment is repaid, NOT back to the planting church, but to God via lives transformed and new churches or campuses planted
*the new campus (or church) is not expected to support the planting congregation financially, except possibly where the original site is located in an area of economic distress where the church wishes to keep a missional presence among the poor
*there are campus based leader teams
*there is a primary campus pastor – a face with each place
*there are age level (and other types of) ministry directors housed at each site who think primarily in terms of developing ministry at their site
*stewardship development at the new church or site is critical and should be customized to that setting. Even in a multi-site strategy, campus-specific capital fund raising is often wise, so long as the church’s overall lead team is in the loop and signing off on this effort.

Multi-site differs from traditional planting in the following ways…
*the pastors of all campuses continue to function as A UNITED TEAM long-term
*the new campus may have a name or brand that distinguishes it from other campuses, but it always identifies somehow with the overall church
*the development of the new campus beyond the planting phase remains a high priority for the church as a whole, reflected in overall church budget and in leader development at the new site
*small groups and mission teams may contain blends of people from more than one campus
*some people, especially church leaders, may float back and forth among campuses from week to week
*the money (and other resources) is usually pooled into a single fund
*there is intentional effort to bring solid representation from all campuses into one common leadership team for the church

Finally, it’s all about the Great Commission.  All the rest is just details.  But important details!  A church should know what they are getting into and pray diligently before they attempt to plant a new site or a new autonomous church.

If your church is contemplating the possibility of multi-site ministry, you may wish to print this article for use in your conversation. And always, I welcome email contact around this subject.
 

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Multiply, Paul Nixon, Anchor Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.