Mon 10 Jul 2006
It seems that more and more churches are embracing the multi-site church model for church growth these days. For those who are new to this, multi-site churches are those who share a common vision, budget, leadership, and board (The Multi-Site Church Revolution, Surratt, Ligon, and Bird, 2006). These can be “video venues” where a pastor preaches one or more “live” sermons on a weekend which is video recorded for other congregations at either the same location or satellite locations around town (or around the state, country, etc.). Multi-site churches can also be daughter congregations with their own teaching pastor who ultimately report up the chain to the senior pastor in the “main church.”
(Note: This article was originally posted by me on Ed Stetzer’s newchurches.com message board — www.newchurches.com.)
One thing that some may find surprising is that many churches who have been and continue to be influential in the world of indigenous church planting are also now embracing the Multi-site Church model as a means of continuing to grow their main location (Mars Hill Church in Seattle (www.marshillchurch.org), among others).
I am an elder of a mid-sized church in Las Cruces, New Mexico. We are embarking on a church planting effort this year with the vision to form a missional congregation — to be a church that “seeps through the cracks of society like water through a bucket of rocks.” I am going to be the founding pastor of this new church — which is exciting, sad, and scary at the same time. However, this solution doesn’t address the overcrowding problems present at my parent church. Planting the new church is clearly not a growth stress solution for them.
Consequently, my parent church is desiring to start a series of multi-site congregations in addition to planting the new, indigenous church. This seems logical — the senior pastor is a very gifted speaker, and the attitude and feel of the church is very open and inviting. They have become the church in town that heals the wounded Christian more than the church that saves the lost. But nevertheless they are facing growth challenges as more and more wounded folks come to get healed.
My observation is this: planting new churches is clearly the best thing to do if you can. But even churches that are intentional about planting new churches every year are facing growth challenges for which multi-site congregations seem to be the logical path for many. However, at what point are we pandering (for lack of a better word) to Christian society’s desire to follow a “pastor” rather than educating, discipling, and equipping Christian society to form new churches? It seems logical that if new leadership could be developed to plant new churches as quickly as new believers join the ranks, then things like multi-site congregations wouldn’t be needed. But that may just be idealistic on my part.
I’m concerned about this, because too many pastors struggle with ego. This often results in the desire to be as influential as possible, to form the biggest church possible, and to somehow always be “the boss.” The multi-site congregation movement seems like a dangerous temptation for such a pastor.
(Note: Mesilla Park Community Church is an elder-led church. As such, our elders work side-by-side with our pastor to ensure that such matters are adequately “fleshed out” and that our motivations are challenged against what scripture says should be true of our character.)
How are other church leaders around the world dealing with this?
July 10th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
I think the most dangerous temptation is not to build bigger and better buildings. These is far more harmful to the area than having an egotistical pastor (leaves shells of buildings that are only good to other churches, and promotes the idea of christian consumerism). That would be far worse to have an egotistical leadership and congregation, than just the one guy. Just some thoughts on the new churches: are they going to honestly look at the culture of Las Cruces as a whole and intentionally engage the subcultures that exist? I guess the question is, who will be the target group? With a culture as diverse as Las Cruces no church can be all things to all people, even if that is the hope. There are so many groups that most slip through the cracks of the church. I can see four that are largely overlooked: college age (conservitively 8,000 traditional college students), hispanics, damaged catholics and post-catholics, and retirees (being ranked in top 5 best places to retire means more and more evangelism to do).
On overpopulation: Church palnting is a great way to curb growth. Always have teams in training, and send those teams out anually or bianually. Even if those teams fail, you’ve managed to get people actively involved in sharing good news with Las Cruces. Another option would be a good old fashioned church split, except you could do it on your own terms. Make it a joyful event, done as a missional step in engaging Las Cruces more effectively(the details of this would be hard to do. money, building, and leadership stuff). Just some ideas. I could be crazy.
July 11th, 2006 at 10:36 am
The beauty of many small churches is that each elder or pastor can be free to be as effective as they can be for the demographic for which they have the best influence. For example, college age students might be best reached by a mature college-age leader. Hispanics might be best reached by an Hispanic leader. Same with post-Catholics, retirees, etc. The “big church” no longer has to struggle with being culturally relevant to all these groups simultaneously — they can let the smaller churches handle it. This model applies to home churches, multi-site churches, small video venues, etc. If the leadership is there, they are going to thrive, because they are going to be free to “go nutz” with the demographic they are best equipped and positioned to reach. Whatever that happens to be. I pray that MPCC finds its identity as a church planting church in all these ways. More than that, I pray that MPCC becomes known as a church that develops leaders to go and do all this work. That’s where it will all happen, and that’s what we’re striving for.