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Multi-site church planting gaining steam

by: Marc S. Botts, editor

It’s the kind of problem most pastors would love to have.

The Rev. Mike Richardson anticipates his Polaris Christian Church will soon grow too large for its current location. The former cinema the church recently renovated seats 275, and with nearly 350 in regular attendance, two services are needed.

After spending time, money and energy renovating the cinema, Richardson knows moving to a larger location is not a viable option. So, Richardson is exploring one that many experts believe may be the next big movement in church growth: multi-site church planting.

Under the multi-site model, a church opens additional locations but continues as one congregation, with a single treasury, membership roster, governing board and name. Many times, the sites have dedicated staff who share the church’s common vision, mission and resources.

"A person coming to Christ in a new location doesn’t really grasp how you are connected to all these other churches," said Richardson.

Once his Brunswick, Ohio-based Polaris surpasses the 400-member threshold elders imposed before any new growth-strategy can be adopted, Richardson said he will push hard for a multi-site approach.

"It gives you a lot of flexibility and a quicker return," Richardson said. "We have a multiple teaching staff, so for us to split into different sites it not at all a stretch."

Church-growth expert Lyle E. Schaller, in his book "Discontinuity and Hope: Radical Change and the Path to the Future," noted that several "multi-site congregations have discovered that their off-campus ministries are the most effective channels for reaching skeptics, agnostics, non-believers and inquirers at the very earliest stage of their faith journey."

Schaller also pointed out that from a financial perspective, multi-site churches may be the most cost-effective approach to evangelism.

Dave Ferguson, lead pastor at Community Christian Church with sites in Naperville, Romeoville and Montgomery in Illinois, is one of the early church planters who recognized the benefits of multi-site churches.

"When we started our church back in ’89, we did a big marketing blitz and had about 465 show up the first Sunday," Ferguson said, referring to the Naperville location.

"We started from scratch. There were just five of us, me and four friends, so that was great. But it leveled off to about 180 people, which is terrific when you started from zero and about 80 percent of those people were unchurched."

Ferguson said he used a similar marketing approach when he opened the Romeoville location in 1998.

"We had 560 people at the first service, but we had 360 that stuck around," Ferguson said. Four years later, Community Christian launched its third location, in Montgomery, with similar results: 600 people in attendance early on, with 350 returning regularly.

The retention rates - 39 percent at the first church versus roughly 60 percent at the second and third locations - coupled with the fact 80 percent of those attending were previously unchurched, convinced Ferguson he was on to something big.

Leadership Network, a foundation created in 1984 by social entrepreneur Bob Buford to identify, network and provide resources for senior ministers and staff of large congregations, has carefully watched the multi-site movement.

The Dallas-based organization brings in groups of leaders from churches to meet with facilitators to discuss and find ways to overcome challenges pastors at large churches face. In June the organization published a white paper titled "Extending Your Church to More Than One Place" in which it offered insights designed to help church leaders looking for ways to reach more people for Christ.

Leadership Network estimates that at least 1,000 churches across North America could be described as multi-site. It cited research by the Rev. Peter Roebbelen, who visited a number of multi-site locations under a grant from the Lilly Endowment-funded Louisville Institute.

"I think this is a true movement, a true new work because it’s popping up in isolated situations all over the place at about the same time," Roebbelen, pastor of four-campus Chartwell Baptist Church of Toronto, Ontario, said in his analysis.

Roebbelen said the people he interviewed did not appear to be driven by fad.

"It’s a God thing," he said. "Most didn’t sit down to strategize and plan, and then conclude, ‘We’re going to try multi-site,’ because none of us had heard of multi-site. We simply began doing it. The stories have been remarkably similar from coast to coast and from north to south."

Ferguson agrees.

"Our experience, particularly with the multi-site deal, has been that God just did some extraordinary things and it became obvious to us that we had to say yes to it," Ferguson said. "So, really, the God-thing happened first and then came the vision. When the God-thing happens first and then there is a vision, it makes it pretty easy to sell the vision."

Ferguson said his entry to multi-site churches came after a church member asked if he would be interested in moving to a real estate community he was developing rather than the high school they were meeting in.

"I said, ‘I can’t move two towns away. Why don’t we just start a second location?’" Ferguson recalled.

To help share the success Community Christian has enjoyed, Ferguson started a non-profit organization dedicated to reproducing "multi-site churches relentlessly dedicated to helping people find their way back to God."

The organization, called New Thing, draws inspiration from Scripture:

"See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland" (Isaiah 43:19, NIV).

Pat Masek, office manager and assistant to Ferguson, said their experience with multi-site church planting was something they were compelled to share.

"We just feel we have a greater impact. More people stick and more people find their way back to God," she said.

New Thing includes two apprentice churches in its network — Jacob’s Well Community Church in Jacob’s Well, Colo., and Life Journey Church in Bakersfield, Calif.

Ferguson was recently invited to speak to more than 10,000 church leaders in South Korea at the invitation of the Rev. Yong Jo Ha, pastor of Onnuri Church in Seoul, South Korea, which is home to five of the 10 largest churches in the world.

"Pastor Ha, at Onnuri Church, probably the most progressive of all the large churches in Seoul, really believes that this the wave of the future," he said.