Inevitably, I suppose, I need to address the phenomenon of the multi-campus congregation.
For example, we have in Alabama a non-denominational congregation with campuses in four cities. There’s one sermon delivered by one man each Sunday, and the video of the sermon is delivered to the other campuses on a lifesize screen. Modern technology makes this very possible and very effective. In a culture accustomed to TV, movies, and computers, a projected preacher can be very well accepted.
In these churches, the live preacher usually rides a circuit among his campuses, so all the members see him in person every few weeks. In Churches of Christ, the eldership is composed of men from all campuses.
And these kinds of churches have, on the whole, done very well. They’ve grown numerically but they’ve also baptized many and drawn their members into a much deeper, richer spirituality than many smaller churches do.
I’m not saying that a single-campus church can’t be as effective in these ways; just that it’s not really possible to argue that multi-campus churches are ineffective as compared to single campus churches. And I’ve been wondering why.
Here’s my first theory.
1. They were effective long before they became multi-campus churches. Rather, their effectiveness is what allowed them to become multi-campus or even what forced them to go multi-campus to accommodate their numbers.
In short, if you’re not effective now, opening a second campus will only increase your overhead and administrative burdens. It won’t make the same leadership and same vision work any better. Rather, the church has to be doing well to consider such a move.
But there’s more to it than that. Consider a not-unusual example. A congregation of 300 falls on hard times. The charismatic preacher who labored there for 20 years has retired due to poor health, membership is in decline, and the church’s finances are a mess. Rather than recruiting the next great charismatic preacher to a struggling church — hardly an easy task — the elders ask a multi-campus church in town to merge and turn their church into another campus of the larger church.
After much prayer and discussion, the merger happens, the preacher for the multi-campus church is broadcast electronically into the failing church (the new campus). A few members of the larger church transfer to the new campus, to shorten their drive. And the leadership team of the larger church begins to make changes.
Rather than a preacher, the new campus is provided a minister to handle administrative matters, coordinate pastoral work, and to complete the transition to the new kind church. A retired member is put on the payroll to handle visitation. The curriculum and age-groups ministries are reworked using the resources and approaches of the larger church.
The elders are brought into the larger eldership and trained on their way of doing church. Some elders resign — relieved — and others are excited by the new ideas and energy.
The new campus starts to grow spiritually and numerically.
What really happened? Well —
2. Unity is exciting. There’s just something really exciting about being unified in mission and vision with thousands of other people.
3. Change becomes possible. When the old church agreed to submit to the leadership of a larger body, its old traditions died on the spot, and necessary changes could then be made — even changes the original elders desperately wanted but didn’t have the political clout to pull off.
4. Talent matters. A church of 2000 has more talent than a church of 300. The odds are overwhelming that it has more talent and resources in its children’s program, teen program, etc. The ideas, experience, and resources, once created, are easily shared. The teen minister at the new campus doesn’t have to invent everything from scratch. Rather, he can borrow ideas from the more experienced campuses and focus more on building relationships and working with parents.
5. Accountability matters. In a multi-campus church, you’re more accountable. If you’re the youth minister and are lazy, it’ll quickly become obvious. The leadership of the church will not allow that condition to remain in place for long. You see, with multiple campuses, everyone is benchmarked — not in competition but by comparison. There are other people there just as expert as you — if not more so — and if you don’t work hard, it’ll show.
6. Excellence matters. Excellence in worship or teaching does not, by itself, make a lousy church into a great church. But weak programs can turn a great church into a lousy one.
7. Better theology makes for better churches. On the whole, larger churches and multi-campus churches have better theology than smaller churches. That’s my experience. There are plenty of exceptions, but on the whole, they are effective because they are more nearly biblical than lots of smaller churches.
More precisely, they’ve found a way to do the theology rather than just talking about it. They do mission. They do evangelism. Some of the most missional churches and most mission-minded churches I know are multi-campus churches.
Rather than being consumerist, goods-and-services congregations, they are often among the most demanding of their members. Really.
Now, notice what’s not on the list: the preacher. A large congregation is going to have a great preacher. But the use of his sermons at the new campus isn’t what turned that campus around. Otherwise, they could’ve hooked their projector to the Internet and played his Sunday sermons without bothering with the merger.
No disrespect to Rick Atchley, but if a failing church were to play DVDs of his sermons every week, they’d still be a lousy church — just a lousy church with great sermons. It wouldn’t work. That’s not the key dynamic.
It’s part of the dynamic, of course — in part, I think, because it helps the campuses feel united and because it leads to a shared vision. And great preaching really helps build a church — but not by itself .
And we instinctively all know that to be true, or else we’d lay off some preachers and buy Rick Atchley DVD sets. They’d sure be a lot cheaper! But they wouldn’t be an effective way to build a church.
Rather, size matters. The ability of talented leaders to lead thousands rather than hundreds means the leadership is just better. Great leaders are rare. The ability of great theologians to spread their ideas and discoveries across a larger group of people matters. The excitement and confidence that comes with unity matters.
Some questions
And so, I’ve been wondering what would happen if a church with great leadership and preaching — such as The Hills Church of Christ (formerly Richland Hills) — were to adopt several house churches as “campuses,” sending out Rick Atchley DVDs but requiring the house churches to submit to the leadership of the church as a whole. Would it work?
I honestly don’t know, but I suspect not. I think it would be very hard to overcome the inefficiencies inherent in the house church model. I think you have run a house church like a house church, and that model is so foreign to a truly large church, it would be apples and oranges.
I wonder how big a multi-site church could become? Could one grow into a near-denomination by itself? The Mars Hill congregation in Seattle, pastored by Mark Driscoll, has grown so large that they have what amounts to an in house seminary to train church planters.
Saddleback is essentially a publishing house unto itself. I suspect that far more churches use their lesson and leadership materials than, say, those who buy from the Gospel Advocate. They may be bigger that Broadman, who publishes much of the Southern Baptist Church denominational material.
And is that a good thing? I do worry that some multi-campus churches spread from city to city rather than within a city — making them more like a small denomination than a congregation. How responsive to the local community can a church be if the leadership is scattered across several cities? I’ve seen the same phenomenon in banking, and spreading an organization over several cities separates it from the life of the city in subtle and, for a church, unhealthy ways.
What I think
So here’s what I think. Multi-campus churches should not expand into separate communities. I think they should stay within their own communities and use their additional campuses and vast resources to serve their communities — rather than their desire to get big. Getting big by going city to city and picking off the prime talent is, well, a business strategy. It’s how banks do business. It’s not a good church model.
The goal isn’t to get big. The goal is to be faithful and to serve in God’s mission. Therefore, rather than turning our churches into mini-denominations — an out-of-date, failing model — we should learn to serve our own communities with greater intensity. And if that means multiple campuses in the same community, fine. That may well be exactly what works in a given location and culture — but only if the church doesn’t do this to compete with the other churches in town.
Again, American consumerism and business models push us to compete with each other — which is just wrong, even a little childish. Grow up and use those resources to serve those parts of town that need the resources. Let the rich serve the poor, the great serve the meek. That sounds like a Christian model for church to me.
Jay…I find it amusing that you attribute many positive attributes to economy of scale and yet you begin to limit that scale to a certain radius…Why? If a church can improve (not that all do) by combining resources with another church in a local community then why on earth would they not be as successful if they combined resources with another group in another city nearby? Who determines what “community” is or the exact length in miles that one can be more efficient??
I think that you see many advantages to function and efficiency with an abundance of talent and resources…I agree…I also think that your “roots” are reactive toward “denominationalism” which is essentially what you find to be an effective “pattern”, if I dare use either of those words…
I’m sure there are problems unique to “groups” (if that word is less offensive than denomination) that aren’t experienced with the “non-institutional churches”….so there aren’t any perfect examples…but I would like to know what is the REAL reason that people are so offended by those faith heritages that do have more organization and association which to some appear much more effective in some areas of service.
I have experience in the multi-campus model as well as in the individual campus model. In my opinion, some matters are better managed locally and others are better managed collectively. There are good reasons for individual campuses to be given a significant degree of autonomy (financial, shepherding, etc). The collective matters are more along the lines of cooperating on things like joint services, missions, etc. Most of that can be done without becoming one “congregation” (a misnomer unless you congregate together!).
Having everyone listen to the same speaker giving the same message doesn’t make it one church IMO. If the people don’t know each other across campus lines it’s not really one church regardless of what you call it. You need to work at mingling the people. At some point geographic distance makes that impractical.
Alan…totally agree… The less the people are interactive with one another the less of a community they actually are…However, there does seem to be, as Jay suggested, an advantage to collective participation in missions and other work of the church. Also, I really like the concept of having some degree of over-arching theological agreement to avoid schisms and division over entirely misinterpreted applications of scripture… It keeps misinformed people from manipulating and/or controlling people with that very misinformation and/or false teaching…
Of course, the internet has opened the doors for many who didn’t have a clue about how other people thought on such subjects as IM even within their own faith heritage…Not that everybody has to agree but at least conservative blogs such as this one aren’t afraid to have open discussions about topics that some have never seen openly discussed… So, in a way, even the CoC has been moved by technology toward collective reasoning rather than each little gathering of people of faith getting to make up the rules as they go…
So, instead of having one single pulpit misnister for each local congregation, we have one single polpit minister for all congregations. Jay, how far is this from “each one has …” in 1Co 14:26? Doesn’t that reduce the whole city/campus-wide church to mere “pew-potatoes”?
Alexander
Alexander…..are you saying that it would be better to have one potato, two potato, three potato, four ?? Sorry, just couldn’t help myself…
We are not called to be potatoes at all, Price. But a pews-and-pulpit-system produces one farmer and myriads of potatoes.
Alexander
Alexander…. curious…weren’t the 1st century Christian communities made up of a bunch (or at least several) smaller house churches (congregations) that were overseen by a single group of Elders for that city ?? Not sure that economy of scale would apply but it seems on the surface that what we are speaking about (many churches with single group of Elders) is exactly what the 1st century “pattern” was… Not that we should be required to duplicate that 2000 year old pattern today….Also, I think Jay said…if you can trust Jay :)..that these connected churches have grown causing one to think that they are much more than a potato farm…far from it…
My experience with these types of affiliations suggest that church “plantings” often occur like this with some sense of shared resources until the new church is able (and wishes) to become entirely independent and then the Mother Church cuts the apron strings… In Atlanta there is one church in particular that uses the video conferencing and even some pretty neat 3D hologram stuff that you can’t tell whether the preacher is actually at your location or the other… And it’s definitely growing…and they do an excellent job in their discipleship from the feedback I get…
At least that’s the way it looks in the NT, and that’s been the structure of the 2nd century church of Christ as well. So I think, yes, this is the “original”.
But I think you misunderstood my “parable of th potatos”. What I tried to do is transferring the term “couch potato” into a church setting. There are no couches, but pews in a church, and there is no TV-Set, but a pulpit. But otherwise tha situation in similar: We sit there passively watching a program.
Now when we have one preacher broadcasted into all these congregations in a city, this silences all other gifted brothers and sends them back to the pews. I am absolutely convinced that this kind of a “one man show” stands in opposition to the Spirit of God who desired to bestow His gifts unto whom He pleases. The way a NT assembly is described in 1Co 11:2-14:38 is very VERY different to what we came to experience today.
It is not my job to judge the effectiveness of this or that model, because this is a) not the main criterion and b) all of this is far too young and new in order to be judged as “effective” in the long term.
But I take my Bible and see that what I see (or hear) does not look like what I read in this Holy Book. And so I draw my conclusion: “This ain’t right.”
Talking about effectivness: The 1st and 2nd century house church networks literally turned the world upside down. I know of no other movement that hat this impact. And they had no internet, no TV – all they had were sandals, a few handwritten copies of the scriptures (and a very good memory), and a whole lot of love.
Alexander
Alexander
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Alexander, I actually like the idea of having several people in the congregation give their testimony, and maybe participate in some worship activity versus just listening to a preacher…except that some preachers can really bring it !! Had a buddy say something similar to what you are saying with the potatos…he said there were some decoys among the ducks…
Jesus was the original network marketing guru.. he took a few, who found a few, who found some more…..and even He had one fall out of him…LOL… Something extra special happens when God wants to see something grow !! It wasn’t just those early Christians doing the do. God was opening a door than no man could shut….Which convinces me that until He comes…we can divide, argue, and divide again…fight, divide some more and really “ugly” up the place, but we can’t stop THE Church from growing…just our church.
Not only giving their testimony, Price.
Every brother can share a teaching, a song, a prophecy, a prayer – and (apart from teaching) every sister can do the same.
When the assembly is started, preferably by prayer or by a gathering hymn, each one can participate as the Spirit leads them to. Therefore in our house churches we don’t have one long sermon, but several shorter teachings, insights – inbetween prayers are said, hymns are suggested (and sung).
There is no need for extensive “planning” like:
Opening Hymn – 2 min
Greetings and Announcements – 5 min
2nd and 3rd hymn – 6 min
Prayer – 15 sec
4th Hymn – 3 min
Lord’s-Supper-Devotion – 10 min
Distribution – 2 min
Offering Hymn and offering – 3 min
Sermon – 30 min
Closing prayer and Hymn – 3 min
Which makes roughly an hour of “programm” where only a handful of brothers may actually contribute.
Our meetings have two parts: The one where we focus on worship and teaching, and the other one where we sit together and eat. The Lord’s Supper can be in either of the two parts, we have it in the second part. No one experiences such a meeting as “consuming a program” because all are called and have the opportunity to really be involved.
But unless you have been in such meetings you will hardly understand the huge difference this makes …
Alexander
Alexander, you make a good point. That sounds a lot like what I read in 1 Cor 14.
However I don’t think that is the only way to “do church.” I think it’s interesting to note how Justin Martyr says this was done about a generation after the apostles:
Acts 20, not Acts 2. Sorry.
Alexander…I was invited to a home church on several occasions and did go and participate. It was refreshing and much more spontaneous…
I guess I would have to say that God loves to see us worship from our hearts in all the various ways that we choose to do it as long as it is done in a way that is not “disorderly” or chaotic… I like the freedom and liberty that He gives us to choose…to change…to adapt….to sing a NEW song…
Alexander,
In my own church, we have about 650 in attendance, and we have a single preacher. But we’ll have dozens of teachers in Bible classes and small groups on that same day. The members get the benefit of an excellent preacher plus a multitude of teachers exercising their gifts. Many will hear from three different teachers the same day!
Seems like the best of both worlds to me. And essentially all multi-site churches run similar small groups ministries.
Jay…that’s an excellent point… Teaching opportunities along with personal expression are available in most churches in the Sunday School environment which would not have been broken down into worship and non-worship categories in the first century…Reading, speaking, singing, even sharing ameal etc., etc., were all considered a part of the Christian experience. It is popular in many churches to have special meeting times for the whole assembly or just men’s/women’s groups where additional Christian fellowship and various expressions of worship are offered…It would be a unique situation I think where a person who felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to share would not have a chance to do so… We, at least I, have a tendency to think of “worship” as the time in the “big room” from 11-12…
But, Jay, what people see and hear when they come to church is one preacher saying it all. What people in the 1st century experienced: All prophesied and they were convicted (1Co 14:24). (Both statements are BTW exaggerations)
So what do you (actually) say? “We don’t assemble like the 1st century church of Christ, but we have a different system that comes close to it, while we follow a worldly system that has been introduced in the course (or curse) of the centuries. So we have the best of both worlds.”
This is not meant to offend you, but to make you dig deeper into the essence of the church of Christ, the gifts of the Spirit and related subjects – even patterns top follow.
Alexander
Jay:
I’ve looked around but I have not been successful in finding anything related to The Hill’s growth. Do you have any numbers to report? I know that they were 13,000 before introducing an instrumental worship service. I understand from an unreliable source (website that begin with “P”) that they fell back to 11,000 + after doing so. Another source suggests that they are now at 16,000 .
Have they grown? What are their numbers?
Disclaimer: my reference to the instrumental worship is soley a point of reference. It is not intended to start a debate on the subject.)
Clyde,
Many of the numbers you’re looking for at http://www.wineskins.org/filter.asp?SID=2&fi_key=332&co_key=2298.
Rick Atchley says, “We had been about 3,000 for some years, but since then we’ve added 1,000 people. Last Sunday we had 4,400 people in our services.”
I don’t find the number in the article, but my understanding is they lost some 200 or 300 members when they added an instrumental service, but recovered those numbers almost immediately and then began to grow rapidly.
You’ll find similar numbers for Farmers Branch at the same link. Chris Seidman says, “Today, we minister to three times the number of people that we did when we added an instrumental service. We were at about 700 at the time I first started talking about it with the elders, and this spring we ran between 1,700 to 1,800 folks.”
Many detractors want to argue that every church that has added an instrumental service has suffered an attendance loss. Not so.