8 Things to Consider Before you Multisite

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Currently there are more than 8,000 multisite churches across America and more than 1,600 mega churches (churches of more than 2,000 people in weekly attendance). While both are growing the multisite church movement has outpaced the mega church movement in America. What was once seen as only a Band-Aid strategy for space issues at mega churches has become a vehicle for growth in local churches of all kinds and all sizes (the average size a church goes multisite is around 850-1200). “Multi” doesn’t mean “Mega” anymore.

Your church may be considering going multisite. If so, that’s exciting news and I’d love to hear about it! But before you do here are 8 things to consider before you take the multisite plunge.

1. Get Healthy

Multisite is all about reproducing what you are. Not what you wish you were, or what you want to be. If your church isn’t healthy, get healthy first before you multisite. Do you have a culture worth replicating?

2. Go Multi-service & Multi-venue

If you can’t pull off doing multiple services in one location than you’re not going to be able to pull of doing services in multiple locations. And if you have the opportunity to do multi-venue (more than one service at the same time on the same campus) on one location that additional venue can be a great training ground and place to experiment for future multisite teams.

3. Do Image Magnification (IMAG) in your current Auditorium

If you plan on delivering teaching through technology like video then make sure you can do that well in one location before you attempt to do it in more than one location.

4. Determine the right Location

55-80% of your church lives within a 15-minute drive time of your existing church. The rest pretty much live within about a 30-minute drive time. That 15-30 minute drive time distance is the sweet spot. Build on an island of strength by identifying a location where you already have a high number of people driving from.

5. Decide who will be the Campus Pastor

One of the most important decisions you are going to make before you go multisite is, “Who is going to be the Campus Pastor?” Not only do they need to be a cultural fit, after all culture is transferred through people not systems, but they need to be a leader. They need to be able to turn followers into volunteers. Here’s more on “What Makes a Great Campus Pastor?”

6. How Consistent will our Ministries be between Campuses?

Before you launch determine how consistent your ministries will be between campuses. Will the new campus do every ministry that the sending or original campus does? If you’re not going to reproduce it than is it something that should be eliminated?

7. Determine the Cost

What is the plan for the new campus to be financially viable? Most multisite campuses become financially self-sustaining within 3 years. But how much will it cost to get there? A lot of that is determined by your facility choice, the equipment you resource the new campus with day one, how many givers are going to move from the sending campus to the new campus, and the growth rate of the new campus.

8. Launch Strong

It’s better to be strong in one location than weak in two. The average size of a multisite campus is 360 people. When launching a new campus ask yourself, can we send 200-400 people from our original campus and still be strong enough to keep moving forward and not cripple our sending campus?

Thanks to Leadership Network and Multisite Solutions for the research!

Photo Credit: kevin dooley via Compfight cc

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5 Articles that will Help your Church Make Vision Real

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Thank you for making November one of the highest trafficked months of the year here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real! It’s great staying connected with you through social media and hearing about how helpful different articles have been. So, thank you for connecting with me through the content on this blog! You made these the top 5 Posts from this last month. If you missed out on any of them, here they are all in one place for your convenience!

#1 6 Things I Bet You Don’t Know about your Pastors’ Wife

One of the least thought about people in the church today is a Pastor’s wife. While leaders get all the attention and accolades their families and private lives are thought of very little by the public. In fact in a moment in church history where we are inundated with volumes of leadership ideas and training very little is written about pastor’s wives. I recently sat down with Lisa, my wife, and asked her about her experience being married to a full-time pastor for the past 18+ years. Here is some of what she had to say…

#2 A Leadership Conversation with an Executive Pastor at a Church of 20,000+

One of the most incredible and successful churches in America is one you’ve probably never heard of. Like many churches Christ’s Church of the Valley started in the living room of the founding pastor, in this case Don Wilson. Now over 30 years later CCV has a weekly attendance of more than 20,000 people located across 6 campuses. Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Ashley Wooldridge who serves as the Executive Pastor at CCV and talk leadership and multisite. Here are a few of the highlights from the conversation.

#3 Replenish: Leading from a Health Soul

Lance Witt served 20 years as a senior pastor and five years as the executive pastor at Saddleback Church with Rick Warren. A couple of years ago Lance released his book Replenish: Leading from a Healthy Soul. It’s a great book for church leaders. It’s so good, in fact, that we have our Leadership Coaching Networks at the Unstuck Group read it for the conversation we have about personal health. If you’re in ministry, I strongly encourage you to order this book today, you won’t regret it. Here are a couple of key ideas that stood out to me.

#4 What Makes a Great Campus Pastor a Great Campus Pastor?

Leading in a multisite setting I’m often asked by other church leaders, “What makes a great Campus Pastor a great Campus Pastor?” Often times when a church is thinking about moving to a multisite model the last thing they’re thinking about is who is going to be their next Campus Pastor. They’re stuck on logistics and most just assume they’ll stick an existing up and coming staff member on the next campus and hope for the best. That’s great IF you have the right person on the team already, but this can also be a fatal flaw. Trust me, I know and I’ve lived it. So here are 7 things I’m looking for when I’m looking for a Campus Pastor.

#5 The Best of Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit Pt-1

In the past I’ve regularly taken a large team to the annual Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit, this year was a little different. Thankfully the Global Leadership Summit is available digitally even after the live event! We previewed the talks and selected the best two from this years event to share with our team. The first talk was from Joseph Grenny, Co-Founder, Vital Smarts: Social Scientist for Business Performance and New York Times bestselling author.

Photo Credit: justin fain via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership

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What makes a Great Campus Pastor a Great Campus Pastor?

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Leading in a multisite setting I’m often asked by other church leaders, “What makes a great Campus Pastor a great Campus Pastor?” Often times when a church is thinking about moving to a multisite model the last thing they’re thinking about is who is going to be their next Campus Pastor. They’re stuck on logistics and most just assume they’ll stick an existing up and coming staff member on the next campus and hope for the best. That’s great IF you have the right person on the team already, but this can also be a fatal flaw. Trust me, I know and I’ve lived it. So here are 7 things I’m looking for when I’m looking for a Campus Pastor.

1. Relational Skills

They can influence people. They can influence people younger than themselves, they can influence their peers, and they can influence people older than themselves. Influence comes through trust and trust is given in the context of relationship. If they don’t have the relational skills to build trust with the congregation they’ll never be able to influence the congregation to move forward in a particular direction.

2. Communication

They’re a good communicator. I’m not saying they have to be a good preacher, unless that’s how you are planning on handling the weekend teaching in your multisite model. But they have to be an effective communicator on stage, in large groups, in smaller groups, and one-on-one. A litmus test you can use to discover this is can they connect the mission/vision to funding? Can they talk about money from the stage and have people respond?

3. Lead Through Others

Great Campus Pastors don’t just delegate tasks they empower people. They don’t do everything themselves rather they get things done through other people. They know how to manage large multifaceted projects through robust teams and accomplish the stated goals. They know the team outperforms the individual every time.

4. Development

They don’t just lead through relationship they lead through development. In other words people don’t follow them just because they like them and enjoy them relationally but because they are developed into better leaders and better people by following them. They don’t just attract talent they develop talent.

5. Driven

They have a bias towards action. They are movement oriented and wake up every day thinking about moving things towards the vision.

6. They Deliver

They’ve already demonstrated the ability to deliver. They’ve built something from concept to completion; they’re not a novice. They’ve already done, what you want them to do. They know how to execute decisions and implement strategies.

7. Culture

They don’t just know the mission, vision and values of the church but they live them out in their own lives. It’s not that they can simply repeat these things, but they deeply understand them, leading by making decisions through the lens of the core and unique identity of the church.

Interested in learning more about the role of a Campus Pastor? Check out this post: What is a Campus Pastor? Also you can take a look at a sample job description for a Campus Pastor here.

Photo Credit: kevin dooley via Compfight cc

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Multisite Campus Constants

Sunday, March 9, 2014

At Sun Valley we are one church family that meets in many different locations. As any church or organization grows there comes a point in time where oral tradition only goes so far. At some point, you’ve got to write things down. This helps provide clarity to everyone as to how to make decisions and what direction to go. After all lack of clarity is the greatest barrier to growth and speed in any organization. To that end we’ve adopted the following “Campus Constants” that every existing and future Sun Valley Campus will adopt. If you’re in a multisite church or thinking about going multisite I hope this serves as a resource to you and your church!

1. Mission:“We exist to help people meet, know, and follow Jesus.”

2. Vision: To reach as many people as we possibly can with the Gospel by growing a movement of healthy reproducing Campuses and Churches.

3. Strategy: This strategy serves as the foundation for spiritual growth.

Meet: We help people meet Jesus through Weekend Services.
Know: We help people know Jesus through Small Groups.
Follow: We help people follow Jesus through opportunities to Give and Serve.

4. Cultural Values: These values are what keep us on target as we move towards our vision.

Authenticity: Trusting Jesus and others with the real me.
Community: Learning from Jesus through strong friendships centered around God’s Word.
Generosity: Living like Jesus through giving and serving.

5. Leadership Distinctives: This is what we expect from those in leadership and what makes the Sun Valley Staff Culture so unique. If you’re interested in learning more about our 7 unique leadership distinctives you can follow this link.

6. Leadership Structure: At Sun Valley vision is global and leadership is local. Leadership authority and responsibility flows through the Campus Pastors and influence flows through the Ministry Champions. Every ministry of the Church at each Campus operates under one leadership structure that ultimately comes under the authority of the Board of Servant Leaders and the Lead Pastors.

7. Weekend Teaching: The Teaching Team sets the teaching schedule and serves as the primary communicators either in person or by video.

8. One Church: We choose to align the ministries on each of our Campuses, including Children’s, Students, Groups, Care, Missions, Guest Services, and Weekend Services.

9. Corporate Branding: Every Campus operates under the same branding and communication strategy including a centralized website for the Church representing all Campuses.

10. Financial Model: Every Campus shares these financial goals:

Within 12 months, offerings from the Campus cover its ongoing ministry expenses including staffing costs.
Within 24 months, the Campus also contributes its prorated portion of central service expenses.
Within 36 months, the Campus also contributes towards expansion endeavors.

11. Central Services: There is one centralized process or system for administrative services including banking, budgeting, staffing, payroll, benefits, capital expenditures, I.T., facility management, lease agreements, etc.

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The Top 10 Blog Posts of 2013

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

I recently just finished counting down the top 10 blog posts of 2013 on Helping Churches Make Vision Real! These are the posts that generated the most traffic and social media interaction. The most popular topics this year were volunteers, giving & financial stewardship, leadership, and managing the tension of between being an insider-focused or outsider-focused church. If you missed out on any of them, then you’re in luck! They’re all here in one location for your convenience! Thanks for making it a great year here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real!

#1: “10 Insider Focused Ministry Names”

#2: “Why Nice People Kill Churches”

#3: “6 Indicators You’re Leading an Insider Focused Church”

#4: “What the Church Can Learn from Southwest Airlines about Volunteers”

#5: “5 Reasons it’s Good When People Leave Your Church”

#6: “Engaging the Givers in Your Church”

#7: “8 Reasons Why People Don’t Volunteer at Your Church”

#8: “What is a Campus Pastor?”

#9: “Defining the Leadership Culture at Your Church”

#10: “Church Boards Gone Wild”

Posted in Leadership