Tag Archive - model

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8 Characteristics of a Great Campus Pastor

Sunday, September 23, 2018

I wrote my first article about multisite churches eight years ago, it was entitled, “Why 20 Churches Went, Didn’t Go, and Still Might Go Multisite.” The article was based on a conversation with a group of Executive Pastors from large churches across America that I had been asked to facilitate. Since that time, I’ve written over 40 articles about multisite churches and I’ve learned a few things along the way from leading in a multisite church and making mistakes, finding success, as well as learning from other great multisite churches.

There’s a lot that goes into building a successful approach to multisite. However, in my experience there’s one thing that stands out above all the conversations and arguments that take place over the next location, financial and staffing strategies, live verses video teaching, branding, culture, decision rights, and what ministries you should replicate at each new location. The Campus Pastor. That’s because people make decisions and replicate culture. That’s something structures, policies or even systems can never do. Policies, structures and systems may institutionalize or support your culture, but people build and replicate it. Get the right people and the right people will lead you to the right solutions.

So with that in mind, here are eight characteristics that you need to be looking for in your next Campus Pastor.

#1 Culture: They fit your organizational “DNA.” They embody and champion the mission, vision and values of your team.

#2 Communication: Depending on your teaching model, they don’t necessarily need to be able to teach from the stage, but they do need to be a good communicator. They need to be able to speak with your church’s “voice” and have the capacity to inspire people and motivate movement.

#3 Relationships: They’ve got to have great relational skills. This may sound shallow, but people need to like them. If they don’t like them then they won’t like your church. This means they have to have a pretty high E.Q. and be good with people.

#4 Leadership: To be a Campus Pastor they not only have to be a gifted leader, but they need to have a proven leadership track record of building and leading teams. They need to be able to show how they’ve led through others by not only delegating tasks but empowering decision making.

#5 Driven: Being a Campus Pastor isn’t always rainbows and unicorns. If you’ve ever wanted to be a Campus Pastor, be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. Campus Pastors need to be mentally tough and have a certain amount of grit to lead through the tensions of moving people from where they are to where they need to be. They need to be able to execute and deliver, not just pontificate about ideas.

#6 Start Date: They’ve got to be able to join your team at least 6 to 12 months prior to the launch of the new location. It’s going to take that long for them to be a part of building the core team, staff team and deal with launch details. I’d encourage you to give them an even longer onramp if they’re being hired in from the outside and need to learn and embrace your culture.

#7 Community: They’ve got to be willing to live in and/or engage the community where the new campus is going to be.

#8 Second-Chair: Great Campus Pastors are wired to serve as a second-chair leader. They don’t need to be the vision caster but they need to believe in and be a vision carrier.

Posted in Leadership, Staffing

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6 Lessons I’ve Learned from 6 Years of Multisite Church Leadership

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Nearly 6 years ago Sun Valley Community Church (the church I have the honor of serving at) adopted a multisite strategy to deliver growth to new areas and reach new people with the Gospel. That one decision changed everything.

Since that time, we’ve grown from one campus to five (with more to come) and we’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way. Some of those lessons, as you would expect, we’ve learned the hard way. Here’s a few that stand out.

1. Starting is the Easy Part

Starting new multisite campuses is actually the easy part. Starting something new is usually exciting, attracts new people, and typically has some kind of momentum associated with it. Those are all things that make church leaders salivate. However, managing all of the complexities of inter-campus relationships, communication, decision making, reporting, influence, and building an effective central service team that serves the campuses is the more difficult part. It’s one thing to start a new multisite campus, it’s another thing all together to adopt a multisite mindset.

2. Communication is Complicated

The lines of communication can get really complicated in a multisite setting. Who needs to know what when and in what sequence are things communicated to which audience? Creating feedback loops from the campuses back to central services is key to help the central service team understand what’s working and what’s not and what the campus teams need from them to be successful. It’s also just as important to cascade communication through campus pastors to the campus teams. Add to that now you’ve got to figure out how all of the campus staff relate not only to central services but also to other campuses. As you can imagine it can get a little complicated.

3. Decision Rights can be Confusing

Knowing who makes what decision can become really confusing. When a campus begins making decisions that the central team believes they should be making or the central team makes decisions that affect every campus without fully understanding the impact at the individual campus level or getting the right campus level staff on board first, things can get tense. Clearly understanding who makes what decision and how decisions get made help dissolve the complexity of multisite.

4. Culture is King

One of the biggest questions that a church needs to answer before it goes multisite is, “Do we have a culture worth replicating?” In expanding and replicating your culture through a multisite strategy it’s not uncommon for churches to confuse policies and people. Here’s what I mean, your people (staff, leaders, volunteers, and attenders) transfer your culture to new locations. Policies, systems and structures may support your culture, they may even institutionalize it to a certain degree, but they don’t replicate it. Your people carry your culture.

5. Approach Matters

Yes, there are a lot of different ways to do multisite. There are a number of different approaches and models. But not all approaches are created equal. Some are more successful than others. For our purposes, I equate success with people saying yes to follow Jesus and life change…and I always figure more people meeting Jesus is better than less. There are some very concrete reasons why only 15% of churches that go multisite ever get past 3 campuses. There are also very concrete reasons why churches like LifeChurch.tv find so much success. Some approaches are more successful than others.

6. People Development is Difficult

The growth of your church has the potential to outpace the rate at which you can develop people. In other words, people don’t grow or develop as fast as your church, and multisite will expose that. One of the greatest challenges that multisite brings with it people development. So, as much as you may want to hire from the inside there are going to be times where you’re going to have to hire experienced talent from the outside to keep up with growth and new challenges that growth brings.

Posted in Leadership

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7 Questions to Help your Church Determine the Location of your Next Multisite Campus

Sunday, September 3, 2017

The multisite movement isn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, the last statistics I saw indicated that only 12 of the 100 of the largest churches in America are not multisite churches. What was once a band aid solution that growing churches used to create space for outgrowing their facilities has now turned into a mainstream method to deliver growth to new locations.

If you church is thinking about launching a new multisite location in the next 18 months I’d encourage you to seriously think and talk through the following 7 questions with your Sr. Leadership Team to help you determine the next right location.

#1 Do we already have people attending our church that live in that new location?

You plant new churches where you don’t have people attending your church but you start new campuses where you already have people attending your church. Launching strong means “going where you are.” I know it may sound counterintuitive but it works. Start by mapping out where your current attenders live and identify pockets of greater density as potential areas to begin new campuses.

#2 Are there people in that new location already engaged in our mission?

Beyond attendance and “brand recognition,” do you have people in that area who are “all in” with you? People who will transfer your culture to the next location and who can lead not just attend? A great place to start is to determine who lives in that area that is already in a small group, they’re financially contributing to the church, they’re on a volunteer team, or they’re leading other volunteers.

#3 Is the new location 20-30 minutes from our existing location?

This is still the sweet spot nationally on drive time between campuses. Obviously, there are variations between urban, suburban and rural communities. There are also emotional barriers at play with drive times. Mountains, lakes, rivers, rail road tracks, highways and the like can all be mental barriers in communities to people attending a new campus or driving to a location…and those just may be a reason to put a new campus on the other side of that barrier.

#4 Does the location reflect who we are trying to reach?

All churches idealistically want to reach all people, I understand that sentiment. But your church is naturally built by intention or neglect to reach a certain kind of person. Your style and approach to ministry is designed to work with certain people and not with others. Don’t fight it. It’s a biblical approach. It’s called contextualization and it’s what the Apostle Paul did in the early stages of the Church.

#5 Are there available facilities with the right parking and seating capacities that are also in the right location?

It still holds true. Location, location, location…just ask any realtor. Does the location you’re considering meet your seating, kids space, and parking needs? Are you going to buy land and build ground up? Is it a popular area that has a lot of drive by traffic? Is it an area that people drive to or drive from?

#6 Are there already churches with a similar mission and style in the new area we’re looking at?

Other churches aren’t the enemy. The enemy (Satan) is the enemy. We are not in competition with other churches. If there is another church like you in that area and the population density wouldn’t work for more churches like that, then move on to another location.

#7 Is the potential location experiencing growth or development?

Are new people moving to the area? Is the area growing and experiencing new development? New people get involved in new churches and take new steps. New is a huge potential for success. 

Need help with your multisite model or expansion? The Unstuck Group has a proven process to help you go multisite for the first time or develop your multisite model for future expansion! Follow this link to start a conversation!

Posted in Leadership

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8 Keys to Defining your Multisite Strategy

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Currently there are more than 8,000 churches across America that consider themselves to be multisite churches. These multisite churches vary in denominational affiliation, theological persuasion, size of attendance, physical location and facilities, teaching (video or live), ministries, and style of worship. Churches are proving that there are a lot of ways to do multisite. Many churches are just jumping into the deep end of the pool and figuring this multisite thing out as they go. While you can do that, I’d suggest that a stronger way to launch and continue launching campuses is to nail down your strategy as much as you can ahead of time. While there a lot of models and variations of models to choose from there are 8 keys to developing an effective multisite strategy that I’d encourage you to wrestle with before you launch your first multisite campus.

1. Teaching

Are you going to deliver teaching via video or live in person at every campus? Are you only going to hire Campus Pastors who are also good communicators? Will teaching be done by one primary communicator or by a teaching team? Will the same message be preached everywhere or will you allow different teaching on each campus? Early on in the multisite movement video was the way many multisite churches were delivering weekend preaching. That number has shifted and now it’s at about a 50-50 split of multisite churches that use live teaching and churches that use video.

2. Campus Pastor

One of the most important questions you are going to answer 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?”

3. Staffing

What is your staffing model going to look like at the new campus? What will the Full Time Staff to Church Attender ratio be? What roles are most important to fill at the new campus? What roles could be part-time or contract employees? Are you going to staff with a few people to get it going and add staff as it goes or are you going to staff more robustly for what you plan on attendance begin at the 1-year mark?

4. Facilities

If you’ve ever purchased a home before you know that location matters. 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. Are you going to purchase land and build a ground up facility? Are you going renovate existing space? Are you going to have consistent environmental design standards so each of your facilities look and feel similar?

5. Launch Strategy

How are you going to identify a location, a staff team, a core team of volunteer leaders, build a communication for your church, and marketing strategy for the new community you will be in? 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?

6. Decision Making

What is going to be identical between all of your campuses and where will each campus have the opportunity to exercise a bit more independence? And better yet, who is going to make that call? What decisions will be made by the Central Service Team and what decisions will be made by the individual Campus Teams?

7. Financial Model

What is the plan for the new campus to be financially viable? How much are you going to plan on investing in each site to get it started and why? 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, your staffing strategy, the economy of the new community you’re going into, and how many givers are going to move from the sending campus to the new campus, and of course the growth rate of the new campus.

8. Ministry Model

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?

Posted in Leadership

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If it’s Not on a Screen it’s Not Multisite

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Being a part of leading a large multisite church, I’m frequently asked by church leaders about my thoughts on various multisite models and how we do it at the church I’m a part of. In this post I’m going to answer that question (to an extent) for everyone reading this article and here’s a little warning, I’m going to say it in a bit of a straight forward matter of fact manner. Here’s the way I look at it, and I reserve the right to be wrong…

“If it’s not on a screen, it’s not a multisite.”

It may be multi-congregational or even a family of churches, but it’s not a multisite church. The simple reason why is teaching. Nothing else in your church has the power the build the unique culture of your church in so much as teaching does. This is why people say the organization always takes on the characteristics and personality (culture) of the leader. When you have different people preaching at different locations, no matter how similar they are, no matter how good of friends they are, no matter how hard they work to be on the same page with the presentation, you’re going to get a different culture. You’re going to get a different church. And like it or not, people who attend churches look to the primary communicator of that location as the leader. Here’s a really quick overview (obviously there are slight variations).

Multi-Site

Big Idea: “One Church Multiple Locations”
Preaching: Preaching is delivered via video. No matter if it’s one primary communicator or a teaching team approach, whoever is preaching is preaching the same message at every location via video.
Governance: There is one Board of Elders that provides oversight to the entire church; all campuses no matter the location. The Board is not put in place for the representation of the campuses (it’s not congress).
Ministry Practices: These churches have a tendency to be more identical in their ministry practices and staffing structures (based on scale). Ministry practices are typically overseen by a Central Ministry Team that coaches and influences each campus towards best practices and objectives

Multi-Congregational

Big Idea: “One Church Multiple Congregations”
Preaching: Preaching is delivered live at each location. Often times the main communicators on each campus collaborate to ensure that they are generally covering the same content.
Governance: There is still some kind of directional team making high-level decisions that have some affect on each congregation, but each congregation has their own Board of Elders making local decisions.
Ministry Practices: Often these churches will share branding and some communication (print & visual media) resources and a centralized Business Department may support all congregations. However each congregation has much more freedom and independence as to what ministries they build and start.

Family of Churches

Big Idea: “Multiple Churches with One Cause”
Preaching: Preaching is live at each location, each church may even have it’s own teaching team. They may share their best teaching series with each other, and speak at each other’s churches from time to time, but that’s about it.
Governance: Early on often these churches will have a Board of outside Pastors from the Family of Churches govern the new church until it is mature enough to have it’s own Board. Similarly often another stronger church in the Family of Churches may manage the business function of the newer church until it has the capacity to do so on their own.
Ministry Practices: Families of churches typically organize around a theological ideal or a common cause such as church planting. While these churches certainly learn from one another and even pick up best practices from one another they are autonomous in their approach.

Posted in Leadership
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