MultiSite Churches Growing in England
Interview with Pastor Steve Tibbert
King’s Church-London

Growing dynamic and healthy churches is not easy anywhere, but especially in post-Christian Europe.
For the past two years I have had the privilege of coaching several dynamic and multiplying churches in England. One of these churches is led by Steve Tibbert who is a part of the Newfrontiers church planting movement begun by Terry Virgo thirty years ago. Newfrontiers has played a dramatic role in launching and revitalizing churches across Great Britain.

Steve is the pastor of King’s Church with nearly 1,500 people attending in three locations in southeast London. King’s Church was begun in 1880 by a student at Charles Spurgeon’s Bible College. Under Steve’s leadership over the past fifteen years the church has seen dramatic growth in size and diversity. Steve also oversees a number of the Newfrontiers churches in the United Kingdom. His recent book Good toGrow shares his church journey and is rich in lessons learned about growing churches in England.

I know you will be inspired and encouraged by this informative interview with a national church leader from Great Britain. Steve is married to Deb, and they have three sons.

Jim: What is the spiritual climate like these days in Great Britain?
Steve: While overall church attendance is still declining in the UK there are many sig
ns of health, particularly in London where church attendance is in fact increasing. For the first time in a generation we are seeing churches of some size and influence emerging, which is encouraging.

Jim: What does it take to grow healthy dynamic churches in Great Britain?
Steve: A move of God, good leadership and a contextualised message to the culture that you are trying to reach.

Jim: Describe how you do multisite at Kings Church? (Teaching, staffing, financial, strategy, etc)
Steve: As at this stage in our growth we have 3 sites. Our preaching is done live via a preaching team. We run one budget, one legal identity and our staff team members have a mixture of ‘one church’ responsibilities and site responsibilities.

Jim: What motivated you to go multisite?
Steve: Following a decade of growth on one site, two building projects and moving to three meetings (worship services) we ran out of space! The multi-site model allowed us to continue to grow in an urban context.

Jim: What was the biggest challenge?
Steve: Re-engineering all staff roles. And understanding the complexities of becoming larger – with more people than ever attending, whilst also being smaller – because each site is smaller.

Jim: What was the biggest surprise?
Steve: The biggest surprise was that the main site at Catford, which sent out over 300 people, has seen those spaces filled in so quickly!

Jim: One of your sites was a merger. What are some guidelines for a successful merger?
Steve: We were fortunate that the merger was with a church that was in the same movement and therefore many of the values were the same. This said, the philosophy and the culture of the merging church were very different to those we had developed. In my own experience of previous involvement with mergers, we have always closed the merging church and invited those that want to join King’s to do so one by one. This can be painful upfront, but it avoids having a church within a church during the years ahead. The primary leader in the church that merges also needs to own and lead the merging church family through the process.

Jim: How did your church become so diverse racially and ethnically?
Steve: Firstly, we live in a part of London that is very diverse, so our context is important. However context alone doesn’t necessarily mean you will get a diverse church. Secondly and probably most importantly, it comes out of biblical conviction
that God has reconciled us to be reconciled to one another. We believe that the church on earth ought to reflect our future reality together in heaven. We worked very hard at this issue and made huge mistakes while trying to retain a sense of humour as we continue to crash into each others’ biases.

Jim: So what’s next at King’s Church?
Steve: More meetings (worship services), more sites, more people committed to God.

I have a lot of requests from churches in Europe and South Africa who would like a partnership with a multisite church from America. Would your church like to help a church in Europe go multisite? Let me know below.

What are multisite churches talking about these days?

The multisite model continues to grow in its acceptance as a legitimate and effective vehicle for outreach, volunteer mobilization, leadership development and regional impact with over 3,000 expressions of multisite church across North America. Even though 50% of megachurches have multiple campuses and another 20% are thinking about it, the multisite movement has outgrown the megachurch movement. Each multisite church has a unique church-print but there are some common trends and buzz words emerging from them as we enter into 2012.

1. Mergers. This is the next big thing on the church scene, and though not exclusive to multisite churches, these mission-driven mergers are being propelled by multisite churches.  Look this year for the first book ever published on church mergers, Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work co-authored by me and Warren Bird. It will be released this April by Jossey-Bass.
2. Small Groups. Regardless what you call them—life groups, home groups, neighborhood groups, missional communities—small groups are big and an essential complement to multiple campuses.
3. Community Transformation. Church leaders are focusing less on church growth and more on serving their local communities through multiple campuses and collaboration with other like-minded local churches, ministries and organizations.
4. Espanol? Everywhere I go across America church leaders are asking how to reach the growing Hispanic population and other ethnic groups in their backyard. Multisite churches are leading the way with one out of four campuses speaking another language other than English. The new mantra of multisite churches will become: One Church—MultiSite, MultiGenerational, MultiEthnic.
5. Teaching Teams. Multisite churches are leading the way in creative ways with team teaching. Nearly half of all multisite churches utilize live, in-person teaching and the other half utilize fully or partially video-delivered sermons.
6. Hybrids. The most effective churches today are launching multiple campuses and planting churches in all sorts of combinations. There is a wonderful hybridization of multisites and church plants happening everywhere. At the end of the day whether a church launches a multisite campus or plants a church it produces the same result—a new congregation in the community. It’s all about being a reproducing church. May their tribe increase!
7. Revitalization. The multisite movement began as a band-aid for megachurches who found themselves out of room or limited by zoning restrictions. It quickly evolved into a growth strategy for healthy churches of all sizes and is now becoming a revitalization strategy for stable, but stuck churches. This is also fueling the growth in church mergers.
8. Discipleship. The trendy church words of the last few years—emergent, missional, incarnational all boil down to old-fashioned “discipleship” with a growing emphasis on creating systems, tools and metrics to facilitate spiritual formation and produce fully devoted followers of Jesus.
9. Student Ministry. Multisite churches are increasingly moving their student ministries off of Sunday mornings to Sunday evenings or another night of the week. This allows families to worship and serve together on Sunday mornings at the campus nearest them.
10. Succession.  The biggest elephant whispered about in church boardrooms across the United States is the topic of senior pastor succession. There is a huge tsunami of church turnovers coming as the aging baby-boomer senior pastors turn over the reins to the next generation. Multisite churches have a built-in pipeline with campus pastors at multiple locations who can be mentored, groomed and prepared for succession by the senior pastor.

What is your church talking about in 2012?

Be fruitful and multiply!

MultiSiteGuy

Thousands of Protestant churches are perplexed by plateaued or declining attendance, while other congregations nearby thrive. Is there a way for them to combine forces, drawing on both their strengths, in ways that also increase their missional impact? Church merger consultant Jim Tomberlin, with co-writer Warren Bird, makes the case that mergers today work best not with two struggling churches but with a vital, momentum-filled lead church partnering with a joining church

Find out more HERE.

Going MultiSite is not for every church. It will not turn around a sick or dying church, but it can be an instrument to extend a healthy one.

MultiSite is not a growth engine, but it can be a vehicle for a growing church.

MultiSite is not a fad to jump on, but it has become a proven strategy to reproduce healthy, fruitful, growing churches.

Find out more HERE.

When does a church move from being a church with multiple campuses and truly become a church of multiple campuses? The change in the prepositions “with and of” is dramatic and very few multisite churches have made that change. The latest survey of multisite churches in 2010 by Leadership Network revealed that 85% of multisite churches have three or fewer geographic campuses. Ten years ago church consultant and guru Lyle Schaller told me that many churches will add a second campus and even a third campus, but very few will launch a fourth campus,  but those who do will launch more than four campuses. A decade later his prediction has come true.

Why are so few unable to break through the three campus barrier? The simple answer is that they have not made the paradigm shift from a single-site to a multi-site mindset. They embrace the idea of multi-siting, but they are still functioning as a single-site church with multiple campuses instead of functioning as a truly multi-site church. They are holding onto the old single-site ways and not thoroughly leveraging and benefiting from the multisite model. They look like a multisite church, but they still think and act like a single-site church with multiple campuses. It’s like using a DOS operating system on a Mac computer. It can be done, but it is a lot harder (if you even know what a DOS operating system is you are really ancient). That’s why many churches will give up adding more than one or two campuses and not make the transition to become a truly multisite church.

So what are the characteristics of a church that is on its way to becoming a true multi-site church? Here are some of the traits that I have observed among churches that seem to have made the shift from single-site to a multi-site paradigm:

1. Four or more geographical campuses.
2. A dedicated multisite champion on the senior team.
3. At least 50% of total church attendance beyond the original campus.
4. A teaching team that fully or partially utilizes video delivery.
5. Dedicated central staff that supports all the campuses.
6. A dedicated campus pastor at the original campus who is not the senior pastor.
7. Regional campus-focused decision making rather that central campus-focused decision making.
8. Grandchildren campuses. Multi-site campuses launching campuses.
9. Campuses beyond 30 minutes from the original campus. Most of these will come through church mergers.
10. Empowered local campus pastors who are unquestionably committed to the mission, vision, values and strategy of the founding church.

Is your church truly multisite?