Multi-site Church Road Trip

Multi-site Innovation Lab 2 spots left!

2009-11-24T10:50:37-06:00

Leadership Network offers a new experience – the Innovation Lab

Is your church looking for the chance to explore new ideas and discover a new path? Do you sometimes feel caught between ideas and action? You’re not alone. That’s why Leadership Network has developed The Innovation Lab, a unique environment designed to help you overcome the common obstacles to innovative thinking and problem solving in developing a ministry area.

JumpStart Innovation Labs are designed to give you a quick start in a ministry area, based on the proven results of others. We are launching the two new multi-site jumpstart labs described below in 2010. We have one spot available for each lab. If you are interested or know of someone that might be, give me a shout today at greg.ligon@leadnet.org.

Multi-Site Multipliers – Churches have already launched one or more campuses/venues and have a vision to accelerate the launch on multiple campuses.

First meeting is January 19-20, 2010 in Dallas and two online meetings from your office on July 13, 2010 and January 18, 2011.

Multi-Site Runway – Churches with a plan in place for a new campus and a launch date sometime between now and early 2010.

First meeting is March 23-24, 2010 in Dallas and two online meetings from your office on October 21, 2010 and April 21, 2011.

For more information on the Innovation Lab process and an application, go to http://innovationlab.leadnet.org.

At the same website, you can find information about six other innovation lab topics we will be tackling in 2010.

Greg Ligon

Vice President and Publisher

Leadership Network

twitter – gregligon and #leadnet

Accounting Made Simple?

2009-11-24T09:10:23-06:00

At a recent Leadership Network multi-site leadership community, Tim Goetz from The Well Community Church announced the completion of a new accounting software developed by he and a team of folks from the Sacramento area. Here is what caught my eye - “We wrote it around the fact that most nonprofits and most churches have their accounting done by a volunteer or someone without an accounting degree. We really simplified accounting (one of the beta testers 7 year old was able to use it), and time saving features so that volunteers can spend less time on the books and feel confident that they are doing the books right.” Take a minute to check it out at www.aplossoftware.com

Multi-site Church Road Trip NewSong Church and Dave Gibbons

2009-11-23T21:19:51-06:00

Just last month, during our road trip stop at Catalyst in Atlanta I had a chance to connect with Dave Gibbons and get an update on the multi-site ministry at NewSong. Dave described how the NewSong model has morphed from every campus being under the same umbrella to a decentralized model throughout Southern CA and around the world. Check out our conversation here.

Also, stay tuned for the Multi-site Church Road Trip bloggers tour coming December 15. Warren Bird, Geoff Surratt and I will be answering the multi-site questions of close to 30 leading bloggers. Hope you will join in on the fun.

P.S. If you haven’t read Dave’s book Monkey and the Fish, stop what you are doing and order it now! Great read!

Greg Ligon

Vice President and Publisher

Leadership Network

twitter – gregligon and #leadnet

To see all posts for the tour, select tour stop from the category sidebar

The Birds and Bees of Reproduction

2009-09-18T07:00:00-05:00

I have stolen more multi-site concepts from Dave Ferguson and Community Christian Church than all other multi-site churches combined. Dave is one of the best thinkers (and practioners) in the world when it comes to church reproduction (the corporate kind, not the diaper kind), so I wanted to get his take on the world of multi-site as we continued our Roadtrip across America.

Q: In the book we describe the leadership structure at Community Christian. How important is structure to the success of a church using a multi-site strategy?

A: Our experience at Community and through our NewThing churches is that there are structural shifts when going to two sites; when going to a fourth site and when going to a tenth site. Because of this we are finding that a lot of churches are going to two sites; not very many churches with three sites and there are a whole lot that are going to four sites and more. Why? I think it has to do with structure. Some churches that go to two sites do not think about structure and find it overwhelming and complicated and stop reproducing sites. While there are other churches that think through the structural changes that need to be made and continue to reproduce to three sites, four sites and beyond.

Q: Community Christian does a great job of both planting churches and launching campuses. How do you distinguish between a church planter and a campus pastor?

A: We really believe the same qualities need to be in place for a campus pastor or church planter. We want them to be entrepreneurial, have a leadership gift and comfortable relating to all people (churched and un-churched) in their context. All our NewThing churches are looking to train one leadership resident per site to apprentice and become a campus pastor or church planter.

Q: You and Jon seem to do an amazing job of leading together. What advice would you give to church leaders who are considering employing family members in their ministry?

A: They key to family working together is much like any staff working together: good character, great chemistry and genuine competency. However, (and I’m sure Geoff Surratt will agree with me) it takes a very special and humble leader to allow their brother to be the lead pastor. Jon (like Geoff at Seacoast) could easily be the lead pastor at this Community or any other church; but instead he uses his extraordinary leadership gifts without getting all the kudos that come with being the lead pastor. I have more respect for Jon, than any other church leader I know.

Q: You have been a leader from the very beginning of the multi-site revolution in America. What do you see next on the horizon for multi-site in American churches?

A: I love this question! In fact, Jon and I just finished our next book,Exponential: How You and Your Friends can Start a Missional Church Movementand we talk about this. So here is what I see on the horizon:

More new sites will be launched by sites other than the original site. In other words we will see new sites reproducing new sites.
Sites will be launched not based on the competency of the mother church, but on the strengths and needs of the community where the new site is started.
There will be less of the “We use video” vs. “We develop teachers” battle and more multi-site churches will use both video and in-person teaching.
A lot more campus pastors will be female and there will be evidence that they are more effective than men in this role which will bring some controversy.
Multi-site churches will think in terms of launching a region with multiple sites and not one new site at a time.
Online churches ill not just have one site, but they will also have multiple sites!
The churches that are effective in reproducing new sites will be the churches that are most effective in reproducing missional communities.

How’s that?

Q: In your book The Big Idea you describe how every ministry at Community is on the same page. How does the Big Idea work in a multi-site environment?

A: It was going to multiple sites that caused us to be intentional about implementing the Big Idea. It was our conclusion that having every campus on the same Big Idea would bring alignment to our vision and mission. Practically speaking here is how it works: we plan our Big Idea series a year in advance. Thirteen weeks in advance of the celebration service the teaching team develops and writes a Big Idea “graph” which is a one page summary that gives clear direction and scriptural content. Ten weeks in advance the teaching team plans the whole message in that series and gives writing assignments. The following week, nine weeks in advance our creative arts team plans the creative elements such as video, sketches, music, interactive moments, etc… to better accomplish the Big Idea. This same process is done for all our large group and small groups fro adults, students and kids. It is awesome!

Geoff Surratt

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To see all posts for the tour, select tour stop from the category sidebar.

Twitter - @gregligon @geoffsurratt @warren bird #mscr #leadnet

The Godfather of Video Venues

2009-09-17T08:48:29-05:00

I first met Larry Osborne, pastor of North Coast Church in Vista California, at a Leadership Network multi-site church event in 2002. Seacoast was just beginning to dive into the world of video teaching and I immediately realized that Larry was the smartest guy on the planet when it came to leveraging technology to expand the Kingdom. And he wears really cool shirts. Over the years Larry has become a friend and a mentor both personally and through his books Sticky Church, Ten Dumb Things Christians Believe and A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God. I recently had a chance to get Larry's wisdom on the role of video, technology and more in the future of the multi-site revolution.

You pioneered the concept of the video venue at North Coast. What do you feel are two or three reproducible keys to your success in utilizing video that other churches could reproduce?

I believe a huge part of our success was our decision early on to only use video for teaching. Many things don't translate well on a screen (for instance music, drama, and the like). But teaching plays well in almost every geographic and demographic setting.

In fact, the biggest shock when we launched our first Video Venue was that it was so readily accepted by virtually every demographic. We thought our older folks would reject it outright. We thought younger generations might find it inauthentic. We assumed churches in the more traditional parts of the country would be highly resistant.

But we were wrong. It played well just about everywhere.

Looking back we should have realized that teaching is uniquely suited for a big screen. It allows people to clearly see facial expressions and non-verbals – which is why most people in a large facility with a video screen end up watching the screen rather than the little person up on the stage.

The other thing that I believe is easily reproducible is our use of differing music styles and ambiances to broaden our demographic outreach. Both Chris Brown (our other teaching pastor) and I are able to reach a far broader demographic (traditionalists, country music fans, and folks with lots of body art) than we could if we had a one-size-fits-all sanctuary.
How important is it for a church using video teaching to have the very best technology available?

I think the need for the quality technology is vastly overrated. You don't need the latest and greatest in order to succeed. You can't be so cheap that your venues are cheesy. The video can't look like a 1980's VCR.

At North Coast we've always made due with less than the best technology simply because we often can't afford the best. We're not a rich suburban church. We're a blue collar church that meets in an old warehouse. If we felt we couldn't succeed without the best and latest technology, we'd still be saving up to launch our first venue.

We've learned that good enough is good enough when it comes to technology. I always tell the churches we consult to buy the best they can afford. There's no need to hawk the future for cool technology you can't afford and there's no reason to hold off launching a new ministry just because everyone else has better equipment.
North Coast has multiple venues with live worship bands at multiple locations and multiple service times. How do you find enough musicians to have that many worship teams?

The secret to our plethora of musicians goes back to a decision we made long before we started our Video Venues. Because we believe the job of a pastor is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:11-12) our worship pastors have always been judged, rewarded, and paid for rising up other worship leaders rather than creating an all-star band.

I find you always get what you measure and reward. So guess what? Since we measure and reward rising up worship leaders, we get worship leaders. And better yet, once we turned the corner, we discovered that musicians draw musicians. So right now I think we have something like 24 adult worship bands to pull from.
In your book Sticky Church you describe the role of sermon based small groups in the life of North Coast. How integral do you think sermon based small groups have been to the growth of North Coast?

Our attendance was about 120 when we started our sermon-based small groups. They haven't particularly drawn people in, but they have helped to slam our back door shut – and when the back door stays shut, a church tends to grow.

We're pretty much a word-of-mouth church (we don't do any marketing or advertising) so closing the back door has been an essential ingredient of our growth. But the biggest advantage has been the way these sermon-based groups have enabled us to get everyone on the same page – and keep them there. That's made us a much healthier church not just a bigger church.

What did I not ask that I should have?

You didn't ask why my books are so much better than yours – at least that's what my mom thinks. Though my wife, Nancy, isn't so sure.

Other than the comments about Larry's books being better than mine (they are, but he didn't have to bring it up) Larry once again stretched my thinking on what is effective and what is good enough in ministry. You can read more of Larry's insight at his blog or in Multi-site Church Roadtrip.

Geoff Surratt

To get the latest updates be sure to sign up for the RSS feed at www.multisitechurchroadtrip.com

To see all posts for the tour, select tour stop from the category sidebar.

Twitter - @gregligon @geoffsurratt @warren bird #mscr #leadnet