For those of you who know me well, I am a compulsive strategist (ENTJ for you Myers-Briggs types). You probably also know that I’m more passionate about the Church of Jesus Christ than just about anything. Therefore, I rather enjoy the intersection of those two passions of mine. This is going to be one of those posts. I wanted to open up a discussion on a church reproduction model and hear what you guys think.
For those of you who are not familiar with this kind of stuff, here’s a bit of a crash course. Churches in America usually reproduce one of two ways:
1. By adding additional ”sites” to their current church. In this case, if New Life Church adds a site (or “campus”) on say, North Campus at U of M, then we would run another church service there, have local gatherings there, etc., but the current elders and staff would still govern and oversee it. It would likely require another band, and perhaps another teacher on Sunday mornings, and a staff member to oversee this subset of the church. It would be, in a sense, a large ministry of the church.
2. By planting new churches. In this case, New Life wants to put a brand new church on North Campus. We would set aside some staff and leaders, send them there to lead this new church, and then take our hands completely out of its governance. They are completely autonomous and self-sufficient as a church body, though we hopefully still enjoy close relationships with them.
There is lots of discussion regarding the best ways to do either of these, but I came across this video from Todd Wilson explaining one model on how to do this quite effectively. I want your thoughts.
If that was really hard to understand, the basic model is to create tons of two-site churches who create more two-site churches. The last diagram illustrates it best, where the bold line indicates two sites of a single church, and dashed line represents relationships between autonomous two-site churches. Leave your comments on what you like, don’t like, strengths, weaknesses, etc.
Related posts:
I don’t know really anything about current multi-site model management or church plant strategies. But I do understand the concept of additive vs multiplicative growth strategies.
So just take this with a grain of “this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about” salt.
That being said, I don’t know what to think about this church growth model.
Something about it seems a bit off.
Maybe it just rings too close to MLM/pyramid scheme to me to give it the benefit of the doubt of it being effective.
Part of the reason (to me) that church plant/multi-site strategies work is because each individual church is only 1 step removed from the main hive-mind. The one that worked well enough to spawn this out.
Each successive level of separation allows for further mutations and problems arising, which to me, means each successive plant is more prone to failure.
Granted, this isn’t about church copying, and we’d have to define ‘failure,’ etc etc. But it just seems in a multiplicative model, unless we’re doing pure copying, each successive plant is going to be ‘slightly less’ than the original.
I think that results in churches that really have no business in splitting…on account of the lack of functionality they may experience.
But again, I have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m not the “booo that’s a dumb idea because of these reasons” guy.
This could turn out to work quite well and become a perfectly acceptable model of church growth. Perhaps even it exists in some fashions or at some stage of church plant growth models already.
I just wanted to throw an opinion up here since it looked so lonely.
I think that’s a better model than most multi-site churches, but I still have fundamental problems with any kind of multi-site.
1) I don’t think we see it anywhere in the Bible
2) I think churches should be autonomous and by having a central church administer a site that removes some of the rightful authority for the site
3) Every “site” is going to be different, but multi-site tends to homogenize things
And it’s very ironic that I’m in a graduate program at one of the largest and most agressively multi-site churches in America, Mars Hill Church in Seattle.
First off, this video just made me tremendously happy. I LOVE growth strategies and graphs.
I’ve heard about multi-site in theory but have never experienced it, so I have no real basis to compare. I also don’t know much about church planting.
I do, however, love doing small group leader training and multiplication, so my head can get around this concept at that level quite easily.
This idea is pretty similar to what I’ve been trying to implement as a small group multiplication strategy.
1) 6-12 months before a “birth”, we raise up a new leader in training, a small group “apprentice.”
Right off the bat, I suppose this is different than “hiring in a new leader.” We are bringing someone up from the inside, not in from the outside. While I think the former reduces the risk of “mutation” that Danny mentioned, I also appreciate the idea in the latter that we could get fresh minds, new strategies, wisdom that our group was maybe lacking. Plus, there isn’t always “that person” available. Oh, the luxery of being rich and able to “hire in”!
2) Multiply the sites/small groups with goal of the new group being self-sufficient in 2-3 years and ready to multiply.
I couldn’t tell if Todd was suggesting “financially self sufficient” AS the qualifier for “ready to multiply,” because I would totally disagree with that. I’m going to assume he’s listing those as two seperate but necessary qualifications and move on…
I would equate this with the idea of the “mother small group’s” leader “coaching/discipling” the new small group leader for a period of time, prepping him/her to multiply the group.
These two steps I’m very much supportive of. Ok, so this is where the 2×2 model differs from my approach thus far:
2×2 model: The small groups are now fully seperated, i.e. each small group leader is on his/her own. A new apprentice is raised up in each group with intent to multiply.
My small group leader approach: The small group leaders each raise up a new apprentice. The “mother group’s” leader still coaches/disciples the first multiplied leader and now adds the new apprentice as someone to coach/disciple.
The first multiplied leader begins training the new apprentice in order to multiply. If this leader isn’t sure how to go about this, they still have the “mother leader” to turn to.
So…
I guess I really like this model, but because of my shepherding (obsession? gift?), my heart is to make sure that each site is well coached and cared for if they are going to be multiplying.
I guess I feel that small groups can be “autonomous” without being “on their own.” I love coaching small group leaders that I’ve multiplied, because 1) we’re usually close friends so it’s great support on both ends, and 2) I love being there to encourage and give input along the way, but also to let them do their own thing, have their own vision, feel empowered, run their group and train their apprentice with their own style and flavor. Each of us brings so much to the body – I don’t want to be making carbon copies of myself.
Last thought:
If you’re doing a multiplication every 2-3 years, the mother leader could have (say he/she is in this 60 years) 30-20 people they’re coaching/discipling, which would be a lot, so potentially their strategy would have to shift slightly… either coach/disciple the older, more experienced leaders less because they might not need as much help, OR slow down how fast you’re multiplying as you get older.