World Magazine on Multi-site

World Magazine reports on the dialogue that Geoff Surratt and I started here at the blog. Both Geoff and I had a follow-up interview with the reporter, Mark Bergin.

Here are some excerpts, mainly focusing on my comments and Geoff's comments. Since the article is for subscribers, I am guessing they would not want me to duplicate the whole thing... but since they draw from our conversation here, it seems OK to cite those parts of the article.

The subtitle is a bit sensational ("mania," etc.) but the article is relatively "pro" when it examines multi-site.

Here are some excerpts:

Out of one, many

Multi-site churches are growing, spreading across cultures, and redefining the concept of gathered worship, for better and for worse. From high-tech to low-frills, unanswered questions and unproven strategies of NextGen churches have yet to slow the mania

...A LifeWay Research survey last year found that 16 percent of Protestant churches in the United States are considering adding at least one campus within the next two years. Other LifeWay findings are due out next spring with the publishing of Scott McConnell's Multi-Site Churches: Guidance for the Movement's Next Generation.

Ed Stetzer, an experienced church planter and president of LifeWay Research, hopes its data will help protect against what he sees as common pitfalls of the movement: "Here's my main concern: Now that multi-site has become the next big thing, will people take the time to do it well or will they simply set up theaters with videos? Often what multi-site becomes is one prominent pastor projecting his image into another town without a missiological or evangelistic strategy accompanying it."

As interim pastor of the multi-site First Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tenn., Stetzer does not oppose using multiple venues. But in "Questions for McChurch," a recent magazine column for Outreach, he outlines several potential negatives of the model: diminished pastoral care, the discouraging of church community, and fewer pulpits to develop young leaders.

Geoff Surratt, co-author of The Multi-Site Church Revolution (Zondervan, 2006), takes issue with Stetzer's criticisms. He says the multi-site model fosters greater pastoral care, deeper community, and more opportunities for young leaders to develop as preachers and teachers. He says that at Seacoast Church, where he serves as pastor of ministries, the congregation's 13 sites in the Carolinas and Georgia have helped section a large church of 10,000 people into smaller, more manageable blocs. Campus pastors direct the individual mission- and community-building at the various satellites...

Critics of multi-site expansion are apt to interpret the morphing of a campus pastor into a church planter as evidence that starting new churches is a more noble and significant enterprise than starting new campuses. Trouble is, that charge fails to recognize that many of the most committed church-planting churches in the country are also knee deep in multi-site ministry. Seacoast co-founded the Association of Related Churches, which has planted 60 new congregations since its inception in 2001.

According to a recent Outreach magazine report, the top two church-planting churches in the country are Redeemer Presbyterian (part of the Presbyterian Church in America denomination), which holds services at four sites in Manhattan and has planted more than 100 churches, and Mars Hill Church, which operates 16 services at seven locations in and around Seattle.

Stetzer celebrates such examples of internal and external replication: "I'm not a theologically driven critic of multi-site. I'm a critic of it done poorly. If you don't think this through and you don't have the right motives, you end up with a baby that grows up to be pretty ugly..."

Other congregations, such as LifeChurch.tv out of Edmond, Okla., have embraced church online without reservation...

Stetzer believes such online outreach is a valid tool, provided it serves people who cannot physically attend church or offers an aid for people to connect and move into physical community. "The problem is when people equate it to church with online baptisms and that kind of stuff," he said. "You have to assemble, and that requires feet, not electrons."

By and large a good story. I would like to have explored some of the ecclesiological issues of why churches should "assemble" and not just meet on-line, but such is life when it comes to word counts.

One small mistake, the church I serve is not multi-site, it is multi-venue.

And, I would also add that this paragraph only tells part of the story:

Critics of multi-site expansion are apt to interpret the morphing of a campus pastor into a church planter as evidence that starting new churches is a more noble and significant enterprise than starting new campuses. Trouble is, that charge fails to recognize that many of the most committed church-planting churches in the country are also knee deep in multi-site ministry. Seacoast co-founded the Association of Related Churches, which has planted 60 new congregations since its inception in 2001.

Though the writer is correct with his examples (and I know and appreciate ARC and the churches he cites), I think it would also be helpful to point out that many of the most well known multi-site churches have no church planting strategy involvement at all.

It is good point out that the leading church planting churches in American are multi-site (and for the record, I made that list of leading church planting churches to which the writer refers-- and reported that they were multi-site), but I think that the fact that some of the best church planting churches are multi-site does not mean that most multi-site churches are deeply involved in church planting... I wish they were! (You might want to take a look at Aubrey Malphurs comments on that very issue here.)

And, finally, I wish they would have pointed out the great dialogue that Geoff and I had about it here at the blog. You can find that here. Conflict makes a good story, but I don't feel much conflict with Geoff!

By the way, Geoff will be contributing to the book LifeWay Research is publishing on multi-site (along with several other current practitioners).

All in all, a good article... though, as I have written before when the USAToday and AP did the same thing, I find it odd that people use my blog as a source for news.