News Release about new multi-site book

Over the River, Through the Woods: On a Church Roadtrip We Go

Newest release in the Leadership Network Innovation Series chronicles a multi-site church road trip

How would you like to take a cross-country roadtrip, touring fifteen of the most innovative multi-site churches in the nation – for under twenty dollars? Thanks to pastors and leaders of Leadership Network, Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon and Warren Bird, you can. At least, you almost can. A Multi-Site Church Roadtrip: Exploring the New Normal (September, 2009), takes readers on a revealing road trip across the United States, exploring the multi-site church movement that’s sweeping the evangelical world. 

A companion to A Multi-Site Church Revolution (Zondervan, 2009), Surratt, Ligon and Bird’s previous collaboration, A Multi-Site Church Roadtrip profiles fifteen multi-site churches. The newest addition to the Leadership Network Innovation Series presents the steep challenges, innovative strategies and expected future plans among today’s thriving multi-site churches.

Traveling from North Coast Church on the West Coast to Community Christian Church in the Midwest, over to Shelter Rock Church on the East Coast and Flamingo Road Church in the South, readers will sight-see multi-site venues of all shapes and sizes, as “one size and one approach still don’t fit all for multi-site.” From an eighty-person congregation at Seacoast Church to LiveChurch.tv’s multiple Internet campuses of 25,500 weekly attendees, A Multi-Site Church Roadtrip illustrates the worth and value of each.

Written with a refreshing blend of the authors’ trademark humor and wit, pastors and church-goers alike will be challenged and motivated by A Multi-Site Church Roadtrip. Dubbed the “new normal” for the modern day church, “multi-site” is a communal concept with a cutting-edge feel. The authors write, “We believe the day is rapidly approaching when few will find it unusual for a church to offer simultaneous worship services in sanctuary, gym and chapel…or even in the original church building, a public school across town, a theater adjacent to the nearby university and the clubhouse of a retirement community.”

Though progressive in their thinking, the authors do not shy away from concerns some have with this development, writing, “The multi-site movement does have critics…[we] want to listen thoughtfully to what certain skeptics have to say.” The authors offer straight-forward, positive and honest insights into their critics’ objections, even choosing to examine and dissect the “best arguments against the multi-site movement.” Addressing the successes and struggles among multi-site churches, A Multi-Site Church Road Trip draws on examples from the various churches, including the one Surratt helps pastor.

Provoking questions, options and models to consider are presented by leading pastors, church leaders and innovators throughout the book. Supplemental discussion questions are provided to probe deeper into this exciting movement in the modern church.

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Geoff Surratt has been on staff at Seacoast Church since 1996. In 2002, he was tasked with pioneering the multi-site effort at Seacoast and has overseen the launch of 10 new campuses at Seacoast since then. He is currently the Pastor of Ministries, but that could change at any minute. Geoff also worked alongside Greg and Warren at Leadership Network with the Multi-site Church Leadership Communities from 2003 to 2006. Geoff is married to the beautiful and talented Sherry and they have two wonderful children, one lovely daughter-in-law and one mangy dog. Geoff's first solo book, 10 Stupid Things That Keep Churches from Growing (Zondervan), was released in May 2009.

Greg Ligon has been with Leadership Network since 1997. He currently serves as Vice President of Church Innovations and Publisher and oversees several Leadership Community Directors and the organization’s publishing partnerships. He has directed the Multi-Site Churches Leadership Community, the Leadership Training Network, and spearheaded strategic services for the organization. Prior to joining Leadership Network, Greg was responsible for creating and directing the United Methodist Campus Ministry at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He served as associate pastor at First United Methodist Church in Waco, Texas. Greg and his wife, Susan, have two full-throttle boys, Daniel and Andrew.

Warren Bird (PhD, Fordham University) has collaboratively authored nineteen books (including two 100,000 bestsellers, one Gold Medallion winner, and one runner-up for the Gold Medallion), served as associate pastor and senior pastor, taught as regularly contributing faculty at Alliance Theological Seminary, and served on the senior leadership team of three organizations that provide training to pastors. He is currently research director at Leadership Network, overseeing the creation of a wide range of knowledge products designed to resource church leaders. Warren and his wife Michelle live in metro New York City and have two grown children.

About A Multi-Site Church Roadtrip

A Multi-Site Church Roadtrip: Exploring the New Normal

By Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon and Warren Bird

Zondervan

9780310293941

256 Pages

$18.99

PUB DATE: September 2009

Comments

[John Carroll]

Are you guys planning for a Kindle release?

[djchuang]

Good news, good news! I've got word that there will be a Kindle version of this new book, and it'll be coming out the same time as the printed version this September!