Multi-site Church Road Trip

The Chapel

I spent last weekend in Akron, Ohio hanging out with the team at The Chapel. They are a part of my Multi-site Leadership Community at Leadership Network. Under the leadership of Knute Larson The Chapel has become one of the largest churches in their entire region. They have planted a number of churches around Akron. Several of their daughter churches have become very large as well. In 2003 they found themselves out of room and out of service times and saw multiple campuses as their only viable option to continue to reach out to the greater Akron area. They built a beautiful facility with a 1500 seat auditorium as well as a variety of children's areas and rooms for ABFs. Now, barely three years later they are filling the new Green campus twice each weekend and are looking at adding a third service while continue to offer four services at the original Akron campus.

The Chapel uses a live teaching rotation so that both campuses hear the same teachers and same messages. (They will preach at one campus one weekend and then preach the same sermon at the second campus the second weekend). Currently they are considering adding additional video venues at one or both campuses. If you have had experience with onsite video venues what advice would you offer The Chapel?

Living Hope

I had a chance to hang out today with John Bishop, Senior Pastor of Living Hope Church in Vancouver Washington. You may remember that these are the insane guys who opened five campuses on Easter. John is an incredible young leader. Living Hope started 10 years ago with 10 people in John's living room. Over the first seven years they grew to about 400 people (a pretty incredible feat, especially in one of the most unchurched regions of the country). Over the past three years they've grown from 400 to about 4000 on a weekend. John expressed a sentiment I've heard from a lot of young leaders, "I've never even attended a church this large and now I'm pastoring one."

Living Hope uses video teaching at all of their offsite campuses. Right now they are weighing the pros and cons of going live with video or possibly going week behind. I'd love to hear what your opinion is on the good, the bad and the ugly of live, same weekend and week behind. What do you think?