Multi-site Church Road Trip

Road trip stop at The Well in Fresno

Continuing my multi-site church road trip, after my stops at 3 campuses of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in the Silicon Valley, I headed southeast towards Fresno. 3 hours later, I checked into my hotel room and took a breather.

6:00pm. 1st stop: Fig Garden. I stop by The Well Community Church’s Fig Garden campus. This worship service meets on Sunday evenings at the campus of The Cross Church, and it happened to be just a couple blocks away from where I was staying. Makes you want to believe in providential sovereignty. I wanted to walk onto the campus even though I wasn’t able to catch the full service, and did. (I thought it was important to take a break after a long drive and freshen up.)

I heard the closing announcements as I walk up to the courtyard. And before you know it, the worship celebration is over, and people start trickling out. I saw a lot more people with tattoos and piercings here than I did at the previous church. I think to myself: The Well sure is reaching a different group of people!

(I tuck in a fast-food restaurant run en route to my final destination.)

7:00pm. 2nd stop: North campus. My oh my! The parking lot is full, the streets nearby are starting to fill, and overflow parking drive up the curbs to park on the lawn. I felt lucky to find a parking spot, and strolled on in. The energy was buzzing way before the worship service started. Lots of college students filled the auditorium, and you.. Apparently people keep coming, and it’s been bursting at the seams for months now. A good problem to have, as it’s been said.

    

Road trip stop at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church

The new book launching this Fall, A Multi-Site Church Road Trip: Exploring the New Normal, inspired me to take my own road trip. During my multi-site church road trip last weekend in The San Francisco Bay area, I visited 3 locations of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in the Silicon Valley. Watch the video version or scroll down to read the report about my visit.

1st stop: Mountain View. I attended the 9am worship at a venue called Open Door Church. They met in a renovated fellowship hall on the same campus as First Presbyterian Church. With 2 churches in 1 location, a visitor has to be more attentive to where they go and choosing between options. The 2 churches do have a great partnership--sharing the campus facilities, sharing the children's ministry that now has over 200 kids, and joining together for an annual picnic that happened to be on the same day as my visit! (no, I didn't get to stay)

The worship space was very nice, padded seating in rows, newly renovated floor to ceiling, three big screens up front, candles scattered along front stage, a darker color palette. My favorite part was the overflow room behind the sanctuary, where a dozen sofa seats and bar stools offered a more casual and comfy ambiance with HD tv monitor to enjoy the worship.

a different kind of multi-site church

A multi-site church is very simply "one church in multiple locations." How explicitly and visibly a church decides to make itself known as a multi-site church varies from one church to another. From what I know, many multi-site churches leverage a shared branding strategy or consolidates its administrative and/or organizational structure. And yet, (practically) every instance of a church using a multi-site strategy is different and unique, in part or in whole.

Heard from a pastor friend who told me about a multi-site church in the Sacramento area called Bayside Church. Looking at its newly-redesigned website, I couldn't tell. Could you?

So I asked my friend about its multiple locations, and here's the list of links to the church's other location's websites:

• http://www.rosevillechurch.com
• http://baysidewest.com
• http://www.bossonline.org
• http://www.baysideplumaslake.org
• http://www.baysideplacerville.com
• http://baysidewoodland.com
• http://baysidelifechurch.com
• http://www.baysideoflincoln.com

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.

-----

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

ministry flows between multi-site campuses online and offline

Found this blog post from Brandon Buckner, Internet Campus Director at McLean Bible Church (MBC.)  This story of three people below shows how a church with multiple locations, both online and offline, can be used of God to reach people for Christ:

Katie, a single grade school teacher in PW County, attends three MBC services each week. Saturday night she attends the Tysons Campus. She enjoys the worship and teaching so much that she attends again Sunday morning via the Internet Campus from her home in Manassas. On Sunday nights, she also attends Frontline via the Internet Campus, where she is one of the most engaged members of the online community.

Three weeks ago, Katie was in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. Katherine, her best friend and a non-believer, came to visit her shortly after the accident. Seeing Katie laying there in the hospital, she made a promise to God. She told Him that if He got her friend through the accident, she would begin going to church. By God’s grace, Katie was out of bed the following day and scheduled to go home with only minor injuries. That very day, Katherine finally did something Katie had been trying to get her to do for months―she logged onto the Internet Campus. That morning, after Lon presented the Gospel, Katherine prayed to accept Christ. But the Lord had even bigger plans in mind, as the following week Katherine brought her younger brother to the Tysons Campus, where he too accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior.

Now, Katherine and her brother are regular attendees of the Tysons and Internet Campuses, with plans to attend the upcoming Christianity 101. Katie and Katherine express excitement on a weekly basis for the upcoming Prince William Campus, where they both hope to get plugged in as volunteers.

Hallelujah! And, to visually communicate the church's identity as one church with multiple locations, McLean Bible Church has recently re-done its corporate logo. Know of another great story of how an internet campus is ministering to people online and offline?

// DJ Chuang, Director at Leadership Network