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.
The worship kicks off with the pastor (Brad Bell) leaning on a tall table to greet the group assembled. A couple acoustic-sounding worship songs flowed beautifully. The worship leader had an incredible voice. Then the pastor returns to teach from the Bible. That night was from the book of Titus. The pastor teaches verse-by-verse expository style. Straight-up Bible teaching. But not in a traditional expository style. He peppers the sermon throughout with colloquialisms of today’s culture like “jacked up” and a bunch more I can't remember. This connected well with the young audience as indicated by laughter through-out.
In the closing announcement, I hear of upcoming events that are all-church, where all campuses will gathering together for their baptism and for their "state of the church" services. I heard that one of the church's core values is fun (jokingly?) and new staff will all be doing a belly-flop into the baptism pools as a part of their initiation. What does your church do for new staff?
The next morning, I was honored to have breakfast with the Founding & Lead Pastor, Brad Bell, and heard the story of how The Well was started, Watch this video of my conversation with Pastor Brad so you too can hear it first-hand:
interview with Brad Bell about The Well (powered by Vimeo).
A couple of observations and learnings that I'll highlight:
- Have a church name that's not geographically-tied. The name of the overall church is The Well Community Church. No geographical reference there. And The Well intentionally names their campuses geographically, and avoids calling one the “main campus” or “home campus.” In so doing, every campus is valued and perceived as an equal.
- Keep the processes clear and simple. The Well keeps its multi-site process simple, so they can be responsive to new opportunities (facilities and core groups), able to change directions quickly like a school of fishes. They’ve ve been able to launch a new site as quickly as 3 months (If I remember correctly.) The leadership team is also implementing video technologies that will allow the teaching pastor to broadcast from any of its campuses.
- Cultural relevancy is required to connect with people. Every church community embodies a culture. Every neighborhood community has its own culture (or sub-culture). In so far as a church can connect with that authentically culture, the better the Gospel can be incarnated and lived out for the good of the church and the good of the community.
// DJ CHUANG, Leadership Community DIrector at Leadership Network
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