9Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon and Warren Bird, The Multi-Site Church Revolution: Being One Church. Allison, “The Multi-site Church Phenomenon: A Biblical, Theological, Historical, and Missional Assessment” (a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, Providence, RI, November 20, 2008). Where do you see the multi-site church concept going in the next thirty years?
As noted earlier, there are different opinions about the beginning of the multi-site church concept. These developments are the focus of the next three chapters on the historical development of the multi-site church phenomenon. 1Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon and Warren Bird, The Multi-Site Church Revolution: Being One Church.
This differentiation between mission start and church start is key to the church discussion in several places.
Frank Norris—The Pastor of Two Churches: First Baptist Church, Fort
In that sense, Norris was a forerunner of the multi-site church movement, and thus functions as an important component in the historical development of the multi-site church framework. He rates the Key Church strategy as one of the most significant ministry models in his long tenure as a researcher and, more importantly, recognizes that J. 52Schaller places a strong connection between First Baptist Church, Dallas, TX, and the Key Church Strategy: “The history of this particular strategy for planning this change can be traced back to the ministry of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, TX.
Two years earlier, a detailed study was conducted to evaluate the national success of the Key Church Strategy. 57According to Schaller, the Baptist General Convention of Texas defines a key church as one that meets these six criteria: (1) makes a long-term commitment to making mission outreach a top priority; (2) prioritizes missions to the level of the church's religious education and music programs; (3) establish a mission development council; (4) elects a Director/Minister of Missions to direct mission expansion; (5) begins five mission/ministerial units each year; and (6) sponsors at least five dependent or pre-independent satellite units on a continuous basis. These congregations, mostly house churches, cared for the needs of the ordinary residents of the surrounding area.
The authors also provide an additional definition: "An indigenous satellite church (ISC) is a single-cell church that remains a permanent part of the sponsoring church" (emphasis added). The purpose of ISC is to reach and disciple non-Christians and other unchurched people. The main strategy of the church, while important in promoting the idea of establishing the church in more than one location, still falls short of the definition of the church in many places.
So far, it has been shown that while components of the multi-site church concept were visible within the seven ministry models above, none fit the definition of a true multi-site church as outlined in the first chapter. The discussion will now focus on examining those changes that enabled the emergence of the multi-site church. Alan Hirsch more succinctly links McGavran's influence to multi-site churches with his claim that “the church growth movement entered the era of the .
Economic Advancement
By no means was the growth of the postwar era attributable to Keynesian economics alone; however, growth followed in the American economy: “In the five years following the war, the gross national product climbed. Jones explains the effect of the Act: “The Employment Act of 1946 is the most important piece of economic legislation of the entire postwar period. 22See Gordon, An Empire of Wealth, 363-67, for an assessment of the very positive but unintended consequences of the GI Bill.
The value of total consumer credit grew nearly elevenfold between 1945 and 1960, and installment credit—the most important component of the total throughout the postwar era—jumped an astonishing nineteen-fold. In fact, a year earlier, the National Retail Credit Association announced that while in the heart of the depression in 1935, 35% of the 70,000 personal. For those of the war generation, choices were in many ways something new, but they soon adapted to the world of choices.
Offering options is one of the main features that multi-site churches and their leaders value most about their church model. Her office is next to the main hospital branch so I have never been to the main hospital except to visit some friends. See Dave Ferguson, "The Multi-Site Church: Some of the Strengths of this New Life Form."
According to the French Franchise Federation, Jean Prouvost, owner of the Lainiere de Roubais, also launched his network of Pingouin in the 1920s, thus starting the concept of franchise distribution in France. The aftermath of World War II caused major shifts across the social and economic landscape of the United States. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, however, multi-site churches are becoming more of a normalcy.53.
Accelerated Mobility
Reducing distance and travel remains important to many aspects of the multi-site church. By 1990, enough factors had come together to see the beginning of a church revolution in several places. Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon, and Warren Bird, The Multi-Site Church Revolution: Being One Church.
These approaches, however, have not produced a church model that fits all the criteria of a multi-place church definition. However, it was another church that would serve as the progenitor church in several places. In the five pages of Spin-off Churches, Harrison briefly introduces the concept of the multisite church.
Three key features of the multi-site church phenomenon are well suited for taxonomy: (1) proximity of sites, (2) preaching methodology, and (3) process of multi-siting.
Proximity of Multi-site Location
Within this taxonomy, the multisite church is not limited to one specific multisite label. In other cases, a church may fit into or occupy two or more features in multiple locations. As for the multisite application, the Internet campus is often considered an additional site of the multisite church.
In terms of the continuum above, an Internet campus is easily located as the end of the proximity continuum because it is a supra-geographic extension of a multi-site church. For a brief introduction to the Internet campus concept, see "Internet Campuses—Virtual or Reality?" chapter in Surratt, Ligon, and Bird, A Multi-site Church Roadtrip, 84-100. 39Originally they listed five, including “(A) Multiple Site, (B) Regional Multi-site, (C) Extended Multi-site, (D) Church Planting Multi-site, and (E) Variations of the Above Themes. ” Warren Bird and Greg Ligon, “Expanding Your Church to More Than One Place: A Field Report on the Emerging Multi-Site Movement,” 9.
Three years later, Bird and Ligon revised their initial categories and created the five multi-site models found in The Multi-Site Church Revolution. A multi-site local approach involves one church with two or more campuses focused on a limited geographic region (Figure 3). In short, a multi-site regional church is one church with multiple sites located throughout the region (Figure 4).
The following four examples of expanded multisites demonstrate the expanded and expansive nature of expanded multisite churches. Seacoast began in Mount Pleasant and became a multi-site church in 2003 with video campuses in (1) Charleston, (2) West Ashley, and (3) Columbia, South Carolina. New Hope Church, Honolulu, Hawaii, is likely the largest multi-site church in North America.
Multi-location Preaching
At the same time, it is clear that the wandering approach was the first in multi-site practice and that it enabled the emergence of the multi-site church movement (Figure 7). With regard to the multi-location church concept, the robber approach can be defined as a single person traveling between two or more locations to preach during one. The primary dividing line between the robber approach and the rotational approach to multisite preaching is the movement from a single teacher to a plurality of teachers in the preaching process.
The rotation approach can then be defined as two or more (many) individuals regularly preaching in different locations of a multi-site church. Two or more (many) individuals who regularly preach in different locations of a multi-site church. As the title would suggest, the collaborative approach is defined as follows: multiple individuals contribute to the creation of sermons delivered in different locations of a multi-site church (Figure 9).
Multiple people contribute to create sermons to be delivered at the various locations of a multi-site church. At the other end of the collaboration spectrum is the Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. One of the teaching pastors makes a sketch and e-mails it to the preaching team.
The proxy approach is likely to be the most controversial of the preaching approaches in many countries. One of the most outstanding examples of proxy preaching is found in the growth and development of the Heartland Christian Church, Rockford, Illinois. A recent example of proxy access is visible in LifeChurch.tv's "shared communicator resources".
Multi-siting Process
Summarizing the explanations above, the multi-site adoption process is best defined as: "A multi-site process in which a strong church assumes leadership and possibly ownership of a weaker church" (Figure 14). Schaller offers "Urban Church" multi-site terms like "the urban church with two or three or four off-campus meeting places." Schaller, Innovations in Ministry, 121. The key difference in the site process is that a church becomes multi-site only with the addition of places of worship at their current location.
Earl Ferguson in his doctoral thesis gives an example of a church that captures the essence of the multi-site cross-cultural process. Multi-site cross-cultural process can thus be defined: as "a multi-site process in which a church of a dominant ethnic demographic launches a campus focused on reaching another ethnic group."114. 114Harrison, Cheyney and Overstreet state this concept as "The Multicultural Model" within their main approaches to multi-site taxonomy.
115 "Español," Church of the Highlands [online]; accessed September 20, 2010; available from http://www.churchofthehighlands.com/campuses/espanol; Internet; see also Scott McConnell, Multi-site Churches, 215-16. For definitional purposes, the multi-site partnership process can be defined as "a multi-site process in which a church works in partnership with a non-church entity to facilitate the creation of an additional campus site" (Figure 19). From these chapters, a superficial understanding of the multi-site church concept is now established for the reader; therefore it is appropriate to turn.
In light of this understanding, we will consider the following five areas of tension in several churches: (1) organization, (2) fellowship, (3) preaching, (4) pastoring, and (5) reproduction. 2Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon, and Warren Bird, A Multi-site Church Road Trip: Exploring the New Normal (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009). This fluctuating nature of multi-site churches should bring experts and novices alike to multi-site observers.
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