Small towns are the horizon for multisite.
This movement started in relatively densely populated suburban areas but I'm seeing a new movement among churches reaching small towns and rural contexts. These communities are often places where no viable gospel oriented church exists and so these new multisite churches are leading the way to inject the message of Jesus back into these locations. I look forward to learning from these trailblazing churches in the coming years!
There is no better way to drive engagement at your church than launching new locations.
Campus expansion is a robust way to engage new volunteers at your church. Typically, we've seen that two-thirds of the volunteers in new campuses haven't served in the church before. I'm convinced that there is no better recruiting tool than to launch new locations. In fact, I haven't seen anything in all these years that comes close to driving up volunteer engagement at a church than launching new locations. If you are wanting to see more people engaged in what your church does, get busy launching new campuses!
Fall is the best time to launch new campuses.
Generally, there are three windows that we see new campuses publically launch, sometime in the fall, early in the New Year and at Easter. The best time to launch is in the fall because you get a few "growth periods" before that next summer season comes along. The first summer can be a tough time in the life of a new campus as attendance and momentum naturally wane a little bit. When you launch in the fall, you are maximizing your ability to see momentum built before that happens.
Again, the size and health of your launch core is the critical success factor.
I can't overstate how important this factor is. Your launch process needs to be built around the single factor of building a large and healthy volunteer team. Everything else is secondary to that decision. In fact, I would suggest that every decision during the launch process needs to be made in light of this one overall driving factor. Build a big and healthy team and your campus will thrive for years to come. If your team is small and weak the campus is almost certainly destined to limp for a long time.
Natalie Frisk – Our family ministry expert. She is a key leader from The Meeting House. This church has 19 (!) locations and is doing all kinds of great stuff. They are also part of a great kids' & youth curriculum that they give away for free. Natalie's a lot of fun and will have so many great insights around leading in a thriving multisite church.
Greg Curtis – Our guest connections & assimilation expert. He leads in one of the fastest growing churches in the country and literally is the "go to" source for getting people to stick and stay in the church. (Eastside Christian Church has assimilated something like 1,500 people in the last 18 months!) His coaching practice around assimilation is amazing.
Ben Stapley – Our communications & service programming expert. Ben is one of the most helpful leaders I know. His day job is at Liquid Church in New Jersey but he does so much to help other leaders with the "big show" part of the church world.
We'd love to have you along for the ride. Record your audio question and email it to me. As well, make sure you are subscribed to the unSeminary podcast feed to get all of our new episodes.
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