On a recent trip to northern Colorado, I met with several pastors of large and leading churches including Paul Trimble with Crossroads Church in Loveland. Paul talked about the growing phenomenon of churches accomplishing new expansions by obtaining smaller new sites all simulcast from a “headquarters” facility. There are a few churches along the Front Range that are doing this today including Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Niwot and Frederick.
Paul shared with me a DVD of a leadership podcast that Andy Stanley of Northpoint Community Church (Alpharetta, GA) conducted in his Leadership Podcast dated 5-1-2009 says that the “old paradigm” of the senior pastor having to be both a gifted, dynamic and attention-retaining speaker AND the operating leader of the church is has gone away because of the video church phenomenon. This is a very good thing since a gifted speaker/lecturer/motivator/speaker is rarely a qualified administrator. In fact, you don’t want your gifted communicator anywhere near administration. Andy says that there is a movement afoot to do video churches all across America by “partnering” with churches that own “under-utilized” real estate. This is an opportunity for the kingdom to come together like never before. Many people will object to this change. But this could be incredibly beneficial to the declining trend of Christian worship in America. A bazillion dollars has been spent on real estate, much of which remains underutilized by many churches with shrinking congregations.
I also met with Pastor Clay Peck, lead pastor at Grace Place church based in Berthoud, Colorado who told me about Mark Driscoll with Mars Hill Church in Seattle who operates seven popular church venues in one of America’s most un-churched cities. Further Mars Hill just opened a new venue in Albuquerque, NM—just 1,500 miles from Seattle! Mark discusses how to preach in a multi-site format at his blog. Mark has boldly stated that Mars Hill plans to expand to 100 churches in the next 10 years. Wow.
We all need to be thinking about expanding our reach. What is your plan to expand?