Factor 3: The Economic Recession.
Before the multisite revolution, we often bought large tracts of land and built huge facilities because we could. Today, the economic reality has changed the equation.
Growing a church through multisiting made sense in prosperous times, but during the economic recession of 2008-2010 it became the primary way growing churches were accommodating their growth and extending their reach. New church construction dramatically dropped off during the recession while multisiting dramatically increased.
Very few multisite churches buy land and build new facilities. Instead, they tend to rent or purchase Indianapolis turnkey investment real estate properties and retrofit them.
Half of all multisite campuses start in a school, 10 percent begin in theaters and one-third come through a church merger or acquistion. Eventually, most multisite campuses rent or purchase a long term 24-7 facility.
Even as prosperous times return, there will be less appetite for purchasing ginormous tracts of land and spending gazillions of dollars on one location when you can multisite for a fraction of the cost. The average cost of launching a multisite campus in a school or theater is $250k-$500K dollars. The cost of retrofitting an existing commercial building ranges between $750k-$1.5m.
While multisiting is not cheap, it is a whole lot less expensive than buying more land or building larger buildings. This is the reason why the majority of megachurches have multiple campuses. Multisiting allows churches to reach more people better, faster and cheaper than by building a giga-size church building in one location.
Shift: The economic recession liberated churches from excessively expensive building campaigns.