The Size and Health of Your Launch Team Is THE Key Success Factor in Multisite Churches
I’ve been in the middle of the launch of 14 campuses directly and seen a bunch more from the fence as coach. I’ve seen all kinds of factors that impact the effectiveness of a campus. (Campus pastor, location, time of year, etc.) By far, the most important factor in the launch of a new campus is the size and health of the core volunteer launch team. Across all the launches I’ve seen, this one factor is the best predictor of how the campus will fare over time.
The benefits of a large and healthy team are pervasive…
- More people to invite friends to the church.
- More people to share the volunteer load, which in turn increases the appeal to serve.
- More financial resources to help sustain the campus.
When you are thinking about the target size of the community of volunteers that are needed to launch a new location, try going beyond your comfort zone. What factors would have to be in place to send 10 percent of your church to go launch the new location? What would it take to get 150+ volunteers to make the new location their home?
This dirty secret pushes towards you taking longer in your launch cycle. You need to take longer to work with “late adopters” who aren’t initially interested to be involved in the launch. You can convince a small team of “innovators” to jump to the new location quickly, but you need to slow down to woo less innovative people to be a part of the launch. The advantage of this approach is that “late adopters” are more likely to stick with the campus in the long haul than “early adopters” any ways.
You don’t just need people to attend the new location. You need people who are willing to serve at the new campus. Your launch process needs to revolve around building up a strong and healthy volunteer core team, and not finding people who will sit on the seats at the new campus. Build a big enough volunteer team and you won’t need to worry about what your attendance will be, because all those volunteers will invite their communities to be a part of your church!
Multisite Will Scale Up Your Problems
Multiplication is at the core of the multisite church movement. It’s a way for your church to spread the good things that are happening at your church to new locations. It’s a path to see your church implement the lessons you’ve learned in a new community.
The downside is that your problems will scale up as well.
If your kid’s ministry is struggling in one location, it will struggle even more in three locations. Taking a music ministry that is having a hard time developing artists in one location and spreading that problem to multiple locations may not be a great idea. If you have problems aligning your vision with your leaders in one location, the discord will just grow wider as you add new locations. Your financial predicaments in one location won’t be solved just by adding new locations.
As the multisite movement enters this next phase, its pervasiveness means that lots of churches that might not be ready to multiply are now beginning to consider it. Even worse, some leaders are seeing this approach as a tool to help kickstart a stuck church. Please don’t.
Nail it before you scale it.
Your church needs a modicum of excellence within its ranks before you look to replicate the model. There needs to be signs of health weaving through the ministry across multiple levels. With humility, can your church say that you are doing aspects of your ministry differently from what other churches are doing in the communities you are looking at moving into?
Conditions Will Never Be “Perfect” for Launch
Talk with any of those rare churches that have launched more than eight locations and they will tell you they never really felt ready to launch new locations. It was always an internal drive to reaching people, something that the church isn’t able to do today.
