If you want to have a multi-congregation church, it is easier if you start out that way. Then you will not have to make the massive paradigm shifts mentioned in the previous chapters. This has some important implications for church planters.
A church planter normally has a relatively free hand in shaping the nature of the church, but how much freedom he has depends on the sponsorship arrangement. A self-supported church planter can do almost anything he wants. Of course, he has to live with the consequences. If a denomination and/or other sponsoring body is involved, the rules are a little different. Money imparts power and influence and the right to control.
For this reason, I suggest that a church planter be as open as possible about every detail of his work. People do not like surprises. They are naturally suspicious of the unfamiliar. If you are involved in launching a new church, you may want to give your sponsors a copy of this book so they understand the philosophy behind what you are doing.
We planted a churchCactually two churchesCon the east side of Las Cruces. The sponsoring committee envisioned it as more or less a multi-congregation church from the very beginningCone English-speaking congregation and one for those of Hispanic background. There has been some tension between the two groups living in the same house, but none with the sponsors.
There are two issues at stake here. The first is integrity. It is dishonest and wrong to try to create a multi-congregation church without the knowledge of the parent body or against the will of the nominal sponsor. The other issue is more practical. Not only is it wrong; it is dumb. You will not be able to hide the fact that you have five services and two preaching pastors.
Sometimes there is one group (or more) that serves as the sponsoring unit and another that comprises the core group for the new congregation. It is important to talk to both groups. Do not assume they see eye to eye. I have known a case where the church planter came to complete agreement with the sponsors, but never talked to the core group that had already formed under another pastor's leadership. It was disaster. The planter had envisioned a very contemporary church, and the sponsors were very open to that idea. But the core group was made up of several denominational employees who expected a more traditional approach. Not a pretty sight, although it did result in two church plantings instead of just one.
Remember, if you are ever going to be a multi-congregation church, you need to be one as early as possible. This means that during the first quarter, you need at least a second preacher in the pulpit on other than a substitutionary basis. Whatever you establish as the norm will be your "tradition" from then on. (At least, this is usually true.) A church in Roswell, New Mexico, started out with two pastors. Each had the serendipitous dual gifts of being able to preach and lead music. From the beginning, they have alternated their ministries: preaching one week and doing the music the next. Moving to the multi-congregation model will be a piece of cake for them.
If a church cannot start with two or more professionals who can preach, do not overlook laypeople. There is real potential here. If the body of Christ could find a way to train its lay leaders to communicate the gospel effectively from the pulpit, there would be no limit to church growth. Consider how much easier it would be for a pastor to develop three good sermons a quarter than to produce two or three a week, week after week. It is a very reasonable expectation that someone other than an official pastor will be able to preach three or four top-notch series a year. There would be twelve weeks in between time to gather illustrations and polish the messages. Our church is just now getting into this experiment, and we are very optimistic about its end results.
The longer a church remains below the 200 mark, the greater the likelihood that it will continue to attract people who prefer a small church. Then growth will be difficult to achieve. Schaller points out that unless a church breaks the 200 barrier rather quickly, it is unlikely that it ever will. His recommendation is that church planters make it their goal to be above 200 on the very first weekend and never dip below that number.1 People can keep a church small if they want to.
Advertising can help get the church above 200, as we saw in chapter 4. Part of doing this is simply a function of math. If you can get 20,000 high-quality flyers mailed, you have a good shot at attracting at least 200 first-time visitors. If you do a good job with the service, a good number will come backC125 is a reasonable expectation. With quality services and regular punches with advertising, a church can have above 200 members in rather short order.
The other side of this has nothing whatever to do with math. God can shut us down if we are too dependent on statistical probabilities. There is a fine line between being practical and wise and being so self-assured that we fail to depend on God. Jesus said, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).
My father used to pose a question to seminary students: "True or false?C>We can accomplish very little without abiding in Christ.'" There is only one right answer to that question: False. Most of us would like to believe we can do at least a little bit without abiding in Christ. We think we can do some good, even if we are not quite as spiritual as we ought to be. But Jesus taught that it was all or nothing. Advertising might draw a crowd, but it will never build the true church of God. True spiritual leaders recognize that the real life-changing work is not done through the mail, but on a person-to-person level, and always under God's direction.
One other note: Whatever you start with is what you tend to attract. Rick Warren was offered some people whose beliefs were very different from those of the church he was planting. He gave a polite "No, thank you." It takes keen perception and a great deal of faith to insist on a similar philosophy of ministry when a church has empty pews.
It is often cheaper and more effective in the long run to start with more than one pastor.2 Try to begin with as many qualified professionals as you can afford. Starting with a team allows the church to take off quickly and gain synergy and momentum from its own growth. On the other hand, if a church is slow-growing because of understaffing, it will have difficulty attracting the kind of visionary personalities that will fuel its growth in coming years. It will hover at a subsidy level for months and even years. Much better if sufficient fuel is provided to get it off the launching pad quickly.
Having more than one pastor allows several groups to form. Because you almost want to discourage that "family feeling" in the early days, try to cultivate a number of age- or interest-related groups immediately. If you are not occasionally accused of being cliquish, you are not doing a good job of this. If your objective is a multi-congregation church, you need to be working toward this model all along. With adequate staff available, you can start with more than one service, and more than one musical style. This is almost certain to begin the mosaic that is characteristic of a multi-congregation church.
Multi-congregation churches work best when their physical plant has been designed to house back-to-back ministries, allowing both sides of the buildingCeducation and worshipCto be full at the same time. More space than in a traditional church will be needed in the nursery because both sides are being used. More rest rooms and parking space will be needed, as will ample foyers to ease the tension when services run longer than expected. Wide hallways will allow people to move in two directions without feeling like they are being herded in a cattle drive. Furthermore, if we want them to stop and fellowship, the hall has to be wide enough to do so. The quicker and more easily people can move from one place to another, the better. (High schools are good examples of this idea.) In the Sun Belt, this space for movement could be provided through covered outdoor paths and landscaped patios. This is not only cheaper; it is more aesthetically pleasingCexcept in January.
Thought should be given to providing a place for musicians to warm up before each service. This needs to be sound-insulated from any adjacent educational and worship space. There should also be easy access to the auditorium or sanctuary. Our pastor does not require that musicians and staff listen to the sermon more than once, but we usually are present at the beginning or end of each service. For this reason, an unobtrusive entrance to the auditorium is helpful.
Because flexibility is a key value for the multi-congregation church, it should be reflected in the building design. There may come a time when you want to have several worship services going simultaneouslyCoffering people a choice of topics and/or preachers and/or musical style without disrupting the small-group structure. Multi-unit movie theaters have been offering this kind of variety for years. On the other hand, the main auditorium of a multi-congregation church can actually be smaller than normal, since the goal is to use it often. It will be a big advantage if there are ways to adjust the actual number of seats in the auditorium, which will allow you to make maximum use of the space when necessary. When a new service is added, you can reduce the seating to avoid that rattling-in-a-big-room feeling.
Land requirements for a multi-congregation church are similarly reduced, as compared to a traditional church of the same total membership. For example, a church aspiring to accommodate all of its 1,000 members in only one or two services would need about seven acres for its building complex and parking space (see chapter 4: "Major expenses can be predicted"). If that same church were to hold several more services a week, and not always on Sunday, it could manage with more compact facilities, and therefore less acreage, at least so long as its membership remains at the 1,000-member level.
There is some talk that on-site Sunday school is being replaced by home groups, since the warmer atmosphere is more "user friendly" to outsiders, and there is relatively unlimited space available. The downside is the difficulty of providing quality education for children in a multi-age family. Dr. John Vaughan has done some research on this and found the facts rather startling. Apparently, churches with a formal Sunday-school system do a far better job of assimilating people in some kind of group life than do churches with only a home-cell system. Independent, noncharismatic churches using home cells average 500 out of 1,000 worship attendees in small group activities. Independent, charismatic churches have about 300 in such groups. Those that employ a Sunday-school system, however, have from 750 and upward of those attending worship involved also in smaller group activities.3
However, the savings in the home system are enormous. As noted in chapter 4, a church should provide about ten square feet of auditorium space per person, whereas education requires about forty square feet per person. And a children's Sunday school requires more space than one for adults, who usually sit in straight rows in their classes. If they sit in one loop around the perimeter of the room they can waste a good deal of usable space.
The point is, there are advantages and disadvantages for both the home-group approach and traditional Sunday school. There has been no clear-cut evidence that a church is able to do both effectively over a long period of time. When launching a new church, you will need to decide which way you want to go. But choose your route carefullyCit may be hard to turn back.
Willow Creek is a good model for many aspects of church life. One thing it does well is fund raising. The leadership sends a couple of letters toward the end of every year, asking people to consider giving an amount above their tithe to building expansion. Because this is done every year, it is never a huge expenditure. Capital fund-raising goals should stay below 20 percent of the total budgeted giving. Most people like to give to buildings and are willing to do so annually, in amounts that do not strain their own budgets.