By Allen White Chris Surratt is a ministry consultant and coach with over twenty-two years of experience serving the local church. Most recently, Chris served on the Executive Team at Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN. Before coming to Cross Point in 2009, Chris was on staff at Seacoast Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Chris’s first book, Small Groups For The Rest Of Us: How to Design Your Small Groups System to Reach the Fringes, will be released by Thomas Nelson on September 29, 2015. You can find Chris blogging regularly at www.chrissurratt.com on the subjects of community, discipleship and leadership.
Q1. When we first met, you were the Greenville Campus Pastor for Seacoast Church. Seacoast the first multi-site church, and now there are over 8,000. What has changed with multi-site?
I would say that a lot has changed since we started experimenting with multisite in 2002. Very few churches were doing it, so no one had written books or started conferences about it yet. We felt like we were building the plane while we were flying it. While we made a ton of mistakes along the way, I don’t know that we would have tried it if we knew what we were doing. Churches are now opening up the definition of what a multiiste church can look like. Before, the only churches starting sites were mega-churches. Now, churches of all sizes are planting campuses. We saw it as primarily a band aid to growth capacity issues, but churches are now using it as an extension or a new expression of their ministry. People used to consider multisite a fad that would pass eventually. I don’t know that it will any time soon.
Q2. What NEEDS to change with multi-site?
There are still churches who look to multisite as a method for instant growth. With over 8000 multisite churches, it’s easy to want to jump onto the bandwagon and be a part of the movement, but not every church is ready or equipped to handle the issues that come with multiple locations. If your church is not currently growing in one location, and you still have capacity for growth, another location will not magically get it kick started. Cracks become gaps when you go multisite. Those same issues that are holding back potential now will travel with you to the next location. Put everything into making what you have now as healthy as possible, then consider multiplying it.
Q3. You just left the staff at Cross Point Church in Nashville to enter into the consulting world. I don’t understand why anyone would want to do that at all (wink). How can consultants help churches?
My family recently moved into a brand new house in downtown Nashville. During the process of moving in, someone (could have been me – no one really knows) took a chunk out of the wall carrying furniture up the stairs. Our first reaction was, we have to get that fixed as soon as possible, because it is going to drive us crazy to look at everyday. Two years later and it’s not fixed, and we never notice it anymore. The only time we think about it is when our small group comes to the house and lovingly points it out for us. No matter how amazing your church staff is, there is nothing like bringing in fresh eyes to see the cracks you have been staring at for months – or even years. A good consultant (like Allen or myself) can come in and walk alongside the staff to help maximize the good and fix the bad. My job is not to prescribe my way of ministry, but work with the leaders to make sure it fits their mission and culture.
Q4. I recently met your dad in Orlando with your brother, Greg. It seems a lot of pastor’s kids end up needing psychotherapy, yet the Surratt family now has generations of church leaders. What did your parents give you?
We have been referred to as the “Surratt Mafia” of the church world. I’m not sure if that’s good or not, but we should probably get nicer suits to wear. I think part of it is: we didn’t know anything else. My life has been spent in the church and I cannot imagine a better place to be. Growing up we had Sunday morning service, Sunday night service, Wednesday night Bible study, and revivals that would last for weeks. My mom would always say, “You don’t have to go to church, you get to go to church.” But, I never felt pressure to have to be in full-time ministry. My parents just instilled a love for the local church and the passion to help her reach the world with the Gospel. The methods have definitely changed with the generations of Surratts, but the mission has not. And, a follow up question, which doesn’t count toward the 5.5 questions, is the multiplication of the Surratt family the secret behind a multi-site church? Definitely with my brother, Greg. His kids have taken the “be fruitful and multiply” commandment personally.
As an introvert by nature, I have always felt left out by most small group systems. Between the connection hoops and the demand to share my secret sins in a room full of strangers, small groups felt like an intimidating concept. While thinking through how we could better design a system to reach people like me, I started running into other groups of people we were missing through our processes. If we were going to say we believed in community for everyone, what does that look like? The typical small group system is designed for the typical church attender. We have to begin thinking differently if we want to reach the people on the fringes. You’ll have to buy the book to find out how. 🙂 AW: I’m looking forward to it!
By Allen White A few days ago, I introduced the idea of the Microsite Church here on the blog. These are video “campuses” just like a multisite campus, except they can meet in much smaller places. Here are three reasons to consider them: 1. A Geographical Reason. The planning, budget and staff needed to launch a multisite campus in either a permanent or rented facility is quite an investment. While launching a campus in a small city or metropolitan area is a no brainer, launching in a small town or a rural community is indeed more of a “brainer.” If a church will repurpose the content currently used for its multisite campuses into a living room friendly version, a campus can meet in any town in any place in the world. In fact, a microsite campus could be the trial balloon for a multisite campus down the road or it can be a tool to reach a community that you haven’t reached before. 2. A Demographic Reason. Microsite campuses don’t have to be limited to remote areas. Think about how a microsite campus could serve even in a community that already has a multisite campus. Why would you need them? Getting to church is hard for some people. Job schedules, special needs children, health issues and other reasons make it difficult to travel or maybe even to fit in at a large campus. With microsite, you can bring the service to them. Some might object by asking why an online campus couldn’t serve them just as well. I am all in favor of using the internet to reach people. In fact, I had an online small group on CompuServe in 1992. But watching a service online is much different than worshipping in a community of believers. Issues that isolate people shouldn’t keep them out of a church community either. Microsite campuses are certainly a possible solution. 3. A Political Reason. I spent some time with the pastors of an awesome, rapidly growing megachurch in a metropolitan area recently. They are reaching the lost in powerful ways. But, there is one limiting factor — their city won’t allow them to build on the 400 acres they actually own! The political climate is completely unfavorable. Multisite could be the answer, but in this political environment, that could be shot down too. I made an offhand remark to them. My friends would be disappointed if I hadn’t. I said, “Maybe it’s time to just go underground.” I know that thought seems radical and extreme. It’s something we might imagine only under a dictator or a Communist regime. But, let’s face it, the church has lost the culture war and is living in an exceedingly secular climate. Microsite could serve two purposes here. The first is unbelievers who are invited to a microsite could not only experience the service, but see the Gospel lived out in the lives of the group gathered at the campus. Rather than watching the service projected on a large screen, their experience is more up close and personal. Second, it’s not illegal anywhere that I know of to have a dozen or so people over to your house. Some HOA’s might have parking restrictions. You’d have to abide by that, but it’s not impossible. Campuses would only be limited by the number of willing members who would open their homes to one. The final reason to consider microsite is that one the code is cracked for your first microsite campus, you have a unit of one. If it can work in one home, it can work in many homes. There are more thoughts to think and things to discuss. Join in on the conversation. I’d love to hear from you. Related Posts: The Rise of the Microsite Church NewSpring Launches Microsite Campuses This Year
Multisite churches have multiplied ministries and reached the lost very effectively over the past decade in the US. What started as a desperate need for expansion at Seacoast Church’s Mt. Pleasant, SC campus and the subsequent denial by their city council to let them expand led to the launch of a new model that duplicated services across counties, states and eventually countries in the case of churches like Saddleback. The fix to a zoning problem became a launch pad for evangelism. Now, for the next wave.
A while back on a coaching visit to Seacoast Church, Josh Surratt mentioned to me that a family from their church had moved to the state of Maine and had 40 people meeting in their living room every Sunday watching the Seacoast service online. I said to Josh, “Maybe it’s time to redefine what a campus is.”
Prior to this, a multisite campus had always been a designated building, either rented or owned, some distance from the main/broadcast/original campus that provided a pastoral staff, worship, children’s ministry and other things associated with a church. Now there’s an opportunity for a new model that requires less overhead and could be put in any situation in a town of any size anywhere in the world.
While many churches will reach into the suburbs or into other metropolitan areas, few churches are reaching into small places. I don’t think it’s on the radar to plant a multisite campus in Possum Kingdom, South Carolina, the hometown of Bo and Bear from the band Needtobreathe. If you’re not familiar with Possum Kingdom, it’s right next to Honea Path. There are a lot of towns that no one’s ever heard of before and some of them have very strange names but every town has a group of people who could make up a microsite church.
Now some would object and say, “Doesn’t every small town have some sort of a small church already?” and the answer is yes. The problem is that we live in a national culture. We watch the same television programs and listen to the same music whether we live in New York City or in Podunk Holler, Arkansas. Small churches in small towns cannot compete with what the culture has to offer. It’s just hard to get people’s attention. There are churches, however, that have proven to develop effective ministries in our culture that have a broad reach. By bringing a microsite campus into a small town, you can bring in the quality and effectiveness of a large church ministry and package it for a living room. You could reach not just thousands of people in a metropolitan area but dozens to hundreds of people in a small town. If you do the math, there are more people in small towns than there are in large cities.
The idea of Microsite Churches is seminal at this point. A few churches are beginning to pilot this model or are considering a pilot. Let’s think about the keys to a worship service: you need music of some sort which can be prerecorded on video with subtitles and offered in a living room either through a download or DVD. You need teaching. Teaching on video is very common. I worship at a very large multi-site church and the teaching is by video. I’m at a multisite campus I have only ever met the senior pastor one time, but the video teaching makes you feel like you’re really there. The fact is when churches have the pastors on a screen, people will watch the screen even if the pastor is teaching live in the room.
There are a lot of things to think through: giving, childcare, counseling, marriage ceremonies, etc. But, let’s start with these few paragraphs and discuss what might be next. What do you like? What do you not like? Leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
