Multi-Site Church Revolution: Being One Church in Many Locations (Leadership Network Innovation Series) - Softcover

Geoff Surratt is on staff of Seacoast Church, a successful and high-visibility multi-site church. Geoff has twenty-four years of ministry experience in churches. Along with his wife and two children, he lives in Charleston, South Carolina. He is coauthor of The Multi-Site Church Revolution and author of Ten Stupid Things That Keep Churches from Growing.

Greg Ligon serves as Vice President and Director of Multi-Site Church Leadership Communities for Leadership Network, which involves location visits to over fifty multi-site churches. A capable writer, he also coauthored The Multi-site Church Revolution and is Leadership Network’s Publisher. He and his wife have two children and live in Dallas, Texas.

Warren Bird (PhD, Fordham University) serves as a primary researcher and writer for Leadership Network and has more than ten years of church staff and seminary teaching experience. He has collaboratively written twenty books, all on subjects of church health or church innovation. Warren and his wife live just outside of New York City.

The Multi-Site Church Revolution Copyright 2006 by Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon, and Warren Bird Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Surratt, Geoff, 1962 -- The multi-site church revolution : being one church in many locations / Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon, and Warren Bird. p. cm. --- (The leadership network innovation series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-310-27015-7 ISBN-10: 0-310-27015-4 1. Church facilities --- Planning. 2. Church management. I. Ligon, Greg, 1962 -- II. Bird, Warren. III. Title. IV. Series. BV604.S87 2006 254 --- dc22 2005034544 CIP All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked CEV are taken from the Contemporary English Version. Copyright 1991, 1992, 1995 by American Bible Society. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, copyright 2000, 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Scripture quotations marked MESSAGE are taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright by Eugene Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. Scripture quotations marked NKJV in this publication are from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible: New Living Translation, copyright 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189. All rights reserved. The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for their content for the life of this book. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means --- electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other --- except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Individuals may make photocopies or transparencies of the workouts at the end of chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. These may be used for classroom or church use only. Interior design by Nancy Wilson Printed in the United States of America 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 * 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 You Say You Want a Revolution? Meet several highly successful multi-site churches These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also. --- ACTS 17:6 ESV It is coming . . . a movement of God. Some even call it a revolution. On Sunday morning at Seacoast Church, where I (Geoff) serve on staff in Charleston, South Carolina, a band launches into a hard-driving worship chorus as lyrics and background images are projected on screens and television monitors throughout the auditorium. Everyone begins to sing along with the worship team. This describes the experience at many contemporary churches, except that this scene happens eighteen times each weekend in nine locations around the state, all of which are known as Seacoast Church. Using many different bands and worship leaders, Seacoast's eighteen nearly identical weekend ser vices represent the look of a church that chose not to fight city hall in order to construct a bigger building. We instead continued to reach new people by developing additional campuses. At another church across the country, a congregation just north of San Diego sings 'How Great Thou Art' in Traditions, one of six venues on the same church campus. North Coast Church in Vista, California, developed six different worship atmospheres, all within a few feet of each other. Traditions is more intimate and nostalgic, while other venues range from country gospel to a coffeehouse feel to vibrating, big subwoofer attitude. The elements unifying these six on-site venues are the message (one venue features in-person preaching, and the others use videocasts) and the weekly adult small groups, whose discussion questions center on the sermon that everyone heard, no matter which venue they attended. North Coast has now developed multiple venues on additional campuses, so that on a typical weekend in early 2006, worshipers chose between more than twenty different ser vices spread across five campuses. Over in Texas, Ed Young Jr., senior pastor of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, preaches every Sunday morning on four campuses --- Grapevine, Uptown Dallas, Plano, and Alliance --- all at the same time. Ed delivers his Saturday night message in person in the main sanctuary on the Grapevine campus. It is videotaped and viewed the following morning by congregations at the other venues via LCD projectors and giant projection screens, framed by live music and a campus pastor. 'We decided we could reach more people and save a huge amount of money by going to where the people are and doing smaller venues instead of building a larger worship center in Grapevine,' Ed says. In downtown Chicago at New Life Bridgeport, a small church meets in a century-old former United Church of Christ facility. The pastor, Luke Dudenhoffer, preaches a sermon that he's worked on with up to ten other pastors across the city. Each pastor leads a satellite congregation of New Life Community Church, which is known as one church in many locations. At Community Chris tian Church in Chicagoland, eight different drama teams perform the same sketch at eight different locations. Then up to three different teachers deliver a message they've developed collaboratively. Most ser vices have an in-person preacher, though some sermons are videocasts. These churches, and more than 1,500 churches like them across the country, are discovering a new model for doing church. Going beyond additional ser vice times and larger buildings, churches are expanding into multiple venues and locations, and many of them are seeing increased evangelism and even exponential growth as a result. The approach of taking one church to multiple sites seems to be the beginning of a revolution in how church is done in North America and around the world. When four university computers were linked together for the first time on something called ARPANET in the fall of 1969, there was very little press coverage of the event. Aside from the scientists working on the project, no one considered this event revolutionary; it was just an adaptation of concepts that had existed for many years. In spite of such simple beginnings, ARPANET, known today as the Internet, has revolutionized almost every aspect of our lives in the twenty-first century --- from how people get sports scores to how they buy airline tickets to how they size up a church before visiting it. Revolutions often begin with little fanfare. They are usually built on concepts that have existed for many years and are seldom recognized in the beginning as revolutionary. The measure of a revolution is its impact, not its origins. That is why we believe the multi-site church movement is revolutionary. The concept of having church in more than one location isn't new or revolutionary; the roots of multi-site go back to the church of Acts, which had to scatter due to persecution. Elmer Towns points out that the original Jerusalem church 'was one large group (celebration), and many smaller groups (cells). . . .