A CT blog that struck my attention today is by Ed Stetzer, a pastor, professor, executive, and writer from Tennessee. The post is about multi-site churches. Essentially, multi-site churches have a pastor preach in a church with a camera that telecasts the message to other congregations which align themselves under the church government of the original church.
The Multi-Site
“I am critical of the multi-site done poorly, and I am in favor of the multi-site done well…”
Stetzer is circumspect about the idea. He has criticized multi-site churches in the past. In that post, he mentions three areas where they could fall short: fulfilling pastoral responsibilities (esp. caring for members), creating Christian community, and producing new leaders and teachers.
I would add one more concern: the inability of the congregation to observe the example of the pastor. It’s possible for a pastor to delegate responsibilities of governance and care to other people, but it’s impossible to delegate relationships. Yes, the pastor must be with his congregation to know them… and they should know him, too! For the congregation, the consistency of the pastor’s life is the necessary background of his sermons.
Can It Work?
In his post, Stetzer writes that a multi-site church responded to his concerns.
They wrote to him showing that, especially in response to his third concern, their multi-site church has reproduced many leaders. In his words, their lead pastor “…demonstrated that [a] multisite like this can build leaders who aren’t called to be the primary pastor, while simultaneously developing leaders who have the right make up to be the key vision caster.”
While I agree with Stetzer’s concerns about multi-site churches, I don’t agree with him here.
Pay attention to the wording: “…this can build leaders who aren’t called to be the primary pastor…” Because the word “called” is in the passive voice, the sentence is ambiguous. Who is not calling? What if God is, but the church isn’t? It would be better to say, “This builds potential leaders who cannot become the primary pastor.”
The multi-site church’s biggest flaw is that it prohibits that possibility. A willingness to engage in church-planting, rather than strict adherence to the multi-site model, would change that. Church satellites could become actual churches as leaders took on local responsibility for preaching and leadership. This would make real leaders — not just potential leaders.
The Church as Engine
Stetzer continues by saying that, while these people can’t be lead pastor, the multi-site model develops, “… leaders who have the right make up to be the key vision caster.” I don’t know what a vision caster is. The Bible doesn’t ever refer to that. I think it may be a synonym for lead pastor. If it is, these leaders must necessarily leave the multi-site church and either start another church or find another church in order to utilize that ability.
Is the video screen experience worth preserving at the expense of creating & installing local pastoral leaders?
I think it’s better to acknowledge a leader when one exists. Acknowledge the benefit of a local lead pastor who grew up in the church (if he truly is competent for the task) over the one that comes in through a screen.
Stetzer concludes with suggesting a model of, “…regional multisites that are leadership development engines, sending out planter pastors and campus pastors (depending on the gifting and call of the pastor) to start churches or sites that reach lost people and develop more such leaders.” In this suggestion, Stetzer commends multisite churches to remain so. Rather than encouraging leaders to be given lead pastor responsibility within the church in a satellite locale, he wants them out of the multisite. They need to start their own churches.
Something to Shoot For
The idea of confining churches to remaining multi-site at the expense of giving over satellite congregations to God-given leaders seems unnecessary.
If a church grows really fast and wants to have another site…fine. But I think this is a temporary stop-gap at best. Let’s turn these multi-site churches into church plants that can grow and flourish with local overseers who lovingly shepherd them and apply the Word to their lives every Sunday.
Think of it like this: if Paul lived today, would he still let Timothy be the pastor of the church of Ephesus? Or would he rather just have Timothy introduce Paul’s broadcast Sunday morning, run a small group, and make all the hospital visits around Ephesus?
Postmortemism 