Multi-Site Workshop with Geoff Surratt

Kairos organized a multi-site church workshop this past weekend with Geoff Surratt (The Multi-Site Revoultion, The Multi-Site Road Trip, and Measuring the Orchard-free email download) hosted at the West Houston Church of Christ. Geoff did a great job giving the ten churches represented a thoughtful, experienced based overview of what are multi-site churches and how do they work?

A Thoughtful Challenge

Geoff challenged us right away to consider where our churches are on the growth/life cycle. A church can occupy several of these spaces at the same time. That was really good news. A church that is ready to multi-site will be in the parent stage where their purpose is to multiply and their fruit is new disciples. The challenge is that only 4% of all the churches in America will ever multiply, either through multiple campuses or through church planting. This implies that most of our churches are deliberately on birth control or are sterile by design. Ouch!

Some Great Questions
As a church looks at how it will fulfill God's mission of redemption (evangelizing) and transformation (discipling) Geoff asked us to answer these following five questions. Warning: these questions are not for the faint of heart or the blithe of spirit:

1.  What do we value as a church? These are our real, lived out values demonstrated by what we do, what we spend our time and money, and what we make decisions on.

2.  What are we uniquely good at? One church may be really good at worship experiences, another at teaching children, while a third is really good at discipling. Here's a caveat, the standard for "uniquely good" is not what we think, it is what those who are not part of us and who are not yet believers think about us. How can we know this? We have to invite them to observe then ask for their frank opinion!

3.  What is reproducible? Some things we might be able to reproduce really well while other good activities are not really reproducible at all at another time or place.

4.  What is dispensable? What are our traditions or habits that have developed because of our time

and space that we really don't have to and don't want to reproduce somewhere else? This is the place to ask about how beneficial and healthy our ministries really are. Do we have to reproduce in a new site every ministry that is operating at the original site?

What Most Impacts the Success or Failure of a Multi-Site Campus?

Answer: the campus pastor. 


Geoff was adamant: "At Seacoast church we will not hire a campus pastor unless he has been through church planter assessment."