Multi-Site Exposed

Monday and Tuesday my wife, Jill, and I attended the Multi-Site Exposed conference held at Seacoast Community Church in Charleston, SC. I really enjoyed learning from some of the pioneers of this strategy. I particularly was encouraged to hear that Seacoast has started 13 multi-site locations and has started 65 new churches in the last 6 years. Whoa.

I'll be posting some of the take-aways. Today, it's about leadership. This is a consistent message in everything I hear and read about multi-site: The single greatest correlating factor in a successful site comes back to the Campus Pastor. Here is what Seacoast staff have leaned about the characteristics of a successful Campus Pastor...

5 Behaviors of Successful Campus Pastor

• Enthusiastic visionary leadership, inspires others to own the ministry, and someone who can carry the church DNA
• Great team builder who spends time with people 
• Self-starter, resourceful, and has a managerial work ethic 
• Genuine care for people 
• Good communicator (shares about 5 times per year live). Must be able to sell the vision. 

5 Behaviors That Will Sink the Ship

• Unavailable to people or other staff
• Non-delegator 
• Inflexibility 
• Laziness 
• Lack of passion

Obviously, to have started 13 multi-site locations and 65 new churches in 6 years, Seacoast is doing something very intentional about developing these kinds of leaders. They shared what they do in the session they called "The Leadership Pipeline". That will be the next entry... 

And for those interested, the presenters suggested that the main difference between a Campus Pastor and a Church Planter came down to their gifting and desires in the area of teaching. While Campus Pastors need to be very good communicators, the church planter's need to be gifted (to lead an attractional style church.) 

I would suggest it also comes down to two other things. First, are they passionate about teaching weekly? (Which often comes hand in hand with gift.) A campus pastor may simply prefer to take the 20 hours of sermon prep time and pour that into people and ministry development. Another reason seems to me to be the leader's level of desire to either stick with the ministry style/ brand of the sending church or to branch out with a different ministry strategy, approaches, theological emphasis', etc. A new ministry model will likely mean a new church. Either way, more churches get started, and more people are being reached.