Satellite Campuses

[Jeremy Seth]

What are your opinions on the multi-campus ministry model?

My church at home has for a few years operated a second campus in a school district building. We have a team that goes before, and stays after, to build and tear down all the equipment for the Sunday morning service. The two locations are only 14 minutes apart. We are now in the process of purchasing a permanent location to construct the second campus of the church by the temporary home.

Benefits I can see for the practice:

• Shared resources and expenses
• Association with established church
• Church planters having experience

Couldn't we achieve these things while still planting an entirely separate church?
Instead of Second Baptist Houston having 5 campuses, would "Barker Cypress Baptist Church" better function as an assembly of Christians in their area than "Second Baptist Church, Cypress Campus", since the leadership would be exclusively from that community?

I am by default (perhaps to-a-fault) skeptical of concentration of power, which I understand to be a common theme in the SBC, where there is high priority of the autonomy of the local church.

 

[annsni]

We are a multi-campus church with three campuses. Each church runs with it's own pastor (no video teaching) who is the campus pastor and runs it's own ministries and stuff. We definitely benefit from the home church because there is no way we could pay my husband and our expenses on what we bring in with offerings although we are getting close. (Oh - my husband is one of the campus pastors). We are about 26 miles away from the home church and the other campus is about 20 miles or so - and we are probably 10+ miles apart from each other.

I see positives and negatives with doing it the way we are doing it and I think it's important to think of each campus as being a church in that community FOR that community and not trying to reproduce what the home campus is doing. Meet the needs of the individual communities rather than trying to be a clone.

 

[preachinjesus]

I'm 50-50 on multi-site campuses. As a Baptist I believe all local churches should be autonomous and independent. While multi-site doesn't directly violate this principle, it often gets close and, in some instances, does violate the autonomy.

In high density cities and urban areas I think multi-site and merger based revitalizations are a great way to grow healthy churches and minister to the needs of many. Space is too costly to justify an auditorium for a regular Sunday gathering.

When I talk to leaders doing multi-site my first question is always: when will this campus be permitted to freely become it own church? I rarely get an answer with a timeline. Usually, most multi-sites are simply an extension of the brand of a church or the personality of a pastor...this isn't healthy nor a good ecclesiological model.

I do like the models like annsni describes, multiple teaching pastors and/or campus pastors empowered to lead their people. When this is accomplished in a close geographic arrangement I'm okay with the multi-site strategy. However, when a church just projects in a video of a pastor who is far away, there are, imho, massive ecclesiological problems. A campus, or church, which uses that model is more about the personality of a person over the Kingdom of Christ. Just my opinion though.