Developing leaders a growing challenge as Protestant churches add multiple locations
Many Protestant churches in the United States are expanding, with early one in 10 churchgoers now attending a multisite church. However, many of these churches struggle with developing proper leadership to keep pace with the growth.
“For many multisite churches, the growth is outpacing the infrastructure to support it and is often why the most common ‘stuck’ point is an insufficient number of people in the leadership pipeline,” according to new research reported in “The Christian Post.” “The key to multisite growth is having an intentional leadership-development culture, simple and clear organizational systems, and healthy relationships between ‘central’ and campus leadership.”
The Ascent Leader and Multisite Project released a report based on more than 1,800 multisite churches.
“The typical multisite campus is growing at an amazing 8 percent annually and it has an attendance of almost 400, which makes it many times bigger than the typical Protestant church today,” church researcher Warren Bird said. “Do you have to be a megachurch to go multisite? The resounding answer is `no.’ In our survey, 36 percent, ju
READ: Hamilton to Remain Senior Pastor After Senate Win
Research showed that an early criticism of the multisite movement was unwarranted: the fear that video preaching “will reduce the number of preachers to just a handful of incredibly gifted preachers that are seen by video all over the country,” he said. When asked if they had a teaching team defined as the lead pastor sharing the pulpit at least 10 times a year, 92 percent of multisite pastors said ‘yes.’
More than half of new campuses became financially sustainable within three years; 15 percent within one year or less; 18 percent within two years; 24 percent within three years; and 22 percent within four or more years. The remaining 21 percent are not financially sustainable or are not expected to become so.
Bird said first-year costs for building or acquiring new facilities vary widely. “The first-year costs are all over the map,” he said,” from one church that said nothing to another church in our survey that said their first-year costs were $35 million, and I presume that was for quite a sizable, lovely new facility.”
Although study author Jim Tomberlin said, “the biggest challenge in going multisite over the past 25 years has been finding a suitable facility,” he pointed to a newer challenge — a leadership shortage. “The multisite movement and churches individually are growing at a faster rate than their leadership pipeline can keep up with,” he said.
–Lee Hartman | Metro Voice
Photo: thirdman | pexels
