options for growing churches

Is your church growing? (If it is, you're doing better than 70 to 80% of the churches in America.) If so, what are you planning to do about it?

The auto-pilot response is, "Build." Expand the worship space, add-on and renovate, or ditch the existing facility and start all over. All good ideas, but a new one is beginning to take hold: broadcast.

Currently, seven of the top ten fastest-growing churches, according to Outreach Magazine's latest report, are multi-site campuses. Some stretch across town, others stretch across the country.

For the present, going multi-site may be a good solution for small churches that are growing quickly and may not have all the funds for a new or dramatically expanded facility. You only have to give your current worship space a face lift, add better lighting and video capabilities, and establish other campuses. These campuses can be partnering churches, coffee houses, or homes. They can support live worship, or broadcast yours. It seems to be working ... for the present.

I'd be interested to see demographics on people who attend satellite campuses. If anyone knows where that report is, please let me know. I'm guessing it's mostly people who are 30 or older, or in their 20's with a Christian background. I'm guessing, that is, that there are not a lot of millennials taking a keen interest.

Dr. Ed Stetzer, director of research for LifeWay, considers multi-sites "the new normal," according to a Christian Post article. I wonder.

Because we know that the emerging generation, the millennials, the digital natives, etc. are bored to death with broadcast. They haven't been raised on teevee like most of those attending multi-site campuses; they have been raising each other on the Web. They don't trust superstar personalities, they're not interested in being passive spectators, and they already don't like church/Christians. Can you imagine taking one of these kids to a satellite campus? I'm guessing she'd make some comment like, "I can do this at home, except my couch is more comfortable and I don't have to deal with these people."

The Church needs to look forward. Right now teenagers are difficult to understand and next to impossible to work with, but they're taking over. You are going to have to hand off the torch at some point. Your ministry is going to depend on their offerings. Your church will be trying to reach into their community and into their culture.

Multi-site campuses are working for now, and that's great. Keep them running as long as they're bringing people to Christ. Be watching the horizon, though, so when this generation finally swallows yours whole the Church can be ready to move into interactive, relationship-based meetings.