(Actually it is in Vista CA, hosted by North Coast Church, but San Diego is the local ‘port city’ I fly in and out of, and is better known than Vista.) The conference is sponsored by Leadership Network (www.LeadNet.org) as a prelude to the National Pastor’s conference. Since I am not a pastor, this is all that I have come out here for (well maybe also for some sunshine and warmth since I understand that PA is in the teens right now). My interest in this conference is to learn about a strategies for maintaining growth that may be helpful to churches that we work with.
Multiple sites and multiple venues are approaches for churches to grow in the very effective, efficient and expedient ways that have reached the capacity limits of their auditorium or parking. North Coast began offering video venues as a way of providing additional space when their auditorium reached capacity. Their auditorium sat 500 people, and they were in multiple-multiple services. They had tried to buy / build larger on another track of land, but neighborhood opposition and legal action prevented them from doing this without what was sure to be a lengthy court battle. So in 1998, they decided to try something new; using some additional space on-site to offer a different kind of setting for worship and then show the message on a video screen. Pastor Larry Osborne did not want this to be the typical overflow room where the late-comers are punished, but a desireable destination in its own right. They did this by serving Starbucks Coffee and refreshments that people could bring into the service and have a different style of live worship. As their initial capacity of 89 quickly filled-up, they added a second service in this same format and it filled-up too. So they added more types and different styles of worship in other rooms of the business park they’re located in, with varying music styles including traditional (hymns), country, edgy and more. The result is that they now have about as many people attending video venues (some off-site) as they have in the ‘live’ service. Today they average about 6,500 regular attenders, and their largest seating area is only 500! Their philosophy is simple: once they run out of seats or parking spaces, they find a new setting to continue growing. Lest you think that this only works in the ‘Land of Fruits and Nuts’ (CA), there are three other presenting churches that are using a multi-site approach successfully in other parts of the US. It is estimated today that there are 1,000 churches using some variation of a multi-site / multi-venue model. I will try to write about some of the other churches and how they are implementing it in the coming weeks.Â
I hope you are enjoying the good weather because it certainly is down right cold here. You referenced that there are many different styles of music and atmospheres- are any of them geared towards smaller children? If so, is there a children’s sermon that is provided from the live service? It can become very interesting where different portions of the live service are provided to different venues dependent on the desired input.