“Are we doing multisite right?“
The truth is, many churches launch multisite with great intentions but eventually find themselves stuck—operationally overwhelmed, financially strained, or culturally fragmented across locations.
In this series, we’re pulling back the curtain on what it really takes to build a healthy, sustainable multisite strategy. We’re starting with something a little different—we’re letting some church leaders we’ve served tell their multisite stories in their own words.
In this episode, you’ll hear from three pastors who have had very different experiences with multisite: Nick Cleveland from Grace Church in Wooster, OH; Christy Gibas from The Table Church in Pittsburgh; and Mike Reinsel from Stonecreek Church in Georgia.
Get crystal clear on who you are before you multiply. [episode 438] #unstuckchurch Share on X Don't go multisite to grow bigger; go multisite to reach more people. [episode 438] #unstuckchurch Share on X While tension is normal when you're leading one church in multiple locations, some tensions can start to derail your effectiveness as a church. [episode 438] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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More Episodes in this Series
Top Challenges of Multistuck Churches – Episode 439
Multisite Model Best Practices – Episode 440
Transcript
Sean:
Pastors, let’s be honest. Most of us would rather preach 10 sermons than talk to one lawyer. But here’s the good news. The Church Lawyers actually speak your language. This law firm has served thousands of churches of all sizes and denominations throughout the United States. They handle everything from church bylaws and employment issues to real estate transitions. There’s no judgment, no legal jargon. You’re just gonna find practical, sound legal advice. So check out the useful free resources and affordable membership options at thechurchlawyers.com.
Well, welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast. I’m Sean here with my teammate Amy Anderson. And when I say here with my teammate Amy Anderson, I actually mean here with my teammate in the same office. I don’t know if our listeners care, Amy, but we don’t ever sit together when we record these podcasts.
Amy:
We do not. You are in Indiana, and I’m in Minnesota, but thanks to Hockey.
Sean:
That’s right.
Amy:
You and your son Ty are here staying at the Anderson Inn, and we get to record something face to face.
Sean:
We are in the wonderful state of Minnesota. It is sunny. It is, I think, 50 in, we’re recording this in February, and it’s a great day to be here. So thanks for bringing the nice weather or creating nice weather for us while we’re here. We appreciate it.
Amy:
We try to host well.
Sean:
I don’t know that our listeners care that we’re in person today, but we’ll see if the podcast has any different flavor, since we’re actually sitting face to face, computer to computer today. But today we’re also kicking off a brand new series called Are We Doing Multisite Right? I think this is gonna be a great series. I’m really excited about what we’re gonna talk about. This is episode one of a three part series where we’re gonna dive deep into what it really takes to build a healthy, sustainable, multisite strategy.
Amy:
Yeah, I’m really excited about this one too. I know we talk about multisite a lot, but this one has a little bit different feel to it because we’re starting a little different than we normally do. We’re actually letting some church leaders that we’ve served tell their multisite stories in their own words. So today you’re gonna hear from three pastors who have had very different experiences with multisite. So Pastor Nick Cleveland from Grace Church in Wooster, Ohio, Christy Gibas from the Table Church in Pittsburgh, and Mike Reinsel from Stonecreek in Georgia.
Sean:
And then episodes two and three of this series, Amy, we’re gonna respond to kind of what we hear today from these three leaders and spend some time just unpacking multisite best practices and the top challenges that keep churches, what we would call multi-stuck, stuck in multiple locations. Alright, so Amy, let’s start today’s episode by listening in to your interview with Pastor Nick Cleveland from Grace Church.
Amy:
Well, I’m excited to talk to Pastor Nick Cleveland from Grace Church in Wooster, Ohio. I actually met Nick my first year working at The Unstuck Group and got to serve his church through, I know, you were going through succession and just, you were a growing church with lots of growing challenges. But Nick, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your church.
Nick:
Yeah, thanks for having me. This is totally a privilege. My name’s Nick Cleveland. I’m the lead pastor of Grace Church in Wooster in Medina. Rural places in Ohio between Cleveland and Columbus. And it’s a church that’s about 90 years old.
Amy:
Wow.
Nick:
And God’s Grace has been over it from one generation to the next. A unique thing is that we’ve only had three leaders in the last 77 years. And so there’s been longevity. And I came here in 2002 and I started as a youth pastor and the teaching pastor and kind of went through different roles on staff. But in 2016 when we went through succession and leadership, I was set up incredibly well by Pastor Bob Fetterhoff. And then, you know, obviously there’s kind of bumps in the road when you go through succession and whatnot. And then of course, COVID hit in 2020 and we all went through that. But since then, man, we’ve just seen incredible growth. God has been moving and we made, you know, Outreach magazine’s top 100 Fastest Growing Churches, which for a rural church is like what in the world.
Amy:
That’s great.
Nick:
And we’re seeing people, just families, everything. And so, yeah, we’re excited for what God’s doing.
Amy:
Well tell our listeners a little bit about your launch into multisite.
Nick:
Yeah. I think it came from a heart to want to do regional impact. We were a church that was pushed in 2000 historically at times here in our rural community. And we’re like, that’s about as big maybe as our community can handle. And we want to see the gospel go forward in lives, be changed in a regional impact way. And so that was our why behind it. And we wanted to multiply, you know, kind of what God was doing. We were already a multi-venue church. We had shifted to video teaching internally in 2015 for a traditional worship service. So we were familiar with that kind of approach, but we wanted to go outside of our walls and make a difference. And so we prayed, and we went through a long process of figuring out what it would look like. And we took a first step forward in 2022.
Amy:
And I believe in this decision-making process, you decided to do a live in-person teaching model for your multisite, right?
Nick:
Yeah. Yes and no. We started with a hybrid.
Amy:
Okay.
Nick:
So of course there’s live teaching, there’s video teaching, and then we had some friends who did a hybrid. And I thought, man, that makes a lot of sense ’cause we really didn’t know, to be totally honest. And I probably as a team, we probably didn’t listen to the experts enough on going pick your model and stick with it. And so we did 70% video teaching, 30% live teaching with the hope that we could increase that over time probably ’cause that was more traditional-type approach, thinking more rural context for us. And so that’s where we started. But it wasn’t very far into where we realized, hey, there’s some inconsistencies going on here and it’s affecting our potential for growth.
Amy:
Yeah. Talk about that. What were some of the symptoms that were indicating something wasn’t working well?
Nick:
Yeah, I think we knew what we wanted to replicate and we had said our approach to teaching, which is a very life application oriented approach. Like teach the Bible faithfully, but teach it for life change. Right? And that becomes increasingly difficult when you try to scale that. It was the reason we didn’t go to live teaching internally in our own venue. And so what I realized was, if you go video teaching, you’re gonna have people that probably don’t like video teaching. But if you go live teaching, you’re gonna have people that prefer one teacher over another. But when you do a hybrid, you get both. And we were getting frustration kind of all around the model wasn’t consistent. And so one week with video teaching from main campus, the next week with live teaching, it was just so inconsistent and it was stalling our growth. We were stuck. We were literally stuck.
Amy:
So growth started, you know, as you said that, it reminds me back to the worship wars era of churches, and churches that, you know, did a blended service. They didn’t pick their model. And no one was happy because Right. You know.
Nick:
Yeah. That’s exactly what it was.
Amy:
Well, you, when I got to work with you again this past fall, you had already been through this journey, but you had made the strategic decision to transition to a full video venue in your multisite. So why did you make that decision and how did you implement that? How did you reverse engineer your model?
Nick:
Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, I knew the inconsistencies. We had identified that we were stuck, that we needed something in order to grow. And you call it just God’s favor at the right time in the right place. We happened to be at a church in Phoenix visiting, and I had some access to a leader that I had really just no business getting access to. But he was very generous with me. And we started talking about this and they were fully video. So I kind of talked about, you know, their 20 campuses or whatever. We started talking about our situation and this is where he said, if you do live teaching, you’re gonna get live teaching problems. If you do video teaching, you’re gonna do video teaching problems. If you do both, you’re gonna get both. And I thought that’s it. So it really came down to a decision of who I wanted to reach.
Because as we went to video teaching and the brand and the content was more consistent. We were, it was connecting with new people. They don’t care. They don’t care. Church, you know, people that move in from other places, they might care more, but new people don’t care. They just want to hear a message that connects with where they are and helps them grow forward in their faith. They don’t really care how it is, so we just made the decision to stop what we were doing and go fully video teaching. And we just did it like almost overnight and said, this is what is best for our church and us. And really it came down to what kind of model we wanted to be. I think it was Larry Osborne that said one time, you’re either multi congregational, you’re multi venue, or you’re multi-site. And I think the live teaching, it can work in some context, but it almost, because vision comes out in teaching a lot.
Amy:
Right, right.
Nick:
Becomes multi-congregational. And that’s not bad. That’s a network. That’s fine. But we wanted to be multi-site and replicate what God was doing here and have that impact regionally. So we chose, we’re gonna be fully multisite and we’re gonna use video.
Amy:
Do I remember part of your story that you actually went to the location you launched and taught there for a few weeks to kind of cast vision to the folks as to what you’re doing? And didn’t you even put like a, “It’s an experiment; we’re gonna try it.” Can you tell a little bit about that, if I’m remembering it correctly?
Nick:
Yeah. Well, when we were hybrid, the thought was, well, maybe we should be rotating teachers, you know, live. And maybe that’ll help. And what I realized the very first time I stepped on the stage in our Medina campus was, oh, this is not a good setup because this is the second time I’ve preached this. And I’m going to just like blow this out of the water here. And that’s the expectation then. And so a setting the wrong expectation, rather than coming from one place to all kind of bouncing around, it might become follow your favorite preacher kind of an experience. Yes. And we were trying to not do that. And so we realized we gave that a short window and this is not working. So when we said, “We tried it; it didn’t work. We pulled the plug” said that is not the right thing. When we went to video teaching, we just said, this is where we’re gonna go, and we did it. And, you know, we’ve doubled our campus since
Amy:
That. That was my next question. So that was, what, about 18 months ago you went? Yeah.
Nick:
Yeah. A little under two years. Yeah.
Amy:
To full video. And how’s it going? How’s it going?
Nick:
It’s going fantastic. There’s still people from time to time that ask questions that need shepherded, that need coached. And you know, I think when people transfer in from another church, they wonder or whatever, but if you have groups and next gen ministry and clear next steps for people and community and you keep the teaching consistent, man, most people, they’re fired up. We just went to two services this fall.
Amy:
Nice!
Nick:
And so we’ve seen consistent growth through the fall. And even in the winter here; there were over 300 a couple weeks ago, which for that venue is fantastic, or that campus is fantastic.
Amy:
Yep.
Nick:
So we’re seeing the fruit of it. Lives are being changed, people are being baptized, they’re getting in community. All of that’s happening. So it’s exciting.
Amy:
Yep. Well for our listeners, maybe there are some pastors out there who are working on launching their first multisite. Just from your experience, what advice would you give churches that are getting ready to launch or thinking about launching their first location?
Nick:
Boy, far be it for me to give much advice other than to listen because there’s a lot of great people out there like yourself who have really provided great coaching, read the stuff. And I think we pastors all kind of know that our situations aren’t all that unique, but we like to play that they are. Right? So I’d be careful to pretend that you’re in the most unique situation on the planet. Obviously there’s our community, there’s our church, and there’s our staff. And that creates an espree, if you will, of who we are. We all have that unique DNA for sure. But it’s not so unique that it’s never duplicated anywhere else in the world. So listen to the advice. Pick your plan and go and just go reach more people for Christ. That’d be my challenge.
Sean:
Alright, Amy, that was a great interview with Nick. Love his insights. Let’s move now to your conversation with Pastor Mike Reinsel from Stonecreek.
Amy:
Well, pastor Mike, I’m so glad you’re with us today. I got to work with your church just a few years ago Stonecreek. And man, we had a great time together and you just have a unique story. So that’s why I wanted to interview today for our podcast series on multi-site. So let’s just start. Will you just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your church?
Mike:
Yeah. I’m Mike Reinsel. I’m the executive pastor at Stonecreek, which is in Milton, Georgia. I have been here for on staff for four years. It was our church home for our family about seven years before that. So Stonecreek is well familiar to us and to our family, but Stonecreek is 25 years old, so we just launched just had our 25th anniversary celebration.
Amy:
Wow. Fun.
Mike:
That was great. And Stephen Gibbs, our senior pastor, has been around for pretty much all of those 25 years and senior pastor for almost 20 of those. So it’s been really cool to see God’s favor in the last several years, though. I came on staff four years ago and we were worshiping about 825 in a week, and now we’re worshiping over 3000. So it’s just cool to see…
Amy:
That is incredible.
Mike:
God’s work and who he is leading to us.
Amy:
Wow. What you left out though, you’re in Milton, Georgia, home of the Milton’s Restaurant, which is the best steak restaurant in the world, I believe. So I need to get back to Atlanta just to go eat there again.
Mike:
Come on. We’re we welcome you anytime.
Amy:
With the butter sauce that accompanies it.
Mike:
This is a year for someone from Minnesota to get out and experience Milton.
Amy:
I completely agree. I completely agree. Well, tell us about your initial launch into multi-site years ago. Tell us a little bit of that story.
Mike:
Yeah, so we launched a campus called Elevate City Church, different name. We launched it kind of in the middle of COVID, so strategically not the best time to launch a new location. And this was just before I came on staff, so the language was always, we are one church in two locations. And as I came on staff and I started repeating that language and then looking at how we were behaving and how we were interfacing and I looked in the mirror, I just, I kind of felt like increasingly, like we were not one church in two locations; we were actually two different churches. And so if you look at the demographic makeup of who Elevate City was serving, you know, we jokingly say the average age was 15. It’s just, it’s a really young church, Stonecreek here in Milton, average age is 38 or 39.
So dramatically different in who we were serving and then the approach to do that. And so Elevate City was doing church one way in terms of length of service, style of service, all of that. And it was meeting the needs of their church really well. But yeah, they were speaking into Stonecreek and Milton, and it wasn’t meeting the needs or serving the people that were coming to Milton just ’cause it was a different people group, honestly. And so as we launched into that and started living that out, we started looking in the mirror and asking ourselves or probably me more than anybody, just some honest questions of why we’re doing it the way we’re doing it.
Amy:
Yeah. Tell us about what was your multisite model? What were some of the decisions you made in that?
Mike:
Yeah, so again, predated me, so I might not know all of the decisions, but instead of video campus, it was live preaching on both campuses. We were preaching toward the same kind of outline but how we were doing that was just different. And so if someone in Milton were to go down to Sandy Springs and experience Elevate City, they would probably say, this feels like a different church, not like Stonecreek in a different location so.
Amy:
Yeah. And kind of some wisdom in there. I mean, I don’t know if they knew this going in, but when you have two different mission fields, it kind of requires different ministry strategies. So I can imagine you had some autonomy in the systems in addition to just the live teaching. Tell me some of the symptoms that were indicating to you that it wasn’t working, that the current model wasn’t working, what were the pain points?
Mike:
Yeah. First one I would say is we were high on vision and probably lower on strategy and structure. That’s probably not uncommon in the church world. You know, senior pastors and campus pastors love vision, and the structure underneath it isn’t always there. We weren’t completely devoid of structure but had some issues there. I think as we added staff and added voices, there was just growing, some level of growing conflict and tension. And I think conflict can be good. I think disagreement can be good. We’re not all created to think the same way, but tension isn’t really good. And so there was this increasing tension that some of us felt, some of us maybe didn’t feel as much or, you know, in some cases might have been in denial of at some level. But there were no real decision-right documents, so you couldn’t default to, Hey, here’s how we’re gonna do, what we’re we agreed to do together. And so I’m, I’m a clarity guy, I say all the time I try and drive clarity. And so I just felt like there was a growing level of tension and a growing level of confusion instead of clarity.
Amy:
Yeah. I remember that during your staffing and structure engagement. We looked at leadership capacities, priority positions, and Yeah. Just even the feel in the room, we could sense that there was, it was getting hard. You guys made the brave decision to launch your first multisite into its own church. So what led to that decision? And then I wanna hear a little bit more about their story after you answer that.
Mike:
Yeah, I think I mean, I was newer to executive pastor role, and so I was learning a little bit as I went. It wasn’t like I was 20 years in the multi-site world.
Amy:
Right.
Mike:
So I read a bunch, talked to a bunch of people, talked to people who were doing it, from my assessment, well. And as I learned more and just I honestly, I think, it was just we needed an outside objective voice to speak into us to say, Hey, here’s what we see. So we were there was a growing tension as we had different perspectives. And so, honestly, this isn’t a commercial for Unstuck Group but maybe it is. We invited y’all in to be a trained, equipped, experienced and objective voice to walk into our environment. And start asking questions that led us to ask the important question.
And honestly, it was the campus pastor of the new multisite and our senior pastor, Steven Gibbs and me in a room and your consultant, Unstuck Group consultant, said, Hey, here’s what I see. I think you need to make a decision around that. And so the decision wasn’t completely unified and not everybody agreed, and not everybody felt great about it. But we knew that it was the right decision. And I just love Stephen Gibbs. He’s got an amazing heart. And I know he’s aligned to the heart of God, and so, you know, I know he was prayerful about it, and he’s the one that said, Hey, I think it’s time to release you to be autonomous.
Amy:
Yeah. Those are, if I remember right, you were about halfway through our process and we just stopped because that decision had to be made.
Mike:
Yeah. Exactly.
Amy:
And then we built your new multi-site plans around that decision that you were gonna be much more identical in your approach going forward. Tell me how the church is doing today. What has their story been? What was this about 18 months ago that they became their own church?
Mike:
We released them to be autonomous January of last year or so they’re about 13 months into that.
Amy:
And how are they doing?
Mike:
That’s the great thing. Yeah. I mean, if you look at the book of Acts similar to the book of Acts, sometimes disagreements lead to the growth of God’s church. That’s just how he I think he redeems and restores what he allows. And so if you go down to Elevate City, they’re bigger and better than they’ve ever been. I mean, they’re crushing it down in Sandy Springs. Our growth here in Milton is just crazy. I mean, unprecedented in the life of our church. And so, yeah, I think that that decision, even though it wasn’t totally agreed on by everybody, and even though everybody wasn’t fine, I just believe was the right decision. And God’s honored that in the growth of his church.
Amy:
Yeah. How large were they when you launched them to be their own church and where are they at today?
Mike:
Yeah, so they were worshiping I think about 350 ish. They were in a high school at the time, and now they’ve got their own location. We kind of helped them do all the renovations and fund some of that. So they’re worshiping over a thousand now, and they’ve actually multiplied.
Amy:
Oh my goodness.
Mike:
So they’ve got a campus that they launched October of last year. So it’s just a great God story.
Amy:
Yeah. And it does require, I think, when a church decides to release one of their locations an investment from the sending church. Right? I’m sure you help them financially and help them get their plans put together. They have to build their operations team. I was just talking with another pastor friend of mine in Modesto, and they’ve made the same decision through a process, through our process, and he had some of the same things to say just how well they’re doing and they’re thriving. And it’s going really well, but it also took their sending location to invest in that and help them get on their feet.
Mike:
Yeah, exactly. And Joey McLaughlin, who is the pastor at Elevate City the one we released autonomously, I mean, he’s a rock star, he’s just crushing it. And I honestly releasing him helped him step, I think, to helped him stepped into all the things that he was really gifted to do and maybe wasn’t doing because he wasn’t empowered to do them. And to see him lead now it’s incredible to see the growth of the church and how he’s leading that team there.
Amy:
Well, you are still a believer in the multi-site process, and I was thinking you were about to launch a location, but you’ve actually launched it. What are you doing differently this time and tell us that story.
Mike:
Yeah. A lot. And again, not a commercial for Unstuck Group, but maybe it is. We did a consult with y’all and had several different people come and help us with that and speak into that. So lots of things that we have done differently. One is the strategy and structure and the staffing for that to be able to say, Hey, here’s what our staffing structure looks like today. Here’s where we’re aiming. Here’s from a just decision rights, as an example, we didn’t really have a decision rights document, and now we’ve got the full playbook that we have built out.
Amy:
Love it.
Mike:
In launching our first true multi-site that when God leads us to launch another one, which we’re already talking about that we pull out the playbook and we know, hey, first thing we gotta do is identify God’s leader. Second thing we gotta do is location. Those are the two. We can’t get those wrong, and we learned that through Unstuck Group. So yeah. Lot lots.
Amy:
And are you going much more identical in your ministry strategies now? How are you doing teaching? How are you doing kind of, you know, discipleship strategies? Is everyone running the same plays or are they different?
Mike:
Yeah, so not identical. I mean, it’s expressed differently in our Forsyth campus, then our Milton campus a little bit. But it’s video teaching, so they’re hearing consistently whoever’s on the platform in Milton is video in Forsyth. I think that’s been a big thing. And honestly, that frees up. Sean Curry is, was our student pastor, and he’s our campus pastor in Forsyth. And he’s such a great relational leader, and this just frees him up with more time to build his church and to grow those relationships and to disciple people and to care for the flock and all of that. So it’s really the model that that works, that Unstuck said, Hey, here’s what works. You don’t have to do it, but we work with hundreds and hundreds of churches and here’s what works. And we’re, we’re smart enough to say, okay, maybe we should try that.
Amy:
Well, you are four years in and you’ve got our audience listening. What advice would you give to those pastors or leaders who are thinking about or planning on going multisite in this next ministry run?
Mike:
Yeah. Probably more things than we have time for, but first one is, I would say just get crystal clear on who you are before you multiply. I think sometimes you rush into multiplying for a variety of reasons. Maybe it’s just excitement or passion or calling. But get crystal clear on who you are before you multiply. The second thing I would say is don’t go multi-site to grow bigger grow; go multi-site to reach more people. We said when we launched our campus, we’re out of space here in Milton, but we weren’t launching a campus in Forsyth because we’re outta space. We launched a campus in Forsyth because there are lost people in Forsyth that we’re uniquely gifted to reach, and so that spoke to our people well.
The next thing I’d say is just do your research. I read a lot. I talked to a lot of people. Our staff talked to lots of people. There’s no sense in recreating the wheel. There are people who have done this and done it well and successfully. And I think we should learn from those people. And again, sometimes we rush into, especially visionaries rush into things, without doing all the research. And it’s all out there. So and then what I said earlier, I think focus on who’s gonna launch and where you’re gonna launch. You can miss on some things, but you can’t miss on those two.
Sean:
Amy, loved that conversation. Mike’s insights were really helpful there. Last but not least, let’s move to your conversation with Pastor Christy Gibas from the Table Church.
Amy:
Christy, I’m so glad you’re on the call today. Christy is the lead pastor at the Table Church in the Pittsburgh area, and she and her team were actually the 700th church that the Unstuck Group got to serve. Took me about six months, but I finally got some Crumble cookies sent over to you. Did you enjoy those?
Christy:
Oh, the team was so happy when they arrived. Yes, thank you for sending those. We sure enjoyed them.
Amy:
I love it. You lead a great church, The Table Church. Can you just tell us about your church before we dive into your story?
Christy:
Sure. so we were actually founded as Crossroads Church in 1991. So we are 35 this year. We were founded by pastor Steve Cordle. And he just had this conviction that he wanted to reach people who wouldn’t typically go to church. And so we started in a bar called The Tony Dale. That’s, you know, essentially where they started with a, with a handful of people and grew over the years. But just with this conviction that we exist for people who are not yet here. Over the years, we’ve expanded you know, of course. So we went multi-site 21 years ago in whatever that was, but it was 21 years ago.
Amy:
Numbers.
Christy:
Yeah. So we grew to five locations. Two of those locations were ones that we kind of took in, which I don’t recommend. Those locations are no longer with us. We closed one during COVID; it was in the city, and we closed it during COVID. And then the other one I closed shortly after becoming lead pastor, maybe about four months in. And it wasn’t the sense of like, oh, you know, they were struggling, you know, financially or anything like that. We just didn’t have alignment in terms of philosophy of ministry.
Amy:
Sure.
Christy:
And so, it was a hard but necessary thing to do. And all of those wonderful folks are thriving in other churches. And so I feel really great about that. Wasn’t a fun thing to walk through, but it was good. So, you know, I became lead pastor. I’ve been with the church this will be 11 years this year. And I became lead pastor two years ago. And it’s been quite an interesting journey, and I’m really thankful and you know, just to be on this journey. We have a great team. And so at this point, we are three locations in the West Hills of Pittsburgh is our sort of our founding location and then also the South Hills of Pittsburgh. And then we have a location in Weirton, West Virginia, which sounds far away, but it’s like 20 minutes down the road so.
Amy:
Talk to me a little bit about when you brought Unstuck in to serve your church. What were the pain points you were feeling at that point?
Christy:
Yeah, so the major pain point we were feeling was staff alignment, campus alignment. We’d been working on this for about two years, maybe three at this point. And our operations director, Jordan Grogan, you know, Jordan, he came to me and said, yeah, I think we need Unstuck to come in and help us. And I’m like, we’ve made so much progress, but I’m so glad that we did because there are things that we just didn’t know what we didn’t know, to be honest.
Amy:
Yeah.
Christy:
And so even with all of the experience and all of the things that we had been through over 21 years, there was so much that we learned and so much that we could apply to help us get less unstuck, you know, or help us get more unstuck. Sorry, more unstuck is the word less stuck?
Amy:
So less stuck.
Christy:
Less stuck. Yeah. So basically we didn’t ever consider playbooks or decision rights or any of that, which was really challenging. But we didn’t know it, you know, we didn’t know, oh, this is a challenging thing that’s kind of creating drag on our organization. So those were some major pain points that we were having. And in terms of staff alignment, you know, we’ve had several staff that were with us that were great people, and just, again, philosophy of ministry maybe wasn’t the same or looking at wanting to do things in a similar way or, you know, Hey, this is the way that The Table Church does this. Kind of looking at it more as control than alignment. And so there was some challenges there, but I really feel like we’ve overcome so many of those challenges.
Amy:
I love that.
Christy:
It’s, you know, just taken away the organizational drug that we’ve had.
Amy:
Yeah. I watched light bulbs go on when I was in the room with you around things like decision rights, and even when we built out the action level of the pyramid, bringing clarity to what the winds look like. Let me jump back to your multi-site model then. It probably looks different today than it did two years ago, but what parts of your multi-site model were causing you stuckness when you thought about opening more locations, you know, the reproducibility of the current model?
Christy:
Yeah. Well, I mean, there are a lot of things that were issues that would create stuckness for reproducibility. First of all, when you walked into one of our locations, it wasn’t obvious that it was The Table Church. It wasn’t obvious that this was one of our locations even, you know, just aesthetically looking at the place. It did not look the same or feel the same everywhere. And so that was one of the changes that we had to make, which interestingly enough, you would think would be one of the easier fixes that okay, we’re no longer going to, you know, just buy a random piece of furniture. If you need a chair, this is this chair, this list that you get, and this is, you would think that would be you know, who cares? No, it was, it was a challenge, but we, I think people see the value in it now because it makes us more excellent just aesthetically; it’s more aesthetically pleasing, just it looks the same. So when you go somewhere, and we’re still working on that, you know, there are still things that don’t, it takes a long time, it takes a lot of energy and money to make that happen. But I think that’s one of the things, like even just the look of the place, it has to be similar. So that’s one thing.
The other thing you know, we do live teaching and one of the things that I thought, you know, going into this, I’m like, you know, I’d really like to do more video teaching. And so we had to make an investment, and that was a, you know, financial investment that we had to make Yeah. In order for it to be good quality. And we’ve done more video teaching. We’ve not like pulled the trigger and we’re, you know, a video, you know, we don’t do all video now, but we do more video teaching. And I think that’s been helpful to have us have that one-church feel, and folks know who we are. It’s not like, okay who is this? Who is this Pastor Christy that’s showing up here? No. They know who we are now and that we are one church. And so that’s been helpful as well. But yeah, those were a few of the things that we thought, these things need to change in order for us to reproduce what we’re doing.
Amy:
Well you have the ear of our listening audience on the Unstuck podcast. You have, you know, you weren’t in the lead seat through all of your multi-site decisions, but you’ve been on the journey for over 11 years. What advice would you give ministry leaders right now who are maybe feeling a little bit stuck in their multi-site model? Any advice you’d give them on next steps they should take?
Christy:
Yeah. So for us, it was really helpful to get just an outside perspective. When you’re swimming in the water for so long, you don’t realize, you know, goodness, there might be a better way to do this, and there might be something more strategic that we could be doing. And so getting that outside perspective was really golden for us. I was just like, in the beginning, Amy, I have to tell you know, in my brain, I was thinking to myself, you know, I’m just ready to unwind this thing. You know, at some point I’m thinking, yeah, we could probably just unwind this thing, and it would be okay, but really getting some processes in place was really helpful. Some processes that stopped that organizational drag, it was so beneficial to us. And just having that outside perspective tell us, Hey, it’s not broken here. You just need a few things that are gonna help you. And so that was really helpful for us.
And then again, just going through that process helped us to dream again about what could happen in the future and what God might be doing in the future at the Table Church. And it helped me personally say, okay, we’re gonna actually stretch and go for more, that’s you know, beyond what we could ask or imagine. And so that’s what we’re doing at this point. So again, I say like, right now we have some things that are percolating in the city and then to the north of us in Beaver County. And so going through the process was really helpful to get some things on paper for us. And it was helpful to get things on paper to articulate what I could start seeing in my mind’s eye. And so now our team can actually see on paper like, Hey, these are the things that strategically God is calling us to go for. And it, so it helped us to you know, it gave us the faith to take some leaps forward, if that makes sense.
Amy:
Yeah. And it kind of brought your team together so that you’re all pulling in the same direction.
Christy:
In a big way.
Amy:
That’s kind of what I was observing happening.
Christy:
Yep. In a big way. People are, were working on playbooks together and you know, so it was really things, it took a lot of work. But, it was really things that brought our team together. And so it was so beneficial. Our team is very close and very tight, and we all understand the win. And so that’s important. Our staff you know, down to a part-time person understands what is the win? How am I contributing here? What is the win for my role? And so that has been really important to define that for each person.
Sean:
Well, Amy, that was a great way to kick off this series by hearing from these three leaders, I mean, real world stories from real multi-site churches, navigating some of those challenges. I can’t wait to debrief all of that over the next two episodes with you.
Amy:
I want you to know how disciplined I was to just listen because I had so many thoughts going through my head. But yes, all three of them, such wonderful pastors and people. Thanks so much to pastors, Nick, Christy, and Mike for giving their time to share their learnings. Again, I have a lot of thoughts and response, but we’ll unpack those over the rest of this series. And you know, Sean, you just said it, but it’s so helpful to hear someone’s story, isn’t it?
Sean:
It is.
Amy:
I mean, it brings real challenges and principles to life in a way that, I don’t know, it sticks with me. All three pastors, they just used great words and illustrations to describe and bring clarity to the challenges and the tensions that they were feeling. And I’m guessing that our listeners, those that are a part of a multi-site church, found at least one part from one story that they can relate to.
Sean:
Well, before we let everybody go back to their full plates as ministry leaders, Amy, any final thoughts that we should leave them with?
Amy:
Yeah, like I said, all three pastors started to feel some tension in their multi-site models. And while tension is normal, when you’re leading one church in multiple locations, some tensions can start to derail your effect as a church. So if you’re leading a multi-site church right now, I encourage you to think through the tensions in your model, write ’em down, name ’em. I think that simple exercise will help you evaluate which ones are the ones that are normal and maybe what are the ones that are more of a warning sign that something deeper needs to be addressed. How you start multi-site doesn’t mean that will be your model forever. And as each of these churches demonstrated, they held tightly to what God was calling their church to, but they held a little more loosely to the how and they pivoted where they needed to. So maybe there will be a pivot you discover as you think through your specific tensions and as you listen to the rest of this series.
Sean:
Well, that’s a good reminder. Well, if you’re a multi-site church leader in any of these stories resonated with you, whether you’re considering a first campus, you’re managing multiple locations, or you’re wondering like some of these leaders, if it’s time to rethink your approach, we’d love to help you create a clear path forward. At The Unstuck Group, our multi-site consulting process helps churches develop what we would call sustainable strategies that work for each church’s unique context. We’ll help you assess your readiness, structure your team for success and avoid some of the costly mistakes that gets churches multi-stuck. So you can learn more about that and how we help churches at theunstuckgroup.com/multisite. Next week, we’re back with episode two of this conversation, so we hope you’ll be back for that episode with us.
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