Top Challenges of Multistuck Churches – Episode 439

Are we doing multisite right? (Part 2)

No one goes into multisite thinking, “This model isn’t going to work.” 

Everyone starts for the right reasons: more people reached and more communities engaged.

But over time, tensions begin to show up. And not just normal complexity, but the kind that starts to impact clarity and limit effectiveness if you don’t pay attention to it.

Last week, Sean and I interviewed 3 leaders about their experience with multisite. All three pastors made the case that how you start multisite doesn’t have to be your model forever.

In this episode, Sean and I reflect on the take-aways from those stories and start pulling out some of the common challenges we see churches facing in multisite. 

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Before you can execute effectively, you have to define what multisite actually means for your church. [episode 439] #unstuckchurch Share on X Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is just change course. [episode 439] #unstuckchurch Share on X If you’re feeling tension in your multisite model right now, do not see it as a failure. See it as an invitation to get clarity, to seek wisdom and make the pivots you need to make. [episode 439] #unstuckchurch Share on X

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More Episodes in this Series

Multisite Church Case Studies – Episode 438
Multisite Model Best Practices – Episode 440

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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.

Welcome to The Unstuck Church Podcast. I’m Sean here with Amy Anderson. And last week we kicked off a new series around a question we’re hearing everywhere right now: Are We Actually Doing Multisite Right? And honestly, the answer isn’t as clean or simple as most of us would like it to be. In the first episode, we heard from three church leaders who are all living in very different multisite realities. Mike Reinsel shared what it looks like to unmultisite and then to step back into it again with fresh eyes. Christy Gibas walked us through the challenge of bringing five independent locations into real alignment, not just in name, but in practice. And then Nick Cleveland talked about making the tough decision to pivot their teaching model when what they were doing just wasn’t serving the mission anymore. 

So today we wanna slow down a bit and reflect on what we actually learned from those stories, and then start pulling out some of the most common challenges we see churches facing in multisite. Amy, you interviewed all three of these leaders. When you think back on those conversations, what stood out to you most?

Amy:

Yeah, all three pastors, they started to feel some tension in their multisite model. And again, while tension is normal, when you’re leading one church in multiple locations, some tensions you have to pay more attention to because they can actually kind of derail your effectiveness. And I think all three of them made the case that how you start multisite doesn’t have to be your model forever. And as each of these churches demonstrated, it’s possible to hold tightly to what God’s calling you to do. But hold a little more loosely to the how and pivot when needed. They all just demonstrated the courage, to do that.

Sean:

What stands out to me is that none of these leaders went into multisite thinking, this model isn’t going to work. Right? 

Amy:

Right. 

Sean:

They all started for the right reasons. More people reached, more communities engaged, but over time, each of them began to feel the tension that you’re talking about and, you know, not just normal complexity, more the kind that starts to impact clarity and limit effectiveness if you don’t pay attention to it. So let’s break this down a bit. What are the top challenges these churches faced and the ones multisite churches everywhere are likely facing right now?

Amy:

So I think the first common challenge was just a lack of clarity of what their multisite model was. So I, you know, we preach this all the time. Before you can execute effectively, you have to define what multisite actually means for your church, right? Are you going to be independent and give a lot of autonomy in multisite? Are you gonna be more controlled and highly identical or somewhere in between? And without clarity on your model, churches struggle to make decisions and maintain alignment across locations. 

And this is where I think Christie’s story really highlighted this. And again, if you haven’t listened to the first message in this series, it’ll be important to go back. So you can walk into some of these examples. But at the Table Church, they had five locations, but they were operating more like five independent churches. There wasn’t a clear mission, a unified identity or shared expectations. Everyone was just doing their own thing trying to lead their church well, which made it impossible to scale effectively. And that’s actually, she didn’t share this, but they have this huge vision of how many “tables” they wanna create. That’s their small group strategy. And they just recognize that their multisite model, as it was, was going to be the lid to them actually accomplishing that vision. So just, you need to have clarity in your multisite model. 

Challenge number two, related, none of them had a playbook. So even if you know your model, you need clear rules within that model. Who gets to make what decisions? Central leadership campus teams, what’s negotiable, what’s non-negotiable. And I think without a playbook, churches can kind of lose the we in how we’re doing multisite. It turns into us and them, you end up with confusion, inconsistency in how ministry’s being delivered, and of course that tension between central and campuses. I think Mike Reinsel from Stonecreek said it perfectly. He said they were high on vision and lower on strategy. But they knew they wanted to be one church in two locations, but they didn’t have the systems, the structure or the clarity to make it work. And don’t get me wrong, vision is critical, but without a roadmap, like a playbook, again, you end up with confusion and tension. 

Challenge number three, teaching model tensions, live teaching, video teaching or hybrid. Each has its own challenges. And here’s the deal. We find this decision and what the teaching model is, has predictable outcomes and our data supports it. I don’t wanna go into that today because as a church, you have to make that decision. But this decision isn’t just a logistical decision, it really shapes the entire weekend experience at your church, your front door. And Nick’s experience, with the hybrid model was eyeopening: some weekends, live some weekends on video. I really liked his quote about how a hybrid model, he quoted, he said, let’s see if you do live teaching, you have challenges. If you do video, you have challenges. If you do a hybrid, you have all the challenges. And hybrid, it might sound like a compromise or maybe an elegant solution, but it actually created inconsistency for them and stalled their growth. I, you know, people, they wanna know what to expect when they show up or more, I should say, when they invite people to church, if they’re unsure what to expect, they won’t invite. And that’s a problem for any church. 

Sean:

Those are three big challenges. And what I’m hearing underneath all of this is that, you know, a lot of churches that get multi-stuck didn’t choose necessarily a multisite model. It’s more like they drifted into one. If that makes sense. You know, they had an opportunity, they opened a building, a campus launched, for a lot of them, growth happened and then suddenly, “Congrats!” You know, now you’re a multisite church. They’ve got multiple locations, multiple opinions and multiple versions of what one church is supposed to mean. So yeah, the lack of clarity, no playbook, teaching tension, tensions around the teaching model. Those are huge. I’m guessing though that those aren’t the only layers here because you know, once you start pulling on that one thread, usually you find a lot more things lurking under the surface. So what else surfaced in your stories with them, Amy?

Amy:

I think challenge number four would probably be just the underinvestment in new locations. And Mike mentioned this; he said they did not invest enough in Elevate City from the start. You know, when you launch a new campus, but you don’t give it the resources, staff and attention it needs, you’re setting it up for a struggle. multisite isn’t just about opening doors, it’s about effectively transferring your ministry experience and then sustaining that. Once you start and you know this, Sean, when you open a new location, people are gonna check it out. Whether it’s your regulars kind of checking it out to go, will I invite my friends here? Or new people in the community? And if it doesn’t really feel like your church, again, your regulars, even if they attend that campus, are gonna be slow to invite people. 

Sean:

Exactly.

Amy:

Another challenge was just I, my words and identity crisis, right? Are we one church or many? And this came up in different ways for all three churches we talked to. Mike’s team, for example, realized Elevate City and Stonecreek, the sending location, were functioning as two different churches. They were reaching two different mission fields. Christy, she was working to move from less independent to more identical in there. So the question every multisite church has to answer is, what does one church multiple locations actually mean for us? And that goes back to model as well. Just this identity crisis, I think can emerge in a challenge in a multisite context. 

And then just the last one, it’s the wisdom to know when to pivot, or maybe even on multisite. You know, Stonecreek’s decision to release Elevate City as an autonomous church, that was not a failure. Right? It was wisdom. And I love how both churches thrived after the separation. 

Sean:

Yeah. 

Amy:

You know, Stonecreek grew; Elevate City grew. They were freed up to do what it takes to reach their unique mission fields. So sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is just change course. It’s not easy. I don’t wanna make it sound like it’s easy pulling things toward back from autonomy to control—that’s harder than being controlled and trying to loosen up autonomy. But as you know, as you noted Sean, at the end of episode one holding tightly to the calling, but loosely to the how is absolutely critical, especially early on in multisite. Part of Nick’s story is that he made the change pretty early when he sensed the tension. It’s harder to change those things if you’ve been running those plays for five, six years.

Sean:

Yeah. Yeah. And I love that you said the wisdom of knowing when to pivot. You know what Mike and, and the team at Stonecreek did was they brought in some outside eyes to help them understand was it best to unmultisite or was it best to stay together as one church in two locations? And that’s gonna be a different story for every church, right? Unmultisiting is not the best move for every single church that is multi-stuck right now. So the wisdom behind that and having an outsider get fresh eyes is really important. 

Okay. So those are the challenges. And if you’re a leader that’s listening right now thinking, well, this sounds a little too familiar to me, first, congrats. You’re normal. Right? Because the reality is that most churches don’t hit these challenges because they’re trying to do something wrong. They hit them because over time, multisite just gets complicated. You add locations, you add people, you add layers, and if you’re not intentional, pretty soon you’ve got one church with multiple personalities trying to function like a unified family. And that’s hard. And you know what? Enough churches have gone multisite now that we can predict the challenges that you’ll run into. So if a church leader’s listening right now and thinking, yep, we’re experiencing at least one of these. Amy, what do you recommend they do next?

Amy:

Yeah. Well, first, again, like I said last week, you have to name the tension. Like, don’t ignore it or hope it goes away. Mike, Christy, Nick, they all started acknowledging something wasn’t working, and that’s the first step towards finding a solution. And second, you just, you just alluded to it, I really do encourage you to get some outside perspective. All three of these leaders sought help, whether from consultants, other church leaders or strategic partners. You know, when you’re in the middle of anything, you can’t always see what’s really happening. I think, as Christy said, we didn’t know what we didn’t know, and external voices just brought a lot of clarity. 

I actually remember Mike’s, Stonecreek’s planning time. I ran into Jesse who was facilitating their engagement. And I said, you know, how did it go? And he’s like, well, we got halfway through. I’m like, halfway through. You were there for two days. And it’s because of the conversations it evoked. And they just, we paused the process to give them time to pray and to think about what were the right next steps. And then we came back to finished up that planning. So take the time to think it through. 

And then the third thing I would say is just define your model clearly. So are you going more autonomous with your approach, more independent with your approach? Are you trying to replicate your ministry experience of the sending location? Right? And going more identical or somewhere in between. What does alignment look like for your church? What’s gonna be negotiable? What’s non-negotiable? You have to write these things down and bring clarity to all of the lead players in this model because you can’t execute a multisite strategy if you haven’t defined what that means for you. In fact, in the next episode, we’ll share some of the multisite model best practices that we counsel churches to employ.

Sean:

Yeah. I think those questions you just asked rhetorically there, Amy, those are difficult questions for churches to answer on their own. Sometimes what we run into is, you know, we’ll see a church leadership that maybe has a couple of church friends that have done something with their church, or they’ve read about another church who’s chosen a specific path. But without the experience of really having led through that before, it’s really hard to know what the right thing is to do for your church. So again, back to some outside perspective, it’s why it’s so critical. Amy I also was wondering, what about the churches that are considering going multisite for the first time? What could they take away from these stories? 

Amy:

First, I would just say, don’t go multisite just to grow bigger. Mike said this explicitly multisite is about mission, not just expansion. So you need, again, why you’re doing it, why you’re going multisite and who you’re trying to reach. And then start with strategy, not just vision. You know, Nick’s advice was to listen to people who’ve done it before. Don’t assume your situation is completely unique. Learn from others and build a clear plan before you launch. Don’t copy paste another church’s strategy. You have to think through the model decisions in your context. 

Then I guess playing off some of the challenges we mentioned, make the investment that’s needed for a successful and sustainable launch. Don’t under-resource your new location. Take the time to build up what you need to do both on the leadership bench from a financial perspective. In fact, if it’s your first launch, whatever that experience is will shape your church’s opinion of multisite for a long time. So it’s amazing. It’s successful. It feels like your church is just in a new community, it’s gonna create a flywheel of momentum and set you up well to do it again in the future. If it’s under led, under financed, or if the experience is too different from that sending location, it’s likely to fall flat. People will not get excited about multisite. They probably won’t invite their friends to that location. So it is not just build it, they will come. There’s a lot of investment you need to make in leadership and finances and give it the attention that it needs to thrive. 

And then lastly, I would just say, don’t get married to your model. Do the research, make a plan and work that plan. And then be a learner. And be a learner early in the process. Especially, we talk to a lot of churches that state live teaching is what we’re gonna do. Video won’t work in our community. Now, we’ve been around enough, been enough places to go, “it works in every community.” But we, let’s say you go live and then you recognize some of the gaps that are starting to become gaps. Whether it’s just alignment, identity, you wanna make those changes early. You don’t wanna let them play out year after year. So pay attention to what’s working and what’s not. And your starting model, as I’ve said, doesn’t have to be your forever model. All three of these churches made significant pivots and they’re healthier for it. But if you do the research, you set a model, you start working it, then you learn.

Sean:

That’s good. 

Amy:

And you ask questions and you seek counsel to make sure it’s working.

Sean:

Amy, let’s wrap up this episode. We, you know, we keep these episodes relatively short so that they fit into somebody’s drive time. And I know a lot of people listen to these episodes on their commute. So if somebody’s listening on their commute today and remember’s only one thing from today’s conversation, what do you hope it is?

Amy:

If you’re a ministry leader at a multisite church, here’s what I want you to take away. If you’re feeling tension in your multisite model right now, do not see it as a failure. See it as an invitation to get clarity, to seek wisdom and make the pivots you need to make. Your church’s health and its mission is worth it. So give voice to the tensions you’re feeling. Talk about it with your senior leadership team. The pastors we talked to, they weren’t stuck because they lacked vision or passion. They were just getting stuck because the decisions they had made early in their multisite model started to birth tensions and constraints that constrained them from accomplishing their mission. But they talked about them and with amazing humility and courage, they leaned in. So if you’re a ministry leader about to go multisite, I would say lean into the 25 years of multisite experience that exists. Learn about what consistently works at growing healthy multisite churches. Try to avoid convincing yourself that your church is gonna be the exception.

Sean:

Yeah. And if you’re a leader in a multisite church right now, and you’re feeling some of these tensions, just know you are not alone. Almost every multisite church hits these moments where what worked at the start doesn’t quite work anymore. And they need to unwind some of the decisions that they made initially. So the good news is, you don’t have to just push through this and hope it gets better. There is a clear path forward. Our team at the Unstuck Group, we work with multisite churches all the time to help them step back, clarify their model, align their teams, and build a structure that actually supports the mission instead of slowing it down. And our goal is simple: We wanna help you avoid becoming multi-stuck because yeah, that’s, it’s a real thing. So, if it would be helpful for you to have some outside perspective and a clear plan for what’s next, you can learn more about our multisite consulting process at theunstuckgroup.com/multisite. As always, thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you back next week for episode three of our series.