March 9, 2020

One of the Most Overlooked Challenges of Multisite

multisite

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This isn’t just about having a successful campus—this is about more people meeting Jesus.

Internal and team communications are one of the most overlooked challenges in a multisite strategy.

Even as a single campus, you’ve probably had to work hard to establish a functional internal communications system, and when you launched another campus, the complexity only amplified. 

multisite

Timing becomes more important, project management becomes more difficult, and clarity becomes vital to make any steps forward.

My team’s multisite consulting process focuses strictly on the complexities of multisite. Because I see so many multisite churches struggling with internal communications, I wanted to highlight a few of the things we help you navigate through in this process—

Role Clarity. 

I can’t stress the importance of this enough. Lack of clarity around decision-making frustrates leaders, slows progress in critical areas, and causes an undercurrent of strain between teammates.

Amy and I like to repeat this joke we heard from one of the churches we served

How do you starve a dog? Give 10 people the responsibility to feed it. 

How do you starve a dog? Give 10 people the responsibility to feed it. Click To Tweet

To be effective, team members need clarity and defined responsibilities and wins for their positions.

Sit down with your staff and ask them to write down what and who they’re responsible for. Set aside time to review this with your team to make sure roles are overlapping and people are on the same page.

To be effective, team members need clarity and defined responsibilities and wins for their positions. Click To Tweet

Meetings. 

For better communication, more meetings is not the answer. 

The key is having the right meetings. More meetings will not improve internal communication—how you communicate out of those core meetings will. 

For better communication, more meetings is not the answer. The key is having the right meetings. More meetings will not improve internal communication—how you communicate out of those core meetings will. Click To Tweet

Here are the meeting best practices we suggest to multisite churches:

  • All Staff Meetings

You may decide to do these weekly or monthly, but I do think you need to routinely pull the entire team together to re-cast vision, communicate key information, and offer an opportunity for people to share stories. 

All-staff meetings are not decision-making meetings, and they can’t be brainstorming meetings.

Always remember the “rule of eight.” If decisions are required, the team meeting should be limited to no more than eight people. 

Because all-staff meetings involve the entire team, this is not the place to share all of the information. Instead, focus on the information that impacts everyone on the team.

  • Ministry Team Meetings

As you grow you’ll need to be more intentional about your sub-teams, your ministry teams, meeting on a regular basis.

While the senior leadership team will be more focused on vision and strategy for the entire church, the ministry teams need to meet to talk about strategy execution and tactical decisions. 

In multisite churches, that means you’ll need both ministry team meetings at the campus level (campus teams) and at the central ministry level (for example, all the kids ministry leaders from across all the locations).

  • Cascading Communications

“Cascading communications” is a phrase that comes from Patrick Lencioni. 

At the end of each meeting you need to:

  1. Clarify the action steps and determine who’s going to do what by when
  2. Confirm what needs to be communicated immediately with the rest of the team. 

Oftentimes these communications will occur when the ministry team meets, allowing key information to cascade through the organization.

Finding an effective system for internal communications is key for your campus to experience success and, ultimately, for more people to meet Jesus.

Our Multisite Unstuck Process helps you navigate these conversations with your team, along with clarifying decision rights, confirming your discipleship path, developing launch plans for future locations and much more.

Without clear strategies for ministry, multisite, expansion and execution, multisite can get churches multistuckWe see it all the time.

Our team combined has 100+ years of experience leading in churches with successful multisite strategies. We can guide you to assess multisite readiness, build your model and strategies, and align your staff and structure to the strategy.

Interested in learning how it works? Let’s talk.

Tony Morgan

Tony is the Founder and Lead Strategist of The Unstuck Group. Started in 2009, The Unstuck Group has served 500 churches throughout the United States and several countries around the world. Previously, Tony served on the senior leadership teams of three rapidly growing churches including NewSpring Church in South Carolina. He has five published books including, The Unstuck Church, and, with Amy Anderson, he hosts The Unstuck Church Podcast which has thousands of listeners each month.

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