What Ready-For-Multisite Looks Like (Part 4)
As a church getting ready to go multisite, you might know who you are, have the people, and have a clear, documented model.
But at some point, going multisite really comes down to this: can you fund it, and can you deliver it?
Can you actually pay for a new location so that it’s sustainable for years to come? Can you re-create the main thing people show up for—the weekend experience?
In the final episode of this series, Jesse and I break down the last two Multisite Readiness Checkpoints: Financial Strength and a Replicable Weekend Experience.
- Funding a New Campus for Years to Come—Not Just at Launch
- Replicable Weekend Experience: Defining the “Wins”
- Live Teaching vs. Video Teaching
Communicating God’s truth in multiple locations requires an intentional approach. [episode 463] #unstuckchurch Share on X Live teaching is a fantastic strategy for church planting—not necessarily multisite. [episode 463] #unstuckchurch Share on X It’s far better to pay fewer people on your church staff really well than it is to pay more people less. [episode 463] #unstuckchurch Share on X
This Episode Is Brought to You By PlainJoe Studios.
Adding a new campus to your multisite plan?
If you don’t have a strategy for coordinating your placemaking and wayfinding signage, maybe it’s time to update across every campus. The creative and talented team at PlainJoe, a Storyland Studio, are experts at creating placemaking signs and wayfinding markers that will tell your church’s unique story and point your people in the right direction – from the moment they arrive at your campus.
Learn more at plainjoe.net.
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Transcript
Sean:
Welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast. I’m Sean Bublitz, managing director here at the Unstuck Group. And I’m again joined by my co-host for the series, Jesse Tink. Jesse is one of our consultants here at Unstuck and the lead pastor of Prairie Lakes Church in Iowa, a multisite church with seven locations. Jesse, it’s good to have you back for the last one in the series.
Jesse:
Yeah, it’s been really fun to walk through these with you, Sean. I’m looking forward to this last one.
Sean:
If you’re just joining us, this is actually the final part of our series, Are You Really Ready for Multisite? And I’d encourage you to go back and listen to the first three. This series is for churches that are growing and starting to ask whether multisite is the right next step for them. We’ve been walking through the multisite readiness checkpoints, a tool that we use with churches as we lead them through our first launch consulting process. There are 10 checkpoints. Each one is a place to stop and ask, are we ready here or not?
And here’s how the series has gone so far. In week one, we covered the first three checkpoints about your church as a whole: clarity of DNA, organizational buy-in, and current growth. Week two, we talked about your people and checkpoints: staff leadership capacity, staff health, and volunteer strength. Last week, we talked about what you do and how you do it: your ministry model and your defined systems and strategies.
And today we’ll finish with the last two checkpoints: financial strength and a replicable weekend experience. And these two answer a question that everything else has kind of been building towards. You might know who you are, have the people, have a clear documented model, but at some point it comes down to this: Can you fund it and can you deliver it? Can you actually pay for the new location? And can you recreate the thing that people show up to once you get there?
Jesse:
You know, I’m not really the budgeting, bill-paying person in our house, Sean. So in my world, all of this that you’re talking about just magically happens. It just does. But you’re saying we actually need to have a plan to pay for a building, keep the lights on, pay our staff, and do we consider? I’m looking forward to what insight you’ll provide. I’m going to take copious notes and, of course, pass them on to the right people.
Sean:
That is the idea, Jesse. And it sounds like this will be a lonely podcast for me.
All right. Well, before I get into my monologue, let me thank our podcast sponsor for the series, PlainJoe Studios. Our most recent Unstuck Church Report said that the average church is growing by 12% year over year. That is four years straight that we’ve measured double-digit percentage growth, which is amazing. And that means there are a lot of churches that are paying attention to their worship space.
Well, PlainJoe Studios works with churches to create beautiful, engaging spaces to help them better connect with their community. They have a team of architectural experts, design experts, and branding experts who will come in and help you transform your worship space into something that’s attractive and better engages the mission field God’s placed you in. So if that’s an area your church could use help with, reach out to them today at plainjoe.net.
All right, let’s start with the money conversation. This checkpoint is financial strength, and here’s the principle behind it: New campuses require high levels of investment to be set up for years of success. And I want to make sure that you catch that last part: years, not just at launch. Because this is where some churches that we’ve worked with have kind of missed it. They ask, can we afford to launch this? And that’s the wrong question. The right question is, can we afford to carry this thing until it can stand on its own? A new campus doesn’t usually fund itself from day one. It takes some time to get there. So the real financial test isn’t just the launch. It’s the entire way toward financial sustainability. And that’s why we look at two pieces of evidence.
First, the cash on hand to actually fund the launch. And then the second, the ability to fully support that new campus financially for up to three years. That’s the number that surprises some people. If you can fund the launch, but you can’t carry the location, at least in some way, through that lean early stretch, you don’t have a launch. You have something more like a liability. So how do you know if you’re where you should be right now? Again, I’m going to go back to our vital signs. We’ve talked about this almost every week. Look at your actual financial numbers, and there are four you want to dig into specifically: your per capita giving, your cash on hand, your debt ratio, and your personnel budget. Those four tell you the truth about whether your church has the financial base to do this or whether you’re hoping that the new campus will actually create financial margin for you that you don’t currently have.
And here’s the caution I think leaders need to pay attention to. And it’s the same one from our very first episode. Remember, the number one reason campus launches fail is that they launch too fast and too small. Money is where the too fast usually shows up. A church gets excited, they see an opportunity, and launches on giving projections that assume everything goes right. And when it doesn’t, the new campus starts draining that sending campus. And now both locations are stressed. And sometimes that can be the thing that kills the momentum and reason that you started this new location in the first place.
Jesse:
Wasn’t it Mike Tyson who said everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the face or something like that?
Sean:
Yeah. Punched in the mouth.
Jesse:
Yes. Certainly, a multisite launch is not like a punch in the mouth, but we need to plan just in case we do. So let me share our church’s journey in this area because I think, Sean, of all the things about our campus launch strategy over time, we’ve probably dialed this part in the most. How we do financial forecasting and development for a Prairie Lakes Church campus in 2026 looks very different from how we did it with our first multisite campus back in 2010.
And here’s the main difference. Back in 2010, we had a launch model that front-loaded a ton of expenses. And now we’ve scaled a lot of those expenses way back. The other thing that’s very different is now we’ve shifted a lot of energy into building up the resources for that campus prior to its public launch. So those are the two big differences. And I’m going to describe them super practically and specifically.
But before I launch into that, we’re in Iowa. So the scale’s a little bit different. Our first location is in a metro area of like 120,000 people. Is it super small? No. Is it a large metropolitan area? Absolutely not. And at the time we launched our first multisite location, it was running maybe 1,500 people. But at Prairie Lakes, we’re launching in towns of 30,000 people, 10,000 people, even 3,000 people. And these towns that we’re launching in are 30, 60 miles, even 90 miles away from our first location. So it’s very unique.
Now, that being said, we at the Unstuck Group are serving a lot more churches who are trying to do that same kind of thing now.
Sean:
We are.
Jesse:
I’ve served churches in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois who are all trying to figure out multisite in similar, maybe a little bit bigger, but certainly not smaller contexts. So the principles are still the same, as are the ratios. Whether you’re in a large metro area, more suburban, more regional, or more rural, the raw numbers will just go up and down depending on your context. So practically, here’s what this looked like for us. When we launched our first campus, we launched with the model that I would say was overstaffed. Maybe five full-time people for a campus of like 250.
Sean:
Oh, wow.
Jesse:
Yeah. Like one for every 50 people, because what do you need? You need a campus pastor, you need a children’s pastor, maybe two children’s pastors, you need a worship pastor, you need a tech director, and maybe you need an admin.
So now we’re launching campuses with a ratio of 1.5 for every 100 people, I would say. And so when we launched our first campus, we designed a budget that we thought would require three years to grow into, which was pretty optimistic. If everything went well, if we never got punched in the mouth. In reality, it was more like five years. And even then, Sean, there were years that those campuses didn’t quite get there. But now we’ve got a budget to where they’re solvent within year one.
Sean:
Wow. That’s great.
Jesse:
They’re covering most of their own operational expenses and even most of their central allocation in year one. So we went from a very expensive model that we optimistically thought a campus would grow into. We’ve since exchanged that for a model that’s sustainable almost from the outset, which begs the question—and I know this is one of those areas where, if you get this right, you’d be surprised at how quickly you can launch these campuses—the question that we need to answer is this: How did we account for all of those lost staff hours and budget dollars? Where do they all go?
The oversimplified answer, but true answer, is this: We now spend more time developing that campus prior to its public launch than we did hoping it would develop after. So we did practical things like budget to hire a campus pastor earlier so that they can identify volunteer leaders and build volunteer teams rather than just pay staff to do stuff. We leveraged more of our central time to travel and train those people on the ground. We held vision and informational nights in the community six to nine months out, giving people an opportunity to commit to that campus. We even opened up a fund so they could start giving to that campus prior to its launch.
And here’s what all of that allowed us to do. It allowed us to start developing benchmarks, like numbers of families committed, numbers of giving units, dollars, over the course of that 12 to 18 months prior to public launch. Benchmarks we wanted to hit: nine months out, we should be here; six months out, we should be here; three months out, we should be here. And so by shifting some of the development prior to public launch and developing more volunteer teams and leaders in that time, essentially what we did is we built a larger financial engine. We built a larger serving engine that our previous model just basically tried to fund with dollars given from the church as a credit toward future growth.
And listen, every church has a very different philosophy when it comes to debt or how expensive your model is. How aggressive do you want to be? How lean do you want to be? Every church is different. But I still say this: The more relatively lean that you can be, especially from a staffing standpoint, without violating your church’s brand, the more it’s going to force you to develop leaders and teams to create a culture of entrepreneurship and ownership. All things that are really, really healthy for a church of any kind.
Sean:
That’s really insightful and good. I hope that leaders who are listening lean into that because you guys have years of experience in some of the things that you’ve learned. And again, you’ve made some of the mistakes, if I could say it that way.
Jesse:
Correct.
Sean:
You’ve done some things where you’ve corrected those over time. So it’s good to learn from you guys.
So very practically here, if you’re a church that wants to know whether you’re financially ready, here’s where I’d start. First, as I mentioned before, run your Vital Signs numbers before anything else. Pull your per capita giving, your cash on hand, look at your debt ratio, and look at your personnel budget, and get the real picture of your financial health today, because you can’t build a launch without a good assessment of what’s true right now. And if you’d actually like to run the full Vital Signs Assessment, you can do that through our resource hub. Just log in there. There’s a small fee for the subscription, but you can run those assessments anytime. Drop in your data. It’ll kick out a report for you and let you know where you stand.
Second, figure out what it actually costs you to start a new location. And I’ll be honest here, Jesse, and you tell me if you’ve seen this any differently: There’s no clean formula for this because every community is different. Real estate prices can look very different from community to community. It’s different in Iowa than it would be in Chicago or in New York City. And then there’s the rent, lease, or buy question, which changes the number a lot. Are we going to rent, lease a space, buy a space, or build a space? So this is where your sequence really matters. You do a real location analysis first, decide where you’re actually going to launch, and then you go looking for a facility. The location is far more important than the facility. Don’t fall in love with a building and then back into a location.
Third, get ahead of your staffing costs because that’s the big piece of this financial number. And it’s one that you can estimate earlier than you think. Start with a projection. How many people do you expect at this new campus location? What’s it going to take for our church to feel like our church in terms of numbers of people? Once you have that attendance number, now you can work out how many FTEs are appropriate and which roles you’ll actually need on day one. Jesse talked about their model at their church being one and a half for every 100 people in attendance. And if you run all of this and the numbers say you’re not there yet, that’s good to know now. Better to find out on a spreadsheet than to find out 18 months into a launch that you can’t sustain. It might mean the next season is about building financial margin before you launch anything. And a church with a healthy margin is actually a stronger church, whether they go multisite or not.
Jesse:
The problems that you and I are talking about at this point in our multisite conversation are normal problems in the marketplace. So many people’s jobs, nine-to-five, are solving the things that you and I are talking about. It’s not as normal in the church world. So just a general encouragement: If you’re feeling like, “Oh man, this is all way over my head,” I promise you, it’s not over everybody in your church’s head. You can find people to help out. Staffing’s the really big one. It really is. Wages continue to go up, as does the cost of healthcare and benefits. And it’s really competitive out there. I know we talk about this on our podcast a lot. It is not getting easier for churches to find really good people.
Sean:
Yeah.
Jesse:
It’s not. And churches, I know this sounds maybe a little bit arrogant, probably not to our audience, but churches more than anybody else in the world, we really need good people. So it’s far better to pay fewer people really well than it is to pay more people less. It just is. It’s going to make you more competitive in a very competitive job market. Think about this. If you’ve got a really lean staff model that pays people really well, for people in your seats considering a career change—because they are, by the way—but they’re convinced that they’ll have to forfeit their retirement or mortgage their future to do it, all the more reason for you to run lean, but then also lean into developing leaders prior to launch.
Sean:
That’s good, Jesse. Interestingly, I’ve been talking to some church leaders in Latin America and church leaders in South Africa over the last couple of weeks who listen to the podcast. And these are great multisite churches, three, four, five locations at these churches in different parts of the world. And one of the uniquenesses of their context is that other places around the world, unlike North America, people aren’t dreaming someday about a job in a church. They’re not dreaming, “Can I find a pastoral position or some kind of place in the church?” And so they have this added difficulty of training, building, and identifying potential staff primarily internally because people in their community aren’t just looking for this role.
So I think there’s a good side to that. It’s really good, but there’s an extra step that I just want to acknowledge for them of even identifying who these people are. Then we have to navigate through all this financial challenge that goes with it. And it is not easy. There are some leaders around the world going through some really challenging work there. But they’re figuring it out, and kudos to them.
All right, let’s move to the final checkpoint of the whole series. It’s a replicable weekend experience. And here’s the principle: Communicating God’s truth in multiple locations requires an intentional approach. And here’s why we’ve saved this one for last. Your weekend is the thing that most people actually show up for. So the question isn’t just, can we hold a service over there at this new location? It’s, can we recreate the experience that made people fall in love with this church in the first place?
And this is the checkpoint I think most people underestimate because it feels like the part that you’ve already got handled. You do services every single week. You’ve gotten good at it. But here’s the caution: The weekend is the most distinguishable experience in your church. It’s the thing that people are most attached to. And the people that you’re sending to launch the new location, they’re at your church in large part because they love your services. So if the weekend at the new campus feels dramatically different, you’re going to struggle to get people to stay there. Not because it’s bad, but because it doesn’t feel like their church. And that’s the promise of multisite: one church in multiple locations. The weekend is where that promise can hold together or it can start to fall apart.
So, Jesse, let me hand this one to you because you live in this every single week across seven campuses. What are churches actually looking for when it comes to a weekend that they can replicate?
Jesse:
This has been surprising to me, and it probably shouldn’t be at this point, but it is. We work with a lot of really good churches, Sean. Especially if they’re asking us to help them go multisite, that usually means things are going pretty well.
Sean:
Right.
Jesse:
You go on their website and you look at their sermons, or you look at their worship experience, or you look at their building, and you go, “Man, this is awesome.” And what’s so surprising to me is when we get to this question of how do we replicate the weekend service across multiple locations, it’s some of the most underdeveloped parts of that church, even in larger churches. Maybe the lead pastor, the teaching pastor, and the worship or creative team aren’t necessarily on the same page. They’re just really talented. They love each other. They’re all in one location, so they can work it together or flex together. But then when the question comes, “Well, then how do you do this at a next location?” they go, “Oh, I don’t know.” And so just a few things here that we usually have to work on and work toward when we’re trying to replicate a weekend service across multiple locations.
Number one is, do you have pretty clear wins defined? We will use—and this is pretty eye-opening for even some healthier churches—something called the Strategic Alignment Pyramid. Essentially, from the foundational things all the way up to the top, what it helps churches do is understand, “What are the wins for the whole church?” And then, “How do each of our individual ministries and staffers contribute to those overall wins?”
So when it comes to your weekend service, for example, the easiest one is, “Well, we want to see more people attend.” But we also want to see people come to Christ, profess a relationship with and trust in Jesus. We want to see people get baptized. Your weekend service should be designed to produce a percentage of those results. And so we want to see that happening. And then the question starts becoming, well, if we want to see that, how do we design or program toward that? Are those processes clear? That’s another thing that’s really surprising, even at really, really good churches. Maybe they’re only planning a few weeks out or a few months out. And you’re not getting the entire team around to take their part in it. And you’re not all working off the same documented processes either.
And so it’s very possible, when you’re in this multisite conversation, that you go, “This thing that I thought was working really well,” and probably is, “is working well because you’re all in the same building, inefficiently but effectively pulling this thing off.” And so walking through some of those documented ministry model and creative planning processes is pretty important.
Here’s the last thing I would say. I mentioned this a couple of podcasts ago. We went through a process with the Unstuck Group where we really refined our multisite planning process. And one of the things that came out of that was this: There are just some best practices. There’s not a million good ways to do multisite. There isn’t. And we’re pretty unapologetic about that. Now, when we walk through an assessment, we’ll share some of those things with you.
One of the things has absolutely to do with the replicable weekend service. And that is this: We’re unapologetic supporters of video team teaching. And it is the number one mistake, I think, that we’ve seen multi-stuck churches make. And it’s also, I think, one of the most tempting things to violate when you’re thinking about launching your second location. If that weekend service ministry is one of the most important ones to replicate, there’s really not a better option than video team teaching.
Sean:
And that’s really just based on what we’ve learned over the years in working with churches, Jesse. This is not just a personal bias we have. We believe churches need to be able to trust us with bringing coaching on things that actually work, not something philosophical, not just a gut feeling on our side. And so if you want to hear from us on what we’ve seen really be effective, we’ll be honest with you about that. And Jesse, the number of churches that we’ve helped un-multisite for one reason or another, how many of them have had video teaching?
Jesse:
Very few.
Sean:
None that I can think of, right?
Jesse:
I can’t think of any either.
Sean:
They’re all live-teaching churches. And so again, we’re trying to bring helpful coaching to the churches. Now, does that mean we don’t work with churches that are going to leverage live teaching? Honestly, the majority of churches that reach out to me right now on the first launch process are already planning to lean toward live teaching. I just ask them that they be open to a conversation or coaching on the other side. And if they decide to go with live teaching, we’re going to help them develop a plan to go eyes wide open into that because it’s a more expensive approach.
Jesse:
I think what has helped as I’ve navigated some of the same conversations with churches on the ground is this: It’s not as though video team teaching is a more godly approach. It’s also not as though live teaching is a more godly approach. Here’s what I would say: Live teaching is great for church planting. It’s a fantastic strategy for church planting. It is not a good strategy for multisite. If live teaching in the room is a core part of your ministry identity and strategy, I would say plant churches. Do church planting. Don’t try to be a multisite church with live teaching in the room everywhere.
Because here’s what we know: That church eventually will take on the character of the person who’s delivering that message consistently. It just will. And there are no two people who are exactly identical. You can have the best of intentions. If you want to die on the hill of live teaching because you think that’s really essential to a good church experience, God bless you, honestly. I don’t have any issue with that. Just don’t try to force that into a multisite model.
Sean:
That’s so true. All right, so let’s move this into the practical now. If you want a weekend that’s ready to replicate, here’s where to start. First, define your weekend wins. I’m going to call these weekend wins. Get your team in the room. Answer the question, what does a successful weekend service look and feel like here at our church? If you can’t describe it, you cannot reproduce it. There’s no way. And the thought, “We just know it when we see it,” doesn’t translate to a new campus when you’re not there with them every week. You have to make the win explicit enough that a team across town can aim at the same thing together.
The second thing, and Jesse, you touched on this earlier, is to build a creative process that plans far enough ahead. This is the operational engine behind the weekend. Your teaching, your music, your communications—you’ve got to map all of that out with enough runway that a campus team isn’t scrambling. And here’s why the lead time matters so much. Planning ahead is what empowers your campus leaders. When teaching and service plans are ready and prepared early, campus leaders have time—and catch this, this is what I learned is so important—to resource their volunteers well.
Jesse:
Yeah.
Sean:
It’s not about you. It’s about the team that you’re raising up and the volunteers at your location. Instead, sometimes a team just feels like they get handed everything at the last minute, and then they’re passing on chaos straight to their volunteer teams. That is a recipe to have no one serving at your new campus. Advanced planning at the central location is what makes a healthy weekend possible at all campuses.
And notice how this connects back to what we talked about last week. This is your defined-systems checkpoint showing up again. A replicable weekend isn’t a lucky streak of good Sundays that you just happen to have at your church. It’s a documented, repeatable, creative process. The weekend is where all of that written-tradition work either pays off or exposes what you never actually took the time to write down.
And if you look at your weekend honestly and you realize that it’s just living in a few key people and a lot of last-minute, “We’re throwing it together, we’re making some magic here,” I would say that’s actually good to know. It means that the next season is about building a process before you try to run it in two different locations. Because a weekend that depends on one person can’t be multiplied. A weekend that you build on a process, you can multiply that.
Jesse:
It’s very possible as you listen to Sean say that, that you go, “In that whole oral-to-written checkpoint, I didn’t think about including how we do teaching. I didn’t think about how we do weekend service planning.” Because those are the things that you just trust the senior pastor to do, or you just trust the worship pastor to do. And in fact, if you try to push into that area or try to tear down some of those silos, it almost feels like you’re stepping on toes. I would just echo what you’re saying there, Sean: Get over that and include that as part of your going from oral to written with documented processes.
The only other thing I want to add to this part is that probably half the time when we get to this in the room, I get asked this question: “Well, how does your church do it?” We don’t have time to go into all of that, but what I do want to share is that it’s August, Sean. This is the time at Prairie Lakes when we’re looking to the next calendar year. And we’re getting our entire teaching team in the room for two days. And we’re walking through a process where we plan the series from January through December for the next year. In August, it’ll all be done.
And then what we do, 10 weeks out from when the calendar year starts, is we’ll gather in the room and look at January through March. We’ve got these series planned. Let’s really develop them week by week. And so we have that all done. And then you get to 10 weeks out of the next segment, do the same thing. Ten weeks out of the next segment, do the same thing. That means 10 weeks out from a weekend service, we know exactly what the teaching pastor is going to say. What’s the big idea? What’s the Scripture? What’s the branding? And then all of our staff and volunteer teams can develop it from there. It just creates such alignment. And it also really leverages everybody’s talent because they have margin and space and runway to create, practice, and prepare and produce.
Sean:
That’s good, Jesse. I love the thought and intentionality behind what you do.
All right, let’s bring the whole series home now for listeners. Today was the last two checkpoints: financial strength and a replicable weekend experience. Can we fund it, and then can we deliver it? That’s the question when you’re preparing for multisite. And now that we’ve walked through all 10, here’s what I hope people see when they step back and look at the full picture. The first three checkpoints are about your church: who you are, whether people are with you, and whether you’re actually growing. The next three were about your people: your leaders, their health, and your volunteer bench. Then your model and your systems: what you do and whether it’s written down. And then today, whether you can pay for it and reproduce it.
So there are 10 checkpoints. Every one of them is really asking the same question in a different way: Are we healthy enough right now to multiply? Because that’s the common thread through this entire series. You replicate who you are. Multisite doesn’t fix what’s broken, and it doesn’t create what isn’t already there. It takes who you already are and makes more of it. And I think that’s the good thing, Jesse, because health has to precede multisite. And we need more healthy churches in almost every community around North America and around the world.
So before we close this all out, Jesse, I’ll give you the last word for this whole series. What do you hope leaders carry with them after these four weeks of conversation?
Jesse:
One of the things, maybe the thing I love most about the Unstuck Group’s consultants, is that we not only love the local church, but we’re in it. And because we’re in it, we really want the local church to win. We’re on the ground with you. We’re going back to the one that God called us to. And one of the coolest perspectives that I get as an Unstuck consultant is that I walk away from every single one of those churches that I get to serve with a larger vision for the church, with a deeper appreciation for what God does in and through the local church, and appreciation for the uniquenesses and the different contexts that he puts his church in, but also the universal identity.
So I’m describing that for this self-serving reason: If you’re sensing that you want help, please ask us. We don’t just help lead unstuck churches. We help pastors lead unstuck churches. And that’s really, honestly, our heart. I’m a pastor who just loves the local church. I love pastors. We love the opportunity to help.
Sean:
So here’s the thing that I hope landed across all four episodes, because I said it in each of the four: Not one of these 10 checkpoints requires you to launch anything to start working on it. Clarifying your DNA, developing leaders, building your bench, simplifying your model, writing down your systems, strengthening your finances, and sharpening your weekend—all of it just makes your church healthier right now, whether you’re ever going multisite or not. And if you’re a church that’s been listening through this and you don’t have any plans to go multisite, thanks for listening. And I hope that you really walked away with something from our conversation. Multisite readiness in all of this work is just really the bonus.
So if you go through these 10 and you realize that you have some gaps, like Jesse said, please hear this: This is not a no on multisite. It’s just a not yet, and a direction to where you need to focus for right now. The goal wasn’t to talk you out of multisite. It was to help you launch from a place of strength instead of just hope. Because a church that does this work first launches something really healthy and sustainable long term. And a church that skips over it and goes too fast and too small—well, that’s the story that we started with in week one. Those campuses often fail.
So if this series just touched on something that you feel like you need help with, of course, that’s the work that we’re doing every week with churches. We help churches walk through our first-launch process to help you assess your readiness, clarify your model, and then build a very clear and phased approach to launching that first location with confidence. And we really want that first launch to be healthy and sustainable and to reach the people in the community you’re going to and that you’re trying to reach from the very first day of that location opening. So most churches going multisite have few people, if anyone, on their leadership team who’ve done this before. So don’t go at it alone. That’s why we’re here.
And you can start a conversation with us by going to theunstuckgroup.com/multisite. And if this series has been helpful for you, please consider leaving us a review on whatever platform you listen on. It takes you just a few seconds, and it helps a lot of other church leaders find these conversations. Jesse, thanks for walking through all of this with us and for sharing Prairie Lakes’ story along the way. And listeners, thanks for joining us in the series, and we’ll see you next week.
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