Growing Church Problems (Part 4)
Growth always brings complexity—and multisite is no exception.
As churches grow, it’s easy to slip into reactive mode. But with intentional planning, multisite can create a sustainable path forward and ultimately reach more people with the hope of Jesus.
We’re wrapping up our series on “Growing Church Problems” with a conversation about multisite.
In this episode, Sean and I talk about the different challenges that monosite churches and multisite churches face, how to approach multisite strategically, and the specific strategies that continue to allow room for growth.
Growth always brings complexity, but with intentional planning you can create sustainable paths forward instead of constantly reacting to pressure. [episode 424] #unstuckchurch Share on X The goal of multi-site isn’t just to get bigger; it’s to create more opportunities to reach people with the hope of Jesus in your community. [episode 424] #unstuckchurch Share on X Churches that succeed in multi-site know their location strategy: find places people drive to, not just buildings that happen to be available. [episode 424] #unstuckchurch Share on X You don’t have to copy another church’s model—learn the principles behind why something works and adapt it to your unique community. [episode 424] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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Transcript
Sean:
Well, welcome to the Unstuck Church podcast. I’m Sean, your host here with my teammate Amy Anderson, an Amy Anderson that is freshly back from the first church we have ever served in the state of Maine.
Amy:
That’s right.
Sean:
Which we’ve almost hit all 50 states at this point, but Amy, you got to serve a church in Maine.
Amy:
I did, and it was great. Maine is a lot like Minnesota. Except, you know this about me, I bring the rain most places I go.
Sean:
Of course.
Amy:
So no kidding. I land and it rained the entire time I was there. And then the morning I left, the sun came out in blue skies, but they had been in a drought since June or July. So they were very grateful actually. It’s been an adventure zone on the road for me. Sean, not only did I bring the rain to Maine. But I was in Texas, working with a great church down there, and I got a flat tire in the left lane of the Texas 121 expressway.
Sean:
That’s not ideal.
Amy:
I really thought I was gonna die. And somehow there was an exit ramp in the 10 seconds it took me to go left lane. By the way, they don’t drive like 50 in Texas.
Sean:
No, they don’t.
Amy:
They drive like 85. That’s right. That’s why I thought I was gonna die. And then I drifted down the exit ramp. I can’t believe there was an exit ramp and across the street into a car repair shop. So God took care of me that day.
Sean:
Beautiful.
Amy:
I was just in North Carolina with another great church. They’re a large church that’s getting ready to go multi-site. And there I very confidently leaned against a yellow wall that they were painting.
Sean:
Oh, good.
Amy:
So I was in a black shirt, so the yellow didn’t stand out at all. And then my hair actually got stuck in the wall too, so I’m just saying that, you know, consulting traveling, it’s very glamorous and really fun.
Sean:
Most people assume that this is a very glamorous role, but it’s not—just FYI.
Amy:
It’s not, it’s not. But I’m so glad that I’m able to get onsite with churches across the country. They always make me better. It’s so fun to share what I’m learning at other churches and sharing that. And this is the stuff that feeds the podcast and the things we talk about. So yeah, we have a few states left that we’ve never been, we’ve never been to, let’s see, Alaska, New Hampshire. Yep. Hawaii.
Sean:
New Hampshire, Alaska. Hawaii is one of the states on our list, but we are going in the new year to work with a great multi-site church in Honolulu. So we will be there in 2026.
Amy:
So we only have like three left. Can we do anything special? If one of our listeners is like from New Hampshire and they wanna bring us in, can we like send them a Crumble cookie or something like that?
Sean:
We’ll figure something out. Absolutely. Yeah. sean@theunstuckgroup.com. sean@theunstuckgroup.com. Just reach out. Yeah, really excited about being able to partner with that church in Hawaii and just so great to continue on this mission.
Amy:
We actually just had a church from Hawaii join our executive pastor cohort or was that the multi-site cohort?
Sean:
Oh, that’s right. Paris, right?
Amy:
And they have nine locations in Hawaii. Super fun to see what they’re doing.
Sean:
It is. Yeah. I love that. Alright, well, before we jump into the content, let’s pause real quick and say thanks to our podcast sponsor Donorbox. You know, I’m sure church leaders and pastors have noticed that less and less people are actually carrying cash to church and giving with cash. But Donorbox has a great solution called their Live Kiosk that helps people actually give instantly at your church. They can tap, swipe, and use their phone to donate, and then you can automatically capture their contact information, send them the needed tax receipts, and even set up reoccurring gifts. Donorbox is actually already helping over a hundred thousand organizations and you can try Live Kiosk for free if you go to donorbox.org/unstuckpodcast. That’s donorbox.org/unstuckpodcast.
Well, Amy, we’re in our final episode today in our series on growing church problems. You know, over the last few weeks we’ve been tackling, I think some pretty real challenges that churches face when they’re experiencing growth. Way back in the first episode, we talked about making wise decisions about service times and facilities before you get boxed in. Then after that we discussed what do you do when your structure has outgrown your staff. And then last week we talked about how to scale systems so that key aspects of your church’s ministry aren’t dependent on just one or two people. Today we’re gonna wrap up the conversation with some time discussing multi-site specifically. Where does multi-site fit into the way that you plan to address growth challenges? Either for the first time or ongoing?
Amy:
Well, this has been a really practical series. I think every church faces, you know, growth challenges at some point and how multi-site fits into this is that, you know, it’s one thing to be growing 10, 15% a year, but when you start to run outta space, if you don’t have your kind of expansion plan, your replication, like if you’re already optimizing those hours in the morning, it can be a frustrating season to get behind because there’s no quick fixes to fix it. So that’s why I wanted to talk about it today.
Sean:
Yeah, that’s good. Well, let’s start with the tensions that churches face when they’re thinking about multi-site. You know, for churches that are still one site. What challenges do they typically encounter that might push them towards that multi-site strategy?
Amy:
Yeah, I think there’s several key tensions we see regularly. One, when churches don’t start planning for a second campus soon enough. They end up accepting like soft growth because they’re simply outta space, right? The facility becomes that limiting factor. And in high growth times, I think churches, one of the tensions is they fall behind on their staffing plan. And because of that, they start hiring these part-time people who are great people, but they’re doing things to plug holes and that actually then leads to a lag in leadership development, right? Growing up leaders in a sense, when this is a common thing I see, growing up leaders just has not kept pace with your growth. So staff are busy, some are burning out, and when that happens, you know, you can’t even consider adding another service because the leaders don’t wanna exhaust their team even further.
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
And then I think the third thing that comes to mind in this is that there’s this growing sense that they could reach more people in their community if they had another location, but the timing and the energy to take that on is just, it’s hard in the whirlwind of just keeping up with the growth that God is continuously bringing to your church. Right? There’s not a pause button. We still have Sunday coming every week.
Sean:
Absolutely. What about churches that are already multi-site, they face a different set of tensions when they’re considering whether to continue expanding and adding more locations, right?
Amy:
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, this is a common view that we get to see as we work with churches that are what we call multi-stuck locations. You know, these are churches with three to four locations and often they just hit this point where they are wondering if it’s feasible to continue to expand with their current multi-site model. Meaning when you’re a smaller multi-site church, again, two to four locations, somewhere in there, you can get really creative when it comes to running ministry, when it comes to launching locations. Like you can rotate a team of five or six teachers to cover live teaching. It’s hard at times, but you can do it. Or you can keep ministry team centralized and then break out on the weekend to cover the ministry.
But if you wanna expand past that three or four number, here are the tensions that set in first because of the model, how you’re doing ministry. You’ve had to overstaff because maybe you got creative in how we’re gonna cover these 2, 3, 4 locations and now you feel like you don’t really have the financial capacity for future expansion, which again is super frustrating when you need other locations because your current ones are nearing capacity or at capacity. But again, we can overstaff in those smaller phases, but then that becomes that limiting factor.
Some churches end up with more locations than make sense for their size, I think as another tension due to mergers and acquisitions. So I just, we say this a lot when we talk about multi-site, but you ask what’s the tension. When you feel like you wanna multiply again, but then you feel like you don’t know if you can keep expanding. That’s when these churches, they’re actually more locations than they ought to be right now.
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
And most of the time that’s because they took on mergers or acquisitions. You know, it’s just not always wise to accept free property or merger proposals just because the opportunity presents itself. What I see is when churches end up with several smaller locations versus fewer larger locations, they actually miss the efficiencies of multi-site. Because it requires more staff and more staff because we have to staff for at least the minimal brand of viability, right? In these places, we have to have a campus pastor, kids pastors, worship production and what I just mentioned, they can serve a room that has 2000 seats or they can serve a room that has 80 seats. It’s the same investment. So it requires more staff and then of course it requires more budget dollars for things like repairs, maintenance, facility upkeep.
Sean:
Yep. Yep.
Amy:
And if you’re doing live teaching at all locations in this context, this only like expedites the stress on budget. Because you have to hire more staff now to do what the campus pastor would be doing, but they are tied up in message prep. So now I know for some churches in your context and your mission field, smaller is the way to go. And if that’s you, you just have to remember that there’s a cost to it. And you need to find other ways to reduce cost so that you can sustain smaller locations and you’ll just have to get creative in some areas.
Lastly, and I think this is true, but there can sometimes be internal pressure. So let’s say we’re a church of three or four locations, right? I think there can be this internal pressure from both current congregants and staff to focus on strengthening what’s already been built rather than launching something new that could be fatigue in ministry execution, you know, if you are feeling burnt out, you know, too stretched, sometimes it’s fatigue from a giving standpoint or just a drift in the, you know, from like a mission mindset to a hey, what about me mindset in the church. So those are probably the top three that I see.
Sean:
Yep, that’s true. And that mindset is usually what we see lead to the maintenance phase to churches just starting to maintain, right? Rather than being in that sustained health phase where they’re always asking, God, what do you have for us next?
Amy:
That’s right.
Sean:
Amy, I’m curious then, what solutions have you seen work well for churches that are trying to figure out their multi-site strategy and, you know, they’re continuing to allow room for growth?
Amy:
Yeah. Well first churches need to bring clarity to whether they’re going to multi-site or church plant. Or if they plan to do some at both points, because these are different strategies with different models and approaches. So for us, multi-site means you’re extending your church’s model, ministry model, your culture and your leadership to new locations. Church planting means you’re launching independent churches that may share your DNA initially, but we know it’s gonna develop into their own identity and we want that. And I just think being clear about which path you’re taking helps you make the subsequent decisions. It helps make that just much easier.
Sean:
Yeah, that makes sense. What about churches that have decided on multi-site but they just aren’t sure how to approach it strategically?
Amy:
Yeah. Well this is where I encourage leaders to think bigger and longer term. So if you’re a single site church and you’re thinking multi-site, but you don’t know how to approach it first, don’t just think about your second campus, right? Think about campus number six or seven. What would it have to look like then? Because this will help you build a sustainable model from the beginning.
Just an example, we saw a church that started with live teaching at their second campus. So it was their first multi-site launch. They wanted to do multi-site, not church planting. And boy, within, I think it was the first 18 months, they figured out, boy, if we try to do multi-site this way, it’s not gonna scale beyond three to four locations. So they actually brought the lead pastor to the multi-site location where the campus pastor had been teaching. I think he preached there for four weeks just to envision the congregation. Said, Hey, we’re gonna do video now, and I just want you to give it a try for six months, see what you think. And anyways, they’ve been running that play and they were able to clean it up really early in that model. So if you’re a single site, you really need to think through how every ministry decision will that play out when we’re a church of 5, 6, 7 locations.
The second thing I would say is just get ahead of your multi-site plans by get a spreadsheet, you know, I love a good spreadsheet. And take your current attendance and growth and develop. Just play it out over time. If we keep growing at, what is it, 10%, 15%, 20%, whatever it is, when will we need to have a multi-site ready to launch? Because if growth not there, you can always pause. Right? But at least you’re prepared. I think doing this math will give you a heads up and when you need to start planning just like it would for your next service time, it’ll help you plan for your next location because a good launch requires time. You need a minimum, what would you say, Sean, of 12 months to get ready for a multi-site launch?
Sean:
Absolutely.
Amy:
And really more like 18 to 24 months for most churches. And then if you have to actually build a building versus leasing or remodeling, you’ll have to add on more time. And I’m just telling you as your church grows, you’re not gonna get more time. So when you’re in a season where you’re growing, but you have room for people start to play that growth forward. So you know when you need to begin your multi-site planning.
Sean:
That’s right. Yeah. I usually tell churches, if you’re going multi-site for the first time and you already know who your campus pastor is, so you’ve already nailed that role. And you already know your location and facility, you’ve already got that figured out, then 12 months might be the right timeline for you. But the number of churches who know both of those things that are confident in is very, very small. So 18 to 24 months is a much, much more feasible timeline. What about some practical next steps that you’d recommend for church leaders who are just considering multi-site for the first time as a response to here’s all this growth that’s happening around us?
Amy:
Yeah. Well, as I said, start by getting really clear on whether you want to be a multi-site church or not. From Unstuck’s perspective, a multi-site church is one that is truly one church in multiple locations. So you’re trying to reach a common mission field, right? So that ministry strategies are effective at each location you’re launching, where people are already driving from because it’s people that carry your culture, they serve, they give they invite, and you have one teaching team that teaches via video from the broadcast location. Because remember it’s the people who talk the most that actually drive the culture. So if that’s what you wanna do, that’s one church, multiple locations.
If these things are not true, then church planting might be a better approach. You know, for instance, if you’re in the suburbs right now, wherever your church is and you’re reaching young families, then don’t launch into an urban setting that is mostly Gen Z and college. That’s a different mission field. That’s not what’s right for multi-site. If you have 400 people driving to your church from the east and nobody driving in from the west, maybe due to like a geographical situation, like a mountain, a river, a freeway, but you feel God calling you to put a church there, then make it a plant. Because again, if you don’t have anyone currently driving from there to your church, you’ve got a culture, what would I call it? Not vacancy, abyss, black hole. You don’t have anyone to transfer your culture, but if God is really calling you there, then make it a plant, not a multi-site. And if you feel called to launch locations with their own live teaching, then plant a church. You can leverage obviously some multi-site strategies to support the plant, but design it to be its own thing long term.
Second, if you’re a church that’s growing and you’re in the midst of this, you’re running outta space. I hate to say it, it’s not easy, but you’re gonna need to straddle the work that needs to be done right now to make room and start your planning for the future. In fact, I’m working with a church right now and that is where they started. When they engaged Unstuck, their first tension was really to manage staffing again, rapidly growing single site church. And they were grossly understaffed in leadership when we started working with them and their attendee to staff ratio was somewhere around like 135 to one, which is great if they have all these systems and leadership development going, but no, it was just literally they didn’t have enough people on their team. And by the way, it took them about a year to make progress on the staffing side of things, but at the same time they were finishing up a 200 seat venue remodel that kind of serves as another option for the weekend because their optimal times were full. So it released the pressure valve and they’re on plan to build a 1500 seat auditorium, and unfortunately that’s gonna take longer than they have time for. So they are actively looking for an offsite venue to fill the gap. And so again, it’s hard, which is why I encourage churches to map out potential growth over the years so they can avoid this confluence of activity when we fall behind in this area.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s so good. And I think just you bringing that awareness for church leaders is so important. Another example of this is a great church we work with in North Carolina. October 5th, they started their first multi-site, their first campus. So they have two locations now, launched this new location, great grand opening, they sent three or 400 people out to this new location. And I talked to the pastor the week after and he said, it’s like nobody left. He said, those three or 400 seats just filled right back in the next weekend.
Amy:
That’s great.
Sean:
And what a great problem to have, but they are still straddling both of those issues trying to create space at the sending campus, and then having started this new location where they’ve got several hundred new people attending. It is a dual, you know, if you think about two sides of the train track. You’re working both sides of those train tracks at the same time. And trying to continue to make progress. So in a growing church, you need to be prepared for that. I think also Amy, what about, you know, the churches that already have multiple locations are already multi-site, but then they’re just questioning their strategy moving forward. What would you say to them?
Amy:
Yeah, I think I would just call out some of the key multi-site best practices there. Just remember, you know, location actually trumps a facility. You wanna choose strategic locations even if the facilities aren’t perfect. You wanna find a location that people drive to, not from, like, from neighborhoods. So think about your location strategy. Are we putting these new locations in good locations across our city? The second one that I call out is just remember leaders more important than location, so do not launch your next location without the right campus pastor. We often say this is the most critical hire when it comes to launching a new location well. And then third, I mentioned it, but really approach merger opportunities with caution. If you’re already a multi-site church and God’s doing things through your church and you’re growing for churches that are dying or not on mission, you’re gonna get the phone call, you’re gonna get the phone call at some point. And you just have to remember, just because the phone rings doesn’t mean it’s a sign from God. Sometimes it is. But we encourage churches to approach it as a dating relationship, not a marriage. So as you’re dating, do the work to see if this is really a win-win for the kingdom, because bad mergers can be a huge distraction from your healthy ministry.
Sean:
Absolutely. Yeah. And we can’t underscore enough how difficult mergers are. It’s not that they can’t work. And can’t be healthy long term, but they’re really hard. I just talked with a church yesterday, Amy, who went through a merger a couple of years ago. And added a location through that. So this was a multi-site church that added a location through a merger, and they talked about some of the challenges they ran into. They ended up having to close that location down. And you could still a couple of years after, see the disappointment in their faces from that.
Amy:
Well, and Sean, if you launch your first multi-site through a merger and it has that outcome, right. We just didn’t do enough homework. We didn’t treat it like an acquisition, and it doesn’t go well. When you try to cast vision around multi-site again, you’ve got some baggage now.
Sean:
That’s right.
Amy:
So it’s really important that first multi-site is a win. And again, there are proven ways to do that really well, and sometimes mergers work, but not always.
Sean:
Well, Amy, this has been, I think a lot of really practical, helpful thought around multi-site strategy for churches today. So appreciate that. Before we wrap up this episode and this series. Any final thoughts?
Amy:
Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway is that growth always brings complexity, but with intentional planning, you can create, you know, sustainable paths forward. So whether you choose to go multi-site or not, the key is making proactive decisions about your future rather than just reacting to growth pressures, and remember the goal isn’t just to get bigger, but to reach more people with the hope of Jesus. So consider your unique community context and think through what strategy’s gonna serve at best. We would caution you to copy another church’s model without understanding the principles behind why it actually works for them. And be willing to adapt as you learn on what works and what doesn’t.
I do wanna end Sean with just a few comments on live versus video teaching. If you are a single site church right now, considering multi-site, this is especially for you. Our data shows that multi-site churches that eventually closed campuses were four times more likely to have used a model where the campus pastor was the primary teacher. Churches that we’re working with that have live teaching in two to four locations are dealing with the reality right now that they can’t multiply that strategy and they’re just going through the painful work of bringing alignment to their locations. In other words, this decision is hard to undo once live teaching has been the norm. And just remember video works, we say it all the time. It works everywhere across the country. Well, great teaching on video works really well.
Sean:
That’s right.
Amy:
Poor teaching on video doesn’t work well. But for those who are leaning into this episode, maybe because you’re thinking about going multi-site, that’s just probably the thing I wanna end with today is make sure you get that aspect of how we’re gonna do the teaching right. Because it’ll affect where you go three, four years from now.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s good coaching, Amy. Very good. Well, of course, multi-site can be an excellent way to continue to make room for growth, but there are definitely new muscles for churches to build as they do this. And of course, that’s where we come in. We help pastors lead unstuck churches, and we have two specific processes for multi-site churches. The multi-site launch process where we help you go from monosite just one site to multi-site for the very first time. And then what we call our Multi-site Unstuck Process where you help you clarify your strategies and structure for continued expansion into the future. You can learn about how both of those work and start a conversation with us today at theunstuckgroup.com. Next week we’re back with a brand new series. It’s gonna be a good one. I won’t tell you yet what it is, just because I wanna let you wonder, but we hope we see you then.
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