Multisite Missteps (Part 1)
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If you’ve got multiple locations and your team feels divided, this episode is for you. The dreaded “us vs. them” mentality can creep into any multisite church, creating unhealthy competition and fractured relationships between campus and central teams.
Sean, special guest Carlos Cardenas from Christ Fellowship Church in Miami, and I share our battle-tested wisdom on preventing and addressing this division before it derails your mission.
You’ll learn practical steps to foster unity, establish clear decision-making frameworks, and build the communication rhythms that keep everyone rowing in the same direction. Whether you’re just starting your multisite journey or need to course-correct an existing divide, this conversation delivers the straight talk you need to build a healthy multisite culture.
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Are you considering adding a second or third campus to your growing church? Need help telling your church’s unique story across every location? PlainJoe, a Storyland Studio, has you covered. Their team of creative storytellers, talented designers and innovative architects are passionate about helping churches tell their stories through spatial, interactive and strategic storytelling.
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Transcript
Sean:
Hey, listeners, are you considering adding a second or third campus to your growing church? Do you need help telling your church’s unique story across every location? Well, PlainJoe, a Storyland Studio, has you covered. Their team of creative storytellers, talented designers and innovative architects are passionate about helping churches tell their stories through spatial, interactive and strategic storytelling. You can reach out to them and learn more at plainjoe.net.
Welcome back to The Unstuck Church podcast. I’m Sean, your host here with my teammate Amy Anderson. Amy, as you know, today is a special episode for us on the podcast because we’re kicking off a new series for multi-site churches called Multi-site Missteps. And because we have a great ministry leader and friend joining us today.
Amy:
Yes, we are thrilled to have Carlos Cardenas, Executive Pastor of Christ Fellowship Miami, joining us to share his insights on their multi-site journey. So, Carlos, I wanna welcome you. If you ever meet Carlos, you’ll be friends for life. In fact, you, Carlos, were a part of our executive pastor cohort this past year and the disappointment and all the participants when Carlos didn’t show up because he was just everyone’s friend coming outta that.
Carlos:
Oh, I’m flattered.
Amy:
Tell us, tell our listeners, Carlos, just a little bit about you, a little bit about your church.
Carlos:
Super honored to be here today, and thank you Sean and Amy for having me. And yeah, my name is Carlos. I serve as the executive pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami. I’ve been on staff for over 15 years. I actually celebrated my 15-year anniversary in February. And love Christ Fellowship. We have five campuses in Miami-Dade County. And right now we have actually nine global campuses across South America, Central America, and the Caribbean.
So the global campuses have the same vision, mission, and strategy, discipleship strategy as we do. They are autonomous. So we don’t own these churches, but they’re aligned with us in every way you can think of. They do church, just like us in their context. And so it’s been really, really cool. But Christ Fellowship is a unique place. God is doing, you know, by the grace of the Lord. You know, we’ve had an amazing Easter, and things are going well. And we’re thankful to be able to serve the Lord in a city like Miami and through these global locations as well.
Amy:
And fun fact, Carlos’s wife used to be on our team doing client experience. So for any of our listeners that brought us on site that got to work with Shany, that’s Carlos better half.
Carlos:
Yeah. And let me tell you, Shany says you guys, she misses the team. You are all phenomenal. I mean, she loves Unstuck. I love Unstuck. I like, just like you shared Amy, I was a part of the executive pastor cohort last year for 12 months. We just ended just now.
Amy:
We did.
Carlos:
And it was very, very fruitful for my team and I. I took two executive team members with me, and we just had an incredible time learning from you guys and learning from the other church leaders as well. For any executive pastor out there, I highly recommend if you’ve not been apart. They didn’t tell me to do this, but I’m making the sales pitch. They’re not, they didn’t tell me to do this. If you’re an executive pastor or lead pastor, join one of their cohorts; it is really worth the time and the investment, so.
Sean:
That’s great. That’s really nice, Carlos. Well, if you end up needing any help at any of those Caribbean churches, I’m available.
Amy:
I was gonna say that.
Sean:
Oh, you were.
Amy:
I was gonna say that.
Sean:
Just throw my name out there.
Amy:
February is a good time of the year for that.
Carlos:
It is. It is. We have one in Dominican Republic.
Sean:
There you go. Perfect.
Carlos:
We’ll send you Sean, we’ll send you.
Sean:
Thank you.
Carlos:
We’ll go together and Amy as well. We’ll go together.
Sean:
Well, in this new series, we’re calling Multi-site Missteps. We’re talking about some of the decisions, I think despite good intentions, that can derail even those churches that seem to have all the momentum at the time. Amy, this is something we see pretty frequently in our work with churches, right?
Amy:
Yeah, of course. And I’m looking forward to this series because it’s gonna be very relatable to churches that are already multi-site, and it will be preventative. I think it’ll be preventative content for churches who are planning to go multi-site in the future. In this series, we’re gonna be tackling three of the biggest pitfalls we see multi-site churches face. And today we’re starting with the one that can be really sneaky. I’m curious, Carlos, if you’ve experienced this, and it’s this: It’s allowing an us versus them mentality to develop between campuses and the main location or between campuses and central.
Sean:
Well, let’s start by just kind of unpacking what we mean by this us versus them mentality. I’ll ask each of you both to weigh in here. What immediately comes to mind when I say that phrase? What kinds of subtle ways does this tension show up for churches?
Amy:
Yeah. If you don’t, Carlos, I’ll just jump in really quick. I think we have to be, we have to remember that to be a multi-site church, a healthy multi-site church, there should be a pervasive, if you can see my air quotes, we language, not us and them. But it can start to creep in and show up in different ways throughout really different phases of multi-site. In the early phase, for example, it can show up by referring to the sending location as the main campus or the mothership, right? That language in and of itself says that the other location is lesser, that it’s not as important.
And then for instance, in more established multi-sites that have several locations, Carlos, like you, you know, in a central ministry team, this language can show up when campuses feel like central, like isn’t listening to them, to their ideas or input or isn’t communicating well with them. And it can also source, I think, from central leaders when they feel that like, campuses aren’t doing what they should be doing, you know, they’re not following the playbook. And by the way, the tension I’m talking about is not so much tension between campuses and the literal original or broadcast location, but more so the tension between campuses and the central decision makers and strategists. These are the people, these strategists, these are the ones who have the responsibility to set the ministry strategies for all locations. And they’re typically also leading their respective ministry teams at the original location. So that was my perspective. But Carlos, what came to mind immediately for you when we talk about us versus them mentality?
Carlos:
Yeah, absolutely. Amy, you’re spot on. We’ve had similar situations take place at Christ Fellowship Miami, where we’ll hear a staff member say, “Oh, you know, the mothership,” which is Palmetto Bay campus, is our first campus, the first campus that we had at Christ Fellowship. Or we’ll say, you know, the main campus. And what we’ve realized is it needs to start, culture always starts from the top. And the leadership team, the executive teams, beginning with the lead pastor and the executive pastor, in this case, me and my executive team, we need to constantly be casting vision that we’re all one team.
Because when, when you have multiple campuses, there’s like this campus pride that every staff member has. Like in my context, it’s like, “Well, I’m from the West Kendall campus and that’s the best campus,” and “I’m from downtown” and, you know, well, “I’m from Redland or Doral,” and there’s like this campus pride. You know, competition could be a good thing. Like, there’s a healthy competition. But the leadership team, we constantly need to be casting vision that, listen, we are all one team.
Amy:
That’s right.
Carlos:
And even though you’re part of the Palmetto Bay campus or West Kendall, we’re all team CF. We all wear the same jersey. We’re all team CH. And so, what I would recommend for anyone out there to try to mitigate the tensions of us versus them, it begins with the leadership team consistently casting the vision that we’re one team. We’re one church and one team. Even to the point that we’ve even told staff, like, listen, there are moments where we may need to send you to another campus to fill in a role.
Amy:
Right.
Sean:
Sure.
Carlos:
So, for example, there’s been situations where there is a student director or kids director, or even a campus pastor where, Hey, there’s this position that we need to need you to fill for a season, and you’re gonna have to go into that campus and fill that role for a season so that you can bring some stability to, you know, so you can fill in that gap.
And so, it’s consistently reminding your staff that we’re one team. We’re team CH, and that’s the greater picture in all of this one mission, one vision, and just always trying to cast vision against any silo or any, you know, side ministry that’s going on at the campuses.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s great. Carlos, and you, you mentioned the leadership team, but Amy, let’s talk about the lead pastor for a second. How does their role play into this dynamic?
Amy:
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking we should talk about too, because it’s a crucial point and something the leadership team, by the way, needs to pay attention to. But by the nature of being the lead pastor, that position’s a central role. But because their preaching happens at the broadcast location, lead pastors can easily become main campus guys because that’s all they see every weekend, they’re at the broadcast location. So that’s their literal view of the church. And because of that, it can be easy for them to lose touch with the unique challenges at other locations. So this is where the senior leadership team needs to ensure that all campuses are being considered as high level decisions are made. Otherwise, the actions of the lead pastor could inadvertently cause division through their various actions and decisions. And let me just give you one example.
It’s a light one, but when you have video teaching, we felt it was really important to close the service with prayer, but we wanted the campus pastor to do that. Because campus pastors don’t get a lot of platform time, but they need the platform time to have that pastoral presence and to, you know, give them kind of permission to be vision casting and communicating with their congregation. So we went through a season where our lead pastor was like, I’m gonna pray it out, keep the campuses with me. And he just didn’t have the perspective of what that was like for those locations and what we as multi-site leaders were trying to create. So if we didn’t lead up well in that, if we didn’t kind of unite as a leadership team to speak for the other locations, we would’ve made some wrong decisions because obviously lead pastors have some strong opinions and they have the authority, and so they have to just be reminded as often as possible what it’s like to be on the other side, you know, of the broadcast location. This is where, like you said, Carlos, this is how we keep the we in everything that we’re doing.
Carlos:
Yeah. Yeah.
Sean:
Amy, what are some of the symptoms that churches see if that goes unchecked after a while?
Amy:
Yeah. The we versus me, I think, first you’re gonna notice that your campus and central leaders aren’t getting along well. They don’t feel like a team. And it’s almost like ministry leaders are jockeying for position, jockeying to get their voice heard. And you can sense that. Another symptom is sensing that campus staff are feeling a bit powerless. Like second-class citizens, you’ll hear them complain about ministry decisions because likely they didn’t get their voice in the mix when decisions were being made. You’ll hear it in the language your team uses, when you hear things like, I had no idea, or they decided that, or words that reflect the campuses are being, like you said, Carlos, competitive. Those are symptoms we have a fracture here. And lastly, you just start to experience some passive aggressiveness between team members. You’ll sense that the team is living in more like pseudo relationships than in real relationships. You can see that by the meetings after the meetings, little huddle conversations. Carlos, I’m curious, how have you sensed when, what have you seen when you sense that there’s some fracturing into the us versus them?
Carlos:
Yeah, I completely agree with everything you said, Amy, if you don’t mind if I can share something about the lead pastor position and how they can influence. One of the things that we’ve tried to do with our lead pastor, pastor Omar, he’s done a great job with this. So he preaches about 32 times a year. 30 to 32 times a year. So when he doesn’t preach as much as possible, we try to get him to visit one of the other campuses instead of the broadcast campus, which really is his home campus.
Sean:
That’s good.
Carlos:
That’s the campus that his family worships. That’s the campus that his children go to the kids’ ministry. But as much as possible, if you’re a lead pastor, do as much as you can to go to the other campuses. If you know, if it’s drivable, all of our campuses are about 20 minutes from each other. And, you know, driving. So they’re driving distance 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the time of the hour in Miami. But, because that makes a big difference. But on a Sunday, there isn’t any, there isn’t much traffic. That being said, that is so helpful because you as a lead pastor, are able to see the different dynamics at the other campuses.
And so when you tell the lead pastor something, Hey, this is better for this campus there. He’s gonna know, okay, yeah, you’re right. Because I went to that campus a couple weeks ago and I witnessed it myself. So I think that’s an important thing for any lead pastor out there. I would encourage you to visit other campuses as much as possible. If you’re not preaching, you probably should try your hardest not to be at the broadcast campus. Why? ’cause you’re there 32, 35 times.
Amy:
That’s right.
Carlos:
Anyways. They’ve seen you enough, you know? So you, you’ve shown them a lot of love. You know, they’re good. And do as much as you can to visit other campuses. So, were you gonna say something, Amy?
Amy:
Yeah, I was gonna say, and then central leaders be prepared for everything that lead pastor saw at the other campus. When they’re loose, they see and get a sense of everything.
Sean:
Absolutely.
Carlos:
That is true. But you know what, sometimes I do want him to see it because it can validate some of our concerns. So, for example, if there’s something aesthetically where we’re like, Hey, we have to get this done. Oh, well, we don’t have the budget for that. The moment that, okay, I witnessed it, it’s like, okay, you know what. We gotta make the budget for now, because now I’m going through, like I’m seeing what you guys are seeing in person. So, but absolutely right, Amy, but I think everything you shared, Amy, us versus them, they don’t hear me. They don’t understand me. Decisions are made without any questions being asked from us. You know, the day when you hear a lot of day them, who’s they? Who’s them?
Amy:
That’s right.
Carlos:
You know, what do you mean us? Oh, well, they told me that we have to do this. They told me that we have this Spring Bash event, or that, you know, that’s where you start, you know, you’re seeing signs of toxicity, and it’s unhealthy. And as a leader, you know, everyone, whether you realize it or not, there’s a culture in your church. But is it a healthy one or an unhealthy one? And so as a leader, you have to try to do as much as you can to create a healthy culture.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s really good, Carlos. And to your point about the lead pastor, none of that happens without a strong teaching team, right?
Amy:
That’s right.
Sean:
So the lead pastor can get out and actually have some weekends off stage. That’s great.
Carlos:
Sure, that’s a good point. Yeah.
Sean:
Yeah. So, Amy, what’s the key to kind of preventing or also addressing this division. This us versus them mentality. What solutions have you seen work well for that?
Amy:
Yeah. Well, it begins, you won’t be surprised I’m saying this, but it begins with a clear structure and clarity around the roles in your matrix organization. This begins by adopting a decision rights language that everybody knows and everyone understands. How we talk about it here is everyone knows what campus decides, what campus decides with Central’s input, where we want consensus between central and campus, what central gets to decide with campus input and what central decides. When that is clear, things run so much better.
And then, next, I think you have to bring clarity to what the difference is between campus and central roles, right? The role of central leaders is to set ministry strategies that all campuses will execute. And it’s important that everyone understands that, right? That central decides. And now, while they own the responsibility, they have the decision rights, of course, they would be utterly foolish to do that in a vacuum, right? So when setting ministry strategies, I often encourage churches to set that decision right as central decides with campus input. It’s just stating value to those campuses and what they’re experiencing. And then the role of the campus leaders, on the other hand, campus roles, it’s all about people and ministry execution. These are the folks that run the plays. They pastor people, engage people in ministry and provide feedback on how effective the ministry strategies are at their location. So again, clear clarity on roles, clarity on decision rights. If you get that right, almost every other problem diminishes.
But, second, you need to have strong communication systems in place, right? Healthy multi-site teams, they have systems in place, so that campus feedback and input is a regular part of their rhythms. So, this includes the right meeting structure that intersects the right people regularly. Central ministry strategists, you need to intersect regularly with your campus counterparts. So this is like where all the central kids ministry strategists will meet with all the campus kids pastors, the central group strategist meets with all the campus groups, pastors, and on and on. And I don’t know what you guys do, Carlos, but typically these are monthly meetings where, you know, in this meeting, the strategists, they’re often sharing what they’re working on, what they’re considering, so that campuses don’t get surprised by things. This is where they’re reviewing the results of the ministry, the key kind of measures that you’re watching. And this is where they get feedback on where the campus leaders feel they’re winning and where their biggest challenges are in that ministry area. But the key here is that regular communication and collaboration is happening between both teams. I really think this is the glue that keeps teams in the we mindset versus the us and them.
And let, let me add this while we want everybody on the team to have this mindset, I just wanna double doubt again, it is a core responsibility of the campus pastors and the central strategists to take the lead in a united way. Because like you said, Carlos, if there’s a fracture between central strategists and campus pastors, you are gonna have a rainstorm of just schisms throughout the organization.
And let me give you one more, third, I think central ministries need to get out, like you said, Carlos, and be visible at the campuses. So you were talking about the lead, but central ministry leaders need to get out and visit the other campuses. They need to be present at locations, not just the broadcast location. And here is the key to this. Central leaders, when they go, they should be observing and encouraging campus leaders. They should be focusing and recognizing what those campus leaders are doing well. It is not their job to come to the campus and step in giving feedback on what they’re not doing right. That would be so counterproductive, so hurtful to their relationship.
Sean:
And that’s a good point.
Amy:
You can imagine, right? Campuses would dread when central shows up if this is how central behaves. Rather, and this goes back to role clarity. If a gap is experienced, if a campus leader, you know, is doing something that the central strategist doesn’t think is right or effective, or along the lines of the playbook, they should bring that to the campus pastor because after all the campus pastor, he oversees all of the campus staff, and it needs to start with that person. Do you agree with that, Carlos?
Carlos:
Oh, absolutely agree. And Amy, the last one is so critical. Just like I shared about the lead pastor. You took it from me, but I completely agree about central staff going to the other campuses. And many, many years ago at Christ Fellowship, this was about, I was on staff already. This was about 10 years ago. Every person that who was on the central team, the moment they showed up to the campus, there was, it was very unhealthy. It was toxic. It felt like, here comes the inspector. Here comes the inspector to inspect my area and tell me everything I’m doing wrong and just share one word of affirmation. But he or she, they’re gonna point out all the issues that I have while I’m here trying to take care of babies and the goldfish. And the volunteer didn’t show up.
So one of the things that we changed that culture, our central team, when they go, we want them to evaluate, but they’re like gap fillers. Like, go and fill the gaps. Go and fill the gap. If you’re a central kids director and there’s a volunteer who didn’t show up, you’re gonna fill in that volunteer role.
Amy:
That’s great.
Carlos:
You’re gonna fill into that role. But at the same time, of course, be intentional, right? If you’re a high capacity leader, you can do and observe and know what’s going on. You know your ministry really well. You know the ministry context really well. You can give the feedback that you need to give, but at the same time, work and be in the trenches. Like we tell people, like, one of our values is serving is how we lead. And sir, if you don’t have an attitude of being a servant at Christ Fellowship, you’re not gonna make it long. Because we we’re all like, Hey, we’re in this. We’re gonna grind together, we’re gonna work hard together. And for sure, we wanna be better leaders for sure. We’re gonna empower people and delegate. But whenever there’s a gap and we need to fill it, then we’re gonna fill it.
And I think it’s so important, Amy, where you said that the central team is out there in the different campuses because they’re the ones creating the strategy. So they’re gonna know, wait a minute, this may work in this location, but it’s definitely not gonna work in this smaller campus. So either we need to make some adjust adjustments. Allow for some, for wiggle room. Or change the strategy or the plan so that we can execute it all the campuses. So that is key.
We purposely, Amy, we will send central staff for a season at a specific campus so that they can get the feel and the dynamics of that campus. And if you really think about it, you can go on a Sunday to a campus that is weak, right? And they, maybe they had an amazing Sunday; they crushed it. But that doesn’t tell you, that’s not really an accurate picture of how things are going in that campus, just because you went there once. So to really get an idea of how well or not well that ministry is doing, you need to go there for separate weeks. You need to, we tell them, Hey, plant yourself at this campus. Plant yourself at this campus. Be there for four weeks, you know, or four to six weeks or whatever the time is so that you can get a really good idea of what’s going on. And so you can have a better understanding of the ministry dynamic for that specific campus, but that is huge.
Amy:
Yeah. My husband was a campus pastor for many years and he led a campus of about 6,000 people. And I know that they had really come to a place of health in this area of central and campus. Because what I observed is when central came over, I’d see the kids pastor going, we’re so glad you’re here. Hey, let me know whatever you see; let me know what we’re doing. Well, let me know if you feel we’re off anywhere.
Carlos:
That’s awesome.
Amy:
I’d love your feedback. It was not like that early on in multi-site; it was more like, oh, central’s here. Stand up straight. So, you know, once you get this, when you get the we in here, you find there’s lots of great fruit coming outta that.
Sean:
That’s good. Let’s talk about clarity for a second, Amy. You’ve said on this podcast before Clarity is King. How does that apply here?
Amy:
Yeah, absolutely. Crucial point. Again, it’s really what I’ve been talking about up to this point. Clarity around decision making, having a clear definition of who owns what decisions. Clarity and communication: Having those regular forums for feedback and discussion. You know, the, the meetings especially, and I would add one more, clarity around what the wins are, the goals, meaning it surprises me, ’cause I often do the staffing and structure part of our process, even with very large churches, and they don’t have scorecards for campuses or campus staff.
So we’ve got the big goals, but, clarity and momentum comes when a campus goes, oh, this is what a win for our location looks like. And then the staff within that location goes, oh, this is what a win looks like for our kids’ ministry. For our student ministry. For our volunteering, for our groups. When that cascades down, your leaders step up ’cause they’re like, There’s the target. So I think that those would be the three things. If you have clarity around each of those decision-making, communication and your scorecards, that multi-site is gonna hum. Anything I missed, Carlos?
Carlos:
Oh, I think you, you nailed it. I think, and especially decision making is so important because if you don’t have clarity on as to who’s making the final decision, that’s where a lot of tensions can happen. And things could get pretty toxic. And then, you know, pride creeps in and, you know, well, I thought I was in charge of this. Well, no, I make that decision. And so you have to make it very clear. But one of the things I always say is, Hey, make sure that there’s healthy collaboration and you’re getting feedback, even if you’re making the decision. Even if Central’s making the decision. Get the feedback from campus staff or get collaborate with them before you make that final decision, you know? So clarity is key and collaboration, especially the bigger you get in a multisite. And I know it takes a lot of meetings, times that you have to get different groups of people together, but collaboration is super key as well.
Amy:
Yeah. I think, I don’t know who said it, but you’re never learning anything when you’re talking. And so you should be coaching your central strategists to be great question askers and listening.
Sean:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Carlos:
That’s really good.
Sean:
Amy, for churches that recognize they have this problem, they’re dealing with this at their church. What are some of the practical first steps they can take?
Amy:
Sure. First I would say audit your language. So eliminate main campus mothership terminology. And if this is deeply embedded into your culture, put out the multi-site version of a swear jar. And anytime someone says main campus, they make a contribution.
Sean:
No, I like that.
Amy:
Of course, maybe it needs to be digital jars these days, I don’t know. But yeah. You know, make it fun. But let’s find a way to rid ourself of that language. Second, audit your decision rights. If you don’t have this established, if you haven’t written this stuff down, you need to do it. And it can be as simple as that example I used, right? Central decides, central with campus, et cetera. Develop a playbook that spells out what central decides, what campuses decide, where they need consensus and everything in between.
And go into the details. I mean, do campus pastors get to decide what their announcements are? Or does central decide that? Do campuses get to make a change in songs on Sunday that central planned because they had a good reason for it? And by the way, every time there’s a tension around a decision that was made, you just workshop it. This is a living document that you’re trying to not repeat the same mistakes or create the same tensions you’ve already solved. And then lastly, I would say audit your meetings. Are you creating the right regular intersections between campus and central teams? Carlos, I’m just curious, how do you guys meet at Christ Fellowship between central and campus? Just one example would be great.
Carlos:
So we have our all staff gathering every other week, which is all of our entire staff come together. That’s not so much of collaboration. I mean, we do have moments of that, but you know, that’s more like informing, you know, here’s some next steps, things that are coming up. We celebrate a lot. We celebrate a lot. We try to encourage a lot. We have for sure once a month a core meeting. So the core meeting, it’s the campus pastors and the, we call them ministry directors.
Amy:
Okay. Those are your strategists.
Carlos:
They come together, and there’s some collaboration there. There’s some, you know, need to knows. And that’s very healthy. You know, we at times try to break bread. I think, you know, one of the things that I would just add, Amy and Sean, if you, you sense toxicity, with like us versus them, especially as an executive pastor or lead pastor or executive team, what can you do for you to create a healthy environment, whether, you know, like a get together, like, okay, there’s toxicity. Let’s try to like each other, you know? And then we’re gonna implement these things. Because I think what happens too is that sometimes because you don’t know that team member really well, you don’t trust a decision.
Amy:
Sure.
Carlos:
But when you trust them as a leader and you know that that person is a high-capacity leader, it’s easy to follow that leader or follow the decision that they made. So I would, I would try to do as much as possible a lead pastor, executive pastor, how can you create an environment where you’re building trust and you’re building, you know, not only collaboration, but comradery between, you know, like, like relational equity between these team members.
Sean:
That’s good.
Carlos:
Because if it’s toxic or if it’s a lot, it feels like, man, we’re siloed, chances are that there’s a lot of tensions and not hostility ’cause hostilities are strong word. But, you know, you wanna mitigate all that by building some relational equity. And I think the last four years, we try to do as much as possible to build that relational equity. So like, not only do I work with you, but I like you as well. And you know, I may not understand that decision that you made, but I’ll follow it, and I’ll give my feedback, and we’ll work together. And in both ways, you know?
Sean:
That’s good. Carlos. In my experience in multi-site church, it’s easier when you’re not in the same location to not believe the best about your coworker, about your teammate. And we need to practice believing the best about our teammates, right? Amy, what about prevention? You mentioned that as we started out this episode. For churches that are just starting their multi-site journey, what steps can they take to, to prevent this us versus them mentality?
Amy:
Yeah. Well, I hope all of this has been helpful in prevention for churches that are on their journey to becoming multi-site. Prevention is always easier than correction. We have a phrase we use with a lot of churches that engage the unstuck process to launch your first multi-site. And it’s this: When you go multi-site, cracks become gaps. So meaning multi-site will expose, accelerate, and increase the cracks or divisions that already exist in your ministry. So here’s my specific counsel to churches on their journey to multi-site.
First as Carlos, you were just talking about, build unity into your multi-site strategy from day one. Ensure your central leaders or your central strategists engage and communicate well with the campus teams. Second, be sure to create those systems that foster collaboration. You want leaders in both spaces, both central and campus, who both understand and respect one another’s perspectives. Third, I think the last one, develop your ministry playbook before you launch. Paul Alexander on our team always says it this way. “Move from oral tradition to written tradition.” Write it out for every area of your church. Do the best job you can. Write down how you do ministry, what the standards are, and who makes what decisions. And like I said, it’s a living document, so you’ll be updating it as you learn and grow. So for example, I mentioned announcements. At our church, we started very high control. So central decided what would be announced at campuses. And then later, with the exception of like churchwide announcements, like annual meetings, that went to campus decides. And that was a good switch. But we started high control and then released it. And we always counsel churches that way. You always wanna start higher control in your model. And then because it’s easier to release or loosen later than it is to try to reign ’em back in. Oh, one more: Don’t hire the wrong campus pastor school yourself.
Sean:
Yes.
Carlos:
Amen to that.
Amy:
School yourself on the qualities you are looking for in a campus pastor, I actually think this is the most important decision you will make as you go multi-site.
Sean:
Well, this has been a great way to kick off our brand new series on Multisite Missteps. Carlos, thank you so much for joining us. Having your wisdom and really your on the ground experience at Christ Fellowship is incredibly helpful as we start this series. Amy, I wonder just any final thoughts before we wrap up today’s conversation?
Amy:
Yeah, just one quick one on this us versus them. Just remember, multi-site is ultimately about expanding ministry impact, not creating competing kingdoms. When we keep that mission Central, I think it will help break down this us versus them mentality.
Sean:
Well, thanks again, Carlos, for joining us today.
Carlos:
Thank you, guys.
Sean:
Thank you, Amy. And thank you all for listening to this episode of the Unstuck Church Podcast. You can learn more about how we help churches build healthy multi-site strategies, systems, and those structures that Amy is talking about at theunstuckgroup.com/multisite. Next week, we’re gonna continue our series by discussing structure and staffing issues. Until then, we’re cheering you on as you lead your church towards sustained health. Have a great week.
