Notes Session 5 – #elephantroom

Multi-Site: Personality Cult vs. God’s Greater Glory
Perry Noble and Matt Chandler

Is it biblical for someone to pastor people they never see? Are multi-site and massive ego synonymous or is there a place to pursue this course in humility? Is celebrity status the fault of the pastor or the people he is trying to lead? What’s the difference? What dangers must be avoided in the multi-site approach? What can we say to those who label multi-site an unbiblical ecclesiology and what must they explain?

• Driscoll explaining and hilighting different types of multi-site formats – travelling preachers, local pastors, video preaching
• In the US there are more multi-site church than megachurches – 3,000 compared to 2,000
• Most of the largest churches in America are multi-site
• Lots of stats, don’t forget Mark pastors a multi-site church
• Noble: We went multi-site because everyone else was doing it. “we love this church but our unchurched friends won’t drive 30 minutes to get here.” Idea for multi-site came from research – more unreached people in Greenville than in Anderson. Let’s give it a shot! Opened campus in 2008 with 1,700 people.
• Primary motivations – evagelism and pragmatism.
• Driscoll: Matt, explain your hypocrisy.
• Chandler: We had 6 services, we were turning people away from all of them. I was preaching them all. I hit the wall. “I didn’t want to build the monster.” I can look at the landscape and decide what we are going to be about. We don’t need to spend on our money on attracting people – that already exists in Dallas. Started with two Sunday night services by going video – it worked. “Multi-site works.”
• Make it about missiology – it’s not about putting butts in the seats to see the Matt Chandler Show. I’m more comfortable with a second location to create disciples but still nervous about it.
• Driscoll: Where is it going? What does that mean for the small church pastor?
• Noble: Continuing to grow. He’ll be okay. If a video can trump the anointing of God on a man to preach, they have a really small view of God. Not an either/or thing.
• Chandler: More and more and more multi-site. There is now a better understanding of how to do it with a better ecclesiology.
• The panel…
• Platt: Viable, sure. It is not unbiblical. As we dove in to it, we saw a picture of church planting in Acts. We saw “gospel preached, disciples strengthened, elders formed.” Ideal is planting churches where elders are teaching the word in that body and caring that body. We don’t need to create expectations for these guys to preach to huge crowds. I want to empower guys to speak to small groups. When we do that there is no end to where the gospel can be carried.
• Driscoll: Are campuses a form of church planting?
• Platt: Do they have elders as the main teachers? If so, call them churches not campuses. Primary authority should be with elders in a local body. God has gifted some brothers in a way that can encourage many churches but not in an authoritative way an elder can lead a local body.
• Now it’s on. This is really a question of ecclesiology. Driscoll is bang on with this one. Apostles vs. elders – who has “higher” authority?
• MacDonald: Multi-site should never be a replacement for raising up, training and sending out pastors. If we can reproduce everything BUT teaching, that’s not good. Can you point to places where people you’ve poured your life in to are leading and pastoring? If you can do that then you can begin to say that multi-site is a KIND of church plant, not at the expense of sending out pastors. Campus strategy reaches more people in this city than our church planting strategy.
• So many church plants are under-resourced. We dreamed of a part-time youth pastor for two years. When a large church launches a campus, they are resourced from the very beginning.
• Laurie: It’s not either/or, it’s both. We’ve started new churches, we’ve started video sites. The greatest critics of video sites are people who haven’t attended one. Campus members get better pastoral care, more attention than the ones who come to the main site.
• Furtick: Developing leaders within multi-site is the opportunity to raise up leaders who may not have a strong teaching/preaching gift but have a strong leadership gift. Not responsible as the main teachers but given great leadership opportunity. Strategy was pragmatic at first but we’ve backed in to some of the benefits – I tell my church all the time it’s not about me. Now I can say “it doesn’t matter where I am.” Opportunity to train people to be LESS consumeristic – it’s less about the building, less about the preacher, more about the gospel and more about Jesus.
• Platt: But you’re still there by video so you’re saying that somebody else couldn’t do it?
• MacDonald: No, but we’re saying that somebody else couldn’t do it as good. Aren’t we supposed to steward all this?
• Platt: The problem with pushing the 100 talent guys is that we crush the 10 talent guys.
• Question – Aren’t multi-site preachers losing the value of being a shepherd?
• Noble: No. You can’t effectively shepherd 100 people. The shepherd must raise up other shepherds. The church isn’t effective when the pastor ministers to the body. The church is effective when the body ministers to the body. The reason our strategy works is because we have campus pastors who don’t have to focus on the message, they take care of the people and raise up shepherds within the body to take care of one another.
• Chandler: If the primary teaching pastor of a multi-site church isolates himself from shepherding people, he’s missing out. But don’t make the leap that one requires the other. Don’t start with a “let me find what’s wrong with that” position. You can isolate yourself from people in your church whether you’re multi-site or not. This is a pastoral question that can happen anywhere.
• Driscoll: Developing other shepherds means the pastor gets a pastor. We don’t think about that. Without shepherds, there’s no shepherd for the shepherd. At the end of the day, care poured in to campus pastors and other leaders gives those people pastors.
• Question – Internet Campus – most can create one but should we?
• Driscoll: Is there such a thing as online church?
• Chandler: No. The mandate of the gathering of people is scriptural.
• Noble: Two years ago I would have said yes and we tried it. People are more honest online. Oh really, is that why their name is autoguy169? No, they’re not. They’re fake online. We tried it and it just didn’t work. You’ve got to meet together with a body of believers.
• Driscoll: Before you go multi-site, make sure you have a clearly-defined, biblical convention about what church is. how are we going to do that? How are we going to do sacraments? evangelism? What will this require? Do it like a church plant instead of an overflow room and you can succeed.

Great discussion. I would have liked to have seen an opponent to multi-site (I don’t think Platt fit that) at the table. Lots of great stuff.