Welcome back to our monthly All About Multisite podcast! I’m chatting with a group of multisite ninjas and answering your questions about the ins and outs of launching new campuses. Our group is as follows:

Natalie Frisk is our family ministry expert. She is a key leader from The Meeting House. This church has 19 (!) locations and is doing all kinds of great stuff, including a killer kids’ & youth curriculum that they give away for free. Natalie’s a lot of fun and will have so many great insights around leading in a thriving multisite church.

Greg Curtis is our guest connections and assimilation expert. He leads at Eastside Christian Church, one of the fastest growing churches in the country, and literally, is the “go to” source for getting people to stick and stay in the church. (Eastside has assimilated something like 1,500 people in the last 18 months!) His coaching practice around assimilation is amazing.

Ben Stapley is our communications and service programming expert. Ben is one of the most helpful leaders I know. His day job is the Weekend Experience Director at Christ Fellowship in Miami, but he does so much to help other leaders with the “big show” part of church world.

And I, Rich, have been involved with 14 different campus launches over the years and enjoy helping churches that are thinking about multisite.

We are here to answer your questions about running a multisite church and are excited to be here today with our twelfth episode.

Open Question: Which

Easter candy do you like: Peeps or the hollow chocolate Easter bunny?

* Natalie – It’s clearly the hollow the chocolate bunny. Peeps are like the candy corn of Easter.* Greg – I think that because Eastside has a Peeps party for all of our kids during Easter, and they’re going back to their parents all hyper and sticky, I’m going hollow chocolate bunny all the way.* Ben – I’m the person who adds another option, so I’m going with those little small hard Cadbury eggs with the little sugar coating on them. I have a hard time not finishing a whole bag at one time.* Rich – I would have to say if I had to choose, I would definitely say a chocolate bunny because I’m not sure exactly what Peeps are. It’s like sugarized Styrofoam or something like that.

This month we’ll be doing something a little different

on the show. Everyone has been so great at their different churches that

they’re coaching all the time and other churches reach out to them. So this

episode we’ll have a conversation around Easter and what advice we’ll give to

our campus leadership as we get ready for the big day.

Easter is the day that two things happen: Our people

are more likely to invite their friends and their friends are more likely to

attend. So today we’ll discuss what advice we’d give to our campus leadership

and also to other churches as we come into these last three and a half weeks

before Easter.

Greg: Eight things to think about when preparing teams for Easter.

#1: Preparing and

providing great parking lot attendants. Obviously your parking lot will be bigger

and more full. It’s easy to think your other sites are smaller than your

broadcast site and you don’t need more parking, but a lot of these sites are

not traditional churches and are in places such as movie theaters or high

schools so it’s important to be welcoming and give them the feeling of “We’ve

arrived at the right place.” Think of the first impression you want someone to

have.