Welcome back to our new podcast all about multisite! 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 sixth episode.

Opening Question: What was a highlight from summer?

* Natalie – My daughter had an awesome week at Camp Mini-Yo-We and then we traveled to a lot as a family. It was great to travel and relax a bit.

* Greg – I came back from a Sabbatical in Italy and went to San Francisco. I took my adult kids on a National Park tour and then hung out at the beach.

* Ben – Professionally I transitioned in positions. I used to be the Creative Arts Pastor at Liquid Church in New Jersey. But just recently I came on board as the Weekend Experience Director at Christ Fellowship in Miami.

Q1: When do you know it’s time to go multisite, rather than adding another service?

Multisite isn’t a growth strategy, it’s a multiplication strategy. Going multisite won’t kickstart your church to grow, but if your church is growing, it’s a way to take that growth and multiply it into new areas. So what factors need to be present for you to launch a new campus?

Natalie recommends that you think about the economic point of view. A lot of the costs can be easily minimized and measured in launching a second service at the same site rather than launching a second campus. In kids’ ministry, Natalie thinks about all of the classroom supplies, the volunteers and investment needed for new classrooms and youth groups, youth activities, and so on. If parking is an issue at your campus, one alternative would be moving your original campus instead of launching a second site.

When asked, “Should I add another service or another site?” Ben says the answer is yes. “If your church is growing don’t you as a leader be the bottleneck because you have a small vision; release it as much as you can.” Start with a big vision. Maximize your current space before you look to launch another campus. The top three bottlenecks for service growth are parking space, auditorium space, and kid space. Parking is tough, but the way that they got around it at the Liquid Church broadcast campus where Ben previously worked was by offering a shuttle service with one of the local businesses. They offered the business use of their auditorium if they could use the business’s parking lot for their shuttle service on Sunday mornings.

When the cost of expanding capacity at a service is greater than the cost of launching a campus, then launch a campus. Greg recommends looking at the costs of property in your...