Over the last 20 years, I’ve spent a lot of time helping multi-site churches wrestle through how to launch and lead thriving campuses.
One of the things that often comes up is the “dotted line and solid line” conversation. This is the conversation that attempts to outline how the various aspects of church leadership relate to each other. In particular, this refers to the lines on an organizational chart that define responsibilities and authority.
Solid lines show that the people “down” the org chart have a direct reporting relationship to the people connected to them.
Dotted lines show that the people “down” the org chart have “lesser” reporting relationships than those with the solid lines.
Most church structures resemble a pyramid where everyone in the church reports upwards through someone else to one authority figure or a Board at the top. However, multi-site churches are organized around a matrix comprised of central leaders responsible for functions across all locations and a group of campus leaders responsible for their specific location.
There is a tremendous amount of conversation around where the dotted and solid lines fall for multi-site churches. Some church structures have the solid lines move towards a central leadership team and the dotted lines then flowing outwards to campus leaders. To make this conversation even more interesting, you can also find churches that are structured the exact opposite way. Every multi-site church needs to deliver a common experience across their multiple locations. Dotted and solid lines are a way to structure leadership to achieve that common experience. This type of structure is called a matrix model.
The matrix model is inherently full of tension. Rather than a problem to be solved, this tension is something that is built into the multi-site approach. I don’t know any multi-site churches that would say they have this all figured out, but through various seasons and times of ministry, this tension might get better or worse. Ultimately, a lack of clarity will provoke the following questions:
Who is in charge?
Who is the first mover when things aren’t going well?
Who has authority to change something in a campus or across multiple locations?
Who takes responsibility for various aspects of what is happening in a church?
Who needs to know when a decision is made?
Who do we need to check in with and get their input when we’re making a decision?
Over the years of participating in these conversations, I frankly think that the dotted line and solid line conversation is overrated. Instead, we need to look at some of the deeper dynamics behind the matrix and how it’s affecting the effectiveness of your church. Here’s why I think your church needs to stop talking about the dotted lines and solid lines:
Multi-sites require regular and healthy communication.
At the end of the day, a matrix approach to leadership requires that everyone communicates with everyone else, regardless of whether you are a campus team member or a central team member.
These models are communication-heavy, and they require everyone to ask whether they are consulting with enough people about what’s happening in their particular area. Whether you have a dotted line or solid line connection to others in the organization, they need to be included in the conversation. We often see this take place through weekly meetings, regular email check-ins, and tools like Slack that allow both the central and campus teams to stay in sync.
Multi-site central teams are concerned with systems and curriculum.
Systems are defined processes that help the church deal with its various aspects of care and growth.
Curriculum is what we communicate from our various areas of ministry (e.g. the morning message, children’s ministry, student ministry).