This weekend new guests will arrive at your church. Some will be visiting for the very first time, and they will want to know what your church looks like on a regular weekend. Church leaders who want to make a difference always look at how to make their church’s experience more compelling and engaging for new guests. Here are 21 things you can implement to make your church more first-time guest friendly:

Don’t Be Weird

As a general principle, please don’t be weird. Seriously, people coming to your church for the first time may be worried that it’s going to be strange and unfamiliar territory. They wonder if it’s going to connect with them and the life they are living today. Guests arrive at your church looking for people like them; they aren’t looking for people who are weird and strange but rather those they can connect with comfortably.

Clear Website

We all know that your church website is a critical communication piece for people deciding to check out your church. In fact, somewhere around 50% of new visitors will first visit your website to learn more about the church before attending. [ref] While it is important that your church website follows modern design approaches, it is even more critical that you consider the website from a first-time guest perspective. Ensure your website has everything they would need to facilitate their visit, including the following:

Easy to find address and service times

Access to past messages

Information on kids ministry

A sense of “what is important” to the church

“What to Expect” Content on Social Media

Your church can do a lot of different things on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and whatever other social media platforms you’re using. However, perhaps one of the best uses of these platforms is to provide a sense of “what to expect” for your first-time guests. Post lots of images from inside your environments so guests can see them in action. Use live video features of Sunday mornings to invite people to get in the car and join your church. Make highlight videos of your weekend experiences and share them. Think about these channels as a way to document and demonstrate what the life of the church looks like. (Check out what Road to Life Church in Northwest Indiana does with their weekly highlight videos on Facebook! So fun!)

Signage at the Road

First-time guests are likely very nervous when they drive up to your church. You can remove some of that fear by making sure that you have clear and compelling signage at the road in front of your church. Learn what the local bylaw limits are on temporary signage and go right up to those limits! Flags are a popular option for many churches because they might be categorized differently by your town, but they pack the same visual punch as other types of signs. “Sandwich board” signs are great tools to point people in the right direction in your parking lots. Even something as simple as branded safety cones give an added touch to indicate to first-time guests that you are ready for them.   

Signage at the Doors

Count the number of doors on the outside of your church. Most leaders will be shocked by how many different ways people can get in and out of the building as we often think people only come in through one or two sets of doors. It needs to be super obvious where you’d like people to enter. If you have a door that’s better for families to arrive at then make that clear too. Think about this signage from multiple distances from the building. Is it obvious when they get out of their cars? What should it look like in order to direct the people who are 35 feet away? Is there something you can do for the people who are right at the door?

This weekend new guests will arrive at your church. Some will be visiting for the very first time, and they will want to know what your church looks like on a regular weekend. Church leaders who want to make a difference always look at how to make their church’s experience more compelling and engaging for new guests. Here are 21 things you can implement to make your church more first-time guest friendly:

Don’t Be Weird

As a general principle, please don’t be weird. Seriously, people coming to your church for the first time may be worried that it’s going to be strange and unfamiliar territory. They wonder if it’s going to connect with them and the life they are living today. Guests arrive at your church looking for people like them; they aren’t looking for people who are weird and strange but rather those they can connect with comfortably.

Clear Website

We all know that your church website is a critical communication piece for people deciding to check out your church. In fact, somewhere around 50% of new visitors will first visit your website to learn more about the church before attending. [ref] While it is important that your church website follows modern design approaches, it is even more critical that you consider the website from a first-time guest perspective. Ensure your website has everything they would need to facilitate their visit, including the following:

Easy to find address and service times

Access to past messages

Information on kids ministry

A sense of “what is important” to the church

“What to Expect” Content on Social Media

Your church can do a lot of different things on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and whatever other social media platforms you’re using. However, perhaps one of the best uses of these platforms is to provide a sense of “what to expect” for your first-time guests. Post lots of images from inside your environments so guests can see them in action. Use live video features of Sunday mornings to invite people to get in the car and join your church. Make highlight videos of your weekend experiences and share them. Think about these channels as a way to document and demonstrate what the life of the church looks like. (Check out what Road to Life Church in Northwest Indiana does with their weekly highlight videos on Facebook! So fun!)

Signage at the Road

First-time guests are likely very nervous when they drive up to your church. You can remove some of that fear by making sure that you have clear and compelling signage at the road in front of your church. Learn what the local bylaw limits are on temporary signage and go right up to those limits! Flags are a popular option for many churches because they might be categorized differently by your town, but they pack the same visual punch as other types of signs. “Sandwich board” signs are great tools to point people in the right direction in your parking lots. Even something as simple as branded safety cones give an added touch to indicate to first-time guests that you are ready for them.

Signage at the Doors

Count the number of doors on the outside of your church. Most leaders will be shocked by how many different ways people can get in and out of the building as we often think people only come in through one or two sets of doors. It needs to be super obvious where you’d like people to enter. If you have a door that’s better for families to arrive at then make that clear too. Think about this signage from multiple distances from the building. Is it obvious when they get out of their cars? What should it look like in order to direct the people who are 35 feet away? Is there something you can do for the people who are right at the door?

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m so excited to have William Vanderbloemen from the Vanderbloemen Search Group with us today.

Vanderbloemen Search Group started out wanting help churches find pastors. They now have branched into doing a few other things such as consulting, succession planning and serving ministries in their staffing needs as well as churches. In everything their passion of helping teams and organizations build their culture remains.

William is with us today to talk about building your culture and how he’s shared what he’s learned in his new book, Culture Wins: The Roadmap to an Irresistible Workplace.

* Identify the unique culture at your church. // The truth is, we’re all a little crazy. Churches are staffed with broken people. You make it work not by trying to find people who aren’t crazy (ie. perfect), but by finding people who have the same kind of crazy that you do. Churches do this by asking themselves the question: when we’re functioning at our very best, what are we doing that’s common to us but would be uncommon to other teams around us? That’s a nice way of saying, “What kind of crazy are we?” One of the examples the Vanderbloemen Search Group identified for themselves is that they are super responsive people. As William jokes, “Why are you calling me back at ten o’clock; you should wait until tomorrow?” This type of “crazy” came up again and again, and it turned into a value that they called ridiculous responsiveness. Don’t just be mediocre or vanilla, show the ridiculousness in the values that your church has.

* Culture needs to be guarded. // Good culture attracts people, and staff stick around longer when their is good culture at an organization. If you’re a church planter and don’t yet have staff, you may have key volunteers that serve as your staff. Regardless of your organization, choose one person that should be in charge of overseeing the culture aspect of the team building. Guarding the culture is important enough to be a part of their job and not something that someone does on the side or during their spare time. This individual should spend 30-35% of their time making sure you’re cultivating good culture and it’s being kept on target. Be intentional about culture.

* Internal versus external hires. // William started Vanderbloemen Search Group because he wanted to see the church move farther and faster. Why should a great church spend half of their time without leadership? This problem was one he wanted to solve. In his work with pastor placement, William has found that the smartest clients have developed ratios of when to hire from within versus when to hire externally. If you’re looking to sustain a culture, or push a culture forward in a particular area, you should be looking at an internal hire. On the other hand, if you’re looking to shake up, grow, change and do something different in an area, an external hire is a great thing to do. Regardless of whether you’re hiring from within or outside, the person needs to be the right one for the job.

You can find the book Culture Wins: The Roadmap to an Irresistible Workplace at www.culturewins.org. Or learn more about the Vanderbloemen Search Group at  www.vanderbloemen.com.

Thank You for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTu...

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m so excited to have William Vanderbloemen from the Vanderbloemen Search Group with us today.

Vanderbloemen Search Group started out wanting help churches find pastors. They now have branched into doing a few other things such as consulting, succession planning and serving ministries in their staffing needs as well as churches. In everything their passion of helping teams and organizations build their culture remains.

William is with us today to talk about building your culture and how he’s shared what he’s learned in his new book, Culture Wins: The Roadmap to an Irresistible Workplace.

* Identify the unique culture at your church. // The truth is, we’re all a little crazy. Churches are staffed with broken people. You make it work not by trying to find people who aren’t crazy (ie. perfect), but by finding people who have the same kind of crazy that you do. Churches do this by asking themselves the question: when we’re functioning at our very best, what are we doing that’s common to us but would be uncommon to other teams around us? That’s a nice way of saying, “What kind of crazy are we?” One of the examples the Vanderbloemen Search Group identified for themselves is that they are super responsive people. As William jokes, “Why are you calling me back at ten o’clock; you should wait until tomorrow?” This type of “crazy” came up again and again, and it turned into a value that they called ridiculous responsiveness. Don’t just be mediocre or vanilla, show the ridiculousness in the values that your church has.

* Culture needs to be guarded. // Good culture attracts people, and staff stick around longer when their is good culture at an organization. If you’re a church planter and don’t yet have staff, you may have key volunteers that serve as your staff. Regardless of your organization, choose one person that should be in charge of overseeing the culture aspect of the team building. Guarding the culture is important enough to be a part of their job and not something that someone does on the side or during their spare time. This individual should spend 30-35% of their time making sure you’re cultivating good culture and it’s being kept on target. Be intentional about culture.

* Internal versus external hires. // William started Vanderbloemen Search Group because he wanted to see the church move farther and faster. Why should a great church spend half of their time without leadership? This problem was one he wanted to solve. In his work with pastor placement, William has found that the smartest clients have developed ratios of when to hire from within versus when to hire externally. If you’re looking to sustain a culture, or push a culture forward in a particular area, you should be looking at an internal hire. On the other hand, if you’re looking to shake up, grow, change and do something different in an area, an external hire is a great thing to do. Regardless of whether you’re hiring from within or outside, the person needs to be the right one for the job.

You can find the book Culture Wins: The Roadmap to an Irresistible Workplace at www.culturewins.org. Or learn more about the Vanderbloemen Search Group at www.vanderbloemen.com.

Thank You for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTun...

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re in for a treat today with Lee Coate, the executive pastor in charge of ministry and media at The Crossing Christian Church in Las Vegas.

The Crossing began in 2000 as a partner plant coming out of Canyon Ridge Christian Church. It started with a large plant team and has experienced steady growth since it’s inception. Every community has a unique culture, and that is certainly true for the city of Las Vegas. The staff works to learn from the culture in the larger community as well as intentionally implement the church culture as they grow and hire new staff. Lee talks with us today about how he navigates culture at The Crossing.

* Navigate culture. // Lee views his role as a sort of culture engineer. You can often find him walking the halls and connecting with the 50 or so staff at The Crossing, trying to get people unstuck, dealing with conflict, or figuring out how to get more collaboration and communication across different departments. Throughout his days he’s navigating and cultivating culture to ensure that the staff keeps the church’s values at the forefront of their minds as they work, lead and make decisions.

* Be aware of the culture in your city. // Las Vegas is unique culture-wise in that things are always being updated and renovated to something new. It’s been interesting to see this mentality influence the residents in the Las Vegas area where people get bored really quickly and need to be reengaged frequently. As a result, The Crossing’s ministry has to be designed to address that. The executive team spends a lot of time looking at how to move people from the streets to the seats, and then what the steps through that process look like. Even this process needs to be refreshed fairly often. At The Crossing they are constantly reengineering the top of their “engagement funnel” as far as a growth plan in order to find new ways to keep people engaged and get them into community.

* A unique twist on the engagement funnel. // One example of how The Crossing invites people to connect with the church and each other is through their Discover process. In Discover, visitors have the chance to meet the pastor and are taught the six core values of the church in a creative way that does not include sitting in a classroom for an extended period of time. Instead people take a tour of the campus, experiencing brief presentations at different stops which coordinate with the church’s values.

* Guard your church’s culture. // Those six core values are constantly reinforced among the staff as well. The larger you get as a team and as a church, the more intentionality somebody needs to have towards culture. This is where Lee comes in. Each week he holds a Monday Morning Meeting with the people on his side of the org chart which is all about culture rather than “business”. During this 45-60 minute block, they discuss anything from articles or podcasts to books they are reading together. Whatever they are talking through, Lee is intentional about linking it back to the church’s core values, using this time to reinforce what The Crossing is all about. These practices are especially important with new hires coming in where the culture needs to be communicated from day one.

* Learning in tragedies. // Even with all efforts towards intentionality and strategy in making decisions, particularly to help in the community, The Crossing learned during the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that they had to put some of those philosophies aside. During these times, people just want to have something to do and they need you to help them with that, even if it’s only delivering water to a fire station. Be prepared to set aside your desire to be strategic, and help people with the emotional and spiritual needs they have to respond and help during tragedies,

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re in for a treat today with Lee Coate, the executive pastor in charge of ministry and media at The Crossing Christian Church in Las Vegas.

The Crossing began in 2000 as a partner plant coming out of Canyon Ridge Christian Church. It started with a large plant team and has experienced steady growth since it’s inception. Every community has a unique culture, and that is certainly true for the city of Las Vegas. The staff works to learn from the culture in the larger community as well as intentionally implement the church culture as they grow and hire new staff. Lee talks with us today about how he navigates culture at The Crossing.

* Navigate culture. // Lee views his role as a sort of culture engineer. You can often find him walking the halls and connecting with the 50 or so staff at The Crossing, trying to get people unstuck, dealing with conflict, or figuring out how to get more collaboration and communication across different departments. Throughout his days he’s navigating and cultivating culture to ensure that the staff keeps the church’s values at the forefront of their minds as they work, lead and make decisions.

* Be aware of the culture in your city. // Las Vegas is unique culture-wise in that things are always being updated and renovated to something new. It’s been interesting to see this mentality influence the residents in the Las Vegas area where people get bored really quickly and need to be reengaged frequently. As a result, The Crossing’s ministry has to be designed to address that. The executive team spends a lot of time looking at how to move people from the streets to the seats, and then what the steps through that process look like. Even this process needs to be refreshed fairly often. At The Crossing they are constantly reengineering the top of their “engagement funnel” as far as a growth plan in order to find new ways to keep people engaged and get them into community.

* A unique twist on the engagement funnel. // One example of how The Crossing invites people to connect with the church and each other is through their Discover process. In Discover, visitors have the chance to meet the pastor and are taught the six core values of the church in a creative way that does not include sitting in a classroom for an extended period of time. Instead people take a tour of the campus, experiencing brief presentations at different stops which coordinate with the church’s values.

* Guard your church’s culture. // Those six core values are constantly reinforced among the staff as well. The larger you get as a team and as a church, the more intentionality somebody needs to have towards culture. This is where Lee comes in. Each week he holds a Monday Morning Meeting with the people on his side of the org chart which is all about culture rather than “business”. During this 45-60 minute block, they discuss anything from articles or podcasts to books they are reading together. Whatever they are talking through, Lee is intentional about linking it back to the church’s core values, using this time to reinforce what The Crossing is all about. These practices are especially important with new hires coming in where the culture needs to be communicated from day one.

* Learning in tragedies. // Even with all efforts towards intentionality and strategy in making decisions, particularly to help in the community, The Crossing learned during the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that they had to put some of those philosophies aside. During these times, people just want to have something to do and they need you to help them with that, even if it’s only delivering water to a fire station. Be prepared to set aside your desire to be strategic, and help people with the emotional and spiritual needs they have to respond and help during tragedies,

Thanks for coming back for this week’s episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m honored to have Jeff Beachum of Portable Church Industries with us today. PCI helps churches go portable.

Portable Church started one day when a portable church was struggling in a middle school setting. Finally one of the pastors went to a volunteer, who was an engineer, and asked for help in figuring it out. The volunteer put together a system to make setting up and tearing down easier. From there other churches asked for help in their own settings, and it grew into its own company.

* Grow big by being small. // Portable Church funded a study at Leadership Network called Latest Multi-site Trends: How a New Generation of Pastors is Shifting to Strategies That Reproduce and Multiply. The big idea pulled from the study was that 83% of pastors under the age of 40 have a vision to plant or launch a new campus. Years ago pastors sought to grow a giant church and so we had mega-churches being built and reproducing. Now the trend is to grow big by being small. Rather than a church expression being in one big location, younger pastors have a vision for smaller expressions of church to be spread throughout different neighborhoods reaching unique groups of people and communities.

* Shift your focus. // In these smaller expressions, churches are able to focus more on leadership development and creating a leadership pipeline because volunteers and new leaders are key to the multisite and portable church, or church plant movement. Similarly smaller churches allow for more disciple-making opportunities because they are naturally closer and more intimate communities.

* The church is a movement. // In the first five years of a church’s life, it is still a movement – it’s still fresh and attracting brand new people instead of transplants. But the longer a church is established, there’s a draw toward security, acquiring property, having a set address and not rocking the boat. According to the study, new churches—both permanent and portable—have 24% more growth in first five years than established churches. Additionally, being portable resulted in 12% more growth than any other expression of church. So pursuing portable church options is a great method for growing quickly and reaching your community.

* Customize your system to reflect your DNA. // When creating a portable system for a church, Portable Church Industries first meets with the church staff. The first half of the meeting covers a three-day period and is used to discover who they are, why they want a new site, and why they think the community needs their church. Portable Church goes to the new facility they will be using and shows them how their church’s unique DNA can be expressed in that high school or YMCA or whatever it is. A lot of churches think portability is hard or won’t be a good expression to reflect their DNA, but PCI has lots of resources, videos and photos demonstrating examples of how they’ve helped other churches create volunteer-friendly systems for set-up and tear-down. Typical systems take between an hour and an hour and fifteen minutes to set up, and then are torn down in forty-five minutes to an hour.

You can learn more about Portable Church Industries at www.portablechurch.com and read the two studies referenced in this podcast at www.leadnet.org/portable/. At unSeminary we’ve teamed up with Portable Church to offer our listeners some more resources to help you decide whether the Portable Church systems are right for you and you can find those at www.portablechurch.com/unseminary.

Thanks for coming back for this week’s episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m honored to have Jeff Beachum of Portable Church Industries with us today. PCI helps churches go portable.

Portable Church started one day when a portable church was struggling in a middle school setting. Finally one of the pastors went to a volunteer, who was an engineer, and asked for help in figuring it out. The volunteer put together a system to make setting up and tearing down easier. From there other churches asked for help in their own settings, and it grew into its own company.

* Grow big by being small. // Portable Church funded a study at Leadership Network called Latest Multi-site Trends: How a New Generation of Pastors is Shifting to Strategies That Reproduce and Multiply. The big idea pulled from the study was that 83% of pastors under the age of 40 have a vision to plant or launch a new campus. Years ago pastors sought to grow a giant church and so we had mega-churches being built and reproducing. Now the trend is to grow big by being small. Rather than a church expression being in one big location, younger pastors have a vision for smaller expressions of church to be spread throughout different neighborhoods reaching unique groups of people and communities.

* Shift your focus. // In these smaller expressions, churches are able to focus more on leadership development and creating a leadership pipeline because volunteers and new leaders are key to the multisite and portable church, or church plant movement. Similarly smaller churches allow for more disciple-making opportunities because they are naturally closer and more intimate communities.

* The church is a movement. // In the first five years of a church’s life, it is still a movement – it’s still fresh and attracting brand new people instead of transplants. But the longer a church is established, there’s a draw toward security, acquiring property, having a set address and not rocking the boat. According to the study, new churches—both permanent and portable—have 24% more growth in first five years than established churches. Additionally, being portable resulted in 12% more growth than any other expression of church. So pursuing portable church options is a great method for growing quickly and reaching your community.

* Customize your system to reflect your DNA. // When creating a portable system for a church, Portable Church Industries first meets with the church staff. The first half of the meeting covers a three-day period and is used to discover who they are, why they want a new site, and why they think the community needs their church. Portable Church goes to the new facility they will be using and shows them how their church’s unique DNA can be expressed in that high school or YMCA or whatever it is. A lot of churches think portability is hard or won’t be a good expression to reflect their DNA, but PCI has lots of resources, videos and photos demonstrating examples of how they’ve helped other churches create volunteer-friendly systems for set-up and tear-down. Typical systems take between an hour and an hour and fifteen minutes to set up, and then are torn down in forty-five minutes to an hour.

You can learn more about Portable Church Industries at www.portablechurch.com and read the two studies referenced in this podcast at www.leadnet.org/portable/. At unSeminary we’ve teamed up with Portable Church to offer our listeners some more resources to help you decide whether the Portable Church systems are right for you and you can find those at www.portablechurch.com/unseminary.

Welcome 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 at Liquid Church in NJ, 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 third episode.

Opening Question: What’s a book you’re reading these days that you’re digging?

* Natalie Frisk – Ruth Haley Barton’s Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry. It is a few years old, but a fantastic read.

* Greg Curtis – Church Growth Flywheel: 5 Practical Systems to Drive Growth at Your Church by Rich Birch. It’s a good book for people who want to develop their campuses for senior leadership all the way down. The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile for a way of understanding and managing people. 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done by Peter Bregman is the most motivational way of managing time I’ve seen.

* Ben Stapley – Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller. It’s all about what is my StoryBrand and how has God wired me? How do we use that to find our church’s individual StoryBrand and not just cut and paste from another church?

* Rich – Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. I have a number of female leaders in my life and I found that book great and really challenging.

Q1: How much “control” do you give to the campus vs. central location regarding budgets and spending plans? Do you give each campus their own budget and spending plan and ask them to do all the purchasing or do you give them a trimmed down budget and ask them to use that only contextually for the ministry at their campus with the majority of the budget done at the central campus? Or is there a third way?

The tension in this area can be hard to figure out and sort through. At The Meeting House they’ve worked on trial and error to reduce tensions and figure out what works best for them. There is a central campus budget that covers the basic things that are done for all of the sites such as teaching, training, music licensing, and so on. Then each campus has a budget for site-specific compassion initiatives,

Welcome 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 at Liquid Church in NJ, 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 third episode.

Opening Question: What’s a book you’re reading these days that you’re digging?

* Natalie Frisk – Ruth Haley Barton’s Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry. It is a few years old, but a fantastic read.

* Greg Curtis – Church Growth Flywheel: 5 Practical Systems to Drive Growth at Your Church by Rich Birch. It’s a good book for people who want to develop their campuses for senior leadership all the way down. The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile for a way of understanding and managing people. 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done by Peter Bregman is the most motivational way of managing time I’ve seen.

* Ben Stapley – Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller. It’s all about what is my StoryBrand and how has God wired me? How do we use that to find our church’s individual StoryBrand and not just cut and paste from another church?

* Rich – Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. I have a number of female leaders in my life and I found that book great and really challenging.

Q1: How much “control” do you give to the campus vs. central location regarding budgets and spending plans? Do you give each campus their own budget and spending plan and ask them to do all the purchasing or do you give them a trimmed down budget and ask them to use that only contextually for the ministry at their campus with the majority of the budget done at the central campus? Or is there a third way?

The tension in this area can be hard to figure out and sort through. At The Meeting House they’ve worked on trial and error to reduce tensions and figure out what works best for them. There is a central campus budget that covers the basic things that are done for all of the sites such as teaching, training, music licensing, and so on. Then each campus has a budget for site-specific compassion initiatives,