Going Multi, Part 3

Newfrontiers and Multi, Part 2

The situation now
A number of us were looking seriously at multi before Driscoll came to the Together on a Mission Conference, in Brighton in 2008, but it was his comments in the elders seminars which really lit the blue touch paper. Driscoll seemed to strike just at the moment when we ready to hear what he had to say. After all, many of us had seen multi before, without being impacted by it in the same way. For example, a gang of us went to Singapore to visit Lawrence Khong’s church back in 1999, but because we were focussing on what he was doing with cells we hardly noticed that he was also doing multi.

It is probably worth considering why we were ready to hear what Driscoll had to say at this moment. A concern raised about ging multi is that it can have the effect of limiting space for the charismatic. Being multi almost inevitably means that our corporate gatherings have to be shorter and sharper. Maybe ten or twenty years ago we would have resisted this, but over the past five years or so an increased emphasis on mission means that many churches have already taken the philosophical decision to make meetings shorter and sharper in a desire to reach out to the unbelieving guest. Having already done this, we were in a position to accept the constraints that multi implies.

In this regard, multi-venue, with only one meeting per venue, might offer us a better model than multi-meeting – this would offer the benefits of increased meeting options, but avoid the problem of always watching the clock.

Whatever the philosophical and spiritual issues involved, pragmatically there was just so much sense in what the Seattle dynamo said: Why spend millions (and in most towns in the UK it is millions) buying a building that seats 1,000 when for far less cash and stress you could stay in your existing facility but run two or three meetings? Why always plant a church, with the huge attrition rate upon planters, when you can just open another campus and enjoy all the economies of scale that brings? Why dilute ministry gift if there are some star performers who can serve across a number of meetings?

It all made perfect sense! And as a result a number of our churches are actively moving towards multi-site.

Also, many more of us (Gateway included) are now doing multi-meeting.

The outstanding example of this move in Newfrontiers is Godfirst, Johannesburg. At the time of writing Godfirst has just gone to ten meetings across seven venues and is gathering a total crowd approaching 2,000 people. Godfirst is also utilizing technology, in that PJ Smyth is ‘preaching’ via DVD at a number of these meetings. (PJ’s explanation for why Godfirst has gone multi can be found here)

The trickle-down effect is very real in church leadership, so it is likely that more of our leaders will pick-up on the successes of PJ, Driscoll, et al, and see multi as the latest silver bullet to make all their dreams-of-growth come true. I fear that rather than being the silver bullet, for some this will be a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot bullet, which it would be good to avoid.

In the next post I will try to do some theology on the multi model.