Going Multi

Going multi is the new buzz in church life. Inspired by the likes of John Piper and Mark Driscoll, many eldership teams are considering the possibility of having more than one meeting or meeting in more than one location. A quick survey suggests that something like twenty-five percent of Newfrontiers UK churches are already doing multi in some form; the vast majority of which are multi-meeting. However, as yet there seems to have been little theological reflection upon this, or consideration of some potential pragmatic pitfalls. Is multi a biblically justifiable model of church life? What are some of the dangers as well as opportunities of this approach? My plan here is to spend a few posts exploring these things.

For the purposes of this post I will use the term multi to refer to both multiple services and multiple venues; the context should make it clear to which I am referring. Please note though, that although going multi-site seems the big step, I consider going multi-service to be the Rubicon – once this is crossed, going multi-site is just a step or two further along the way.

However, a key area is the line at which further Rubicon’s are crossed! The decision to go to more than one meeting is a substantial one, but I would argue that doing multi in extreme form (E.g., calling a ‘campus’ in another nation part of one ‘church’) is a step too far. Exactly where the lines should be drawn between these two points is moot, but would seem to be predicated on the point at which relationships cease to be meaningful.

In terms of resources, the most widely quoted text promoting multi-site is The Multi-Site Church Revolution, by Bird, Ligon & Surratt. While stimulating, this could hardly be described as theological in tone. The most helpful critique I have seen is the 9Marks ejournal on the subject. Some of the articles in this are favourable towards multi, but the general tone is negative. In large part this reflects the Baptist polity of the authors.


A quick sketch of the situation in Newfrontiers

Before getting into the meat of the matter it may be helpful to consider our experience of multi in Newfrontiers – the church context with which I am most familiar. While it may seem that this is a very new phenomenon, there is actually quite a history among us of having more than one meeting. Over the years, a number of Newfrontiers churches have experimented with having more than one Sunday service. In the next post I will re-cap some of these experiments.