Multi Church Site/Campus Principals
In the past 6 months I have had an opportunity to visit many multi campus/satellite venues. As anyone would expect, some have been great, some have been average, and some have been bad. From these visits, attending some conferences, personally involoved in startup companies, and life experience, I have come up with my own core principals in starting a successful multi campus venue. Now know, FC has not launched our venue yet, so these may drastically change in a few months. 1) Keep it simple. When you launch your campus start with the basics. Only add programs when you truly have too. This principal will translate into all aspects... don't fall into the trap of having to have all the tools or gadgets that the main campus may have. Remember the good old days, your church did not start out where you are today! 2) Keep it personal. Since the venues will be video preaching, you must have a strong campus pastor that can keep it personal. People connect with people, and church needs to be relational. The power of small groups, bible studies or core relationships are critical for these venues to be successful. 3) Keep it excellent. All aspects of the campus must be excellent. This is a core principal of FC anyway, but in a remote campus you must stay focused on the excellence factor. This is again why keeping it simple is key. Do a few things and do them with excellence. Example, the venue is video preaching, so the video feed better be excellent!
4) Keep it connected. A remote campus must stay connected to the big picture and the overall vision. For example, the slogan One church, multiple locations is great. Keep the vision white hot for the members, attenders and the staff. 5) Keep it cultural. Know your audience and the culture of the area. A remote campus my have a different audience or culture then the main campus. A remote campus may give you an opportunity to do different music, programs or events. Don't fall into the trap of not adjusting your methodology.
6) Keep it purposeful. Know your purpose for the site and keep it on target. Is it to relieve space at the main campus? Is it to reach a new audience? Both? If you are trying to relieve space then get on purpose and strategic about challenging your membership and attenders to move to the new campus. This is hard work if you do it right! Promote, promote, promote. Cast vision... people don't follow your need, they will follow their own felt need. Vision will create the felt need.
7) Keep it goal oriented. Know your definition of success going in and set tangible goals throughout the organization. Do not assume that all things will just happen because you expect them too. Attendance, life-change, small groups, etc will not just happen because you open the doors. Stay strategic, and goal oriented and measure your results with numbers! 8) Remember, its a start up. Staff selection is key to the success of a remote campus. Why? Because more than likely if you are starting a remote campus then your main campus is fairly successful. If your staff has only seen the glory or wonder years of your church they might not be aware of what hard work it took to get their.
9) Keep it strategic. Centralize everything that you can, personalize ministry, and outsource the rest. 10) Keep it structured. Staff alignment and structure is very important. Staff must know who is in charge, and the person in charge must be a "company" guy. The campus pastor or whoever is in charge at the remote campus must be trusted, and must be a great leader. Poor communication in a remote campus could create an implosion very quickly. The staff must feel apart of the bigger picture (vision) and must have great support from the main campus. In my opinion this is the hardest part of all, and also the most UNDER ESTIMATED! Do not make the mistake of thinking that this will just work... Please excuse my candid nature here, but most churches are out to lunch when it comes to this topic! I would look more to corporate america for a great model that can be adjusted to your church. For example, Chick-fil-a or Starbucks, both of these models have a great scalability plan, great accountability, and great brand consistency that can easily be tweaked to fit your church.
Thats it, that is my top 10 list. Please know, if you have experience with starting a remote or satellite campus I would love to get your feedback. Shoot me an email (terry dot storch at fcmail dot org)or use the comments to share your thoughts with me.