Seventeen SBTC churches extend outreach through multi-site ministry

Whether it’s Sunday School at Calvary Baptist in Beaumont, senior adult choir at Spring Baptist Church near Houston, Royal Ambassadors and Girls in Action at Bannockburn Baptist in Austin, Disaster Relief teams deployed by Fielder Road Baptist Church or TeamKid offered by Broadview Baptist in Abilene, there are methods of ministry most Southern Baptists are familiar with no matter where you go in Texas. Now there’s another trait that these five churches have in common—multi-site ministry.

At least 17 churches affiliated with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention have extended their reach to the community, region or even other states, all the while keeping their commitment to teaching the Word of God to new audiences.

“By definition, multi-site involves starting a site somewhere other than your current campus,” explained Scott McConnell in his book “Multi-Site Churches.” While many of the “goals, experiences and characteristics” look similar to church planting, McConnell said, “New sites and church plants are traveling different routes that require different vision, resourcing, and style of leadership.”

Groups that worship on the same campus or via the internet are not considered additional sites. Jim Tomberlin of MultiSite Solutions adds that multi-site churches typically are centrally-governed and centrally-budgeted.

According to Warren Bird at Leadership Network in Dallas, there are over 5,000 churches with more than one location. Up from 200 in 2002. Bird and Tomberlin assisted the TEXAN in identifying multi-site churches in Texas.

Most people think of megachurches when they hear of a church launching another campus, often called a satellite in earlier years. The earliest adopter of the multi-site model among SBTC churches was Second Baptist Church in Houston, pastored by Edwin Young. In 1999 a second campus was launched, with additional sites developed to the north, south and Cypress areas of Houston during the past decade.

With the main Woodway campus, Second Baptist reports an average attendance of nearly 22,000 and membership of more than 58,000. As one of the largest churches in America, at times it has ranked at the top in average attendance and ranks as the 72nd fastest-growing church, according to Outreach magazine.

“God doesn’t want his people to remain stacked up together, so they can have a good time and bless only their own,” Young told Baptist Press during the time when new sites were being offered. “God wants his church to expand— to lengthen its cords and deepen its stakes.”

In another area of Houston, Metropolitan Baptist Church launched a second site four years ago known as the Met @ Fry Road in Cypress.
“An expanding vision to be one church in multiple locations means we are devoted to one mission, one set of core values, one strategy, and one church body, but meeting in multiple locations,” the Met website explains. Recent development of 100 acres at the Cypress campus offers the potential to reach 25,000 people each Sunday at two locations.

Begun as a mission in 1990, Fellowship Church in Grapevine experienced rapid growth necessitating use of adjacent facilities as Pastor Ed Young, preached to one audience while the other worshipped through music, and then switched places halfway through the service.
By 1998, Fellowship relocated north of DFW airport and now offers three identical services, with campuses in Plano, the arts district of downtown Dallas, and the museum district west of downtown Fort Worth.

The pastor’s Saturday night message is videotaped and transmitted to the other campuses the next morning, with live music provided and a campus pastor in place. That technology allowed Fellowship to open three more campuses beyond the state—two in Miami and one in Columbia, S.C.

VIDEO OR LIVE PREACHING
Most often, a multi-site church will designate campus pastors to shepherd believers at the local site while delivering the senior pastor’s message at the original campus via video. Many also offer live streaming video via the internet.

McConnell sees the use of video preaching by “an incredibly gifted communicator” as good stewardship. In his interviews with various pastors using that approach, McConnell said, “It was a refreshing finding that it wasn’t an ego trip for most of these churches. We heard their story that it was God leading them and sometimes the leadership was reluctant” to transmit the sermon via video instead of using campus pastors to preach.”

Exceptions to that approach are found at Hyde Park Baptist in Austin, Cottonwood Creek Baptist Church in Allen, South Jefferson Baptist in Mt. Pleasant, Spring Baptist in Spring, and the Church on Rush Creek in Arlington. At South Jefferson Baptist, the associate pastor preaches in Spanish to a crowd of about 80 people at the second campus known as El Buen Pastor.

Pastor Kie Bowman delivers his message to the 8:30 a.m. traditional service which is piped live to the contemporary service meeting at the same time on campus. Then he drives to the Quarries Church to preach to that audience.

Similarly, Spring Baptist Pastor Mark Estep travels to Klein to preach at the church’s second campus. Cottonwood Creek’s additional sites at Nevada and Denison each have campus pastors who preach. At Fielder Road Baptist Church in Arlington, the pastor of the Eastside campus preaches the sermon, however Senior Pastor Gary Smith or another pastor occasionally preaches to the Spanish service with an interpreter.

Some churches like Calvary Baptist in Beaumont and Fellowship of the Parks in Keller primarily rely upon video to deliver preaching, but feature the campus pastor in a preaching role about once a month.

Calvary Executive Pastor Gary Rothenberger Jr. explained, “The screen is great, but I think people still like to hear preaching in person. You can’t just put up a screen and tell people to come in and watch it,” he said. “Otherwise, they’ll just watch a service on TV. You have to have a campus pastor that does everything else that a pastor does and develop relationships through connection groups.”

Rothenberger said, “It’s not the only strategy. It’s part of a bigger strategy. You can’t just open a bunch of satellites” without careful planning and end goals, he insisted.

Thirty-thousand members at three campuses can hear the same message from Prestonwood Pastor Jack Graham at whichever service time they choose. “The DNA of the church from the first century to now is the Word of God and Jesus Christ,” Graham has stated, emphasizing the priority of a preaching and teaching ministry.

“The church still exists for people who are not yet here,” he likes to remind his congregation when they extend their ministry.
The Prosper campus of Prestonwood grew out of a desire to reach people in an area of rapid growth, but also increased the likelihood that members traveling from that direction would bring neighbors and extended family. When they began looking at a site 19 miles north of the original campus, church leaders realized there were 2,000 members living midway between the two sites, providing a large base of people to join the launch of a new campus.

Prestonwood Teaching Pastor David McKinley said he saw that stewardship principle when leaders for the new site were “kind of stockpiled” at the original campus. “We found people who stretched to embrace and serve and sacrifice and give,” he told McConnell.
Prestonwood is the 75th fastest-growing church in America, according to research LifeWay conducted with Outreach magazine.

Fellowship of the Parks began meeting in a home in 1993 and now offers three campuses with more than 2,000 in attendance every weekend. Begun as a church plant of First Baptist Church of Euless, FOP has sites in Keller, Grapevine and Haslet.

Megachurches continue to dominate the list of fastest-growing churches in America and at least a fourth of them have multiple sites. While megachurches make up less than 1 percent of all U.S. congregations, more than half of American worshippers are found in the largest 20 percent of them, according to researchers at Hartford Seminary.

But many of the SBTC churches that have launched additional sites did so long before waiting to hit the 2,000-plus attendees that define a megachurch.

Broadview Baptist Church in Abilene added a west campus in 2006, reaching out to an area near Dyess Air Force Base and several mobile home communities. Attendance at the main campus averages more than 500 while the west campus draws about 70 people each Sunday.

StoneWater Church in Granbury launched in 2005. About 75 to 100 people were coming from nearby Glen Rose to the new church start, prompting the church to consider starting a new site in that area.

“Out of the blue a church called us from Glen Rose that had about 25 people attending and talked to us about merging,” recalled Joey White, who eventually led what became a new site in the facility deeded to StoneWater. Half of the former church’s members united with the new site.

MISSION-MINDED STRATEGY
Multi-site methodology and a commitment to church planting often dovetail.

StoneWater launched with a goal of planting 10 other churches in coordination with SBTC. White helped the first five in Cleburne, Weatherford and Stephenville, Wills Point and a Hispanic campus in Granbury transition to autonomous congregations with full-time leadership. All of the churches planted by StoneWater “bought into church planting” as well, he said.

Meanwhile, StoneWater will launch another multi-site campus in Bosque County south of Glen Rose this year, again utilizing preaching via video.

“Many church plants are deciding to be multiplying as they grow so they’ve put into their strategy how they’re going to do it,” McConnell said. Multi-site ministry is often a part of a plan that tracks alongside continued church planting.

“If you have a guy that’s a really good pastor/communicator who is a visionary leader, he’s more likely a good church planter,” White told the TEXAN. On the other hand, the person he describes as a pastor-shepherd who loves the people and demonstrates good organization and delegation skills is more likely to qualify as a campus pastor with the sermon provided through video, he said.

Multi-site churches tend to grow faster and become healthy in the first two years, he said, leading the church to adopt a statewide approach in starting sites in rural, county seat towns where few church planters are interested in going. Thirty-two men at StoneWater are currently training to be sent out as church planters, campus pastors, missionaries, elders or simply ministry leaders for a period of time at a new site.

Bay Area Fellowship (BAF) in Corpus Christi grew from a handful of people in 1998 to more than 4,500 with 7,600 attending worship at the nine different sites spread across the region, according to the last Annual Church Profile completed by the church.

Many of those sites came about as Pastor Bil Cornelius noticed the challenges that overwhelm church planters and invited stalled plants to join his network to free the planters up to focus on pastoring their flocks. With Cornelius’ sermons piped to the various campuses meeting in renovated theaters and storefront properties, the planters-turned-pastors develop relationships locally.

While BAF’s success has placed the multi-site church on fastest-growing lists, Cornelius has also led the way in traditional church planting, teaming with SBTC to launch Brazos Fellowship in Bryan/College Station and Revolution Church in Schertz, as well as launching other plants in Texas, California, Colorado, Georgia, and Florida, and 40 churches planted in India.

LakePointe in Rockwall is another example of a megachurch committed to church planting, working alongside other churches to launch autonomous churches in other states and countries.

Begun in 1979 by seven families meeting at a marina bait house where Pastor Steve Stroope’s office doubled as a preschool classroom, the congregation now worships on a 34-acre site with campuses at Town East in Mesquite, Firewheel in Garland, and one in Forney, each embracing different worship styles.

In reality, nearly every multi-site church affiliated with SBTC is directly planting churches in Texas, and oftentimes in other regions of North America or even internationally. They provide funding for a church plant and frequently send members to help with outreach efforts of a plant.

In many cases these investments are made in coordination with SBTC strategy or that of either the North American Mission Board or International Mission Board. Many of the megachurches are directly engaged in church planting through another missions organization or network.

MERGING CHURCHES
New sites can help churches reach diverse populations, often by adopting or merging with floundering churches. (See related article on page 14.)

Spring Baptist Church in Spring was approached by Bridgestone Baptist in Klein about becoming a second campus, a story McConnell relates in his book.

Seeking guidance from member T.W. Hunt, Pastor Mark Estep wrestled with the impact on each congregation. Hunt told Estep to ask, “If you do this or don’t do this, what does it mean for the kingdom?”

At that point Estep sensed God directing the church to move forward with the merger. Preaching a third time in person at the Klein campus is at times a workout, Estep admitted, but he prefers to speak directly to all the members of Spring Baptist Church.

TRANSFERRING DNA
Whether it’s a missions mindset, preaching priority or congregational polity, McConnell advises churches to consider how to transfer their DNA to new sites by asking about:

• Identity: Who is your church?
• Values: What matters to your church?
• Expression: How does your church function?

 

The beliefs and vision of the church expressed as components of identity are where prospective members learn the doctrinal beliefs of a congregation, while polity matters arise in regard to expression. (See related article on page 13.)

For instance, nearly every multi-site SBTC church clearly states doctrinal beliefs on their website, some like Fellowship of the Parks taking a step further to provide a lengthy post relating doctrine to various ethical issues. Others pare down the commitment to the Baptist Faith & Message in brief content and direct further inquiries to the full document.

At Calvary Baptist in Beaumont, inerrancy is listed as the first of 11 core values, stating: “It’s all about him and it’s all in the Book.” Each value is explained in a message by the pastor.

McConnell said doctrine is a part of new member classes at most multi-site churches. Ensure there is consistency in what is taught among campus pastors “so that you don’t have two different views of eschatology or two different views of Calvinism being expressed from different sites,” he added.

When identifying denominational distinctives, some churches may be “slower to mention denominational affiliation,” McConnell said. “You’ve got to dig to find it.” He often fields questions as to whether a church is Southern Baptist in his role of managing Annual Church Profiles at LifeWay.

On the other hand, many multi-site churches affiliated with SBTC note that relationship on their websites and in material distributed to new members.

What McConnell does not see in multi-site churches is any hesitation from the pulpit to deal with doctrinal issues. “They’re digging in, understanding the Millennial generation wants to deal with real issues and deep truths. But probably through some of those front door places like a website or handouts in the worship center there may be a little less denominational-type distinctives showing up.

Southern Baptists searching for a new church home may also check to see if sermons are available on a church’s website, allowing them a preview of the pastor’s preaching and teaching ministry.

Since the 1980s Houston’s FBC has worked with more than 75 local congregations all more than the city, encouraging and revitalizing their ministries as part of a local missions effort. So when they launch the Sienna campus this Easter, the revitalization of Grace Church pastored by Jeff Rees will continue that priority.

Rees approached leaders at the Houston church last year about adopting their congregation and both congregations approved the merger in January with Rees continuing as campus pastor.

“It was a divine intersection where God orchestrated the exact moment at which years of prayer and pondering and panning by two church bodies would finally come to fruition,” stated Houston FBC Pastor Greg Matte in describing initial conversations with Rees.

Church leaders cite research that indicates a multi-site strategy has an 80 percent success rate as compared to a 30 percent success rate for traditional church plants, viewing it as a way to extend ministry to reach the lost. By focusing on neighborhoods, the multi-site approach is about “creating, not cloning” since the approach in each area matches the context. The campus pastor is empowered to shepherd his segment of the congregation in a particular location, they said.

McConnell is quoted by Houston FBC leaders to describe “what multisite is and what it most definitely is not.”

“The multisite strategy does not replace any other method of participating in kingdom growth,” McConnell wrote. “It does not replace church planting, personal evangelism, visitation programs, investing and inviting, servant evangelism, or evangelistic training.”

COMMISSION MOTIVATION
Church growth leaders who study the multi-site phenomenon are quick to point out that it is the Great Commission that must motivate new sites, not growth for the sake of growth.

“In short, multi-site is a means toward an end, not an end goal in itself,” write the authors of “The Multi-Site Revolution.” “Most churches do generate growth through multi-site, but just as importantly, multi-site keeps them from capping the growth they’re experiencing.”

Austin Stone Community Church offers a St. John campus to serve that neighborhood, sharing space with For the City Network where non-profit organizations work alongside the church for efforts of restoration and renewal. In addition to the downtown campus near the University of Texas, two other sites are offered on the south and west sides of the capital city.

“Having more and smaller worship gatherings with the same theology, vision and leadership will allow us to continue to grow wide as well as deep,” according to the church website. LifeWay Research studies for Outreach magazine report Austin Stone Community Church as the 69th fastest-growing congregation in the U.S.

Their goal is “to multiply missional communities of disciples of Jesus throughout the city of Austin and on into the nations.”

Some churches like Calvary Baptist of Beaumont have maximized their experience with multiple venues on the main campus as training ground for adding a new campus off site. V2 was the nickname for a second venue on the main campus where Pastor Nathan Cothen delivers his sermon in between the other worship services. Worship is offered in Spanish in the church’s gym, delivered by a Hispanic pastor who shares Cothen’s earlier message.

After initially meeting in a remodeled skating rink in Lumberton, north of Beaumont, the second campus relocated to facilities on 14 acres where a church had closed its doors. Steven Hays serves as campus pastor with 300 adults in worship and another 100 kids in Sunday School classes. Eventually, the north campus will offer adult Sunday School, but for now evening connection classes meet the need for discipleship.

“The sign out front says Calvary Baptist Church,” Executive Pastor Gary Rothenberger Jr. said, affirming the denominational connection Calvary has had for over a century. “When somebody wants to join we explain who we are, get them a copy of the Baptist Faith & Message and tell them we are involved in Southern Baptist mission causes.

Of the 17 multi-site churches studied, four are among the top 30 in Cooperative Program giving through the SBTC while four gave nothing in 2012. A few, like the Met use the majority of their mission dollars to partner with a variety of mission organizations.

Anticipating construction plans for their second campus, Pastor Sal Sberna reflected on the $5.3 million given to global mission efforts in the past three years, “What hasn’t changed is our devotion to the call of God to go and make disciples of all nations.”

Prestonwood Baptist Church led the group in per capita giving to Southern Baptist causes. Prestonwood Baptist Church led the group in per capita giving to the Cooperative Program among SBTC churches with half of the 17 ranking in the top 50.

Fielder Road Baptist Church in Arlington has a long history of being engaged in missions in the local community and abroad. Its new East Arlington campus maintains a priority of being multi-ethnic and multi-generational led by campus pastor Ender Palencia-Sanchez.

By giving members an opportunity to serve together across campuses, multi-site churches build unity, deepening relationships.

Stroope said of LakePointe’s approach, “It’s not one big church, but a collection of small churches,” alluding to the small groups where members receive “care, an opportunity for service and accountability.”

Even as these churches grow larger, many leaders encourage members to recall when they first began ministering.

“The greatest growth story is the first eight years,” Ed Young recalled when he took a group from Fellowship back to Irving to remind them of the church’s roots.

“We’re not going to become a monument,” he said. “We’ve had momentum for 20 years. We’re a movement and it’s not going to stop.”