Multi-Site Church: Economies Of Scale

Currently at Conversatio Morum we’re covering the Multi-Site model of church. This is a model with which I’m familiar and I find myself doing significant reading on. While reading something from Mark Batterson there was a reference to one advantage for this model being an Economy of Scale. Economies of Scale is a business term used to describe the point at which the growth of an organization has made it the most efficient. In terms of church, this is an interesting application when you put this in a multi-site church context. There are some key advantages here:

1. Growth is no longer about facility acquirement
   1. This is especially true in an urban context where land costs.
   2. Multi-site removes a central building as the church and re-structures that the church is actually the people gathered in different places.
2. Room for more leaders.
   1. As you add campuses, there is room for more people to step up and fill roles
   2. The example is if you have 3 campuses then you’ll need, at least, three main worship leaders.
   3. The more campuses the more roles, the more roles the more room, the more room the more people serving Christ in the context of a body.
3. A central staff to handle administrative tasks
   1. There is a common need in single campus and smaller churches where common administrative tasks have to be handled by the pastors.
   2. There’s some advantage on a stewardship level when 6 churches don’t have to pay 6 different graphic designers, but they can all give toward one.
   3. There’s an increased momentum when resources are pooled this way.
4. Pastors are set free to pastor
   1. This plays off of the previous point. Pastors can be pastors without having do all the other administrative tasks or pay a lot of money to add more staff.
   2. A central staff to handle requests of a decentralized church allows the church to concentrate on its mission in its context.
5. There’s always more to do and places to improve
   1. I’ve seen this in organizations both for and not for profit.
   2. As you acquire organizations or gather with those who do things in a slightly different way, sharing ideas becomes necessary. As this happens, best practices tend to emerge and all benefit.

What do you think? Is there really strength in the mulit-site church model regarding making the church more efficient and effective? Are there other advantages that I’ve missed here?