Teddy Ray is pastor and preacher for the Offerings Community and the Executive Pastor of 1st United Methodist Church in Lexington, KY. Recently, he wrote about the dramatic growth in multi-site churches and provided an explanation of how his church’s approach differs from the traditional multi-site models.
Multi-site congregations are a relatively new idea. Ray mentions the years multi-site congregations in the USA reached significant numeric milestones:
- 1990: 10,
- 1998: 100, and
- 2005: 1500.
. . . as far as we know, there is only one multi-site church doing what we’re doing. The typical multi-site church beams in a video of one pastor preaching to all of the sites. Or if not, all of the preachers preach the same sermon in their own setting. They have the same announcements at each site. They essentially offer worship site alternatives and keep everything else together.
That’s very different from what we’re doing.
Each of First UMC’s faith communities has quite a bit of freedom in its worship, its preaching, its discipleship and its outreach. That has been a very intentional, much-discussed decision. We have decided to be one church with multiple expressions.
We believe there are a number of good ways to worship and become disciples, and we want to allow each community to embrace the forms that are best for them. We all have the same Wesleyan theology. We all believe in the importance of worship, growth in small group community and service in the world. We all believe in making disciples. But we each embody those values differently.
So What?
I have not kept up with all of the latest literature on the multi-site church movement, but am thankful for those who are experimenting with new forms of what it means to be a multi-site church.
- Have you ever attended a multi-site congregation? If so, how did your experience differ from what you experience in a single site context?
- What do you believe to be the greatest strengths of the multi-site movement? greatest concerns/growing edges?
- Are you aware of other multi-site models? If so, please explain.