The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
The Hidden Pitfalls of Multi-Campus Ministry
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What if your strategy for growth is the very thing that could be breaking your team? We're going to talk about multi-campus churches today, and I'm a huge fan of multi-site and multi-campus churches. They can be absolutely amazing, or they can quietly crest your team. Today we're going to talk about what's really going on behind the scenes at churches with more than one campus and how to lead better across every location. Hi there, my name is Todd Roads. I'm one of the co-founders over at Chemistrystaffing.com, and I'm your host right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. All right, let's talk about this one church many locations or one church many campuses, known as multi-site. And just full disclosure, I worked for about a dozen years over at Leadership Network, and we were one of the behind-the-scenes players pouring gas on this multi-church fire, multi-campus, multi-site church fire. And I know that many unbelievable churches are multi-site and multi-campus. Matter of fact, I attend one, I love them. And I think many people have come to Jesus because of this. But it doesn't work well everywhere, and it doesn't work well if you don't start it with the right mindset. Okay. So the dream is always unity, right? The reality sometimes is each campus becomes its own silo and communication can break down and culture can get diluted, and staff can feel like they're on different planets. And all the while you're saying, hey, we're one church in many locations, but your staff is hearing, hey, good luck getting an answer from anybody, because it's gotten so confusing. And I can tell you, especially in the early days of multi-site, this was a huge problem because everybody was a pioneer, right? No one had ever seen this done really well together. So there, that's why there are all different kinds of multi-site models and different ways of doing things. There's central location models, there's video preaching models, there's uh almost like a church planting model that bear the same, all different kinds of models. And what were what works for one church will not work for another church. Okay. So there were early pain points, and still for churches that are adding campuses or going from one location to two locations or two locations to three locations, particularly those first locations, it gets really messy. It can get really messy. So there are some staffing pain points that you need to be aware of in multi-site models. And this is just really important if you're considering, or maybe you're on your second campus or your third campus, because when you first start out, this is where some of these pain points really start to show their kind of ugly face. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about pain points, particularly if you're thinking about starting another campus. All right. So there can be, if you're not careful, exhaustion from just constant growth and pivoting and duplicated efforts. From a staff standpoint, you can really run some people into the ground because you're asking them way to do way too much. And on top of that, a lot of times, particularly when you're starting out, there are just some unclear reporting structures and there are unclear expectations and there is role confusion because honestly, you've never done this before. So if you're a staff person, that can make you feel really tired, almost burned out, starting. It's exciting work, but it's exhausting work. And if you're not careful, your team could end up feeling unseen or unsupported, particularly at the startup campus or the smaller campuses. Okay, because if you're starting a second campus, honestly, it's probably gonna be a fraction of the size of your main campus. There's just gonna be maybe some feelings that they're unseen or unsupported at maybe a smaller campus because it's new, but that's hidden because everything is new and exciting, okay? It could be that some of your staff start to avoid conflict because the main campus said so. And I've seen this happen in a lot of multi-site churches to where the main campus, they don't mean for it to be like this, but it's like the main campus is the boss. So if you're not at the main campus, you just do what the main campus says to do. And that can cause some conflict. But here's the kicker: the bigger the system, the smaller your people can feel. And that's really the heart of the matter. That's what you really have to watch when you go from one campus to two or two campuses to three or whatever when you're expanding into a multi-campus model. So, how do you lead across different campuses without losing your culture? Because the goal at the beginning was to not to lose your culture, but actually to expand your culture and grow your culture and multiply your culture. One way is to use some centralized communication, but at the same time empower local execution. Okay? So clarify the roles, clarify the chains of command, clarify who decides what and when and who. And you really need to champion each campus equally. There can't be any favorites, there can't be any stepchildren. You really need to lead across the campuses and really do so without the extreme focus on not losing your culture. As a matter of fact, the extreme focus on multiplying your culture. And you need to build collaboration between the staff, not just between individuals or silos or reporting lines. Healthy multi-campus teams feel connected. Okay? If you're disconnected, it's going to be a problem. So to have a healthy multi-campus team, you have to feel connected, but you cannot feel controlled. You can't, your staff members, particularly if you're not at the main campus, if you're at a smaller campus, a new campus, they can't they have to feel connected, but they can't feel controlled. All right. Just some things. Hear me. I love multi-site. I love I like some models better than others, to be honest. I'm sure you do too. And maybe you don't like multi-site. That's fine. I'm not that's not a hill I'm gonna die on. But I don't want you to hear that I'm against multi-site. I actually love the model and I think it it can be an incredible model. But it comes with some staffing. It's really tough to staff multi-site churches and to make sure everybody feels part of the team because you're not even all in the same location anymore. So if here's the bottom line: if your multi-campus model is breaking your staff, and it's breaking your staff, it's time to rethink your strategy. Maybe not rethinking multi-site, but maybe rethinking your strategy, not just doubling down, not just saying, okay, it's not really working well here on their second one. Let's start a third. Don't double down. Make sure you rethink your strategy. Reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. I got a lot of friends in multi-site ministry that I can connect you with if you need somebody to connect with to count some ideas off of. But it's really important. I've seen incredibly healthy staffs on multi-site ministry, and I've just seen dumpster fires on multi-site ministry with staffs. It all comes down to your strategy and how you communicate with staff and how you're structured. Okay, podcast of chemistry staffing. If you have any questions, I'd love to hear from you too. What's your biggest staff's challenge in a multi-site setup? I'd love to hear what you're struggling with or dealing with. Maybe you can do an episode here on the podcast. So that's it for today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes. I'll be right back here again tomorrow. I hope you'll join me here on the Healthy Church Staff. Have a great day.
