The Multi-site Church Revolution
The biggest church in Perth is Riverview Church, in Burswood, just near the Swan River (hence the name) five minutes from the city centre. I’ve been there a number of times over the years for different events and have always found it to be an excellent well organised high quality experience. They have a heart for God and a culture of exellence. You may have seen their pastor Phil Baker on their early morning Sunday TV program or you may have read his blog.
Their latest foray into church expansion/church planting is interesting, however. They are running a multi-campus approach with video feeds of the main message preached at Burswood (not sure if they have a live worship band at each campus or if that is via video also). To date they have set up satellite campuses to the north and south of Perth, but their next “campus” plant is a truly audacious one - still on the West Coast, but in California, rather than Western Australia. You can read about it on Phil’s blog here, or at this site : Down Under is Coming Over.
Good luck to them - I sincerely hope this venture is a success but I have my doubts. Now I usually pride myself on being quite technological and open to new ideas but maybe this proves I’m a bit more 20th century than I like to think. Going to church on Sunday in order to watch a message on a big screen rather than to hear a real live speaker just doesn’t seem quite right, although I could perhaps get used to it… but if the worship was simulcast that would be even worse - I can’t imagine worshipping along with a band on a video screen. Additionally the inter-continental aspect of it is a bit of a stretch also. The good thing about attending church in your own town or city is that the preacher can preach a culturally relevant and appropriate message which can hook in many ways into local places, people, and issues. It’s nice to be able to relate to what the speaker is talking about, even if it’s just a story about what happened to them down at the local shops. And although there’s no denying that a Californian audience will get a lot of value out of a message by a great speaker like Phil Baker, you must lose some of that local connection. Additionally, the video model of church denies you the chance to have any real interaction with the preacher, both during and after the service. I hope that this is a success for them but I have my reservations
I’m not totally against the multi-campus concept though. I saw this working well in Uganda at the Kampala Pentecostal Church that we visited. They have a 14,000 plus congregation spread amongst five campuses around the city. Although a pentecostal church it is a typical evangelical style, but with an African flavour. Their model is to have a live band and preacher at all of the services. At each service the same message is preached though, and the entire church follows the same theme. They have bands which rotate through the various campuses to maintain the same high quality of worship music, and the pastors similarly rotate around. This model seemed to work really well, maintaining the benefits of a large centralised organisation and administration whilst providing for local level worship, ministry, and care. Although divided between five sites there is still a strong sense of the unity of the church. A model multi-site church, as far as I could see.
Categories : Church | 0 Comments
