4 Tensions Every Multisite Church Must Manage - Part 1

Leading in any growing church is like playing that old arcade game Whack-A-Mole. Little problems keep popping up over and over. Just when you think you squashed them at one location, they pop up over there at another. There are some issues that just seem to come up over and over, no matter how much you wish they wouldn’t or how thoroughly you might have dealt with them last time. This is magnified in a multisite church where complexity grows along with the number of campuses.

Instead of whacking the mole over and over, maybe we should try to figure out why the same mole keeps coming back.

My thinking on this subject has been influenced by my own experiences, as well as leaders like Kadi Cole who I have learned from over the years. As often as I’ve seen these four issues, I have also seen the difference between healthy and unhealthy ministry is the ability to flex and bend (i.e. “manage the tension”) both on the part of individual leaders and the organization as a whole. Perhaps these are not problems to be solved once-and-for-all -- but ongoing tensions to be managed.

What you were doing a few years ago or when you had a few less campuses just may not work anymore. In my experience both leading in and working with multisite churches, I have identified some of those recurring issues that just won’t go away. Here are four tensions that every multisite church must manage:

1. Autonomy vs Alignment

2. Global vs Local

3. Present vs Future

4. Us vs Them

1. AUTONOMY VS ALIGNMENT

I’ve written elsewhere about how critical it is for multisite churches to define the level of autonomy for campuses. A commitment to multisite must include a commitment to provide clarity about what will be standardized at every campus, what will not and the reason why. This usually includes things as essential as the preaching model, staffing structure and small groups philosophy. But it sometimes alignment even includes specific details like carpet colors or even snacks for preschool ministry. Every church is diffferent but the point is you need to define for yourself where to strike that balance and then provide clarity about it.

Managing the tension between autonomy and alignment is perhaps the biggest challenge of any multisite church. Alignment standards may make campuses feel like they are being micromanaged with top-down mandates and bureaucratic processes -- but it doesn’t have to be that way. Ministry actually tends to be simpler and more scalable in churches with a high alignment system so there is freedom in simplicity. Ministry tends to take on a more contextualized feel in a high autonomy system which may seem more authentic to some, though it’s harder to maintain alignment and there’s a higher likelihood for there to be a lot more disparities between similarly sized campuses. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to where you should fall on this spectrum but it does require effort to discern and decide what works best.

If the campus pastor and campus staff have any inclinations or gifting as leaders, their natural tendency will be to test these boundaries from time to time. Within reason, that could actually be healthy. If there is constant testing and chafing at boundaries, you missed a step somewhere either in what kind of staff you hired or in communicating your strategy to them. If there’s never any testing, you could have achieved utter perfection in your multisite model! But more likely, it’s happening but your multisite model is so unclear that you can’t even tell.

Failure to manage this tension well can be catastrophic. Many of the horror stories of rogue campus pastors or unsuccessful campus launches can be traced to this dynamic. How well the church addresses the first tension of autonomy vs alignment has a cascading effect on the other three: Global vs Local, Present vs Future and Us vs Them.

Some ways to manage the tension of Autonomy vs Alignment are:

• Establish a multisite model that has clear, written boundaries related to campus autonomy and alignment. Without that, there are no standards to enforce.

• Hire a staff with passions and gifts that fit your system. An extremely creative, dynamic leader as campus pastor may not flourish in a high-alignment system. Click here to read more about this.

• Establish frequent communication between campuses and central leadership about expectations, frustrations and opportunities. Be willing to question your own multisite model's effectiveness.

2. GLOBAL VS LOCAL

In the epic movie of the 1982 movie Start Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (worst opening sentence ever! Stay with me now...), there is a famous scene at the end where Spock sacrifices himself in order to save the rest of the crew. As he was slowly dying, he mumbles to Captain Kirk, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Let’s hope navigating multisite challenges aren’t nearly as dramatic as that! Yet these kinds of decisions for the greater good happen all the time in a multisite setting. Sometimes you can’t do something that would benefit one campus because it will interfere or prevent something else that would benefit the entire church. When I say that these decisions are necessary and a key part of leadership, it probably resonates with the person making the churchwide decision but it makes little sense to those at the campus level who are impacted by it.

This tension is usually about money because it surrounds the allocation and distribution of staff and resources. From the viewpoint of the campus, we never seem to get as much of a budget increase as we would like or the next staff position we need seems to take too long to get funded. But it may go deeper than that. The tension may come from the perception at the campus level that the decision makers are too detached from the day to day ministry needs. If this boils over and turns toxic, it becomes a lack of trust in leadership’s judgment and the quality of their decisions.

The hard truth is that what’s best for a particular campus may not be best for the church as a whole. An essential trait of a campus pastor is the ability to transcend the local context to think globally on behalf of the whole church. When the entire multisite church is healthy, it is a benefit to every multisite campus. In other words, a rising tide floats all boats. It should never be a zero sum game where “success” here means “failure” there or the gain of one campus is a threat to the others. A mark of a healthy multisite church is the ability to see a win for one as a win for all.

Some ways to manage the tension of Global vs Local are:

• Create an intentional pathway for campus pastors to be fully heard in key decisions like budgeting and staffing. When decisions are handed down, make sure to explain the rationale so they understand the “why” behind it. If they feel like they had a part in the process and were respected as leaders, it softens the blow when they don’t get everything they requested.

• Create a culture where you celebrate each other’s “wins” rather than begrudge them. A rising tide floats all boats.

• Whenever the full staff is gathered, emphasize and reinforce the identity of the whole church over the identity of individual campuses. The global/churchwide mission and vision of the church is a powerful tool to create unity. Rather than a hard decision appearing arbitrary, knowing that it advances the church at large makes it more concrete and easier to understand.

  
  

Click to read Part 2:

3. Present vs Future & 4. Us vs Them