I appreciate this from Tim Keller:
1. First, we sent our services out into different locations so that people could worship closer to where they lived. People can become more deeply involved in the community and can more easily bring friends if they attend services in their neighborhood. This was an ‘anti-mega-church’ move, since huge churches create a large body of commuters who travel long distances to attend church. We wanted to resist this tendency and root people more in their locales.
2. Second, the multi-site model is a transition design for us. Redeemer has a timetable for turning each site into a congregation in its own neighborhood, with its own pastoral leadership.
Read the whole thing here.
I’m generally not a fan of the multi-site model, but it does please me to see that the goal for these new sites for Keller’s church is for them to be new churches with their own pastors. I wish more churches with multiple campuses had this as their end goal.
Very encouraging to hear an actual long-term vision to these multi-site congregations. I had the blessing of attending one of these sites two years ago in NYC and though the crowd was large the leadership did an excellent job of creating an environment that felt “home-y”. It was clear these people for the most part had been cultivated to be a close community.
BTW- Good to have you back and blogging, hope to read more!
Amen. Point # 2 is what I’m always telling friends would make me a lot more comfortable with the multi-site movement. If it’s more of an organic process akin to cell division, then it makes a ton of sense!
sounds a lot like church-planting 🙂