The Power of a Team

One of the things I’ve been reminded about as I have taken on the leadership role over the Multi Site Ministry, is the power of a “Team.” Nowhere in the Bible does God tell us to go it alone. Sure God sent a few people out into the desert alone, but He didn’t leave them there. I don’t know how, or if it’s even  possible, to grow a church without an amazing team.

Taking on the Multi Site Ministry at BAF has been a huge, yet awesome journey. Starting two new Campuses last year stretched my leadership, my skill set, my time, and my family. But in spite of all the obstacles we faced, and there were plenty, we have two new churches that both have around 250 people who regularly attend and call these campuses their church home. Since July of 08 almost 200 people have entered into a relationship with Jesus Christ at these two campuses. I am blown away by what God has done at these two new campuses, but one thing I know for sure, none of this would have happened without the amazing Multi Site team.

At our 5 Points Campus, God blessed us with an amazing campus pastor named Jason Curlee who came to us with tons of experience. There is no way I could have pulled off the huge construction project we undertook, completely with volunteers, without Jason by my side. Then on top of having an amazing campus pastor, God blessed us with some amazing families that stepped up and sacrificed in a huge way to get BAF 5 Points up and running. Night after night for four months the place was full of men, women, students, and children, all working like crazy to build their church. This project doesn’t happen without this amazing team.

I doubt if we would have even got started out on Padre Island if Pastor Dave, our Hometeams Pastor, hadn’t stepped up to take the lead so I could focus on the 5 Points build out. Pastor Dave leads a Hometeam ministry with a couple of hundred small groups in it, yet he took this on because he’s a team player. Padre Island is doing great because Dave surrounded himself with an amazing team. There is an awesome group of people out there who selflessly left the main church campus that they loved so much, because they want to reach their own community for Jesus Christ. Most of these people have been attending the Corpus Campus for many years so this wasn’t a small sacrifice.

One of the key factors in these two campuses being up and running, is the willingness of Pastor Rudy and the Kingsville team to allow themselves to be put on the back burner for most of the year so we could focus on the two new sites. Kingsville has been up and running for a couple of years, so for most of the year Pastor Rudy and his team have pretty much been on their own. They did it with a smile, and they did it well, because they’re part of a team.

As a member of the Management Staff here at BAF, I have watched each one of the Management Staff Pastors step up and support this project with their unique expertise in their own areas. They’ve done so, because were a team.

Then comes the people of BAF. They have stepped up to support the Multi Site Ministry by showing up to work, bringing food for those working, praying for us like crazy, and helping us pay for them.

And last but certainly not least is Pastor Bil, who has supported this with every ounce of his heart. He didn’t just speak the vision from the stage, he has stepped up to make sure it happens, and to make sure we had everything we needed to be successful.

I knew I couldn’t do this alone so I surrounded myself with a great team. If you want to change the world for Jesus Christ, surround yourself with a great team, and you’ll be blown away by what God can do through them.

John

Welcome to the New PastorJohnAtkinson.com

Hey Friends,

As of today it is finally done. I have moved over from Typepad to WordPress. I’m excited to be here because one of my Campus Pastors, Jason Curlee, is a big WordPress guy and he is going to help this blog be better than it has been in the past. I’m not much of a computer guy so Jason is going to be a big help. Thanks Jason for all you’ve already done!

We planted our first Multi Site at BAF over three years ago, but last year we began pursing a full blown Multi Site Ministry and added two more sites. We are currently working on two more now, so I’ve been pretty swamped and it’s affected the blog. I’m going to try to take the time to better share our journey this year. Thanks to all those who have stuck with me and welcome to all of you who are new.

Looking forward to getting to know you all through your comments. Also join me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/johncatkinson.

John

Unpacking Multi Site Pitfall #6

Multi Site Pitfall #6 Creating Great Worship in Multiple Venues is One Seriously Tough Gig!

This is the last of the 6 Multi Site Pitfalls that we are unpacking. This should be short because frankly I know nothing about music, but what I do know as someone who oversees multiple campuses that have worship, it’s tough to reproduce great worship over and over because great musicians are hard to find!

I believe good worship is a very important part of a successful multi site strategy. I think everyone would agree that bad music is uncomfortable for anyone who has ever sat through it, and if it’s bad enough it can actually keep people from worshiping, or even worse from coming back.

The temptation when adding sites, is to either use some of the main campus musicians at other sites at a different time, or use the original campus leadership to build and manage a new band. We did both when we started our first campus which was fine for a while, but over time it began to take its toll on both leaders and musicians, and had we stuck to that plan, it would ultimately have begun to affect the worship at the original campus. We were wearing out our leaders and musicians because we were asking them to add too much to their already hectic schedules.

Last year we moved one of our worship leaders (Joey Davila) over from main campus to be the Director of Multi Site Worship. That was huge for the Multi Site ministry because Joey added a major skill set that was missing from the ministry, and that move has taken worship at the sites, as Ed Young would say, to a whole nutha level!

When looking at your long term vision for adding campuses, I would challenge you to think through this pitfall because reproducing great worship over and over is really tough. I know you probably can’t add a Director of Multi Site Worship from day one, we didn’t either, but part of the reason I’ve been writing these posts is to help others prepare for the things that caught us off guard, and this was one of those things. Thinking ahead about the person who might fill this role will really benefit the ministry especially if your vision is to start multiple sites.

As I write this we are 24 hours away from our first core group meeting at what will be our fourth multi site campus, and with this site, we are going into a town where very few people already attend BAF. This will be probably our toughest attempt at creating great worship because we don’t already know a single musician in this town. As the Multi Site Pastor, I can’t imagine taking on this task without Joey on my team! I’m writing this in hopes it will challenge you to start thinking about this position before you need it, not after it begins to overwhelm you like it did us.

Unpacking Multi Site Pitfall #5

Multi Site Pitfall #5: Adding sites will stretch your churches finances.

As I do with each pitfall, let me say again that we don’t have all the Multi Site answers. As we unpack each of these pitfalls please understand that these posts comes from our own experiences starting the BAF Multi Site Ministry. Many churches are doing it bigger and better, and we learn from them all the time, this series of posts is just us sharing our journey with you in hopes it will help you get started on your Multi Site journey.

Multi Site pitfall #5 is a no brainer. Anyone who is thinking about going multi site obviously is thinking out the financial burden associated with it. But here’s the kicker, we thought it out too, and it still overwhelmed us in ways we could never have imagined.

I have been a part of starting three and soon to be four campuses. Three of the four as the Multi Site Pastor, and one in a support role as a management staff pastor, and I have under estimated the cost of each campus, each time. You’d think I would learn wouldn’t you. The problem is, and take notes here, you can’t predict everything that will happen when you start a church. For example; we did a fairly good job of staying within a budget I had set for our 5 Points Campus last summer. However, we had never had a full house before because we hadn’t had any services yet. That was until we had our first service and filled the room completely up and realized we were about 5000 tons AC short of what we needed. We’re not all that smart, but even a couple of rocket scientists like us know that a couple of hundred people in a room that is 91 degrees is not a good thing. The mistake was made when someone we mistakenly assumed knew said, “you’ve got plenty of AC,” and we believed them. So we had to add and AC which most of you know isn’t cheap. But that’s not the end of it, when we went to the AC guy he told us we didn’t have enough electricity available to add another AC, so we had to add another electrical box outside to boot. The owner of the building agreed to split the cost, something he didn’t have to do, and it still cost us another $5000, that we of course had not budgeted for. Talk about your swing and a miss! So going into a multi site start up just remember this, your start up will cost more, and take longer than your best estimate.

Past start up is where the real fun begins. In most cases, there are some exceptions even in our system, a campus will take probably six months to as long as a year to become financially healthy. It takes time to build a core group of people who are sold out to the vision and are ready to step up and start supporting it financially. Sure we all know a tithe is for God and should be given from day one, but sadly that’s not reality. In the meantime the supporting church must be willing to float the campus until it gets healthy. Our first campus took a long time to get completely healthy, and other ministry leaders paid a price as they heard no a lot. I can’t tell you how many tough discussions we had about our first campuses finances. There’s a lesson in our mistakes, prepare your staff ahead of time so the impending financial struggles don’t catch them off guard.

Adding sites will not only drain your finances, it will also drain your financial people. Adding sites will add a lot of work to your financial team. When you add sites you add budgets, bills, insurances, repairs, and staff, and someone has to manage all of it. In our case not only was our team trying to manage all the extra work created by adding a site, they were also trying to keep afloat a campus that was sucking the financial life out of every ministry in the church. I’m thankful they hung in there with us at that campus, because now it’s completely self sufficient and close to 300 people a weekend now call it their church home. Just preparing our staff ahead of time for these struggles would have made a huge difference.

I’m not trying to talk anyone out of going multi site, in fact I hope every church in America does it, I’m just trying to help you be better prepared for what it takes to do it. If your financial team knows ahead of time that these kinds of things may happen, they will be better prepared when they do. I don’t know about your financial people, but ours hate surprises!

Unpacking Multi Site Pitfall #4

MS Pitfall #4 Someone On Your Staff Will Need to Champion the Multi Site Ministry

I always want to start these off the same way in case someone is reading this post not having read the others. We do not have the Multi Site equation down. We are not the end all experts in the Multi Site movement, many have gone before us, and many are way ahead of us, the Multi Site Pitfalls are simply us sharing our own Multi Site journey. I’m writing this in hopes that something from our journey might somehow help with yours.

As with any ministry someone needs to champion it. When vision is being cast, and plans are being made, someone needs to be there to make sure Multi Site is part of the discussion. Here’s why this is important.

1. When decisions are being made that affect Children’s Ministry, Children’s Ministry at the campuses is affected too.
2. When decisions are being made that affect Student Ministry, Student Ministry is affected at the campuses too.
3. Financial decisions affect all campuses.
4. Decisions about preaching series affect all campuses.
5. Creative decisions affect all campuses.

I could go on and on, but hopefully you get the point. The reason you need a Multi Site champion is so there is always someone in those meetings to ask this question, “how will this affect the campuses.” Even with a MS champion in leadership, things still fall through the cracks because the bigger you get, and the more campuses you add, the tougher communication becomes. So even with a MS champion no system is perfect, but at least with a MS champion you’ll know there is someone in a leadership position carrying the torch for off site campuses.

When picking this person make sure they have passion for Multi Site. Just adding this to someone’s plate because they’re the closest warm body, is not the right answer. I believe if God is calling you to go Multi Site, He is also doing something in the heart of the person who will champion it. I say that because that’s exactly how it happened here.

Unpacking Multi Site Pitfall #3

Multi Site Pitfall #3: Picking the Right Leader is Critical to a Campuses Success

Moving on with the Multi Site Pitfalls let’s talk about about why it’s critical to pick the right person to be your campus pastor. When you read this please understand that I don’t for a second think I have figured out the Multi Site puzzle, I’m just sharing with you my personal experiences in leading the BAF Multi Site Ministry.

Why is the Campus Pastor choice critical?

1. Your campus pastor is the carrier of your churches DNA! If your campus pastor does not have your DNA, neither will your campus.
2. Your campus pastor represents your church to the community where it’s located.
3. You are in trusting the future spiritual growth of a group of God’s people to this person.
4. Your campus will not outgrow this persons leadership. John Maxwell calls this the “Law of the Lid.”

What to look for in a Campus Pastor.

1. A great campus pastor is a great leader. The main role of the campus pastor is leadership development, and it takes a leader to develop other leaders.
2. A Campus Pastor must have character. That is one thing that cannot be taught!
3. A Campus Pastor must but be good with people. If the Campus Pastor has no personality, neither will the campus.
4. A great Campus Pastor is fiercely loyal to the vision and direction of the church.
5. A great Campus Pastor is teachable. Great leaders are also great followers.
6. Great Campus Pastors think for themselves and don’t need to be told what to do all the time.
7. Great Campus Pastors are problem solvers. If I have to solve all the problems at a campus, then I have the wrong person leading it.

I wish I had a silver bullet I could share with you that would tell you exactly how to find the person I’m talking about, but its not that easy. But if God has called you to go Multi Site in your church, He will also provide the leaders you’ll need. Start putting potential leaders in leadership positions in your church and see which of them rise to the top, but ultimately each time you put a leader in a high position and give them authority, there is risk involved. Not all your choices will pan out, but those that do, will raise up your next Campus Pastors.

Unpacking Multi Site Pitfall #2

Multi Site Pitfall #2. Going Multi Site will stress your church to its core!

When we started our first site we had no idea the stress it was going to put on our church and staff. Here are some of the areas where Multi Site hit us hard:

1. To start a new campus we felt like we needed to put the project in the hands of a proven leader so we gave it to one of our Management Staff Pastors. He found out quickly this wasn’t something he was adding to his plate, this became his plate. With him focused completely on the new site, which he had to be, things in the other ministries he oversaw paid the price. I firmly believe you need a proven and faithful leader to lead a project like this because that leader is the carrier of your churches DNA.
2. Two of our sites required build outs, and all of it was done with volunteers to keep costs down. A two to four month build out with volunteers will stress your staff and volunteers to their very cores. We just finished a 3 1/2 month build out at our 5 Points Campus that almost killed all of us, and I had a bad to the bone leader in Jason Curlee. I could not have pulled this off without him, because even with him, it still stretched me and my family to their limits.
3. As we began having church it quickly became clear that our already understaffed and over worked administrative team was going to be overwhelmed with the extra responsibilities. Adding a site, a full church folks, requires creating a whole new budget that someone has to manage. Then on top of the budget, that same overworked team, now had a whole new set of bills and expenses they had to take care of. Someone had to handle leases, phones, Internet, water, gas, maintenance, AC, Electric, Cleaning, Insurance, payroll, cleaning supplies and on and on. Those things just didn’t just take care of themselves, someone had to add them to their already stretched responsibilities. And then there was the financial white elephant in the room that we all wish we could have ignored, getting that site up and running was causing money to pour out of the main campus like water through the Hoover Dam. There is a financial cost to going multi site.
4. As any church leader knows, Children’s Ministry is not something you can throw up and just hope for the best. There was no way we were going to intrust the safety and future spiritual growth of all these new children into the hands of untrained people. So the main campus Children’s Ministry had to step up in a huge way. I don’t personally know any churches who have tons of extra staff just standing around waiting for a job to do, so we had to send over trained staff and volunteers from the main campus every weekend for a very long time. Our Management Staff Children’s Pastor was overwhelmed by the added responsibilities, and her volunteer base base at the main campus was stretched big time as well. Because this campus was 45 miles away from our main campus, there were no trained Children’s workers available, so it took a long time, and lot’s of volunteers to get the BA Kidz DNA in place.
5. About six months in we started a Student Ministry, and of course everything we just talked about in Children’s Ministry happened to the Student Pastor and his team.

I was asked to take over the leadership of that campus a little over a year into it, and it was not doing well. The stress it had caused to every ministry in our church was overwhelming. We weren’t really ready to go Multi Site when we did, and we paid a price for it. It was by God’s grace alone that the campus survived, because it was really struggling financially when I took over. I remember a meeting that Pastor Bil and I had shortly after I took over where he calmly but firmly let me know that something needed to be done to solve the problems, and soon.

We were able to turn it around over the next year and it became our model for how not to go Multi Site, and thankfully we did a much better job when we started the next two campuses. Had we known then how much adding a site was going to stress our church to it’s core, we certainly would have done some things differently. In our defense, we had never added a site, and didn’t really know anyone who had, so we just stepped out on faith and moved anyway.

As with all these posts, I am not in any way trying to talk you out of going Multi Site, I love it, I live it, and I believe in it, I simply hope that reading this might help you to be better prepared for the stresses your church will face when adding sites. But if God is calling you, and you have a plan, then go for it, and God will bless your ministry like He has ours. Even when we made mistakes, and we made plenty, He blessed us anyway because He had called us to do this, and He will do the same if He has called you.

Next time we’ll talk about Multi Site Pitfall #3 which is the importance of finding the right leader for a new site.

Unpacking Multi Site Pitfall #1

Recently I wrote a post titled Multi Site Pitfalls where I talked about 6 specific pitfalls you may face when going Multi-Site. In the next couple of weeks I plan on unpacking each one and talking more in depth about what they mean. Scroll down on my blog and you will be able to read the original post so this will make sense.

Pitfall #1 Make Sure God is Calling you to Multi Site

Because so many churches are having great success with multi site, it has the potential to be the thing churches feel like they’re supposed to do because everyone else is doing it. I do hope tons of churches go multi site because I believe it’s an amazing way to further the Kingdom of God and offset the growing numbers of churches that are closing their doors, but I also don’t think multi site is for every church. What I’m trying to do is challenge you to seek God and ask Him if this is the direction you should go. Multi Site is hard, and it will stress your church to it’s very core, and not all churches are in a place to survive the stress brought on by adding sites.

In upcoming posts I’ll talk specifically what I mean when I say multi site will stress your church to it’s core, but in this post my challenge to church leaders is to simply seek God before moving to a multi site strategy. Don’t start a site because others around you are, or because it seems like a cool thing to do, I really challenge you to move to multi site only, if God is calling you to do it.

This is so important because if you haven’t really prayed your way through the decision to go multi site, you’ll either quit when it gets tough, and trust me it will get tough, or you’ll continue in spite of the fact that it’s failing miserably because pride will keep you from admitting you made a mistake. Neither of those options are good for a church that was probably already doing God’s work well.

Listen carefully, please don’t in any way be discouraged from going multi site by this post, just pray like crazy and make sure you know God is calling you to this. One of the ways you’ll know God is calling you to Multi Site is, no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to shake off, pray off, or wish off, His leading. That’s exactly what happened to my pastor, Bil Cornelius. He tried to move past the leading to go multi site many times, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t shake it, so we moved forward and God sustained us when times got tough, and man did they ever get tough.

Again, I’ll write in depth in the next couple of weeks what I mean specifically when I say tough, but for this post my hope is this will lead you to pray and fast, and pray and fast some more, so if you move forward on your vision to go multi site you’ll know you did it because God told you to.

Multi-Site Pitfalls

Let me just say first that I love Multi Site. I go to bed thinking about starting new sites and growing our existing sites, and I wake up thinking about the same thing. I believe in it, I’m living it, I’m leading it, and I know it’s going to expand the Kingdom all over this country. But what I’ve also learned along the way is it’s not easy, so I want to share some of the pitfalls we faced along our journey in hopes it will help you be better informed when making the decision to move forward at your church.

1. Make sure God is calling you to add sites. Multi Site is the big thing right now, but that doesn’t mean everyone should do it. Multi Site is difficult, so make sure God is calling you to do it, or you’ll be tempted to quit when it gets hard, and it will get hard. I believe going Multi Site is a decision that should be made prayerfully, not because it seems like a good idea, or because everyone else is doing it. If you don’t pray your way through this on the front end you may regret it on the back end.
2. Multi Site will stress your church at its seams. Adding sites will stress your Admin team, your Children’s Ministry, your Student Ministry, and your Creative and Production teams. No ministry is exempt from the stress of Multi Site, but in our experience, these were hit the hardest. I don’t know many churches that have all the staff they need, and most of us somehow pull off church every weekend with less people than we wish we had, which is stressful, so I challenge you to think ahead about the coconsequences of adding more to that same already overworked team.
3. Finding the right leader is critical to the success of a new site, and those kinds of leaders are not easy to come by. The campus pastor is the carrier of your churches DNA, so making the wrong choice here could seriously effect the future of the new campus or even the reputation of the church. We picked each one of our campus pastors at BAF because they were already proven leaders long before they were given the job of oversight of a campus. Pick this person carefully so you can avoid some major problems down the road.
4. Someone on your staff will need to champion the Multi Site Ministry, which is what I do as the Multi Site Pastor at BAF. That leader needs to have a passion for it if the ministry is going to thrive. Adding it to someone’s plate who either doesn’t want it, doesn’t have time for it, or doesn’t have the giftedness to lead it, is a death sentence to the ministry.
5. Adding sites will stretch your churches finances. A campus may pay for itself right away, but it could just as easily take six months to a year to get financially healthy. We’ve experienced both scenarios and when the financial stress starts effecting other ministries it gets tough.
6. Creating great worship in multiple venues is one seriously tough gig. Someone will have to oversee this part of the ministry if you want great worship, and I don’t believe you’ll ever grow a great campus if the worship is bad. Just adding it to your existing Worship Pastor will eventually begin to affect the quality of worship at the first campus. I don’t know what I would do without my Director of Multi Site Worship because what he does not just anyone can do. Leading a group of musicians and creating great worship is a very unique skill set.

These are just a few issues you might face when adding sites. There are solutions to all these issues especially if you put the right leaders in place, so don’t let any of these possible pitfalls keep you from stepping out on faith and starting a Multi Site ministry if God is calling you to do it. I write this in hopes that sharing some of the things we have faced in starting new sites will simply help you step out better informed and prepared. Yes, there have been struggles, but the lives that have been changed have far outweighed any problems we have faced.

We don’t by any means have all the answers, but the Multi Site staff at BAF will gladly share with you the good the bad and the ugly of our journey. Trust me, we learned a lot more from the bad and ugly than we have from the good.