There, I’ve said it. I know it’s contrary to what Mark Driscoll and Matt Chandler and others are saying and doing. The multi-site trend continues to grow among churches in the United States. It’s been discussed and debated at length in the blogosphere. Perhaps the best discussion took place back in 2006 on Steve McCoy’s blog, Reformissionary. In the comment stream of the post, Darrin Patrick, the pastor of The Journey in St. Louis, shares his struggle with his church’s decision to open multiple sites.  is a fan. Craig Groeschel has raised multi-site church to an art.  Popular leaders such as Mark Batterson and Ed Young are growing their churches by leaps and bounds by opening up “alternate sites” across the country and around the world. According to Third Quarter Church Consulting, there are over 2,000 multi-site churches meeting across the country.

Most multi-site churches are made up of distinct locations that share one pastor, and/or leadership team. In the early days of multi-site, the preacher would preach a sermon at one location, and then drive (or even fly) to a second location to present an encore presentation of the sermon. With the rise of video recording technology, many satellite campuses would watch a pre-recorded version of a sermon. Nowadays, preachers are streamed live onto screens across the country. The idea behind the multi-site church is this: a church starts out small, and grows. They fill up their meeting space, so they start to hold multiple services over the course of the week. Maybe they relocate or build a new building. People are driving in from miles away to attend. The next logical step is to open up another location.

Multi-site church is a logical and efficient solution to a problem brought on by bad missiology.

1. It perpetuates the celebrity pastor mentality. Your oratory skills may be out-of-this-world (they’re probably not),  but do you really want your church to be built around you? Many multi-site churches start with “hey, the pastor can only do so much.” Why not disciple young leaders to preach and teach? Why not dispel the myth of the rockstar preacher by intentionally limiting your influence to the behind-the-scenes equipping of leaders?

2.  It promotes Christian consumerism. Rather than put in the work that it requires to be the local church, many resort to opening a Fellowshipchurch.com franchise. It may be what people want, but wise church leaders will prefer to give them what they need. They need a pastor who knows their name, lives in their community, and can be available for them personally.

3. Realistically, your church has become two when you decided to hold multiple services (especially when these services are designed to appeal to different demographics). What reason (other than the pastor’s ego) is there to insist that these are “one” church? “One church in many locations” is only the illusion of unity. Why insist that every new spin-off church be part of the same brand?

4.  Multi-site church breaks the missiological principle of indigenaity. Rather than allowing each new fellowship to reflect the culture in which it is planted, multi-site locations instead export with them the culture of the “mother” church. I know that some churches try to help this by having a local worship team or support staff, but rarely are satellite locations allowed to stray too far from the formula.

For the record: I’m not against sermon podcasts or broadcasts. God used these sorts of resources maintained my team spiritually on the mission field. I’m also not trying to criticize anyone in particular. If a church is led to multi-site, I want them to be successful and to prosper. This is not intended to tear down anyone. I really am a big fan of many multi-site pastors, and hope I don’t offend any of my multi-site friends with this post. Nevertheless, as a missiologist, missionary, and missional believer, I felt the need to say something.

By the way, Bob Hyatt wrote a great article on multi-site church at Out of Ur.

Be sure to watch for my next post, “Your Sound System Is Where You Went Wrong.”