Pastor John Atkinson

Multi Site Media

Recently I've been writing a series of posts about the multi site journey at Bay Area Fellowship. It began with a post called "Multi Site Pitfalls" where I listed six separate issues you may face when going multi site at your church. Down the road I was going to address some of the media issues we faced in starting our three and soon to be fourth campuses. A lot of people apparently read the post and one guy had a great comment that I wanted to use as a post instead of just as a comment. The commenter was a guy named Tom Doyle who obviously has a lot of experience in this area so I asked him if I could just use his comment as a post.

Here's what Tom had to add.

"Well said and I agree with 99% of your post. I might add two things. In our almost 100 multi-site deployments that we have in theaters nationwide we've discovered two other areas. If your using video in any way shape or form (Announcements, Teaching, or Worship). You must consider two things. 1. Technology - Make sure you have the right technology at the main church to support the campus. This might be as simple as the proper editing software or perhaps as expensive as additional HD camera's. 2. Technique - In conjunction with technology, invest in and understand techniques which will make your content compelling. A great pastor captured in HD, shot poorly and edited badly doesn't make for great church."

• Commenter name: Tom Doyle
• Commenter email: tom.doyle@ncm.com
• Commenter URL: http://www.nationalcinemedia.com/cms/templates/meetings_types.aspx?articleid=12&zoneid=5&menuCode=sub28
• IP address: 208.178.13.2
• Authentication: None

I would add one more thing to Tom's insightful comments, don't scrimp and put a low quality projector at the multi site campus and waste the work you put into the capture. We did at our first site we started three years ago, and I believe many of the people who left early on did so because the video wasn't the quality it needed to be. If you're going to ask people to give up having live preaching for a video, it better at least be good video. We did not make that same video mistakes in the two sites that followed. Thanks again Tom for sharing your expertise with us.

John

Breaking Down the Multi Site Pitfalls

Earlier this week I wrote a post talking about six pitfalls we have experienced along our journey to going multi site at our church. In the coming weeks I'm going to write about each of the six pitfalls and what they meant to us specifically.

When we started our first site three years ago we really didn't know anything about Multi Site, so we made a lot of mistakes. I think we have done a much better job with the second two, but if we would have had someone to learn from back then that had already done some sites, it might have saved us a lot of unnecessary pain. In the coming weeks I want to share with you our journey in hopes others can learn from our mistakes instead of having to make them again. Please feel free to comment and ask questions and we will try to answer them as best we can based on our experiences. We will also continue to do some Multi Site Tokbox's as well. In fact were going to do one the week after next on Multi Site worship with our Director of Multi Site Worship Joey Davila. We'll post it on twitter when we have a more firm date.

Please here my heart, I'm not here to tell you the right way to do multi site, because there's a bunch of models out there that are very different from ours, and being done with amazing success in churches like Seacoast, Lifechurch.tv, and Healing place Church just to name a few. I am getting to know leaders from all three of those churches and they are mentoring me more than they know. I just want to share with you our journey here at BAF and what we have learned over the last three years having started three sites and working on the fourth. My hopes in writing this is that we can help some other churches by sharing our story.

I'm off to Innovation3 on Monday and I don't know how much time I'll have to write while I'm there, so look for the first of the series on Multi Site Pitfalls in a week or so. I hope something in this blesses your church along the way.

John

When My DNA is Transfered!

This is a consequence of my DNA being passed on to the world. I apologize ahead of time :)

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.

John