Multisite Churches: Come-and-Get or Come-and-Give?

McChurch. Franchised Jesus. Theological clones. Incubator congregations. Ecclesiological buffets. From the devil.

If there is a classification of church that gets put down more than megachurches, it would have to be multisite churches. Is the critique fair? Sometimes. But not always.

As we found with megachurches recently, there is plenty of good that comes with the stereotypical bad. In the megachurch research we saw that they don't really draw away members from other local churches as much as people think they do, they are healthier financially, and they are growing at a faster pace than smaller churches.

But what about multisite churches?

Warren Bird and Leadership Network-- the same group that did much of the megachurch research discussed here on the blog-- released some research on multisite churches last fall. And wouldn't you know that it showed several positives regarding multisite churches.

From the research:

- Multisite churches reach more people than single site churches.
- Multisite tends to spread healthy churches to more diverse communities.
- Multisite churches have more volunteers in service as a percentage than single site.
- Multisite churches baptize more people than single site.
- Multisite churches tend to activate more people into ministry than single site.

And the number of multisite churches is exploding. In fact, 62 of the 100 fastest growing churches in America are multisite. And there are now more than 5,000 multisite churches in North America....

But is this multisite explosion a good thing for churches in North America? Yes...and no. Read more