second site, plant or second service?
Feb 26, 2010
…if discipleship and leadership development are core functions of the church…we’re slowly coming to the realization that a second site or church plant might have greater potential to perpetuate those basic church building blocks. in my experience of multiplying services (i’ve added five in my church leadership life) it seems clear that more more than half of the “new” load falls on “old” volunteers and leaders. in other words, added services typically results in added loads rather than distributed loads. whereas a plant or second site require new roles to be filled resulting in old roles being vacated and back-filled. i can get pretty excited, pretty quick, thinking about outlining 50 new leadership roles and 100 new volunteer roles for a plant/second site for people to step up and in to… those new servants would all spend 6 to 12 months being trained and developed by existing servants, leaders and staff, while recruiting and training new servants to fill the vacated spots. your thoughts? stay tuned for the next blog…”second site or church plant?”
February 27th, 2010 at 7:00 pm
This pivotal question could be thought of as creating a solid foundation – spreading outward to create a more stable base . . . and perhaps, these concepts are not mutually exclusive, with step 1 as second site or church plant, and as vista’s growth is revealed step 2 could be a second service . . . However this develops, I’m in.
March 1st, 2010 at 9:26 am
I know about the 80/20 rule when it comes to work load, and maybe I’m the exception, but I feel that if there were two services, I’d be able to serve in a greater capacity by attending one service and serving at the other. Maybe I’m the rarity and it would only be 79/21, but I feel that it’s hard to ask members of the body to serve regularly (weekly) if that means missing the corporate worship/service. If I was able to serve weekly in some capacity, but still attend one of two services, then it would be easier to make that decision to get involved on a weekly basis.
Maybe the people that you’d consider recruiting for leadership for a church-plant could be redirected to be leaders for the second service to share the burden on those currently working so that 20% weren’t doing 80% of the work for TWO services.
March 1st, 2010 at 5:14 pm
I went through a second service addition as a Children’s Pastor and agree with Ben where he notes that more are willing to serve as they are able to also participate in the Sunday morning service. As the months wore on, though, I observed that the downside for a family with younger children (infant-6th grade)was that it was difficult for them to sustain their service due to the morning being too long. Eventually, the work load fell on those who were single, empty nesters or those with jr. or h.s. kids. The upside is that we gained new workers in the process, but it ultimately was a heavy commitment on those remaining.
When we planted Vista, it seemed more like a ‘do or die’ situation! There wasn’t anyone but the team to get the work done and it promoted a great deal of unity among us.
I believe a church plant will create the need for a new staff, new servants and servant-leaders. I think adding a service will create more work for the existing staff and those already in leadership as well as add a few more into the ranks of servants and servant leaders.