In the last ten years we have seen a significant increase in the number of churches adopting a campus model for ministry. In this model the church replicates itself in another area while maintaining a close connection and identity to itself (the main location). There are many different ways that churches go about this. I will not attempt to cover them all here.
Instead, I want to talk about what we did at Omaha Bible Church (OBC) as we moved to plant Emmaus Bible Church (where I currently pastor). We used the campus model as a bridge toward church planting.
In the next two days I want to highlight the pros and the cons of this approach.
Today it is the pro side. Why was the campus model a good bridge toward church planting?
Our Context
OBC is a growing church with young leaders. There is a lot of motivation to press on in gospel ministry. This climate led to a desire for church planting.
In 2007 the elders decided this was the right time to move toward the establishment of a new ministry in a community about 25 miles south of OBC. At the time there were about 75 people from this area regularly attending. Our thought was that the need was there in that community and that we should aim to meet it with the ministry of the Word. Our elders asked me to lead that effort.
What We Did
In July of 2008, OBC launched a separate campus in Bellevue, Nebraska. We began meeting in a High School (and still do).
We named it Omaha Bible Church-South Campus. Pretty original, I know. We did not video feed in a sermon from the North Campus. Instead, I preached each week. I preached from a different passage/book of the Bible than the pastor from the North Campus. We sang different music (not intentionally, just incidently as we had different leaders). We continued to share the same elder board, website, budget, logo, etc. We worked hard to maintain continuity.
The goal was always to have OBC-South become an automous, self-reproducing church itself. The timeline was not firm. But this was the end goal.
As of September 2010, we have transitioned from a campus to a church plant. Now I can look back and identify several helpful features of this model. I’ll list them and provide a brief explanation. If you would like more detail, let me know in the comments and I can expand.
Shared Leadership: Leadership is a significant challenge for a church plant. The reality of not having several qualified men to lead and carry the shepherding duties is a bad way to start a ministry. However, if there is a way to share the shepherding load, to absorb the new ministry with seasoned men, that would be ideal. This is what the campus model afforded us. It was also the ideal setting to bring along two new elders. We were able to put them through the ordination process under the existing elder board at OBC and expose them to the intricacies of being an elder at a local church. In this case the campus model helped us to steer the ship and provide new elders a safe and constructive training and testing environment.
Someone Had our Backs: In matters of church discipline or other significant decisions it was sure helpful to have a larger elder board to work through. As a young group we needed to make sure that we were making good, solid decisions. To have a group of seasoned leaders to work decisions through was vital.
Shared Constitution: The campus model afforded us the opportunity to share the same consitution. This just made life easier. If we went to a church plant right away we would have had to make a decision about the constitution. What would change? How would it change? Could we be governed by the other one right away? And for how long? This made life easier. It was a benefit.
Shared Resources: Ask any church planter his greatest challenge and he’ll either say leaders or money. In acknowledging this challenge and adopting the campus model we attempted to mitigate this concern. We had one general budget. All of the giving from both campuses went into one pot and paid all the bills for both places. This really freed us up as a campus to not be as concerned with the financial aspect. It also enabled the broader OBC context the opportunity to do more. As ministry expanded so did giving. This results in more opportunities for OBC ministry. This was good.
Shared Identity/History: This was a bigger benefit than I had initially anticipated. Many people visited us because they were on the OBC website and saw that we had a service in Bellevue. Our location was closer to their home and so they joined us. In other cases people from OBC-North told their friends and invited them to OBC-South. It was a definite benefit to have people familiar with the ministry of Omaha Bible Church when they visited us. The long shadow of biblical faithfulness at Omaha Bible rested comfortably over us at the South Campus. This was good and helpful.
Shared Support:At OBC there is a back office of admin folks that carry a heavy load. It would have been a significant undertaking to get a new team trained up and ready to go solo amid all of the other things we were doing before launch. The shared support made life much easier.
Please note that I don’t think that these benefits are restricted to the campus model. I am just observing them as benefits for us in the campus model in our context. There may be other ways to achieve these benefits.
Lord willing, tomorrow I will write about some of the cons of the campus model as a bridge to church planting.
Does your church use the campus model? Is it a bridge for church planting? How has it gone? I’d love to hear from you.
