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The Drawbacks of Using the Campus Model as a Bridge for Church Planting

Yesterday I wrote briefly about some of the advantages, as far as I my experience, to using the multi-campus model as a bridge for church planting. Many churches are using this method and having success with it.

Today I take the other side. I want to highlight the drawbacks to the multi-campus model in church planting. Please note that this is based on my experience, which is limited. I am not impugning a method across the board (nor am I promoting it). I am making some post-game observations of the process.

It is interesting that some of the strengths from yesterday actually become drawbacks long-term. In other words, some things are extremely valuable up front but as time goes by and the ministry develops they become disadvantages. As Tony Horton of P90X fame has said, “Nobody said this would be easy.” Exactly. There are a lot of moving parts.

Let’s begin.

Weakness with the campus model as a bridge for church planting:

Identity: When you begin meeting as a campus the identity is set. You are part of a bigger church. Most of the people on your team are from the original church. In the previous weeks they were gathered together at the other campus. However, as time goes on, new people come. These people have never darkened the doorstep of the other campus. In our context many of our families are military. They aren’t even from Omaha. As a result, as time went on the strong identity that we had with OBC began to get diluted. As  a campus of that church this became harder to preserve.

It was also complicated by the fact that our church name was geographically anchored. “Omaha” Bible Church is in “Omaha.” We are in Bellevue. While we are close, and there is overlap from members, the people in our community are not from “Omaha”. It may sound like splitting hairs, but it makes sense when you think about it. When you are trying to reach a community with the gospel, the name of your church matters.

The other aspect of identity to consider is relative to the growing campus. As these new people come and the ministry begins to grow, the campus invariably begins to take on its own identity. If you have different preaching pastors between campuses (as we did) and different music leaders (as we did) with different people then you begin to look and feel a little different. These differences are not drastic, however, they are noticable.

Over time it began to be difficult to preserve a unity of identity with people who were not related to the other campus, the city of Omaha, or a slightly different feel. This was not something that I anticipated when we were planning.

Community: This overlaps a bit with the first. I remember visiting a campus of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minnapolis, MN (John Piper). There was no doubt that everyone at this campus was involved in the greater Bethlehem family. I tried to get answers from folks as to why this was. The best I could tell was that it was John Piper. He preached on video feed at the campuses that he did not preach at live. He made his way to different campuses over the month. They were singing the same songs, hearing the same sermons and really worked hard at communication among the church.

I noticed in our context when the campuses would get together for Sunday evening service, conferences, or other events that there was already a distinction made between the campuses. There wasn’t a lot of mixing of people. Sure folks talked and were polite. There weren’t factions or anything. But it was evident from my seat that even in some of the comments I’d hear about “them” and “us” that the community of believers was two different communities that shared a name.

I think this is a drawback because it begins to stunt the development of the campus that is intending to be a church plant one day. I found myself trying to bring people together and mold a one church identity. It just wasn’t working. The horse was out of the barn and was galloping along towards a church plant. Which is what we wanted, just not what we had expected (or anticipated so quickly).

Shepherding: If you are using a campus as a bridge to a church plant then you probably have one elder board. On this board discussions would center around ministry as a whole, across campuses. In theory it may work. But practically it is difficult. In order to shepherd a pastor has to know the sheep. It is very difficult to know the sheep that are geographically separate from you. This makes shepherding responsibilities hard and somewhat unclear.

If you begin to work through this you might consider having some elders in lead people at their own specific sites. The minute you do this you begin to have what looks a lot like two churches. The shepherds shepherd the sheep. They are in and among them.

I believe this is one of the biggest drawbacks to this model. If you try to spread the elders out they end up not knowing their people well and perhaps doing too much. If you retract them to location specific campuses then they begin to look a lot more like a church (especially without the continuity of a video stream/rotating preaching pastor). My ecclesiological concerns with this approach are one of the main sticking points for using this in the future.

Communication: This is always hard. It intensifies across campuses. Whether you are talking about events, announcements, policies or whatever, it is difficult to be in two places at once. Furthermore, it is difficult determining how to communicate. Does the word come to the campus via the campus pastor or the church’s senior pastor? I found communication to be surprisingly difficult.

Confusion on When to Plant: How do you determine when to plant the church? If the campus is doing well you will have or be on your way toward (at least) 4 things: qualified leaders, committed members, financial stability, and community engagement. Without a permenant location the 3rd criteria is easier and the 4th is more difficult. But in our case the first three happened before 2 years. Does this mean that the campus model is working and should be continued? Or does it mean that it worked and it is time to plant? Or does it mean that it isn’t working and it is time to plant? There are a lot of ways to look at it. At the end of the day, decisions for planting are difficult without a clearly marked timeline and criteria. The follow up question then would be, “If these are the goals, then why go campus in the first place? Why not just take the necessary steps toward a church plant in the first place?” This seems easier and cleaner.

Financial: As I noted yesterday, a great benefit for the campus model is the sharing of resources. It is also a weakness.

Here’s what I mean, when there is a combined budget the campus/church plant does not really know what it costs to run the operation. They may have some idea, but unless the numbers and the giving are broken out people don’t really see what the bottom line cost is. With a church plant it is healthy to get people on board and have them see what it costs to be a church. Members need to see what it costs and be committed to meeting the budget.

It is also not fair to the main campus. What I mean is that it is usually less expensive to do a campus in a school then it is to maintain a building, office, and everything else. As a result, the campus may begin to inflate the general offering vs expenses. If planting becomes a reality this detassling becomes more complicated.

Conclusion
I should note also that the campus concept was something that I pushed hard for. These Monday Morning quarterback notes are not aimed at any one guy or group of guys. I consider them lessons learned going forward. I, myself, learned a ton and hope to do this better in the future.

In our situation we are really blessed with gospel-centered leaders who love Christ and the church. There is a desire to see the gospel go forward. This burden propels church planting. This also promotes unity and mitigates against division. But even in this climate I don’t think that the campus model is a favorable option if church planting is the goal. To put it simply, what you get short-term (leadership, resources, etc) do not exceed the potential or apparent pinches later on. I think it is more difficult to make a transition to church planting from one church with two campuses then it is from one church (who wants to plant).

There is much more I could say about this, but I will spare you.

I want to write a bit about what I think we would do in the future. Even though we are a church plant ourselves, we are positioning ourselves to plant as the Lord leads in the near future. My aim is to briefly write out some thoughts on this tomorrow.

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