What does a church do when they've invested significant capital resources into land and a building, and their growth still outpaces their physical capacity to effectively serve all the people who attend? More and more churches are finding their answer in the multi-site church model.

According to Jim Tomberlin, founder of Multi-Site Solutions, "What started as a megachurch phenomenon has become a healthy-church strategy."

Tomberlin was hired in 2000 by Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, to pioneer the multi-site model. During this time, he launched four campuses over the course of five years.

"Initially, going multi-site was a band-aid solution for churches like Willow that had plateaued or stymied because of space limitations," says Tomberlin. By creating satellite locations, Willow Creek could more effectively minister to the people who were driving long distances to attend church.

Today, Tomberlin says the thinking on multi-sites has evolved. "Churches now realize that going multi-site isn't just a band-aid for space limitations; it is a viable alternative for accommodating and accelerating church growth without investing in bigger buildings," says Tomberlin.

Multi-sites provide a way for churches to grow faster and cheaper within specific geographic areas. And the biggest win: multi-sites often allow the church to minister more effectively because they are smaller and better able to develop relationships within the new, smaller congregation and in the community at large.

"Churches are asking, how do we make our church more accessible within our community in a more effective way?" Tomberlin says. Now, for more than 3,000 churches, going multi-site is the way.

"Multi-sites are an outreach, impact strategy. Today, the motivation for becoming multi-site is a call to be a reproducing, high-impacting local church.The multi-site model is less about multiple locations as it is about being a multiplying, reproducing church," says Tomberlin.

To a large extent, multi-sites have put "local" back into the local church. "The majority of people live within a 15 minute drive of their church. When Willow's population grew to the point where a large segment of their attendees had to drive further than this to attend, they saw their growth begin to plateau. That's when they decided to fan out in other locations across Chicagoland and embed more meaningfully in neighboring communities."

"Willow's new campuses became self-sustaining immediately after opening their doors," says Tomberlin. "A typical church plant has a high failure rate, whereas a multi-site church campus has a high success rate, in large part because it can leverage funding, staffing, and support services from the sending location. Essentially, you can benefit from the economies of scale when you centralize support for administrative details, such as IT, HR, accounting, and communications. And from a ministry perspective, you eventually hit a point of diminishing returns on your investment after you've been plowing the same ground for ten years or more." For churches like Willow whose reputation was already firmly established in a geographic area, adding new locations allowed them to experience marked growth again.

"At Willow, each of our multi-sites launched with 300 people. This was the base we determined we needed to be viable. We also targeted buildings that were in a 30 minute driving radius from our original campus. Too close, you run the risk of not incentivizing core enlistment from the sending campus; too far, you lose the benefits of being related to the original church."

Today, there are approximately 1,500 megachurches across the nation. Of these, 37 percent have adopted the multi-site model. Although many churches are moving to this model, Tomberlin says multi-sites are not right for every church.

"Multi-sites work best for churches that already have healthy systems in place and an outreach mindset."

What are the signs your church may be healthy enough to consider a multi-site strategy? Tomberlin points to these traits:

• Clear mission and vision


• Unified leadership


• Effective systems and infrastructure


• Growing church, meaning you are experiencing at least a five percent increase in attendance each year. "New people should be coming in, baptisms should be regular occurrences, the church's culture should be life-giving, transforming, and not consumed with internal conflict."

Today's multi-site church is based on a strategic plan to reach specific people within a targeted area versus simply plugging in multiple locations to accommodate overspill from the church's main campus. Although every multi-site church is unique and different, Tomberlin points to several examples of successful multi-site churches—Life Church, Seacoast, North Point, Community Christian.

What other examples of strong multi-sites would you add to this list?