"Seven years ago, we added an early service to the Sunday morning schedule, and that now averages 145 in attendance. Our second service averages 200 in a room that can accommodate about 250. The 80 percent rule states that the ceiling has been reached when the year-around attendance averages 80 percent of capacity. We do add a third service on Easter and Christmas Eve, but we are clearly at capacity for worship. Five years ago, we were able to purchase the property next door to ours. That enabled us to add another hundred spaces of off-street parking. It is unlikely, however, any other property will become available in this block. We are at capacity in terms of both space for worship and parking."

Those eight sentences introduced the key recommendation in a report from the Long Range Planning Committee at Bethany Church. This congregation had been founded in 1923 as a new mission on the west side of a city of 40,000 residents. Forty-five years later, this report was presented at a congregational meeting. The key sentence read, "Therefore, we are recommending Bethany Church relocate to a larger site at a better location and construct modern facilities on that site."

After nearly two hours of heated discussion, the time arrived to vote by secret ballot. The printed ballot offered two choices: for relocation or against relocation.

The final count was 14 abstentions by blank ballots, 97 for relocation, and 202 opposed.

Two Relevant Lessons
During the next several years, advocates of planned change that was to be initiated and implemented within a voluntary association learned several lessons. One was the normal, natural, and predictable response to a new idea calling for radical change is to reject it the first time it is presented. People need time to talk themselves into affirming the need for change. That is one explanation for the time between conception and the birth of a baby is about nine months. That also explains why today's Long Range Planning Committee usually will schedule at least a couple of public hearings designed to hear responses to the preliminary diagnosis of the problem followed by two or three open meetings discussing alternative courses of action before submitting a specific recommendation.

A second related lesson is if the leaders become convinced that perpetuating the status quo is not a viable alternative, they do not have an ethical right to define the choice as between change or no change. The physician who is convinced the patient's cancer is on the way to becoming a terminal illness is not ethically free to suggest the choice is between "surgery" and "ignore it" when the real choice is between surgery or death.

A Different Model
In 1998, a congregation in another state found itself in almost exactly the same circumstances as Bethany Church had faced three decades earlier. After a half dozen open meetings for listening and discussing alternatives, the Futures Committee concluded, "Our real estate has placed a ceiling on our ministry on this property. We cannot live with that."

They also rejected that 1950s option of relieving the pressure on space by sending out a cadre of 150 to 200 people to become the nucleus for a new mission. They had checked out the consequences of that tactic and discovered one common consequence was that cadre usually included a disproportionately large number of venturesome, future-oriented, and creative younger members. A second consequence was those left behind at the old site included a substantial number of older people who preferred perpetuating yesterday over creating a new tomorrow. A third common consequence was the creation of what became an aging and numerically shrinking congregation who often blame that earlier decision for the decline, "We created our own competition for younger members."

Finally, at a congregational meeting on a Tuesday evening attended by well over 300 members, this Futures Committee presented two choices. One option was to purchase a seven-acre parcel of land at an excellent location, construct the first unit of a new building, and sell the present property. The second was to continue to gather to worship God in this sacred meeting place and plan to become a two-site church and function as one congregation with one name, one message, one ministry, one governing board, one budget, and one staff. The two ministers would alternate preaching at the two sites.

During the discussion, one older man commented, "This parallels our situation. After 42 years of marriage, my wife and I both would prefer to grow younger, but that is not on the list of options. Our real choice was change with continuity by growing old together or change with discontinuity by one of us becoming widowed. We prefer change with continuity." Another member commented, "I see this as a choice between Change A and Change B. Most of us face that choice several times every year."

The vote was 283-to-26 in favor of becoming a two-site congregation. Like Bethany Church, this congregation also rejected the option of radical change called relocation by a substantial majority. Unlike the process at Bethany Church, this process also gave the leadership clear support for change by addition, thus building in continuity between the past and the future.

Four More Lessons
While this second congregation was not the first to choose the multisite option, its experience does provide four lessons for those planning for ministry in the 21st century.

The first should be discussed in the context of a definition of success. What is defined as success in the context of the parish ministry? What is defined as success in creating new worshiping communities? One strategy calls for denominations to plant new missions. If success is measured by two criteria, that new mission (1) is still in existence 10 years after the first public worship service and (2) is averaging at least 135 at worship, about four out of 10 can be described as success stories. If the new mission is planted by a congregation averaging over 800 at worship and designed to become a self-governing, self-financing, self-expressing, and self-propagating congregation before its 10th birthday, about six out of 10 can be described as success stories. If the multisite option produces both (1) an increase in the demographic diversity of the congregation and (2) an average annual increase of at least five percent in worship attendance, about eight out of 10 can be described as success stories.

A second lesson is the 1950s affirmed the organizational structure that called for one person to be the leader of an organization. It worked! That design had been reinforced by the American economy of the 1920s, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and World War II. It worked with most adults born before 1950. One religious version of this called for sending out a pastor to organize a new congregation of people born before 1930.

Many Americans born after 1950 prefer to work as a member of a team. The multisite design is most useful when the staff leadership team consists of three to seven adults. The multisite option provides for a leadership team of specialists rather than depending on a generalist to be the leader.

For some, the third lesson ranks at the top. It is more cost effective. The financial subsidy required to plant new missions that are designed to be success stories often runs to more than a million dollars each…and some failures also cost a million dollars.

A fourth lesson tends to have greater visibility. The pre-1950s economy in the United States taught most people, "The world offers you two choices. Take it or leave it." Americans born after 1950 tend to believe the acceptable option is "Both-and." One example is the preference for a small congregation averaging under 135 at worship that functions as one big extended family. Five of its desired characteristics are spontaneity, intimacy, the absence of complexity, the absence of anonymity, and a building designed to encourage and support one-to-one relationships and social interaction. "The pastor can tell when I'm absent because my place is vacant." "I always talk with one of my friends who I never see during the week at the same spot in the narthex after church."

In addition, many of these loyal churchgoers also want the quality, relevance, and choices in worship; the specialized ministries for youth, women, and men; the meaningful and memorable experiences as a volunteer in missions; and the absence of guilt as a motivation that large churches can offer.

How can the congregations averaging 50 to 150 at worship offer people the advantages of being part of that small fellowship plus the opportunities, quality, and choices that require mobilizing a larger quantity of resources? One option is to become part of a multisite congregation with a total worship attendance of 2,000 or more on the typical weekend.

One version calls for the same carefully edited sermon to be delivered via projected visual imagery at perhaps two dozen worship experiences at seven to 15 sites every weekend. One site may be owned by that aging and shrinking fellowship that chose to petition a multisite megachurch to become the "North Campus," three to five worship services are offered every weekend on the campus owned by this missionary megachurch, another may be in the community room of a retirement village, a fourth site may be a leased school auditorium, a fifth may be the property of a congregation that had voted to disband and sell its real estate, a sixth may be in a vacant store leased from the owner of a strip shopping center, the seventh and eighth may be in former retail buildings purchased by this missionary church and renovated as seven-day-a-week ministries, and the ninth may be a new building on a site donated by a member.

Each off-campus site also has a campus pastor who combines the three roles of worship leader, loving shepherd, and "the face on the place."

What Do You Count?
A minor price tag has to be paid by those who depend on historical continuity in describing contemporary reality. For example, in 1920, the 107 million people living in the United States were served by slightly more than 30,100 banks. They also depended on 6.5 million farms to provide food and fiber. Today, the 304 million residents of this nation are served by only 7,500 banks, but most have several branch offices. Likewise, the 2 million farms, with far fewer farm workers, produce four times the food and fiber produced by 6.5 million farms in 1920.

How many churches are located in your county? As recently as 1990, the answer "about 300" might have been a reasonably accurate and acceptable response in the county with 250,000 residents. In 2015, that same county may include 300,000 residents and the answer may be "about 200 congregations with a combined total of 450 sites - and most of those 200 are single-site congregations." The denomination that included 6,000 single-site congregations in 1990, down from 6,300 in 1970, in 2015 may report a total of 2,500 affiliated congregations with a combined total of 11,000 sites and serving twice as many people as were served by those 6,300 single-site congregations back in 1970.

Has the time arrived for your congregation to relocate the meeting place? Or to become comfortable with an aging and numerically shrinking membership? Or to become a two-site church? Or to petition to become the Jefferson Street Campus of a multisite megachurch?

Lyle Schaller discusses the multisite option in more detail in chapters 7, 14, and 16 of Small Congregation, Big Potential (Abingdon Press, 2003) and in chapter 4 of A Mainline Turnaround (Abingdon Press, 2005).

Copyright 2007 Lyle E. Schaller