Here’s an interesting update from John MacArthur, speaking on multisite churches:
The first thing that comes to mind with multi-site pastors preaching on flat screens to people in another city is that it’s completely artificial….It’s artificial, it’s not real, it’s not reality….The most important of all the shepherds to be known and loved and understood and watched by the flock, is the one who teaches them the Word of God. The very basic requirement for a pastor is that the congregation can affirm that he is a godly man: they know his life, they know his wife, they know his kids, they know he manages his household well, they know how he lives, how he spends his money, how he behaves. All of that exposure is necessary to the confidence of the people in the pastor….Intimacy, connection, friendship, vulnerability, exposure, that’s essential to being a pastor. Any other approach is purely artificial and it has a way of making somebody famous without making them a real shepherd.
Found here. (You’ll enjoy this article!)
So… the answer is… John is not going multisite in the foreseeable future.
Word to all the artificial multi-site pastors and churches out there: Keep up the good work.
But word to the wise: If you REALLY wanted to spread the gospel… TV is where it’s at. The 60 in. plasma in my living room beats out your 10 foot screen every day of the week (even if it is purely supplemental).
Todd
Watching John MacArthur on TV does not equal Christian Fellowship anymore than weekly shuttling in and out of a darkened theater with little or no commitment hearing a “talk” geared at the “unchurched”.
MacArthur would probably agree.
John has some good points, but every multisite church I’m aware of has a campus pastor who is not the primary teaching pastor but quite active in ministry to the congregation. So the shepherding is done by a pastor, just not the preacher. It gets into the whole discussion of who does what. For instance by his own definition of accountability in life and active role in ministry I would find it hard to believe John practices that definition of pastoral care and accessibility with each member of his 8500 people congregation. Still John does point to the importance of pastoral care and points to the necessity of integrity in teaching and life.
I don’t despise multi-site, but he has a point about how a person on a big screen in another state is unable to truly “pastor” people… and I wonder about the long-term viability of Video venues.
That said, what’s said above about the campus pastor is very important, and in those cases where the flock truly understands that THAT person is their pastor, I guess it could work.
I think, though, that for me… it’s problematic. I haven’t been blessed to see video done really well yet.
Isn’t it ironic that he’s telling us this on a video screen? Don’t ya think.
I find the comments in response to the article to be reasonable. Without doubt one has to acknowledge that something significant is happening through the multi-site movement. It does cause me to be reminded of the church growth movement that hit with a vengeance in the 70′s. Young pastors embraced it as the next great move of the church while being ridiculed by older pastors holding to a form of church that was bound by tradition. Today I hear some speak of the church growth movement dismissively, mocking the “number of parking spots metric” among others, while advocating the current model of ministry that is in the next hot thing.
I think John makes a legitimate point, but for the church, the real question of how healthy the multi-site model is may be best measured in a decade or two. As the article illustrated it conforms to business practices that have been successful, i.e., WalMart swallowing up mom and pop stores across America. Of course, look at the public backlash to WalMart today. Decades after being hailed as an innovator of modern distribution (isn’t this what the multi-site really is – a better distribution system) they are reviled as the big box that kills community enterprises. So vitriolic is the public debate that entire communities fight tooth and nail against WalMart coming into their neighborhoods. Quality of life in their communities is too big of a sacrifice to enjoy “Every day low pricing.” I wonder what price the church will have to pay if and when the backlash occurs.
Finally, mega-churches through scale and resources have the potential to have huge positive impact in communities. Small churches will never be able to match them for impact, or can they? We are so enamored with bigger and better that I think we fail to remember that God confounds the wise routinely. There are little churches of 150 people who are being faithful and are serving, loving and yielding to the leadership of the Holy Spirit. There are young pastors who are developing their preaching skills, sharpening their pastoral skills and represent future generations of pastors. Is it possible that the next John Piper, Tim Keller or John MacArthur is quietly being shaped for ministry in some “back-water” pastoral assignment?
I fear the multi-site model is so personality centric that one has to wonder how the next generation of pastors ever has the opportunity to develop. Concentration into a few seems to limit the full development of the gifts and talents of future preachers, leaders and pastors. Surely we should be trying to raise more than executive pastors to be site managers.
Other than that, I think the multi-site is a model worth experimenting with, but I do not think it is necessarily the only model with which we should be experimenting; what about the parish model which I see more and more young pastors gravitating toward? Not every church needs to be multi-site today, just as not every church needed to be a seeker church during the 80’s and 90’s.
Good thoughts Bill. Your concern seem to be warranted that personality based attractional mega churches as models may actually squelch out the leadership development of many other persons God is or would be calling. Multiplication may be the goal of multi site personality driven franchises but subtraction may be the unintended result when it comes to the development of young capable leaders who have the gifts and calling to preach.