Decentralization = Explosive Growth
By Stovall Weems
Over the last 30 years the church in America has undergone a series of steps in the decentralization of service structure which have led to explosive growth. They are:
Multi services: I remember when pastors began doing multiple services for different people. As ubiquitous as that is now, the prevailing response to a full sanctuary in the early 80s was not to add a service, but to build a bigger building. Imagine that! The first people to do multiple services for different people (as opposed to a Sunday night service for the same people) were real innovators for their time, reaching people by adding more options.
Mobile church: This movement, mainstreamed in America by Rick Warren, revolutionized the way church was done. The idea that you could start a church and not even have a building was crazy, but it worked – big time! Today the idea of buying or building a facility before launching a church seems backwards at best, but until the 90s, it was the norm. This major innovation is still impacting church planting today, empowering leaders to reach more people with less money and leading to a colossal rise in the rate of church planting in America.
Multi-sites: In the 90s several pastors began to experiment with having more than one location in the same city. They set the service times so that they could drive back and forth and preach at each campus. These churches were now able to reach people who loved the heart and vision of the church but didn’t want to or couldn’t make the drive to the other side of town. Suddenly these people had an option for plugging into the life of the church.
Video multi-sites: People really criticized this idea at first. The idea that you could get the same quality of ministry by watching the message on a video screen seemed almost heretical. But people found that the community of believers they connected to was what made church, church, regardless of how they experienced the message. By adding video multi-sites as an option for a Sunday gathering, churches experienced phenomenal, sometimes exponential growth, reaching so many more people for Christ.
I believe the next wave of decentralization in the church in America will be the movement of multi-gatherings. I believe it will ignite the biggest, rawest, closest-to-the-book-of Acts-experience we have seen yet. On Friday, September 5th, Celebration church will launch 200 extension gatherings.
Over the next several weeks I will be sharing on my blog what we are doing and learning as we embark into completely uncharted territory. I have about 10 -12 main theories and ideas on this concept. I want to share these and invite your feedback.
I am sharing these ideas and theories in the context of the church in America – not China or Korea or any other country where a form of this has been already been happening for decades. I know that some of the theories might challenge traditional philosophies of ministry. Some ideas may even be a little bit controversial or challenge your way of thinking. Feel free to share or disagree and I will try to answer as many questions as I can.
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5 Responses to “Decentralization = Explosive Growth”
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Well said – that is very much what it is like. Thanks for your comment.
This is a really interesting idea. It’s almost like giving every average Joe in your church the permission to be a off-site venue campus pastor. I’m definitely interested to see how this looks in Jacksonville, since I live here and minister across town in Arlington.
AWWW YEAH!! It’s all about getting people planted into the Local Church. Let’s take the Local Church to the world!! GO JESUS!!
What an exciting time. I love that it is an out of the box idea and isn’t that just like Jesus? This is what I love about Celebration.
I love this Pastor! I know the young men and women at the St. Johns jail will connect big time to this! Rather than being connected to a Bible study only while they’re in, they’ll be in a service and become part of a church that they can re-connect with once they’re ‘on the outs’….huge!