Collide Magazine

Multi-Site Mishaps and Misconceptions

Ryan Barnhart - Originally posted Tuesday, August 12, 2008

The voice of the pastor carries throughout the church. It is loud, and his ideas are thought provoking. But where is he? He is not on the stage.

The service at this church is part of a growing trend. It is a multi-site video venue service. Usually, a video feed of the teaching pastor is portrayed on a massive screen above the stage, but at the moment, the pastor is no longer visible.

The audience laughs. The mix-up is a first, and the technology crew scrambles to rediscover the picture. Matt Chandler, the lead pastor of the Village Church, reappears, stretching across the screen as the video plays like an awful 1970s kung fu movie. Chandler’s lips are moving, but the words trail behind. Eventually, the techies give up and the video is stopped before the sermon is finished.

As the Village Denton, a video venue church plant of the Village Church in Denton, TX, continues to work out the kinks, a minimal number of technological mistakes like this one occur. But according to Beau Hughes, the campus pastor of the Village Denton, thousands of churches now use a video venue format for services. And with the right equipment and proper planning, unforeseeable glitches can be minimized.

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The Denton Village has transitioned from tape to digital recordings and the malfunctions have become less frequent, but there is also a backup plan, which calls for Hughes to preach on demand. And surprisingly, not one person polled for this article felt that an occasional video glitch hindered their worship.

Positives
When all equipment is functioning properly, the positive aspects of multi-site video venue services are substantial. First, it removes loads of stress from the speaking pastor. The Village Church currently offers nine services per weekend, including three at the Village Denton, and Chandler’s sermons are frequently longer than 45 minutes. It makes a lot of sense to take some speaking off his already full plate.

Second, the church doesn’t need to overspend on a facility just to crowd thousands of attendees into two services. “I am sure we can all think of a better use for $40 million dollars than just a building!” said Village Church attendee Karen Anderson.

Third, video venue services provide more opportunities to worship at additional locations rather than just the main campus. Village attendee Justin Blaydes likes this idea, especially with a looming recession and a struggling economy. “If attending a video venue location means shaving 10 minutes off my commute time, I'd probably opt for the video service most of the time,” said Blaydes.

The Main Concern
Though there are countless positive aspects, those who are not proponents of video services and multi-site churches can easily counter the above benefits, as well as express greater concerns.

Ironically, when mega-churches were increasing in popularity, the leading concern was “How can a preacher pastor his flock when he cannot possibly know or meet every member of his church?”

Now, as the number of multi-site and video venue churches continues to grow, the main concern is similar, “Shouldn’t the pastor be present and available during a message?”

“I definitely have issues with video services,” said Jason Seville, a Dallas Theological Seminary student. “The role of a pastor is to shepherd the flock with which he has been entrusted. It is difficult to pastor a flock you have never seen or rarely see.”

The Village Church hopes to answer both concerns by providing the body with vibrant and active campus pastors. While Hughes serves in that role at the Village Denton, the Highland Village campus designates a service pastor for each service.

Hughes, who takes the pulpit in Denton on weekends when Chandler does not preach at the Village Church, will preach approximately 15 times in 2008. But Hughes is more than a fill-in when the lead pastor is on sabbatical. His role as campus pastor is, in his opinion, threefold.

“For now, I think I would say that the Campus Pastor is God’s man for the campus,” said Hughes. “He is the lead under-shepherd, leading in pastoring the other shepherds and the flock. He is the lead missionary, leading in exegeting the culture around the campus and contextualizing the gospel message to engage the culture. And he is a teacher, communicating the vision of the campus through the preaching of the Word when the teaching pastor is gone.”

Humbly, Hughes admits that he enjoys his role and does not desire to preach a full schedule. He relishes the freedom he has to be a pillar within the community by serving on local committees, engaging the culture, and devoting time to the more than 45,000 college students in Denton.

Why Video Venue?
The Village Church has had space issues since Chandler became the lead pastor in 2002. As the numbers in attendance began to steadily increase, demographics were studied and either a humongous building or church plants became a necessity. And since the leadership of the church wholeheartedly agrees that attendees should be “doing life” within their community, it didn’t make sense that attendees were driving as much as hour to get to the church on weekends.

After two unsuccessful attempts at decreasing attendance by planting churches with other pastors in nearby communities, the space issue remained. And as the number of attendees at the Village Church continued to multiply, services were added and the sanctuary was expanded. Growth continued to balloon, and services were added again.

The leadership prayed earnestly and sought guidance from the Lord. Their prayers were answered in the form of a near empty church less than 20 miles away in Denton. But this time, in order to alleviate the space issues, the leadership decided to make the new campus a multi-site video venue church. And with weekly adult attendance in Denton pushing 1,000 (500 formerly from the Village Church), the plan seems to have worked.

Cult of Personality
But pundits also argue that video service attendees are only following a personality. “When the video service decision is made,” said Seville, “there is a conscious decision made by the leadership that the personality (or teaching) of one man is more important than meaningful connection with the audience.”

Hughes addressed that concern by saying, “To have the technology available to steward [Chandler’s] gifts in such ways for God’s glory and to not use it would be foolish and prideful. Some may see that as promoting a personality; I simply see it as stewarding the gifts of the body of Christ.”

Hughes referenced 1 Corinthians 1 when he added “The way the early church fought their personality cults was not to ban Paul and the other early leaders from preaching, teaching, writing, and leading the numerous churches they led, but to call it what it was—idolatry—and strongly warn the people from worshiping any leader but Christ.”

So whether it is Paul, Apollos, Matt Chandler, or someone else preaching, should it matter if that person is live or on a video screen?

“I think that it is a great way to utilize technology,” said Steve Cohen of Grapevine, TX. “And hasn’t it been going on already for many years using TBN or Daystar to spread God’s word all over the world?”

Yes, it has. And an uncountable number of souls have been saved through such opportunities and technology, including viewing Billy Graham on television. Maybe those viewers were only following Graham’s personality, but then again, maybe they never would have experienced Jesus Christ if they hadn’t been drawn to Graham. And their experience with Jesus is what matters, not whether the speaker was on a stage or on a screen.

Ryan Barnhart is a freelance writer who lives in Denton, TX. You can find out more about The Village Church at www.thevillagechurch.net.