Collide Magazine

North Point Starts Streaming

Scott McClellan - Originally posted Thursday, December 17, 2009 -

Internet campuses are becoming more and more commonplace among large American churches, but when North Point Ministries (www.northpoint. org) in Georgia launched North Point Online (www.northpointonline.tv) in August we took notice. For one thing, North Point (a multi-site church with three campuses—North Point Community Church, Buckhead Church, and Browns Bridge Community Church) is known for it’s creativity and excellence under the leadership of pastor Andy Stanley. For another, web developer and strategist extraordinaire John Saddington (www.human3rror.com and www.churchcrunch.com) was heavily involved with the project. Despite the fact that North Point has yet to dedicate any of its staff exclusively to North Point Online, it appears to be a fantastic entry into online church. I was eager to talk with Saddington about North Point’s decision to launch an Internet campus and their process of bringing it to bear.

COLLIDE: Tell me how the idea for North Point Online came about.

John Saddington: The conversation started before I came on staff. A number of churches had already created online campuses, and many of them looked great. We pulled from their research and talked with a lot of peers in the space as we developed ours, but I’m not exactly sure when the conversation got started. I came on staff in September of 2008, so it has been a little bit more than a year now, and [North Point Online] was one of the first projects given to me. It began with a conversation asking, “What would you like to see in an online campus? What would you think about it?”

That began a long conversation about what the campus could look like up until the point that we launched August 16, 2009. The conversations really began hot and heavy in October or November 2008, when we began talking seriously with vendors, talking with contractors, doing research, talking with LifeChurch.tv—a definite inspiration—and really developed those relationships.

One of the cool things about our process, in retrospect, is the patience and the pace at which we were comfortable in pursuing this campus. Coming from an extremely fast-paced, high tech, Silicon Valley background, we had initial prototypes, ideas, and mockups in the first 30 to 60 days. But our core leadership team put on the brakes and said, in so many words, that we’ll know when it’s the right time to launch, we’ll know when the right product has been found. So I really give it up to the management team for being excruciatingly patient with the process and really bathed in prayer about how we needed to go about it. Jeff Henderson, the campus pastor of Buckhead Church, really led the charge and was the team sponsor, and I was the technical lead for all intents and purposes.

COLLIDE: Can you describe the motivation that drove the development of North Point Online?

Saddington: Our core motivation [for North Point Online] has always been the same as our mission as an organization: to help people grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ. The way we have invested in people and decided to engage with people is through a series of programs and initiatives like our Starting Point material (the way we engage with lost people) and we saw [North Point Online] as another opportunity to engage the large body of people that do not know Christ. What was nice was that throughout the process of developing the product we kept coming back to the question, “Who are we culturally, historically, and in terms of our leadership?”

One of the fascinating things from a product perspective is we took into account the way Andy Stanley speaks and the way he engages the particulars of the Buckhead campus and, historically, how we have engaged with the lost, and of course, how an online campus fits us culturally. And one of the things Jeff came up with very early on was the phrase, “Never watch alone,” which is not an official tag line but it’s something we’ve said several times. “Never watch alone. Share the experience.” A core part of how we do ministry is that we love engaging with people in any shape, way, or form, but we don’t want you to watch alone. We want to challenge you to get in circles, not rows. Andy says that all the time, our leadership says it all the time, and I believe an effective church gets people to sit in circles, not rows. Ultimately, that looks like small groups or life groups or whatever you want to call it. Our motivation was to extend the Buckhead campus in such a way that we could continue that mission—to get people in circles, not rows—engage people in a comfortable atmosphere, at their pace, at their leisure, and in a non-offensive way from a technological perspective.

COLLIDE: When you talk about circles, are those both physical and online at this point?

Saddington: Our initiative is still very new. Scott Mawdesley has donated a lot of his time as a groups guy, which is part of his history at Saddleback and Christ Fellowship in Florida, and he has been leading the charge. In fact, we’re launching the first iteration of our small groups initiative this week. It’s going to be a long maturation process, but ultimately our desire is to get people connected with each other on a consistent basis. The first thing we’re launching is what we call “series groups.” Unlike small groups (oursmall group model is a closed model—a committed group of individuals for a certain amount of time) these people online are going to commit to a series. We’re launching with Andy’s four-part series and these people will commit to meeting regularly for the four weeks of that series, and then they have consistent stuff to talk about. Long term, our hope is that we’ll be able to leverage these groups and use technology to get them to consistently meet or get them into a local body.

COLLIDE: From a logistical standpoint, tell me about the decisions to stream from the Buckhead campus, as opposed to the Alpharetta campus, and to stream just one service—the 6:00pm Sunday service.

Saddington: We ultimately landed on Buckhead Church for a number of reasons. Jeff, the campus pastor at Buckhead, really championed moving forward with the online initiative, and it made sense that it be a campus-specific initiative and not North Point-wide to start with. Of course, long term we could create other campuses, though that wasn’t the plan originally. In addition, the 6:00pm service at

Buckhead is somewhat “independent” from the rest of the campuses since no other campuses have a 6:00pm service. In this way we could have room with experimentation without impacting all three campuses and it was easier to manage and setup. Buckhead is also more progressive in terms of technological adoption, so that fit culturally with that particular body. For example, Buckhead is the only campus of the three that has a dedicated, campus-based blog. North Point Community Church (located in Alpharetta) doesn’t have one and neither does Browns Bridge Community Church. And it’s not that those two campuses don’t value that, it just doesn’t fit the current model and the way those campuses are doing it.

COLLIDE: Are there any tech tools your team has incorporated that people need to know about?

Saddington: One of the things I brought to the table as a technical lead is I am very passionate about open source technology and I love Word- Press—it’s just an amazing platform. So we went through a couple iterations of the campus and this is ultimately the last iteration (at least so far). And what’s fascinating is that the actual costs associated with the campus decreased with every iteration. We’ve been able to provide a better experience in a more cost-effective way using WordPress as an application core for part of the experience. We partnered with 316 Networks (www.316networks.com), which is our video-streaming provider. Otherwise, we did most of the development in house.

One of my goals is that when people come to North Point Online and say, “Wow, amazing campus. We’ll never be able to do that,” I’ll be able to respond in confidence, “Want to know a cool secret? We didn’t really spend that much money in terms of the software and the technology. Much of the technology we’re using is actually free. With a little touchup and design, and a little creative direction, and of course, a little know-how, you can do this. You can contextualize it appropriately for your body, for your ministry, when you engage the lost. And you can be as effective, if not more.”

If anything, we want to provide a model of one way to engage online. It is not the model, it’s a model, and it seems to be working for us. I love to have that conversation when people say, “Wow, you’re telling me I can do this for my ministry?” Absolutely, and it’s not going to break the bank. Of course, there will be incremental costs in terms of bandwidth use, hardware, etc., but it’s within your reach and I love encouraging people in that way.