Collide Magazine

An Inside Look at the Multi-site Movement

Geoff Surratt - Originally posted Tuesday, December 29, 2009 -

The invention of the printing press took Paul’s letters to a whole new level of effectiveness as Bibles were mass produced for the first time and believers were able to read the Word for themselves. In the 20th century, radio and television harnessed the latest technology to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. Now, the multi-site church movement is challenging not only the idea that a church meets in just one location, but also how technology can best be utilized to expand the Kingdom. Multi-site churches aren’t innovating just for the sake of technology, but because they believe that technology used correctly can enhance spiritual growth, outreach, and the transcendent connection between God and a community of believers. Through the use of video sermons, live-streaming of services, and concurrent live worship in multiple locations, multi-site churches have pushed both the level of technical excellence and the bounds of what is feasible for churches of all sizes. We talked with some of the leading multisite technology pioneers to find out what is possible and what is next for the Church in the 21st century. –Geoff Surratt

COLLIDE: What are the most important tech tools of the trade for a multi-site church?
Dennis Choy: For me, sound is still one of the most important tools for multi-site or just churches in general. No matter how great the video image of your teaching pastor is if you can’t hear him, the video is useless. The second most important tool is your video playback system. It needs to be reliable and backed up.
Tim Savage: I think it’s critical to have excellent sound and video so that the satellite congregations understand and enjoy the service. The important tools are microphones, cameras, lights, recording and playback media, speakers, sound boards, and projectors. Bright projectors, while expensive, are essential.
Jeff VanderGiessen: At Mars Hill we really strive to have the highest quality video playback possible at the campuses. This leads us to constantly look at ways to improve our capture, distribution, and playback systems.

COLLIDE: What roles comprise the tech team of your multi-site church and what kind of expertise is important?
Dennis Choy: Our model for the production team is a Producer, Sound Operator, and Visual Operator, and a setup team if it’s a portable church. Within those three positions I’m really looking for less expertise and more willing heart.
Tim Savage: At New Hope, we have a pretty large group of “expert volunteers & staff” at the main recording/broadcast campus. Our satellites have done quite well with more inexperienced teams, but then, wouldn’t we all love to have a really great sound guy! While the mother church tends to need specialists, the satellites need more generalists.
Nate Krause: Our normal tech team consists of a front of house engineer, projectionist, lighting operator, and service coordinator. Our capture campus (currently the only campus with IMAG) adds a camera operator, video director, and technical director. You need a couple of people who are relatively technical; the rest of your team just needs to be willing to be there consistently and be willing to learn. Then it’s up to you to provide good training.
Sunny Thomas: We look for individuals, who are a cultural fit with our church and our team, support our core values, and display our behavioral values. Having experience designing, installing, and supporting audio, video, lighting, and satellite systems doesn’t hurt either.

COLLIDE: In terms of facilities, technology, and multimedia, is there an ideal venue for a multi-site campus?
TJ Friesen: If you don’t want cables and connections to break continuously then any permanent location would be great. Our campuses meet in all different kinds of places, from courthouses to schools to community clubhouses. If you are a multi-site church with a focus on reproducing, you are probably going to be meeting in temporary facilities, so the more road-tough you can make your setup the better.
Tim Savage: Our experience has been that locations with air conditioning do the best. Technically, the next thing that I look for is the ability to control the ambient light so that the projection can be as bright as possible. Movie theaters, while not great for the live portions of the service, are a good model because they’re typically cool and dark.
Nate Krause: There are better sites than others. Here are some things to think about: Are you portable or permanent? How much can you leave set up? How much time does it take to transform the space into a worship environment? What is the availability of basic utilities such as power or Internet?
Sunny Thomas: We have found success with using a portion of buildings vacated by a big box retailer, grocery store, or movie theater. Those locations are usually in high traffic areas, have ample parking, and have high ceilings. These spaces allow us to modify the interior to suit our ministry needs.

COLLIDE: Do you use pre-recorded video teaching or a live video feed? How did you decide between the two?
Dennis Choy: At North Coast we do acombination of both, but we choose a pre-recorded message over a live video feed if we have the choice. Going live with video takes more equipment, more staffing, and more technical skill to execute.
Tim Savage: We’ve chosen prerecorded video here at New Hope. It’s inexpensive and gives us more control over the individual satellite services. I’m always impressed and amazed at the churches doing live feeds because it requires perfect timing for everyone involved, not to mention all of the gear in the chain has to behave. We are currently using DVD, but are moving towards media file downloads so that the video campuses can just cue up the needed clip and roll it at the right time.
Nate Krause: We are a week delayed at all of our campuses. The advantages of this approach are that we get to choose the best sermon for each weekend and the technology to distribute the message tends to be cheaper. However, it is hard to do topical messages, which is why we use same-day couriers for special occasions such as Christmas and Easter.
Jeff VanderGiessen: We have done both live and pre-recorded. Initially, when we decided to go to a multi-site model, we launched our first six campuses with a live feed (first using six T1 lines, then later via HD Satellite). Last May we switched to pre-recorded video on a one week delay and have since launched three more campuses. The switch to pre-recorded video has been great because we have additional time to ensure the highest quality file and to distribute it. Our campuses can also preview the sermon, which allows effective service planning around the mood and tone of the sermon. Best of all, it is simple and cheap!

COLLIDE: What are some of the biggest challenges in launching and maintaining a multi-site campus?
Dennis Choy: The biggest challenge I have seen with the Tech Ministry is volunteers to setup and operate a satellite campus. Usually, when we launch one I seed it with a team from the main campus, hoping that in the first few months we can recruit people who are attending that campus to volunteer. But typically the pool is a lot smaller to recruit from, and it takes a while to train new volunteers to be on the same level as the seed team.
Nate Krause: The biggest challenge is to be intentional about the choices that you make establishing the campus personality. Get your core tech team together early, train them, and make sure you have a plan in place for retention of volunteers.
Jeff VanderGiessen: Communication is key. Leaders and staff are no longer in the same building, so clearly communicating the vision and the plan to accomplish said vision are absolutely key to ensure everyone is in lockstep as you move forward. Also, training is hard work and time consuming. I suggest thinking through how you are going to manage volunteers for multiple campuses and how they will be trained and poured into spiritually. This takes a lot of work and cannot be overlooked.

COLLIDE: What is the biggest technical multi-site mistake you’ve experienced and what did you learn from it?
Dennis Choy: We launched a campus in a school gym, which had some sound issues. Limited by what the school would let us do as well as upfront resources to pay for the acoustic treatment, we decided to just try it and see what would happen. We had people attend several times and then not come back because of issues with hearing the teaching clearly.
TJ Friesen: You really have to think long-term with multi-site, which can be difficult in the technology arena. When you start using something and 11 campuses adopt it, it takes a lot of time and money to change that decision.
Sunny Thomas: A mistake I make is not thoroughly testing everything after making a change to the system. I think, “It’s just a minor change and it shouldn’t affect anything.” Famous last words, right?

COLLIDE: How has the use of multiple sites impacted the production values of your services?
TJ Friesen: The greatest benefit of multi-site in terms of creative arts is probably the resulting collaboration. Having input from different Arts Directors from different cities and towns in our surrounding area adds a depth and richness to our services and production.
Tim Savage: We felt we needed to improve our production values and recordings to communicate to the satellite congregations that they are truly valued and important. Some of the things we could get away with in a live environment (such as mediocre stage backgrounds for the speaker) just wouldn’t cut it when projected large for a remote location. Also, online streaming and TV broadcasts have prompted us to pay more attention to our sound mixes. Controlling recorded sound is a team effort that involves everyone—front of house, monitors, vocalists, musicians, and teachers. All contribute to its success or failure.
Jeff VanderGiessen: Similar to the business world, it is really hard to maintain the same production or quality level across multiple locations when you grow too fast. At Mars Hill, we hold a high production value because we want to give Jesus our very best. It isn’t about producing a flashy show, rather it is about reflecting God’s glory back to him the best we know how. Growing quickly is a great problem to have in the local church, and by God’s grace we experienced quick growth over the past few years. The growth has led to lower quality production at some of the newer and smaller campuses, but it hasn’t changed our values one bit. Usually, a campus has a few bugs to work out after launch, which leads to growth in community among the volunteers as they figure things out. The common goal is a detail focused production as our offering of worship to Jesus.

COLLIDE: What are the most important lessons from multi-site service production that can be applied to a non-multi-site church?
Dennis Choy: I’ve had to recruit and train more volunteers than I’d need at one church with one service. I think most non-multi-site churches have one or two “super volunteers” in tech that serve every weekend, but it has been rewarding to give more people the opportunity to serve in sound, video, and lighting.
Tim Savage: I’m primarily a video guy, but in my experience, sound is the most important technical art. YouTube has taught us to accept less-than-perfect pictures, but if people can’t understand what’s being said or sung, you’re sunk. Be resourceful and intentional in training all of your techies.
Jeff VanderGiessen: Plan for change and be willing to try new methods to solve old problems. I don’t think that a multi-site strategy is for every church, but I do believe that we are to consistently look at new ways to engage the culture around us.
Sunny Thomas: Have backup equipment. Technology will fail, and many times it will fail right before your service is about to start. We have at least one backup for much of our equipment, so that if a piece of equipment fails at one of our campuses, we can send them a backup right away.

COLLIDE: Beyond just multi-site and Internet campuses, how can church leaders best discern between what is technologically possible and what is really beneficial for the Church?
TJ Friesen: I think it helps to view different types of new technology in terms of being helpful and beneficial or distracting. For example, if you find that by using Twitter you are becoming even more narcissistic, then it might not be the best thing. But if by using some new technology you are finding ways for people to connect to the Big Idea in the service, then go for it. I think the problem lies in simply disconnecting how people use technology on a daily basis when they walk in the doors of the church. The future seems wide open for us to think of ways to use new technologies for people to encounter our God.
Tim Savage: To me, the question is really, “What will help reach nonbelievers and the un-churched with God’s life-changing and soul-saving message?” Most anything can be redeemed in order to do that. I think the Church has recently come a long way in using the arts and technology, but for many of us, we can still go much further. We have to learn how to speak the language of our culture. Our culture understands the Internet, movies, music, dance, drama, entertainment, TV, technology, etc., and if we hope to reach them, we have to use their methods without compromising our message.
Nate Krause: Anything is possible with the right budget, but you need to be intentional about everything you do, and do everything you can to enhance the worship experience and not become the worship experience. When it comes to technology, be invisible.
Jeff VanderGiessen: It is more important than ever to be intentional in the way churches decide to use technology. We need to keep our eyes on Scripture and our hearts in prayer so that we may continue to utilize technology to worship Jesus and not let anything distract from his glory being seen by everyone. I love seeing the Church engage with technology, but I do not want to see it end up being a means to its own end.
Sunny Thomas: There is a lot of cool stuff out there. It’s easy for us to say we “need” that stuff. We must ask what God has called us to and what equipment will support our church’s mission. Around here, we always ask, “What will be the return on investment on this purchase? How will this equipment support our mission?”

Geoff Surratt is a teaching pastor and executive pastor at Seacoast Church, a multisite congregation based in Charleston, South Carolina. He co-authored The Multisite Church Revolution and the new book, Multisite Church Roadtrip (Zondervan, October 2009), with Greg Ligon and Warren Bird. Multisite Church Roadtrip chronicles the growth and impact of multi-site churches on the American church landscape. Geoff is a community leader for Leadership Network as well as a popular speaker.