Are multisite churches able to multiply by reproducing themselves time after time?
Consider this compelling story of multi-generational church multiplication.
In 2012, Andrew Hopper launched Mercy Hill Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. He was a campus pastor sent out from The Summit Church, a multisite congregation 75 miles away in Raleigh. Today, Mercy Hill Church is a multiplying multisite church of 4,000 people gathering in five locations across the greater Greensboro area, with a mission “to make disciples and multiply churches.” Since 2019, Mercy Hill has also planted six churches in North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida. Five of the six church plants already have church planters in training to be sent out when fully equipped.
The backstory is even better.
Summit Church began as Homestead Heights Baptist Church in 1961 and experienced a pivotal shift in the 2000’s under the leadership of J.D. Greear. Embracing a church multiplication mindset, Summit Church transitioned into a multisite model that now includes a dozen campuses throughout the Raleigh-Durham (RDU) area and a vision to plant 1,000 churches worldwide. In 2009, Greear’s church planting vision led to the creation of the Summit Collaborative, which has already planted – directly or through partnerships – more than 600 churches nationally and globally.
Mercy Hill Church was one of those 600. Summit Church sent multisite campus pastor Andrew Hopper and 30 others to plant an autonomous church carrying the multiplication DNA of Summit Church.
Andrew advocates in a recent Unseminary interview with Rich Birch that the multisite model complements church planting rather than competes with it. He explains that there is a continuous need in a multisite church to cultivate new leaders for multiplying groups, services, and campuses, which naturally prepares individuals for the challenge of church planting:
“I love the multisite model. I think it’s probably the best leadership development tool that I’ve ever seen in churches, and obviously I benefited from that.” – “Building a Sending Church” with Andrew Hopper
At Mercy Hill, the core team members who joined its church plants came from their multisite campuses rather than the original broadcast campus. These members – who have already shown commitment to the mission by adjusting their lives to a multisite campus – were primed to take the larger step of moving to a new area to support a church plant.
What’s the Lesson?
Mercy Hill Church is a great example of a multiplying multisite church that was birthed out of another multiplying multisite church. Multiplication is not only in its mission statement – it’s in its DNA. Summit and Mercy Hill became multisite churches before they planted churches. They learned how to build leadership pipelines and send people to reproduce congregations with a multisite strategy. The multiplication DNA is embedded in every congregation and transmitted through second, third, and fourth generation reproducing churches – church multiplication on steroids!
What can we learn from this sequence of multiplication? Multisites can be just as effective as new churches in their evangelism. Follow my logic through this series of questions.
1. What is the most effective evangelistic strategy in the church today?
Missiologist Peter Wagner emphatically answered that question decades ago by saying, “Start new churches!” Repeated research affirms that new churches usually reach more people better, faster, and more affordably than existing churches.
2. Do multisite campuses achieve the same results as new churches?
Warren Bird’s 2022 survey of reproducing churches through ECFA (Evangelical Counsel for Financial Accountability, ecfa.org/surveys) revealed that multisite congregations typically grow faster than church plants. Why? Multisite congregations typically launch strong with 100 or more committed church members who already live in the community of the new campus.
This is not merely growth by moving believers from one location to another – they hit the ground running as fully functioning congregations on opening day, with operational support from the sending church that frees them to focus on evangelism and discipleship. They also benefit from a trusted brand name and a strong core of local, enthusiastic, DNA-carrying congregants. Most important of all, more people can be reached with the new location – producing growth, reproduction, and multiplication.
Andrew Hopper at Mercy Hill Church affirms that each new campus launch has included many baptisms of people newly professing their faith in Jesus Christ. As those newcomers were discipled, many reproduced themselves by inviting family and friends to hear the gospel. As of this writing, four of their five multisite campuses have experienced solid numerical growth and have been feeders to their church plants.
Some have questioned if multisite campuses are really churches because of their form or model. Yet the New Testament focuses more on function than on form. Consider the multisite model seen in the Jerusalem megachurch, which had centralized governance overseeing thousands who met in multiple locations across the city. The New Testament Greek word for church, “ecclesia,” means “assembly” or “gathering.”
Acts 2:42-47 describes the function of a local ecclesia:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. . . They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. . . praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
All the key functions of a local church – biblical teaching, fellowship, worship, prayer, serving their neighbors, and evangelism – occur in a typical multisite congregation.
3. How do multisite churches contribute to church multiplication?
Exponential’s Five Levels of Church Growth, developed by Dave Ferguson and Todd Wilson, helps explain the growth stages of more than 320,000 Protestant churches across the United States.
- Level 1 – Subtracting Churches
- Level 2 – Plateauing Churches
- Level 3 – Adding Churches
- Level 4 – Reproducing Churches
- Level 5 – Multiplying Churches
Level 3 churches typically grow by adding services, buildings, and venues. Churches that reach megachurch size (2,000+ in attendance) usually do so through Level 3 growth by addition.
To reach Level 4 – whether a church plant or a multisite campus – it must birth one or more expressions of itself, which in turn have the potential to reproduce. Multisite does that by birthing a congregation in a new location. Multisite can therefore be an expression of church reproduction for churches of all sizes that can lead to Level 5 church multiplication.
To understand how multisite churches contribute to church multiplication, it is important to distinguish multisite congregations from church plants.
Multisite congregations are essentially reproductions of an existing church, governed centrally, and typically established within a 30-minute drive from the sending church. They are usually led by campus pastors who excel as team players in implementing the vision of the sending church.
Conversely, church plants are reproductions of a church model but are self-governed, and generally launch beyond a 30-minute radius from the sending church. Church planters act as vision-casters and often seek to “do church” in a unique way that, while respecting the sending body, is organizationally distinct.
Though different, both multisite campuses and church plants can be outgrowths of reproducing churches. However, not all multisite campuses or church plants become multiplying churches (Level 5). By Exponential’s definition, multiplication occurs when the multisite campus or church plant reproduces a congregation that, in turn, multiplies to the fourth generation and beyond.
Despite these differences, the mission is the same – extending evangelism and discipleship by starting new congregations. The local community, however, is indifferent to whether a new congregation is autonomous or centrally-governed, whose vision is being cast, or how it is funded.
Multisite churches can plant churches in various ways. Bird’s research, “New Faces of Church Planting and Multisites,” found that 49 percent of multisite churches are committed to both strategies – birthing multisite congregations and planting new churches concurrently. Some multisite churches “slow-plant” a congregation with the goal of it becoming autonomous over time, while others create a “family of churches” or multi-church networks through partnerships that share resources and DNA to start new congregations. Many apprentice future church planters, offering financial support when they are ready to launch.
4. Can multisite churches play a role in helping to achieve the 16 percent mission of Exponential?
The mission of Exponential is to help the Body of Christ reach a 16% tipping point of the 320,000 Protestant churches in America to become reproducing and multiplying churches. It is an audacious but attainable goal – 50,000 churches making disciples who make disciples and churches birthing churches that birth church networks and movements. The latest research indicates that Exponential is making progress toward that goal with an increase from 4 percent (in 2019) to 7 percent (in 2024) of churches becoming reproducing and multiplying churches, based on Lifeway research for Exponential.
According to Warren Bird’s research posted at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, there are about 1,800 U.S. megachurches (Level 3), with an overall weekend average attendance of 4,092. Yet there are an estimated 8,000 multisite churches (Level 4). Not all multisite churches are megachurches, but 70% of megachurches are multisite – and that trend is increasing (see Warren Bird, The Changing Reality of America’s Largest Churches, ecfa.org/surveys).
The multisite model that emerged at the turn of the 21st century was the breakthrough strategy that helped break the pattern of Level 3 growth only by addition (adding services, buildings, venues, members, disciples, etc). As already noted, half of all multisite churches are also committed to church planting.
Summary
The multisite strategy has proven to be an effective evangelistic church reproduction model for making more and better disciples. More importantly, it has been a catalyst in rediscovering the multiplication DNA inherent in the church and has reignited new energy for church planting among local church leaders.
Whether a church grows by addition, reproduction, or multiplication, what truly matters is whether the congregation serves the local community in Jesus’ name, reaches unchurched people with gospel-centered preaching, and makes disciples of Jesus who, in turn, make more disciples. All approaches should aim for making disciples by adding, reproducing, and birthing new congregations that lead to multiplication.
In the end, the debate over whether multisiting or church planting is better misses the point. Multisite and church planting can not only go hand in hand– they complement one another. Both are valuable strategies in the playbook for church reproduction and multiplication.
Loosely paraphrasing the Apostle Paul, “What does it matter? All that matters is that Christ is being preached, whether through multisiting or church planting. That’s what makes me glad, and I will continue to be glad.” (Philippians 1:18, CEV).
If you are in a multiplying multisite church – or know of one – please let me know. I would love to share the story!
Be blessed, be fruitful, and multiply!
“And the message of God kept on spreading, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem. . .” Acts 6:7 (AMPC)
So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria was having peace, being built up. And going on in the fear of the Lord and in the encouragement of the Holy Spirit, it continued to multiply. Acts 9:31 (LSB)
