Dave Ferguson pastors Community Christian Church (Naperville, IL), an eight location multi-site church that is reaching about 5,000 people weekly. His leadership experiences have given him a great understanding of the full-scope of the multi-site church strategy. And he recently shared five things that pastors should know about the multi-site church. A summary is:

1. Multi-site is about quality, not quantity.
   It’s about taking who you are, reproducing the ethos or quality experience of your church, and bringing it to more people.
2. Any size church can consider going multi-site.
   Fundamentally, any church that has one leader who is ready to go out and start a new thing can reproduce itself.
3. The multi-site approach demonstrates good stewardship of our resources.
   Within a certain geographical proximity, multi-site allows you to reach more people for the same amount of money, or reach more people for less money. And while raising the funds to build new campuses is good, you can also grow into alternative venues such as digital church, extension sites, video-café congregations and satellite ministries. Multi-site also demonstrates good stewardship of time and creativity.
4. Multi-site is today’s most powerful method of church expansion.
   Until now, we’ve had two options to accomplish the Jesus mission. Option #1 was to grow a church at a single site larger. Option #2 was the church planting another church in another location. And multi-site gives everybody a third option now—you can both grow larger and also start other locations.
5. In the next 10 years, the multi-site church will gain more influence than the large church.
   The influence of the multi-site church also has to do with branding power. Multi-site churches are creating a brand of church that is so compelling that when unchurched people move into the neighborhood, they say, “OK, you know what? I want to go check that church out.”

To read Dave Ferguson’s extended thoughts on the five truths, check out his original post.