Interview with Todd Wilson

By Brad Dupray

Todd Wilson serves as director of Exponential Network and is on the leadership teams of several national church planting ministries. Todd received his BS in nuclear engineering from North Carolina State University and spent 15 years working in the Division of Naval Reactors on nuclear submarine design, operation, maintenance, and overhaul. In 2000, he entered full-time vocational ministry as executive minister with New Life Christian Church (Centreville, Virginia). As a church-planting church, New Life releases Todd as a missionary to the kingdom with a primary focus on church planting and other entrepreneurial initiatives. Todd and his wife, Anna, live in Manassas, Virginia, with their two sons, Ben and Chris.

Follow Todd online at Twitter:  toddwilson and churchplanting. His blog is at envisaging.org

Is multisite a fad?

No. Thirty years ago we had less than 100 megachurches in America. Today there are more than 8,000. Ten years ago there were less than 100 multisite churches. Today there are more than 2,000, with an increasing number of new ones emerging. That rate of year-over-year growth for an entire decade would be hard to argue as fad.

So is multisite the future of the church?

It will certainly play an important role in the future. Thirty years ago, with the emergence of the megachurch movement, you had a first phase of “How do we grow bigger within our walls?” Then along comes multisite and it”s a question of “How do we grow bigger beyond our walls?” At best this yields linear growth. Exponential growth requires further transition to “How do we establish cultures that reproduce by moving beyond “˜catching” to “˜releasing and sending”?” I”m optimistic multisite plays a vital role in shaping the future questions.

It sounds like the future isn”t necessarily about growing bigger.

For us to stop the decline in disciple-making in the U.S., the conversation must be about reproducing””independent of growing bigger and doing new sites. We are seeing encouraging signs that the last decade of rapid growth in multisite and the last 30 years of growing bigger is actually spawning a new focus on reproducing. With thousands of founding megachurch pastors hitting midcareer and experiencing a form of “halftime,” many are saying, “I founded my church. We”ve grown it large. We”ve done externally focused. We”re doing multisite and church planting, but there must be something more. There are not enough years left in my life to just grow this bigger.”

But doesn”t “bigger” mean reaching more people?

Several years ago a large church in our area announced plans to start one new site each year for several years. Big news. Why? “Big” gets people”s attention. But to what end? A large church starts one site per year for 10 years. So what? If their capacity is to start hundreds of churches in that time period and release thousands of their members to start new faith communities, how are 10 sites in 10 years good stewardship? What gets exciting is if those 10 sites in 10 years are somehow part of a much bigger vision to be a reproducing, sending church involved in starting thousands of faith communities.

It sounds like our traditional definition of bigger doesn”t speak to the real goal “”to reach the masses.

Even optimistic projections of future growth in multisite are not enough to stem the rate of decline of Christianity in the U.S. Unless multisite strategies ultimately enable and result in multisite churches engaging in more aggressive reproduction, our future outlook is grim. We are winning battles but losing the war.

Are you pessimistic about the future?

I believe the future will look different than our current forms of multisite, but the current models are vital to getting there. I”m actually optimistic that history will show multisite played a key role in helping churches transition from cultures of “attract and catch” to “release and send.” Multisite does appear to be opening the door and creating the experiences and conversations for more reproducing cultures to emerge.

Rather than a fad, it appears to be a springboard.

Just as the growth of the megachurch over the past 30 years was prerequisite to the multisite movement of the past decade, let”s pray that multisite is transitional to producing yet another movement that will move beyond linear growth to exponential growth. I get excited about the prospects of more explosive expansion than we are seeing.

Does a church take a risk when it starts a new site?

The momentum of any object or organization is its mass (or size) multiplied by its velocity. There is a principle in physics called the conservation of momentum. It states that if an object”s mass (size) is increased in a collision (like adding a new site), its velocity will naturally decrease to compensate (the overall speed of the church and its leaders may see a resulting slowdown). Churches starting new sites often experience a slowdown as the leadership tries to catch up with what just happened in the “collision.”

Give me an example of what that means.

If a church of 500 starts a site that has 250 new people, that”s a 50 percent increase in mass (size) from one week to the next. The principle of the conservation of momentum suggests that church could see a significant short-term slowdown as it “recovers” from the collision. A 50 percent increase in mass would result in a 50 percent slowdown, per this principle.

I suppose smaller churches could potentially take a larger momentum “hit.”

Yes. A church of 500 birthing a new site of 250 represents a 50 percent increase in size, while a church of 10,000 birthing a site of 500 only represents a 5 percent increase. Most churches of this size can easily handle this increase.

What does that mean in real-world terms?

More than likely the impact to your leadership is going to create short-term limits to your speed, because your leadership is being stretched significantly. Think about it. If from one week to the next your church grew 50 percent, your leadership would be stretched. It”s good, but churches often underestimate the impact of this effect. It”s great that you”re growing, but that can stretch your leadership thin because you”re growing so fast.

It makes sense that bigger churches can more easily sustain the impact that a new site brings.

Larger churches with strong leadership systems in place have a much easier time starting new campuses. Smaller churches without real strong systems in place can actually get bogged down.

That”s pretty heavy stuff for a Bible college graduate like me!

There”s a second principal. A copy on a photocopy machine is never of greater quality than the original.

That”s easier to understand. How does it apply?

If you take anything less than a very healthy process, whether it”s your children”s process, newcomer assimilation process, worship process””any process you have””when you copy it, if it”s unhealthy, it may become even more unhealthy than the original. On the one hand, your church might be growing rapidly beyond the current capacity of your leadership and systems. On top of that, you may be copying less than vibrant and healthy processes and systems. The result can be sideways energy that further slows you down.

So the grass isn”t necessarily greener when adding another site?

If you”re a church that can add a worship service in your sleep, you”re going to add sites fairly easily. If you”re a church that”s already stretched in your leadership capacity and systems, you”re going to have a more difficult time multiplying sites. I”m a proponent of adding sites as long as motives are right and leaders understand in advance it may be more difficult than advertised. It is a great opportunity to take a fresh look at your leadership systems and operational processes. Leverage the move to multisite to improve the health and infrastructure of the church.

Any other cautions?

One-location churches fare well with traditional, functionally “siloed” organizational structures. It”s the structure handed down for generations and assumed in Bible college. Unfortunately this structure only works for the largest churches that can afford to fund an entire staff for the new site. As long as staff will be shared (which is one of the key selling points for multisite efficiency), the structure will be some form of what the private sector calls “matrix organization.” Most pastors are not equipped for the complexities and challenges of this structure. Adding to the complexity is the need to continually morph the structure as sites are added. The net effect can be significant “sideways energy.”

It seems like each generation comes up with new methodology. Is that happening again here?

We”ve certainly seen a boomer progression over the past 30 years””from “man” to “mega” to “multi.” Through this progression we”ve become proficient at “attracting and catching.”Â  What does the emerging generation bring next? It”s exciting to ponder. The young emerging generation has a different scorecard than we boomers. To a large degree the scorecard is not measured by size of auditoriums but by relationships, sending capacity, and impact. Where current prevailing church models are strong at “catching” disciples, I”m optimistic the next generation will increasingly value the “releasing and sending” as much as the catching.

What is the emerging model for becoming more effective at reproducing and sending disciples?

Increasingly, the emerging leaders are going to see the prevailing church as a hub or a launching pad for incarnational faith communities. The question is evolving from “Where do we start the next site?” to “How do we release 250 of our members to start more incarnational faith communities?”

What is an “incarnational faith community?”

It”s a gathering of believers, not unlike the first century church, who are not bound by the physical walls of the church, are discipleship focused, lack comprehensive programming, and value simplicity and relationships.

How do you see the local church leading the way?

Prevailing church leaders (megachurch, attractional, multisite, etc.) will increasingly value and see their primary role as equipping, coaching, and sending leaders and less about attracting worshipers and building a crowd. Multisite is an important transition in this shift in values and mind-set. The shift will help move us from a culture of “attraction and catching” to “releasing and sending”; an exciting transition setting the stage for more explosive expansion through reproducing.

To what end does a church start campuses when it starts looking beyond multisite?

Is our goal to start 10, 50, or 1,000 campuses? With every site that”s added, some sideways energy occurs. The idea of having more than 100 campuses is hard to conceive””[it involves] incredible complexity, and to what end? I”m optimistic the new scorecard of our emerging leaders will result in less complex and more reproducing churches that are hybrids of our current forms of multisite.

So we”ve come full circle, back to an emphasis on starting new churches.

Here”s an example: Troy McMahon and a few others are latching on to this “genius of the and“””of taking the best of multisite and leveraging it in a release kind of model.  Troy is experimenting with what we”re calling a “two-by-two” approach. It”s the idea that God designed reproduction in twos and took the animals on the ark two-by-two. In this model you birth a new faith community using the best of multisite approaches and you eventually release the site to be an autonomous faith community.

By “autonomous faith community,” do you mean a local church?

Yes. After release, the mother and the daughter churches continue to repeat the reproduction cycle again””over and over. This is not unlike the normal human reproduction cycle where a mother and father birth a child, the child grows to maturity, leaves home on his own, and the cycle repeats itself. The reproduction potential of this two-by-two approach is far greater than current approaches.

Sounds like it would be somewhat akin to the branching of a family tree.

If you were to take the top megachurches and ask, on average, how many sites do they launch in a year, the top ones do one to two per year. In the two-by-two model, every 1 goes to 2, goes to 4, goes to 8, goes to 16, and with each generation you”re getting an exponential multiplication rather than a linear multiplication.

And how is that more advantageous than simply planting new churches?

When you do a traditional church plant you send dollars and people to start the new thing. It takes more energy to get a rocket off a launch pad than it does to keep a rocket moving in space. One of the advantages of starting a site is leveraging the momentum you already have. If we were to do a traditional church plant where you send dollars and people on their own, that”s like launching a rocket off the launchpad. If you can birth a church using this two-by-two model, you”re literally starting a new site with the momentum you have. Then when the site grows to full maturity (processes, leadership, financial), you send that site off as an autonomous church that already has momentum. Then both the sending church and the site that”s being sent start that process over again. They both then start sites that, when they become mature, just keep repeating that process over and over again.

At what point should a church consider another campus?

I”m a proponent of considering new campuses from day one of new churches, but you have to realize it may be more difficult than you anticipated. Go into it with your eyes wide open. Luke 14:28 provides wise counsel””consider the costs before committing. The smaller you are, and/or the less mature and healthy your systems are, the more you can spend sideways energy working on the rapid growth issues that ensue. However, with every great risk there is potential for great reward.

So multisite is playing a vital role in taking the church to its next expression.

Multisite approach is an important element that sets the prevailing church up to implement and experience more rapidly multiplying approaches that don”t currently exist. Couple that with the new scorecard of the young emerging leaders and you have a perfect storm for future transformation. I”m convinced we”ll look back a decade from now and see that the multisite approach played a vital and critical role in the models that will emerge in the coming decade. It”s possible one of the most important contributions multisite will make is in the mind-set of our leaders to become more reproducing at all levels within the church.

Brad Dupray is senior vice president, ministry development, with Church Development Fund, Irvine, California.