This post is NOT to make the argument that a church with a local leader and a distant video teaching pastor is a viable church model. Let’s save that debate for a future post. I think there’s a more all-inclusive discussion.
Maybe you have quietly disapproved of the proliferation of video churches around the country. Perhaps it has not been so quiet. You have argued a distant video pastor cannot know the needs of the local body and therefore cannot effectively be their preacher. I understand your argument. I don’t agree; however, that’s a topic for another day.
Your disapproval of that kind of video church (the distant teaching pastor model) may have blinded you to the importance of developing a video prowess in your church. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Video isn’t inherently evil. Your church can greatly benefit from it. Here are several ways:
- Multi-site growth - If you’re the typical growing church, you already have or will soon max out your current site and are probably dreaming of all kinds of ways to acquire adjacent land in order to grow. You have blinders on. What if you could buy 10-20 acres 10 minutes away and use video to establish a growth path for your church with a second campus? If you’ll drop the paradigm of a single-leader, single-site, single-communicator church, then you’d be amazed at your options
- You no longer have to acquire every available piece of adjacent land. You can simply grow in other locations.
- You can consider sites that appear finite and cannot be added to. North Point built Buckhead Church which has a 3000-seat auditorium on 2.4 acres of land. There is NO ability to expand. No problem. We can build another campus which cannibalizes Buckhead and adds seats in both locations. (See this post).
- Current content needs – There are a number of ways video can be extremely useful to you today:
- Image mag (or iMag) – If your auditorium is big enough to warrant iMag screens, you absolutely should use them. Malcom Gladwell spent a chapter in his book Blink talking about how much information is conveyed in facial expressions. I am always amazed when people laugh at themselves realizing that they look at iMag screens instead of a live speaker even when they are sitting on the 5th row. They’re not stupid. They do it because their brain subconsciously tells them there is more information available on the screens. See what Seth Godin says about iMag here.
- Internet streaming – Not many people actually make all 4 parts of your 4-part series. In fact, most don’t. Yes, you can provide audio CD’s, MP3′s and a podcast. But you should also provide streaming video.
- Small groups content – If you’re growing, you have done content 1 year ago that many of your people have never heard. Our small group wants to do marriage content and next month will do a video series Andy Stanley did 2 or 3 years ago on marriage called iMarriage. Of the 6 couples in our group, only 2 were there when he did the series. We were 1 of those 2 and we missed 1 of the 3 messages.
- Future content needs – North Point built a video prowess mainly to accomplish iMag. Then, the ideas of multi-site, groups content and internet streaming emerged. Video prowess enabled us to consider alternatives we could not have otherwise considered. What are the future needs for this content? Who knows, but there are some interesting ideas out there already.
- Internet campuses – Life Church does this well. Take a look.
- Television – This medium has all but been destroyed by bad examples of televangelists through the years. But does it always have to be this way? What if it were done with excellence and relevance?
- You Tube – your streaming video can now be placed on anyone’s website. Both scary and powerful.
Embrace video and do it as soon as possible. It will be the entrance ramp to opportunities you have never considered.
another great post.
it seems like such an uphill battle at times to convince folks that “technology” is not inherently evil. thanks for the positive spin on video.
i am currently at a church of about 2,000 on a sunday morning and we are afraid that video makes us less personal! our lead pastor finally stopped the conversation by admitting at a church our size he RARELY talks/meets with someone he doesn’t have contact with already. Which led us to a conversation that really this is probably more of a hill for US to get over, not the congregation.
thanks…KEEP THEM COMING!
I’m glad you have entered the blogging world to share some of these great thoughts.
I’ve read, and commented in discussions about the distant teaching pastor model and they always seem to be interesting, to say the least. With that said, I think that would make a great topic for your next post
Brilliant!
You seem to be a numbers guy, and perhaps there is a better blog (for another day as you say
) to cover this, but I was wondering what statistics you guys have that relate to success vs. distance from main campus? From my limited observation it seems that many of the video-expansion churches that I have watched have a direct ratio where the longer the distance the more difficult and slower the growth.
Have you guys noticed the same thing?
Jeff,
I presume you are speaking of our Strategic Partner churches which are independent churches (see this map) that share our mission, strategy, core values and beliefs as opposed to our campuses (North Point Community Church, Buckhead Church and Browns Bridge Community Church).
There is a small amount of brand awareness amongst Christians for our church which does fall off with distance. Further, there is a population of ex-patriot North Point attenders which also falls off with distance. The brand awareness and ex-patriots certainly help populate a new church plant with initial volunteers; however, since we are a church focused on those who do not attend church, after 12 to 18 months it does not matter that much.
It takes leadership to recruit those new attenders. We have learned that leadership trumps proximity to Atlanta in terms of importance.
I hope this helps.
David,
Thank you for the response. To be honest I was not actually referring to North Point church plants/partners in particular. (I was actually thinking of some churches in South Carolina that have a similar model).
I agree that leadership is more important than location, but the two seem somewhat linked. Whereas a message can travel from one end of the nation to the other without any loss in quality, it is a rare system that allows vision and culture to do the same. I suppose that is the heart of my question.
How would you suggest someone build and maintain vision across wide distances; and train leaders that may not have direct access to the “home” church?
I apologize for the slight derail here from Technology in church!
Jeff,
I get your question. It’s really a challenge to insure that our church model and our leadership culture is properly transmitted to our church plants. To be sure, the closer churches benefit by being able to bring their new staff and lay leaders to Atlanta to see services and meetings at one of our campuses. The churches further away can do the same, but not as readily.
Our team is continually trying to dream of ways to increase the intimacy of the community of leaders with whom we work. Here are 2 ideas we’re currently working on:
1) Instead of audio conference calls with groups of Lead Pastors, we’re going to video chat conference calls using tokbox.com starting in January.
2) We’re working on an online community for our leaders that would include blogs, wiki pages, shared documents, shared pictures and videos, discussion forums, twitter feeds, etc. If we do this right, and we’re far from there now, it’ll be the home page for all our church plant employees.
But we do struggle with this. Any other DNA preservation ideas out there?
It seems to me that one idea would be to create more “home” environments. I am sure there could be a formula for it based on population, travel time, etc. But, the idea is that you would attempt to replicate what you have in the North Atlanta area all across the nation where each Region has its own base, and all of the bases look the same.
Honestly, I see the potential for churches like North Point to be the seminary of the future. DNA and culture development take time. But, imagine a world where future pastors and leaders dedicate 2-3 years of their life to learn and practice that kind of culture. Then they would carry it with them across the miles. I am not sure how that would work as it would take resources away from the local church initiative (of course people pay to go to seminary and may be able to support new resources). But, if leadership is the key to kingdom growth, then I feel confident that we will continually find new ways to raise and train leaders.
Interesting comment you make regarding the imag screens, ie – that a life audience will tend to watch the screen rather than look at the speaker directly – because they can actually “see” the speaker closer up by watching the screen.
Wikipedia says” some researchers put the level of nonverbal communication as high as 80 percent of all communication. More reasonably it could be at around 50-65 percent. ”
One study found that only 7 percent of communication comes from spoken words, 38 percent is from the tone of the voice, and 55 percent comes from body language.
I feel a lot more people will need to read this, really great info.