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"People like the options and quality of megachurches, yet crave the intimacy of smaller churches," Groeschel told CT. "This model gives you both. You can go to an experience that may have 200 people and dive into deep biblical community with them, and at the same time, you have the option of going on any one of 25 different mission trips during the year. So you get the benefits of a smaller community with the benefits of a megachurch."

To make the multisite approach work, worship leaders schedule each experience at Life almost down to the second. Ten minutes before each experience starts, the Life Church logo and countdown clock are projected on a video screen above the stage. At about five minutes till, the worship team breaks into song. Sometimes it's a Christian song, like "Jesus Freak" by DC Talk, but just as often it's a secular song.

When the countdown hits zero, a set of worship songs lasting exactly 18 minutes begins, followed by a word from the campus pastor. Each location has a full-time pastor on staff, known as "the face with the place," whose job is to build the social networks needed to bind the church together. Then, at 19 minutes and 30 seconds, one of the tech crew throws a switch and the campus goes global, with the sermon coming in via satellite from the Oklahoma City campus.

Each sermon ends with an invitation to accept Christ—and then the global feed disconnects and the campus pastor takes over, leading the entire congregation through a salvation prayer. A video trailer about next week's sermon follows the offering. When the synchronized clock at the back of the auditorium winds down to zero, the experience is over.

One of the surprises of multisite churches is how well attendees accept video teaching. About 40 percent of multisite churches use this format, either via satellite or, more commonly, on DVD. The rest use either a campus pastor, rotating team teacher, or a teaching pastor who drives from campus to campus.

Harvest Bible Chapel of Rolling Meadows, Illinois, began using video sermons at two satellite campuses last year. Executive pastor Joe Stowell told CT the church uses DVDs rather than a satellite feed because the format is less expensive and simpler.

The adjustment to video was easy because people were already used to looking at video screens at Harvest. The main campus, a converted warehouse that seats 2,000, has video screens that compensate for poor sightlines. "It's a flat environment—there's no balcony, no slant or slope to the seating—and there are big screens up front," Stowell says.

What surprised Stowell (whose father, former Moody president Joe Stowell, joined Harvest as teaching pastor earlier this year) is how interactive video sermons can be. When pastor James MacDonald tells a joke, people laugh. When he asks them to raise their hands, they do.

"And when he is telling a serious story, you can hear a pin drop," Stowell says. "It's is the same thing as going to a movie theater. You go to a movie theater and everyone laughs at the jokes and people cry at the right time."

As it turns out, having a live pastor on campus is more important than having a live preacher. At first, Harvest leaders thought all they needed was a live worship band, an emcee, and someone to push play for the DVD. But that left the congregation feeling disconnected.

"We had to change our minds within three or four weeks," Stowell says. "Without the staff pastor assigned here, leading small groups and praying with people, it got a little thin."

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September 2005, Vol. 49, No. 9