A church called Convergence in Irvine, California, meets in a theater in the mall. That isn't unusual; a lot of churches do that because a theater is easy to rent on Sunday morning. But the reason they do it is because years ago the pastor was at that theater see a movie, and he stood at a fountain right outside the theater and he looked around and thought, What if we brought church to where the people are already? He went to the theater and they said they'd love to have a church there on a Sunday morning. So now they do that, and the first twenty minutes of their church time is spent outside around that fountain, serving water, coffee, donuts, and snacks to the regulars and also to anyone who happens to wander by.
And the first thing they do when they head in to church is not sing. They do the message first, then end it with worship, so that if a brand-new person comes in—and it actually happens that someone is coming to see a movie, sees this group of people, is greeted, and then after a conversation they are invited to come in, they say okay, they hear a 15-minute message, and by then they have warmed up to the last thing they have, a handful of worship choruses where they can maybe sing along a little bit. They design their service backwards from the way most services are. Because that fits where they are and what their reason for being is.
Another is Hope Church in San Diego. The pastor there has been there almost exactly the same amount of time that I've been at my church—22 years. Their church never got much bigger than 100 people. But four years ago, they planted three churches, two years ago they planted a church, last year they planted a church, and this year they're planning on planting two more. Each of those churches runs somewhere between 75-100 people. The pastors network together, so you've got a pastor in one community meeting in a community center, pastoring 35 people, but that pastor doesn't have to worry about everything from rent to getting phone systems to getting a copy machine to getting an administrator, because with six or seven different campuses working together, it means they all use the same copy machine, they all use the same accountant, they all use the same administrator, and each of them then helps each other with their strengths and weaknesses.
It's multi-site, but not in way anybody else is doing it. Each campus has its own pastor, each campus has its own worship team, they all preach on the same passage each week—they even workshop the messages together—but it's preached by the local campus pastor to that congregation. A lot of the people at each of those sites don't even know they're part of a multi-site church. It allows for the administrative heft of a big church, but the personal touch of a small church.
