Most multi-site churches utilize video technology to enhance and duplicate their capacities to communicate. At Grace, we have chosen to use video on all our campuses. Currently, the Saturday evening service on Pelham Road is the only one that has live teaching exclusively. Some of the benefits of video teaching include:
- The ability to archive and edit teaching to use in different settings
- The opportunity to use various teachers live on different campuses
- It provides our main teachers the ability to take breaks and be away
- It provides a smaller venue where younger teachers can develop their teaching gift
- It gives us the opportunity to minister across cultural boundaries (for example, Mike and Shannan Fastzkie are able to watch weekly teaching while serving on the mission field in Eleuthera.)
- It gives us more of an online teaching presence (website, YouTube, Facebook, etc.)
FAQs
Since becoming a multisite church, we have received questions and concerns. Here are a couple questions we regularly receive:
- Does video weaken our ability to shepherd the church?
No! In fact, we believe it actually increases our ability to shepherd people because of the local focus it allows us to have. You can argue that it is not that important for a teacher to be in the room because local church leadership (pastors, staff, and volunteer leaders) is always essential to fulfilling the church's mission to teach and disciple. On average, it is difficult for one pastor to shepherd more than 150 people. When thousands of people gather in one location, it produces opportunities to hide and miss out on the biblical community we desire for all who are a part of our community. - Why do multisite instead of planting new churches?
We recognize that church planting is a biblical mandate and one that we take very seriously. In fact, we believe our future holds more campuses and more churches planted. However, we do see some strategic advantages to multisite in comparison to exclusively planting churches:
- The sharing of proven vision, mission, resources, staff, leaders, and strategy
- The success rate of multisite compared to church planting
- It is much more cost efficient
- The opportunities of growth for members, leaders, and staff
This past weekend, Matt Williams addressed the switch to video teaching as well. Take a look at this clip to hear what he had to say.