By Staff

The use of multisite as a strategy for church growth is ever-increasing. But the reasons behind why churches are moving to a multisite model vary from church to church.

Some churches are using it as an alternative to a large capital campaign. Instead of building a bigger building, these churches are meeting more frequently in secondary venues spread out over a city or even a region. In lieu of one mig meeting with everyone, there is a “main campus” with several satellites.

Other churches use a multisite model as a way of church planting. They identify areas of the city in which a church is needed, start a campus, then launch it as an autonomous church later on.

There are other reasons as well, but whatever the end goal is for a multisite strategy, as you can see by the findings from Leadership Network below, the results have been incredibly positive.

1. An impressive 85% of surveyed multisite churches are growing—and at the strong rate of 14% per year.
2. Churches typically go multisite in the 1,000 size range, though almost half say they could have become multisite at a smaller size.
3. Campus viability starts at 75-350 people, depending on your model.
4. The typical multisite church is just 4 years into the process, and 57% plan to launch an additional campus in the next 12 months.
5. One in three (37%) multisite churches started a new campus as the result of a merger.
6. The vast majority (88%) of churches report that going multisite increased the role of lay participation.
7. The vast majority (87%) of campus pastors are found internally—trained and hired from within the church.
8. Multisite campuses grow far more than church plants, and likewise multisite campuses have a greater evangelistic impact than church plants.
9. Nearly half (48%) of multisite churches directly sponsor new churches.
10. The recommended distance between campuses is a travel time of 15-30 minutes.

These findings are from a recent study released by Leadership Network. For the full report, visit LeadNet.org.