Somehow my opinion was overlooked for the Christianity Today question of the week. That's okay, I'll let it slide this time. The question posed to some of the leaders of American Christendom was "Should Multisite Campuses Be Church Plants Instead?" and there were a myriad of answers. Some said that they're still exploring the multi-site phenomenon, others said that multi-site is a prelude to full church plants, and others thought that multi-site was a proper funnel for leader grooming.

One striking thing missing in all of the answers however, was the international Church's perspective. I'm sure part of the reason was that all those asked were working within an American context but how do we as missionaries working in international contexts view this issue? Is the multi-site question an American phenomenon? In the two contexts that I've known personally, multi-site wasn't even an issue because the Church was so small. We were more like the first century Christians learning how to grow, mature, and multiply just to survive; there wasn't a debate on what to do with our girth because we didn't have any.

All of this makes me wonder how the first century church would have answered the question? Was there even a debate between church plants or multi-site? I don't think so... In fact I wonder if the whole debate is simply a product of the fractured, denominational American mindset causing confusion on the issue? If we weren't divided would we even wrestle with the choice to start another church or keep it close to the vest within our fold? Would we want to spread our congregation by adding another campus or would we carve some members out, raise up some leaders and start a new independent work? Are the two mutually exclusive?

In my limited experience, I've found that when the community of believers is tight-knit the goal of making mature disciples and planting as many culturally changing churches as possible are the only goals. How to accomplish that is the only question. In fact I wonder if the whole debate is simply an American issue never to be reproduced anywhere else? If that's the case is the wrong question being asked?

Tags: Missions