Greg Atkinson

This week we’re switching from interviews with campus pastors at multi-site churches to interviews with senior pastors at network or partner churches (autonomous churches that use video teaching primarily). The following is a recent interview with Jame Price of NorthBridge Church in Cranberry Township, PA. NorthBridge is a strategic partner of North Point Church (Andy Stanley) and uses videos of Andy’s teaching for the majority of the year. Here are Jame’s answers:

What is your ministry background? What did you do before becoming a Pastor?

Happy Labor Day to all of you. I’m probably out on our boat fishing right now. Enjoy your holiday. We’ll resume with the interviews tomorrow!

Over the past two weeks, we’ve been looking under the hood at the role of a campus pastor at a multi-site church. If you’re a campus pastor at a multi-site church and want to be interviewed, just let me know. If you’re a LifeChurch.tv Network church pastor or a North Point Strategic Partner pastor and want to be interviewed, let me know.

Starting next week, we’ll look at a twist on this campus pastor concept: network or partner churches of a mother multi-site church. This may be a new concept for you.

These churches that we’ll look at are autonomous churches that have chosen to use a communicator like Andy Stanley or Craig Groeschel as their primary teacher and let the senior pastor of the church function in a role similar to a campus pastor at a multi-site church. I’m, personally, fascinated with these churches and again, I’m building up to a point.

I know my parent’s generation would say, “But that’s what we pay him for. We pay the pastor to preach. If he doesn’t preach, then what are we paying him for?” I’m seeing and advocating a switch in the way we view the senior pastor role and don’t think that the senior pastor has to be the primary communicator (I’ll write more about this in the future).

Another example of this being played out is at Mars Hill in Seattle. At Mars Hill, you’ve probably heard of Mark Driscoll, but may not realize or have put together that Mark is the teaching pastor, not the lead pastor. Jamie Munson is the Lead Pastor. That’s a healthy, working model of this concept that I feel strongly about. Jamie can be the lead or senior pastor and lead the church and someone else (Mark) can be the primary communicator (both live and via video at their multi-site campuses). See HERE for more info.

Today is the day to submit any questions, comments, feedback, thoughts you’re processing, etc. about what we’ve been dealing with the past two weeks. Have you enjoyed the interviews? Are you starting to grasp what I’m building up to – that’s there’s a difference between a preacher and a pastor and the two are not synonymous. What do you think about that statement?

The following is an interview with Josh Surratt of  Seacoast Church from almost two years ago. Here are Josh’s answers:

What is your ministry background? What did you do before becoming a Campus Pastor?
I came on staff as a student ministries intern while I was still in college. After college, I managed an Outback Steakhouse for a couple of years before coming on staff full time with Seacoast. I was the assistant pastor at our first campus, became a small groups pastor for several years, and then took the role of Campus Pastor at our Long Point Road location in January of 2008.

If you were a pastor, do you still preach? If you were a pastor, do you miss preaching regularly?
I am on the teaching team at Seacoast and preach about 6-8 times per year. I also have opportunities to preach at our 1st Wed meetings as well. Have never had the weekly preaching gig.

How would you define the role of Campus Pastor?
My job is to execute the vision and mission of Seacoast at my campus. This includes leading our staff, building teams, communicating the vision constantly, and creating culture…among other things. I am accountable for small group participation, volunteer participation, weekend services, missions, children’s, students, discipleship and all of the other day to day ministry that happens at Long Point.

With your focus being on the role of a Campus Pastor and not preparing a weekly sermon, what do you get to do that you think a lot of pastors/preachers miss out on? What are the advantages of your role?
Most pastors spend 15-20 hours a week prepping for a sermon. That is 15-20 hours that I have to carry out the vision of our church. I am able to focus on the day to day stuff.

• Build small groups and develop leaders
• Focus on systems and overall health of the campus
• Staff Development and training
• Programming the weekend service around the message

What are the unique challenges for a Campus Pastor at a multi-site role?
I think that we face many of the same challenges that other pastors do. How can we engage our church to serve our community? How can we remain laser focused on reaching lost people for Christ? The only difference is that I am not the one that is preaching on the weekend. We are still tackling the issues that surface.

It can be difficult to determine what kinds of things need to be centralized vs. decentralized. Some decisions need to be run through central and some don’t so it is a constant learning process on that front. Flexibility is key.

What is your communication like with your main campus or central support system?
We are constantly communicating through email, phone, yammer, etc. We have a once a month all staff meeting where the campus pastors will interface with central support and have lunch with Greg. I also have a monthly one on one with Geoff Surratt, who oversees all of the ministries and campuses. Since our campus offices in the same place as central I interface with those guys on a daily basis.

This is from DJ Chuang of Leadership Network: Do you have a backup plan? If technology fails you are you the one to preach that day? What is your backup plan?
Again, we are the broadcast campus so we have Greg preaching live most of the time. I do sit in on the message planning team, get the message transcript and listen to a message run through prior to the weekend. So I plan on being available if my number is called:) It has happened on more than one occasion in our venues that we have on site. When it does happen the venue pastor jumps up and takes the reins.

Today I read the following on Tony Morgan’s blog and thought it was great and relevant to what we’ve been talking about with multi-site here on this blog. Check out what Tony is doing at his church:

We’re 11 days away from launching our second campus of West Ridge Church. Our desire to is start four more campuses over the next four years. With that in mind, we wanted to develop a framework to define the constants all of these campuses would share. Indirectly, that also helps clarify where each of the campuses also has freedom.

That led our leadership team to a conversation where we discussed how West Ridge would become one church in multiple locations. Borrowing from a similar resource from Community Christian Church in Chicago, we landed on these campus constants. Every campus of West Ridge Church will reflect the same:

1. Mission
2. Vision
3. Strategy
4. Shared Curriculum
5. Teaching Team
6. Leadership Structure
7. Leadership Development
8. Financial Model
9. Communications & Web Strategy
10. Central Services

Like everything we do, I’m sure this strategy will be tweaked over time particularly as we gain new insights through experience in multi-site. To download the full document, I encourage you to visit Tony’s blog HERE.

For those of you who are already engaged in a multi-site strategy, have you talked through campus constants? If so, how does your list differ?