Everything You Know About Multisite Church is Wrong! What the Largest Multisite Study Ever Done Actually Found with Warren Bird and Sean Morgan

Carey Nieuwhof (0:01)

The Art of Leadership Network.

Warren Bird (0:03)

The overwhelming choice was shoulder tapping, which says it is personal and relational. You can't get away from that.

And the more you do that, the more leaders you begin to cultivate.

Carey Nieuwhof (0:25)

Welcome to The Carey Nieuhof Leadership Podcast. I'm so glad you joined us today. Hey, before we get into today's episode, which is a huge reveal on the actual state of multi-site in America. There's not nearly as many churches as we thought, but they are growing and growing in ways. Probably a lot of us didn't really understand. A whole lot more coming up soon. But hey, did you know it's been almost a month since my book AI and the Future Church was released? I want to take a moment just to thank every single one of you.

When you reached out over social, you purchased the book, you left reviews on Amazon, you shared it with your team.

Sean Morgan (1:02)

I just want to say thank you.

Carey Nieuwhof (1:03)

What a gift the reception of that book has been. So I had done 18 months, well actually almost two years of deep research, prayer, thousands of edits. And you really made this month something to celebrate. So I just wanted to start by saying thank you very much. And what a blessing it is. If you haven't picked up the book, there's still time. But hey, there are not 8,000 multi-site churches in America. You know, there's only 1,800 and they're growing. They represent about half a percent of all churches in America, but 10% of all church attendance. It's crazy.

Warren Bird and Sean Morgan revealed the truth about multi-site in America. We go into the biggest study I think ever done and bring you really over an hour of surprises. That's what we're talking about. I was blown away when I saw this research and whether you're a multi-site church, thinking about going multi-site, or you just care about the church and the future. You're going to love this episode. Sean Morgan is the founder of the Ascent Leader, a pioneering organization dedicated to the relational leadership development of local church pastors. He hosts the Leaders in Living Rooms Podcast and serves as project executive sponsor for the Futures Coalition Multi-Site Research Initiative. Warren Bird holds a doctorate and he researches cutting edge churches and works with leaders to multiply their evangelistic and disciple making impact. He has also authored over 30 books. So let's dive right into my conversation with Warren and with Sean. I learned so much researching for this, reading the report and then in the middle of this interview too. I think you're really going to love it. Well, Warren and Sean, good to have you both in the podcast, back on the podcast. But first time together, which is always a lot of fun because the two of you, as I said in the introduction, are working on this huge project that I think is really excited. The largest and most in-depth multi-site study ever done.

So let's start here. How did you find every single multi-site church in America? Like this is, we pulled eight people and here is the data. This is actual real scientific research. So let's start with that. How did you find every multi-site?

Warren Bird (3:15)

You start with the dream, you know, how would I do this? And not I, but a team and AI and denominational leaders and Google alerts and everything else. So you get every list imaginable, the Outreach 100 list, Denominational Largest Church list and all sizes. And you look them up and then you have, actually we use two different AI groups with two different approaches to try to say, are you multi-site? It's are you multi-site by a specific definition. You know, we rejoice that English speaking church has a Spanish campus or Brazilian campus or whatever. But if it's meeting in the same place, that's not what we mean by multi-site. It's one or more geographic locations, all under the same budget and leadership. So there are a lot of family of churches too, that use the same name or whatever, but they are each and actually an independent church. So wonderful. Praise God. Thank you for that. But that's not what we're counting either. Internet campuses, lots of people have those, and that's wonderful too. But not counting those, just the geographic locations and months of digging, not just to find them, but then to sleuth and say we need contact information for them, both the campus pastor and the executive team. Because a lot of questions we ask, the same question of both groups, and they're not on the same page always.