Multi-Site Arts: Campus Tiers

I think I have figured out what I needed to learn on this particular trip. The churches that I chose to visit have a lot in common. Multi-Site is funny from an Arts perspective. It is fast, continual church reproduction that has unlimited potential in the future as to how large a church can get. I have always said that if CCC had not gone multi-site, our first campus in Naperville could be at 4,000 to 5,000 people by itself right now. If we had put all of energy, staff and money into that one site, I think it would have grown accordingly. But by going multi-site, we have spread that growth out now over 8 sites (and counting). What we have now is the potential in the next five years of being a string of mega-churches equaling much, much more that we ever could have at one site. (And most importantly, reaching thousands and thousands more people with Jesus in Chicagoland.)

But now our first two sites (Naperville and Romeoville) have both grown to mega-church size. (This depends on where they put that "marker" now. It used to be 1,000 attendees. Some now say 2,000.) Yellow Box and Romeoville now run 2,500 and 1,000 respectively. At times, as a Campus Arts Director, I have gotten frustrated because cumulatively CCC is a church of 5,000 and when I look at other one site churches of 5,000 I say, "Why aren't we executing at that level?" or “Why don’t we have that technology?” Since then, I have realized that is not a real comparison.

I think what I have been struggling with over the last year and what I went to find this week was the answer to two questions our entire church has been dealing with: “What it is the balance between reproduction and consistent quality?” and “How does the size of a particular campus play into that answer?”

After a long week, here is my answer. I think we can have both the impact of starting new campuses and the excellence of being a large church by creating “tiers” of campus influence.
What that means is that when a campus reaches a new level of size and influence, it is unlocked to execute the Big Idea in a bigger way that is representative of its size. (The Big Idea is what we call the services that our “Catalyst” Arts staff design centrally. So we all start with a specific outline to our services at every campus that contain the same elements and message.) I will unpack for you what these “tiers” look like.

Tier 1 Campus (0-999 attendees)
This represents one of campuses in its formative years. From the day a new campus births, our Big Idea provides more than any new “solo” church plant could imagine having. They are provided with videos, song selections, band charts, monthly band CDs, weekly notes to every band and tech member from one of our staff “experts”, cue sheets, Teaching PowerPoint, MediaShout scripts and much more. So all of the things that a Creative Arts Director of a new church would spend their time having to do are all done for them. That means they can spend their time developing and recruiting artists from day 1. That happens in every ministry area and that is why each campus can retain the initial attendees from launch as well as continue to grow at a much faster rate than most church plants. Our Big Idea is most perfectly designed for this stage of a campus’s development.

Tier 2 Campus (1000-1999 attendees)
At about 1000 attendees, a campus has grow to a size and Arts structure that they begin to have the resources and excellence to design and execute individualities outside of the Big Idea that is shared by all sites. It doesn’t change the Big Idea; it simply adds to it and reflects that campus’ personality. Here are some examples:
- When Yellow Box hit about 1000 we developed a full orchestra, a Big Band and drum ensemble. No other campus had (or has) anything like these large ensembles. When we choose weeks to use these groups, we take the Big Idea service flow shared by all campuses and change it a bit to better utilize the strengths of these groups, NEVER changing the overall message or impact designed into that service. We may just change a few of the worship songs to ones we have written charts for the orchestra. We may also insert an “orchestra special” into the prelude spot or in an empty offering spot. But again, only if that song compliments the pre-designed Big Idea and does not send multiple messages.

- Almost as soon as Romeoville Campus neared 1000 in attendance, it really began to demonstrate its own personality. Romeoville has a much different make-up of people in its area and they began to hi-lite that in their worship. They started a Gospel choir of nearly 50 people and began to choose about one week a month to do Gospel-style worship. Again, they take the Big Idea service flow that every other site is using and change a few of the elements to make it their own, never changing the DNA of the service.

It makes sense for us to choose this attendance marker as the beginning of the second tier, because our staffing model moves to a campus of this size having a full-time Arts person, or two part-time Arts staff. (Compared to the half-time Arts staff the model allows at a campus 0-1000 in size.) It takes more time on the part of the Arts Director to develop these kinds of next steps. I think there is another implication, in that a “tier 2” church requires a higher level of funding. Since the day we started the original orchestra, it has been expensive. Full printed charts for every instrument and the time to scan and post them. This is also true of the Gospel Choir material and any Arts element a campus would choose to develop and add to the service. Normally they receive all of their resources with no cost form the catalyst, but developing your own material costs your campus.

Tier 3 Campus (2000-4999)
Again, I think we have a natural marker at 2000 attendees, because with the multiple venues and number of services a campus has acquired by this point, it is near to the point of having 2 full-time Arts Directors (by our staffing model). At this point, I think a campus is moving toward an environment where it is approaching a “professional” level of artistry and tech. Here are some changes I would expect to see of a Tier 3 Campus.
- The bands move to a more rigorous rehearsal schedule. In the case of Yellow Box, at this point, we added an additional day of rehearsal, moving the entire weekend to a three day expectation. (As soon as we did this, we saw our largest excellence jump to date.)
- The bands would be moving to “professional” levels of technology. Most churches this size would begin to incorporate a click track to all of their songs, so that everything is live to a metronome and time never falters. This also allows for the use of layering with loops and pads. Only a campus with all “A” drummers in its rotation can put this kind of technology into place consistently.
- A campus this size can take a provided element from the Big Idea and improve upon it. A few weeks ago we had an incredible video made to go behind the song “Tears of the Saints” by Leeland. We chose (as a catalyst) not to click-track this video and let it run free-roll behind the band, thinking the random lyrics we showed would line up close enough. They didn’t at all. We walked out of the first service and said we needed to take that video and add a click-track to it for just Yellow Box. We could only have done that at Yellow Box because our Arts staffs are cross-trained in video and we have the bands that can adjust at that level.
- A campus of this tier can also take a moment created by the Big Idea and expand upon it. Every third weekend of the month is our baptism service, where we include live baptisms in our worship. But some services where there are no baptisms scheduled don’t have that element represented. So we video the baptisms from earlier service and in-between services turn them into a produced video with water backgrounds and selected edits for time. We then turn that into an MPEG file that can be re-inserted into MediaShout and shown at every service lacking baptisms. This allows everyone to see this life change.
- A tier 3 campus can also move the incidental music to the next level. Yellow Box rehearsal leaders have been selecting additional special that are complimentary to the Big Idea to perform as service starters. This requires additional preparation and rehearsal on the part of the band, but increases the intensity of the beginning of each service at this venue.
- A tier 3 campus would begin to move into the higher levels of professional technology available. We choose tech equipment at the Tier 1 level that is very “user-friendly”, as everyone running it will be a new volunteer that needs to be trained. As each campus grows, they begin to introduce newer equipment that requires higher levels of expertise. At tier 3, campuses would begin to introduce the highest levels of equipment, because over time they have developed the best trained technicians to run them. Digital sound boards, Intelligent Lighting, Advanced Video Design, Scrim Lighting, Robotic Cameras and Hi-Def would all be tier 3 technologies for us.
The implications for this tier of campus would be in budgeting. This level of equipment would be costly and volunteer demanding, but by this point in a campus’ growth, it has earned the opportunity to move forward. The other side is on staffing. Troy McMahon, Naperville Campus Pastor (turned new church planter) was always pushing for the next Arts staff hire at Naperville Campus to be an expert in tech. The growth in size allows for additional staff that can bring the expertise needed in these areas to move a campus to a professional level.

Tier 4 Campus (5000-10,000)
I am not entirely sure what this tier of campus implies. I think a lot of it is entailed in the construction of new worship spaces and additional staff specialists, but it definitely would require a budgeting we have not experienced yet.