To continue my mental workout on the idea of viewing campuses in levels; separated by age, size and leadership structure development, I have two more examples to add to the equation. One mine, one belonging to Sean Bublitz.
1) 
At a recent Arts Director's meeting, we were having a discussion about "Missions Trips". In the past, we handled all of these trips centrally from the overall Music Ministry. But over the last 3 years, our entire structure has continued to de-centralize and the control and direct access to the artists has moved to the campuses. Each of these missions trips takes a ton of leadership and time to develop and execute.
We were discussing how we might want to handle this in the future and Sean Bublitz said, "I think this should be handled by the individual campuses. It's just like Tier system you talked about on your blog. A campus grows to a certain level where you have the leaders in place and the resources to lead a group on a trip."
First of all, thank you Sean for reading my blog. Second, I put that quote in quotation marks, as if I actually remember all the words he said. But part of that "quote" is right on!
I think the point is great. A new campus like Yorkville or Shorewood needs to spend it's time recruiting artists and developing it's leadership structure. It would not be the best use of the Arts Director or the Arts leaders of that campus's time to be leading missions trips. A larger, more developed campus like Naperville or Romeoville has the kind of leadership structure in place where a group of them could take on the organization and execution of a trip like that. They could even recruit an additional leader to do JUST that.
That doesn't mean the newer campus couldn't contribute. The larger campus can open the trip up to anyone from any campus who wants to go, but that trip lives within the structure of the higher tier campus.
There is something else there that makes sense too. As a campus becomes more established and the native leadership begins to take more and more of the responsibilities from the Arts Director, that provides the Arts Director and coaches the ability to invest their time into events such as a missions trip that takes the spiritual development of the campus's artists to the next level. The other thing that I really love about missions trips is that it becomes an incubator for developing current and future leaders. Almost every person I have taken on a Music Ministry mission trip was or has become a leader since. That is something a Tier 2 or Tier 3 campus should be investing that kind of time and resources into.
2) The other example I learned this week came about because we had the pleasure of welcoming "The Tommy Bowman Band" to lead worship at our Yellow Box Campus.
Back in the 90's, (Wow! I am old.) our church was a "concert church". Before I got here, they had a CCM band or two a year in to play at their weekend services. They used it to bring new people into the church. But we were only one campus back then.
When we went multi-campus, that just didn't make sense anymore. Unless that artist could play at three sites at the same time, it didn't seem "fair" to use outside artists. Who got to have him. Who didn't get to have him. (We also wondered during that time whether those kinds of artists ever brought non-Christians to our services, which is really all we cared about.)
After seeing how well received Tommy was this weekend and how "something fresh" is always good for your worship environment, I think I feel differently.
Again, I think this is something a Tier 2 or Tier 3 Campus can take advantage of, without degrading a newer campus's worth in any way. First of all, a more well known artist often won't play to an audience below the size of a Tier 3 campus. Also, the tech equipment, facility and accommodations required by such bands would probably only come from a Tier 3 Campus.
But I love what one of our Tier 2 campuses is doing. Our Montgomery Campus is hosting several local bands in Friday night concerts throughout the year. These bands have much lesser needs for tech requirements and (God forbid) a RIDER explaining how they can only have green M&Ms and stay at a Hilton. This is an AWESOME way that a Tier 2 Campus can include the same excitement and draw of outside bands at a manageable level for their campus.
I think we are going to start having more outside bands!
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