Challenges In Harbor’s Multisite Model
This is Part IV of my examination of the Multisite 09 Conference.
Introduction
Part I: What Makes A Church A Church?
Part II Team Ministry
Part III Opportunities In The Multisite Model
A great lesson that I was taught by my Advanced Speech Prof. was that you should always aim to double the positive feedback before you give any negative feedback.
I was really impressed with Harbor’s Multisite model, and I have written 3 post highlighting many of the benefits of Harbor’s model of planting. In this post I am going to examine some of the challenges that seem to, or might, accompany Harobr’s Multisite/Multi-congregational model.
1. Expert Needed
While Harbor, emphasized that their model would allow a second church to be planted at around 30% of the budget of the current church, they also stressed the importance of of have a movement leader who is an experienced planter and pastor, to give oversight and advice. There are a limited number of seasoned planter/pastors who are ready to shepherd other church planters. This requirement would seem to limit the ability to use this model.
2. Lines of Communication and Oversight
At some point I would imagine that the org chart of Harbor would begin to get a bit complicated. For example, Harbor currently has ten locations. Each location might have one or two men on their preaching rotation which means that there are at least 20 people in the preaching loop. At their current size, things are working, but they have stated that they would like to see 100 locations, in the next 20 years. With that many location, it would seem necessary for them to hire multiple pastors to oversee and connect with the locations. This would mean dozens of new salary expenses, and new levels of communication between these overseers or advisors. It would also slow down the time it takes to respond to a major issue.
3. Trust Issues
While Harbor emphasized that they make sure guys are on the same page when they enter leadership in their church, I can see a danger of people having a lack of trust for other site leaders. Especially when you consider that at some size there might be elders who only spend time with each other half a dozen times a year.
4. Defacto Presbytery
Doug Swagerty explained that each month all the leaders from Harbor gather to share stories about what is going on and to have on going training. He has said that they have begun to phase out the sharing in their meetings because there are just too many stories. It seems that as Harbor gets larger they will find more and more meeting time being given to organizational structure and less time being given to developing community. Of course they could combat this by holding smaller gatherings more frequently, but at some point it seems like Harbor’s large gatherings will look more and more like presbytery.
5. Local Shepherding Hurdles
At this point Harbor does not have local elders designated for each worship location. This means that alot of the shepherding issues put of the plate of the pastor. Just thinking practically. At City Reformed we have two full time pastors, and a very active group of elders. Loosing those elders would mean that anything that couldn’t be handle in the community groups would end up going to one or two people. The Easiest solution to this problem is to. Dick Kaufmann, told me that this is what they are talking about doing is having elders at each location with the main duty of counseling and shepherding.