Scott and Michelle Knollenberg of Plainfield can spend their Sundays letting national chains cater to their every need–physical, material and, now, spiritual.
They can grab an Egg McMuffin at McDonald’s, a stylish lamp at Target, towels at Bed Bath & Beyond and a double tall non-fat mocha at Starbucks. But Sunday’s highlight is the church service prepared by Naperville pastor Dave Ferguson and his national staff, which will be virtually identical in music, sermon, videos and skits at 10 locations throughout the country.
The Knollenbergs are members of Community Christian Church, which has Chicago-area sites in Naperville, Shorewood, Romeoville and Montgomery. Nationally, the network started by Ferguson and his brother Jon also has churches in Denver, Detroit, New York and Bakersfield, Calif.
In the business world, they call this kind of thing franchising. In evangelicalism, it’s known as the multisite church, and it is a growing trend with a similar aim: providing consistent quality and service wherever you go.
Dave Ferguson, co-founder and lead pastor of Community Christian, said his church was one of about 10 nationally that were taking a multisite approach in 1998. Six years later, upward of 1,000 churches have embraced the movement.
Locally, Willow Creek Community Church, New Life Community Church and Harvest Bible Chapel are among the institutions whose growth has spurred them to find new ways to accommodate the crowds that flock to their weekend services. That usually means satellite campuses that are 10, 20 or 30 miles away from their main location.
Jim Hilmer, a Florida marketing consultant and a former executive for Blockbuster and the Leo Burnett ad agency, is impressed by the trend.
“I think it’s very inventive for the church world,” he said. “Most churches are pretty staid and tradition-bound.”
Alan Wolfe, Boston College sociologist and author of “The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith,” isn’t surprised that these spreading megachurches are adapting facets of American culture to their advantage.
“When it comes to using cutting-edge technology, American evangelicals have always been pretty good at that,” he said. “They were really pioneers in the use of radio, for example. That runs against the image some people have of evangelicals being backward and out of touch.”
The Knollenbergs say these contemporary, non-denominational churches are anything but backward. In fact, the Naperville church’s foyer is a coffee shop, designed with the help of sociologist and author Ray Oldenburg (“The Great Good Place”). Oldenburg’s notion that humans require a “third place” for gathering as a community beyond home and work has been credited by Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz as one of the factors contributing to the success of the coffee giant’s shops.
Community Christian has so grabbed the couple’s hearts that Scott Knollenberg turned down a promotion, his “dream job,” in 2002 because it required moving away from the church to Peoria. He quit his position a couple of weeks ago to take a 60 percent pay cut and work for Community Christian full time.
“We’re not content with having a nice congregation,” he said. “It’s all about, `How can we help other people find their way back to God?'”
Defying stereotypes
While the November elections pushed “moral values” into the public eye, the Knollenbergs don’t fit the stereotype of the judgmental fundamentalist either. They’re in their early 30s and would flip to a different TV channel if they came across a televangelist.
They speak of their faith as a “journey” instead of a conversion. Growing up, church attendance “was more of a task you had to do every week,” Michelle said. “We both learned more about the Bible and Jesus in the short amount of time we’ve been here than in all the years of growing up in church.”
Community Christian and Willow Creek are geared to spiritual seekers in their weekend services. They put a priority on delivering a highly professional presentation to audiences that have grown up with 16-screen cineplexes, big-budget musicals and elaborate concerts. So when Willow Creek hired Colorado megachurch pastor Jim Tomberlin to spearhead its expansion to satellite campuses, he knew the far-flung locations couldn’t skimp on the reputation that the South Barrington church has developed.
“When Starbucks opens up a Starbucks,” Tomberlin said, “people expect it to be Starbucks, not a mom-and-pop coffee shop. There’s a lot of meaning in the Willow brand.”
Willow Creek has opened locations in Wheaton, McHenry County and the North Shore. All began with 300 people, and all now draw more than 1,000 each weekend. (About 20,000 attend in South Barrington.) The church is currently filling positions for a facility it will open next year somewhere in or near downtown Chicago.
“We’ve done surveys in the past, and when you ask people what the ideal church size is, they’ll say about 200,” Tomberlin said. “But when you ask them what they want from a church, they describe a church of 2,000–great preaching, great youth and children’s programs, a pastor who’s available to them.
“There’s a sense that small is more intimate, and it’s true,” he added. “I believe these [satellites] allow us to do both.”
Weekly meetings
The services that the Knollenbergs attend emerge from video and phone conferences that the church staff has every Tuesday.
Each church staff has 10 days to tweak the service to fit the needs and context of its parishioners. A similar approach is used at Chicago-based New Life church. Its five locations range from Lakeview to Little Village.
“We all do the same message, but it will sound and feel a little different at each location just because of the multicultural aspect,” said New Life pastor Mark Jobe.
Occasionally, the New Life churches gather for a single service, something Jobe cherishes.
“You’ll have a young white professional who works at a tech company downtown sitting beside a first-generation immigrant Mexican who speaks very little English,” he said. “But they’re part of the same church and the same vision and connected to each other.”
The Knollenbergs attend the south campus of Community Christian, and Ferguson or another pastor usually preaches. But some Community Christian locations use a DVD of the message that was recorded during the main campus’ Saturday service the night before.
Ditto for Harvest Bible Chapel. Although Harvest has spun off a number of independent Harvest Bible Chapels in the Midwest and Canada, it recently added satellite campuses in Elgin and Niles. The Niles venue was a dying Baptist church of 70 people who voted to become a Harvest last April. Now, more than 500 people attend two services at the facility on Caldwell Avenue.
Part of Harvest’s draw is the powerful, charismatic preaching of senior pastor James MacDonald, who also has a sizable following in Christian radio circles through his “Walk in the Word” program.
But Harvest executive pastor Joe Stowell acknowledges that a sermon projected on a large video screen alone won’t guarantee growth.
“What we’ve seen is that people are willing to accept biblical teaching on video if it’s accompanied with hands-on, person-to-person ministry,” he said. “We learned pretty quick we need someone up front–a campus pastor–a guy who might visit them in the hospital if they’re sick.”
A preference for homes
The approach is not for everyone. Steve Atkerson was on staff at a Southern Baptist megachurch before becoming president of the New Testament Restoration Foundation, which advocates that churches should primarily meet in homes as was done in the early days of Christianity.
“The difference we’re suggesting is that church ought to be relationally oriented,” Atkerson said. “Megachurches are, frankly, program-oriented.”
Yet part of those programs is, in fact, home meetings, and sociologist Wolfe said they are the engine that drives the big church, though he is skeptical that video preaching will still be acceptable to congregations in 5 or 10 years.
“Without the small groups, the megachurch couldn’t exist,” Wolfe said. “People focus on these big huge chapels, but the small groups are where the action is.”
The Knollenbergs host such a group every Wednesday night in their home. The nine members are currently discussing “Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them,” a book by former Willow Creek assistant pastor John Ortberg.
“The concept of one pastor trying to take care of everybody doesn’t work very well,” Scott Knollenberg said. “We kind of take care of each other.”
The Knollenbergs said they found support and encouragement from the group as they went through years of infertility. (Pictures of 10-month-old Chloe are now everywhere around the home.)
Beyond the bells and whistles of DVD sermons and multisite churches, even Ferguson agrees that filling that basic human need–community–is critical to his organization’s success.
“If you can get people into small communities and invite God into that, good stuff always happens.”
