“Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples.”
Psalms 96:3
As a multi-site church, you’ve expanded your reach to spread the gospel to more people in your community. Your many locations are like the branches of a tree––moving outward to create more beauty and give life to many more individual leaves.
But when it comes to taking your ministry online with an engaging website, it can be tricky to decide how to present your multiple church locations. Do you have one website that is shared by all four of your campuses? Or should you break out each campus individually, and give them each their own websites?
It’s a decision that will take conscious reflection and a high level of self-awareness as a church. But don’t worry, we’ve got some helpful ways to think about the process.
What Kind of Multi-Site Church Website Do You Need?
This type of church website works best when you're aware of your structure. This means that before you strategize your website, you need to understand what you "look" like to others. Do people in your community actually understand that you’re one church with many branches? Or do you have totally different names, leading people to assume you’re totally independent?
You’ll find that these different ways of thinking will most likely put your church into one of 3 different organizational categories:
A. Same Church, Many Locations:
This consistent, clearly-connected multi-site church works as one tree with multiple branches. The tone and feel of your locations don’t vary much from one to the next, and you may even have just one pastor who is live-streamed onto monitors at the other locations during services. You’re not “competing” with the other campuses, per se––just serving different areas with one mission and leadership!
This kind of church would probably be well served by a website that presents a very unified style. You could have all of your events or campuses visible and simply use filters where necessary when your congregation wants to participate in specific areas.
B. Plant and Release:
Just like it sounds, a “plant and release” church is more loosely connected. You could categorize yourself here if you use your knowledge, solid structure, and established “brand” to start churches from scratch. After guidance and as much time as they need to become recognized and established, themselves, these new churches become financially (and even culturally) separate.
A “released” church might benefit more from its own website because it’s more than just a stone’s throw away from the campus that gave it its start. You can always connect the dots between your locations with mentions of “sister churches” or “similar churches” on your website.
C. Independent:
As a blend of types A and B, autonomous churches bind themselves together with similar naming or branding, but operate with their own live pastors and leadership at each campus. By and large, these churches are still connected from place to place, but they adapt to the demographics they serve in their particular locations. You might fall into this multi-site church type if you agree on theological issues and unified Bible interpretations, but have a looser affiliation with the other campuses. This allows for each campus to create their own personality and “brand.”
This type of multi-site church website has a variety of technological options to sort the campus information. You can let site visitors always have the same location as their default after they’ve chosen it once, or you can let them choose each time. Depending on your exact structure, you have many options.
Typically, the more autonomous the organizational structure of your church is, the more defined and separate your websites will be.
