Views from the sites : King's @ Catford

Malcolm Kyte - Site Leader on being a multi-site church

What surprised you most about going multi-site?

• Nothing too surprising - due to lots of church planting experience!
• Knew it would take a time for things to settle – gaps will eventually get filled. I am quite relaxed about the fact that details are not pinned down and confident they will be gradually resolved.
• Numbers of people filling the empty chairs on Sundays so that it didn’t feel very different overall – but then that has always been my experience in planting churches – the seats fill up again fairly soon but it takes longer to fill the serving gaps and get new people giving regularly.
• How many people suddenly came to the church almost overnight.
• How well it went!

 What challenged you most?

• The amount of hard work it took to get to launch day – Christmas to March 2011 was intense with numerous meetings to plan and prepare. The combination of leafleting / advertising campaign / outreach week / 40 days of prayer / t-shirts / new website / refurbishing two buildings / launch etc was pretty exhausting!
• Working out how to address the volunteer challenge.
• Working out my new role as Catford site leader.
• Working out how we work as a Catford site team – who needs to be in which meetings.
• Readjustment of all our roles.
• To what extent the ministry staff team leaders were responsible for just Catford or all three venues e.g. youth / children / pastoral care / safeguarding team.
• Working out how to integrate large numbers of new people into small groups – which will take several more months.
• The ‘staff stretch’ on Sundays and the need to develop more lay leaders to take on key roles – which will take several more months.
• Working out the meeting pastor role. (Still working it out!)

 What are the issues for the ‘sending’ church site?

• Losing key staff and volunteers all in one go.
• Working out who had actually gone to the other two sites.
• Integrating large numbers of new people.
• Getting to know new people.
• Not having a separate Catford site budget.
• The whole sense that at Catford it was ‘business as usual’ rather than a major shift in the way we do church. For those staying it didn’t feel very different on the surface and the danger is that you don’t readjust your thinking at all.
• Missing those who used to be there on a Sunday.
• Communicating the change to those staying – importance of FAQs booklet on multisite / everyone feeling a degree of ownership / ‘selling’ the concept to those who are staying put.