A friend pointed out to me recently what my old church in Hastings (East Sussex, UK) has recently been planning to do. They want to move the church into four locations now, following the latest trend of many other larger New Ground churches who are failing to grow numerically, in particular through the addition of new converts.

A few years ago, the church growth strategy was to buy million-dollar buildings and see them filled. When the large buildings did not fill, the strategy changed to falling over on the floor and laughing while the Holy Spirit gathered in an enormous harvest of souls. When this failed, the shift moved to renting buses to bus in bored, working class children into the large buildings on Saturday mornings. Since that also brought no growth, the strategy evolved into carving up the larger buildings into smaller units and offering multiple services at different times of the week. Since that also didn’t work, now the idea is to move to multiple venues across a wider neighbourhood, of course whilst remaining under the banner of one church.

Apparently, God has clearly spoken to the churches, especially their leaders, to instruct them to use each one of these strategies, which in turn helps enormously with fund-raising because good Christians obediently give generously to God’s alleged initiatives.

When you are a member of such a sect, you simply cannot see this fraud for what it is. You really do believe that God has a new missional strategy to grow the flailing church and you quickly forget that the former strategy had not worked. Once you have been  outside the sect for a number of years, however, you see this deception for what it is. The church is treating God as if He were were some kind of chocolate-bar maker who is frequently scratching his head to find new ways of marketing his products that are failing to sell anywhere other than on the margins of society.

Back to the “one church across multiple venues strategy.” As with the previous strategies, it is even easier to see with this one why it will fail to bring in the promised new harvest of souls before it has even begun. Why?

For some years I had already been observing this multi-site strategy in other UK cities. In every case, what happened was that the church leaders could indeed boast that their church was numerically growing, if you added all the different locations together. However, also in every case, when you talked to individuals at the new church meetings, you discover that hardly any of them are new converts, but rather Christians who had become bored or disillusioned in their local churches and had begun to go to the new meetings organized by the multi-site church since that was there was some fresh life, vision and excitement. Talk to the leaders of the churches that these Christians had left behind, and you discover a sorry tale of church numerical decline, frustration, broken relationships and bitterness.

Jesus Christ had only one missional strategy, explained in  – “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Matthew 28:19-10.

To sell moving your church to four venues across the neighborhood as mission is not only grotesquely fake but also but irreparably damaging to other local churches. It has nothing to do with taking New Ground. But it has everything to do with stealing someone else’s ground, along with their sheep.