The title of this post might make you think of a few different things. Some would ask the question “What does theology matter in issues of practicality?” Hopefully that’s not what you’re asking, as any church issue is a theological issue. That is because the church is the body of Christ and theology is the study of God, who we as Christians believe is Christ.

A more common question with multi-site is “Why call it the same church when its really two churches, one which is watching a video of a pastor preach instead of having a live pastor preach there?” (This is actually only one model of multi-site, but it’s the one my church is using, so I’m not addressing the others right now.) This is the question I really want to answer, as I struggled with it when I first discovered that was my church’s vision.

The church, as I said earlier, is the body of Christ. A local church is how this is practically lived out - believers within a common geographic context meeting together as a family. In my tradition (baptistic) there is the need to hear the teaching of God’s Word and the expression of the ordinances - baptism and the Lord’s Supper or Communion. Journey does all of those things as one body, making it one church with multiple services, one of which is in a different location that the other three.

To answer the complaint that each campus should have it’s own pastor - our’s do. The campus that watches the preaching on video still has a campus pastor there for all pastoral needs. He actually is better able to minister to his flock there, since he doesn’t need to spend time during the week prepping for a sermon. We also are able to share resources between campuses, since we are still one church. Anyone who’s ever planted a church knows how important it is to have resources. Well, we do.

I just barely touched the issues, so what are some other issues out there? Or things you’d like me to dive deeper into? Or disagreements you have with this? Feedback is a wonderful thing.

This Sunday is the launch day of Journey Northwest. We are meeting in the Raleigh Grande Theater near the corner of Lynn and Glenwood. As I said in previous post, this is Journey’s second campus, our first being Journey Northeast, that meets near Triangle Towncenter Mall. I’m quite excited and will let you know how it goes. Check out our pastor’s blog here.

Today was the first day I visited my churches’ second campus. It’s our second work week in there - last week the sound was set up and this week I helped set up the video. We’re still working through some kinks in the video quality, since we’re shooting HDV (not HD) 1080i60 and I’ve never worked with that before. The image is enormous, though (about 35 feet wide). I reminisced to the days of meeting in the school - before we acquired our current warehouse. There’s a feeling of camaraderie and teamwork that setup and tear-down fosters that seems lacking when in a fixed location. I definitely felt that today. I look forward to many more weeks, months, and years of that. The current plan at Journey is to reach all of Raleigh, and that involves many campuses.