There are just four books written on doing multisite church. I have benefitted immensely from all of them and commend them to you as four excellent guides for your multisite journey. To succeed with multisite there’s a lot you need to learn, and these books are a great starting point. Here they are:

  1. The Multi-site Church Revolution, by Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon, and Warren Bird (Zondervan, 2006). This is the original book on MS and it’s still the one I recommend as people’s first read. It is very well-researched, well-written, and practical, and it answers the key questions that everyone has. (Geoff Surratt’s humor also makes his writing a fun read!)
  2. Multi-site Churches: Guidance for the Movement’s Next Generation, by Scott McConnell (B & H Publishing, 2009). This delightful book also is grounded in extensive research and covers the why and how of MS. I especially like

    the many helpful contributions, articles and quotes it includes from movers and shakers in the MS movement.

  3. A Multi-site Church Road Trip: Exploring the New Normal, like the first book, this one is also by Surratt, Ligon, and Bird (Zondervan, 2009). This book takes the reader on a “road trip” looking at a wide variety of different MS churches. It also looks at key trends in the MS movement—internet campuses and expanding the number of campuses through merging with or adopting other churches.
  4. Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work, by Jim Tomberlin and (again!) Warren Bird (Jossey-Bass, 2012). This book on adding campuses through church mergers just came out. This is a very important book because one-third of all MS campuses have been added through church mergers or adoptions. Tomberlin and Bird explain how this pivotal new trend is bringing new life and growth to struggling churches who become part of larger healthy churches, in the process embracing their values, systems, and strengths. Our church (The Vineyard Church of Central Illinois) has six campuses, one of these became part of our church through an adoption. I really, really wish that Better Together had been written before we went through this process. It’s wisdom would have saved us a lot of struggle, pain and mistakes! I highly recommend this helpful and practical guide that covers the why, the how, special considerations and practical steps of making mergers work.

In the Multisite Resources page of this blog, I share a bunch of free resources to help you on your MS journey. What resources, webpages, and articles have you found helpful?