No. There are some similarities, but what we are doing will be different in a number of ways. A capital campaign is typically about a specific project, but what we want to do is take all the things we do & make sure that the vision is central to all of that. This is not just about a project, but it’s about engaging our entire body in the vision that God has for us.

Why do we need to expand? Since January 2014 we have grown by almost 50%.  Our fastest growing demographic is young families. With this growth, we’ve experienced overcrowding in all of our children’s spaces. This creates an atmosphere that is challenging for workers, parents, & the children that we’re impacting. Since we want to continue to see more lives made different, we must expand to meet current needs & anticipate future growth. If we fail to expand we will cap our growth at our current level.

The Summit has contemplated adding space since the original building was built in 2001, but the need didn’t truly arise until the fall of 2014.  From the moment Pastor Mel arrived, he’s been talking about the need for additional space. It simply takes time to develop & implement the plan.

We have looked at a number of building plans & ideas. We’ve also considered not building & just adding more services. We wanted to make sure that we didn’t stifle the growth that God is bringing, while maintaining our commitment to good financial stewardship. This led us to the conclusion that we need to add space, while aggressively starting new locations & planting churches throughout our region.

The leadership is committed to be good stewards. This includes ensuring that we’ll never have debt that will prevent us from fulfilling our vision to see every life made different. We won’t take on a project that will prevent us from giving & going on mission trips or partnering with organizations to help people.  Yes, we can afford this.  The real question is, “can we afford not to do this?”

The culture of the Summit is to encourage everyone to live generously. We have never used high pressure tactics to manipulate people & we will not start now.

This will be one of the most exciting seasons in the history of the Summit. We’re seeing record growth in every area & we are realigning our vision to make sure that we can try to keep up with all that God is doing here.

A new, larger auditorium is cost prohibitive. We’ve looked at the possibility of building & the cost for a 1300 seat auditorium was almost $8 million. We feel it would be wiser to continue to do multiple services & spend a fraction of the cost on new locations & the vision God has given us.

Often times, people want the excellent, vibrant ministry that comes with larger churches with the intimacy found at smaller churches. This normally is very difficult, but with multisite churches we can have a smaller local congregation with all the resources & excellence of a large church.

Every multisite church is unique. Most multisite campuses are fully-functioning congregations with a local pastor, including a site pastor to shepherd the local congregation. Some churches use video-cast sermons (recorded or live-streamed); others have in-person teaching on-site. Some churches maintain a similar worship atmosphere and style at all their campuses, and others allow or invite variation.

Since this movement began in the mid-1990’s over 8,000 churches have embraced this model and their number is growing daily.  Outreach Magazine declared in 2007 that the multisite model is no longer a trend, but the “new normal.” An estimated 5 million people, 15% of Protestant church-goers, attend a multisite church on any given weekend across North America and it’s spreading internationally.

Not at all. Of the 5,000+ multisite churches, only about 20% are megachurches (2,000+ weekend attendance). The multisite movement began as band-aid strategy for megachurches who found themselves out of room or limited by zoning restrictions. It quickly evolved into a growth strategy for healthy churches of all sizes. It has developed into a revitalization strategy for stable, but stuck churches and has increasingly become a rebirth strategy for struggling churches through merging with a multisite church.

They both arrive at the same outcome of a new congregation in a community but they arrive through different pathways. A church plant is usually a small delegation of people who leave a church to go develop a brand new church. Typically, church plants have their own teaching pastor, their own leaders, and their own budget with some financial help from the “sending” church or denomination; otherwise, they are a new and independent entity. Multiple sites are extended and fully-functioning congregations of a sending church, but not independent churches.

No, multisiting is for healthy churches that have a desire to reach more people, mobilize more volunteers, and multiply their community impact. It is not a growth engine to stimulate a declining church, but can be a vehicle to accommodate and accelerate a healthy, growing church.

Statistically, multisite churches:

• Reach & baptize more people than single site churches. We will be able to reach people that would never drive to Indiana for church.
• Spread healthy churches to more diverse communities. We will be able to help infuse the life of Christ into communities with no or very few healthy churches.
• Have more volunteers in service as a percentage than single site churches. We will be able to engage volunteers to serve who normally couldn’t because they drive long distances to church.
• Tend to activate people into ministry more than single site. We will be able to engage more people at high levels of leadership to facilitate excellent ministry at every location.

We are planning to launch another Summit location in the fall 2018.

Staff & leaders are praying about where to go next, but we feel like some areas that we want to target are Kittanning & Blairsville. We are open to other locations