Chapter 13 of 15 · Ideas to Ponder
Can an Online Audience Start In Person Churches?
Chapter 13, “House Churches Connected to Online,” from Online Church Is Not the Answer by Jay Kranda
Short answer: Digital can start in person gatherings with the right strategy. The chapter tells the story of a burger joint Meetup in San Francisco, a Bay Area experiment that half failed, and how the lessons became Saddleback's Extensions. The Watch Party is the low commitment way to test it.
What is this chapter about?
December 4, 2015. Friends invited Jody and me to San Francisco, and I added a day to try a Meetup idea I'd seen another church do. No travel budget, just a cheap flight I was already on. I emailed everyone in our database with a Bay Area address, picked a random burger joint, and walked over rehearsing how I'd spin the failure to my boss. Twenty five people showed up. I didn't know what any of them looked like. We spent the next months developing groups and flying up monthly to host services in hotels, and a few Sundays had nearly a hundred people. Then it got too big for me, too expensive, and my church wasn't ready to plant there. I grossly misread my leadership. Three lessons: start with small groups before a big event, a pastor showing up sets expectations too high, and online to offline works.
So I did Meetups on trips to Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and six Meetups in five states from Boston to D.C., read every house church and disciple making movement book I could, and kept hearing the same theme: God uses ordinary people to plant churches. We had a discipled Online Community taking Zoom classes, in groups, serving, and giving. What if they brought our church to their city? That became Extensions. The pitch to staff was Starbucks: corporate stores are our campuses, and Proudly Brew locations in hotels are Extensions. Lower the bar, set expectations, and you can launch more experiences and even test a region before staffing a campus.
Extensions are groups of ten to a hundred plus watching the service together in homes, a library, workspaces, a barn, prisons, and once on a cruise. They start monthly, grow to weekly, are volunteer led with a team, and use a shorter custom service so there's more time for actual community. Dylan and Hannah turned a wedding barn in Minnesota into a bi monthly gathering of fifty after one Zoom with me. Singapore launched after I pitched fifteen people on a Zoom and never set foot in the country. And Grace came to faith in a prison in the Philippines, found us online, got trained over Skype with twenty faces behind her, and now over nine hundred women gather weekly across two services. I finally hugged her in Manila in 2019. When people say online church can't work, I think of Grace. The easy way to test all this is a Watch Party around Easter or Christmas: sign up, get a kit of invite cards and pens, host once, and see who wants to keep going.
What are the big ideas?
Never underestimate cheaply testing an idea before going all in. Small groups first, then gatherings. A pastor doesn't need to be present for God to move; a college student in Hong Kong emailed me a photo in 2010 and that group became part of our Hong Kong campus in 2013 without any strategy from me. Your church may not need microsites at all, but if your objective is reaching new places, connecting online to offline is where hybrid discipleship gets exciting.
Who is this chapter for?
Church planters, multisite leaders, and any online pastor wondering what all those faraway viewers are for.
What is the Big Idea of chapter 13?
Big Idea: Digital can help start in-person gatherings with the right strategy.
What else do people ask?
What is a Saddleback Extension?
A volunteer led gathering of Online Community members who watch the worship service together in a home or venue, with small groups attached, sitting under the church's elders. They start monthly and can grow into a permanent campus.
What is a Watch Party?
A one time Extension. Someone hosts the online service in their home around a big weekend, gets a simple kit, and afterward the church follows up about continuing. It captures who is already gathering and lets people try the idea before committing.
Should every church start microsites from its online audience?
No. It only makes sense if starting new gatherings is part of your objective. Churches called to one region should focus there. The book shares the strategy so leaders can borrow the learnings, not copy the model.
How does an Extension get started?
Usually with a few small groups in the area first, then a Meetup or Zoom pitch, training for a leadership team, a monthly launch in a home, and a slow move to more frequent gatherings as it grows.