By Drew Hyun: One of the common questions I’m asked is how we’re structured as a family of churches, so I thought it’d be helpful to clarify the differences between a networked church, a family of churches, and a multisite church in terms of structure.

Ultimately, the structure all relates to (1) authority and (2) assets.

If there’s a continuum of how a church functions related to authority and assets, it usually looks something like this:

Centralized ————————————————————————— Decentralized

Multisite                                     Family of Churches                                    Networked Church

A Multi-Site Church

As seen from the table above, multisite churches centralize authority and assets, while also sharing everything from name, branding, central services, culture, and so forth. In other words, whatever the number of campuses or churches, there is one central leadership team that is ultimately making the decisions for each local campus. Now, this central team might empower local leaders to make decisions, but it’s still clear that the central team is in charge. This centralized manner lends itself toward higher quality control and alignment across all churches and locations.

A Networked Church

A networked church is autonomous, often carrying a different name while being in a completely different context than the other churches. As a result of sheer distance, accountability and alignment are far less present, and each church makes largely autonomous decisions when it comes to how to function as a church community. Authority and assets, then, clearly lie with the local congregation, and the network exists to support. There is, however, a shared theological, cultural, and/or missional vision for operating in a larger network.

A Family of Churches

A family of churches, or our family of churches, I should say, is somewhere in the middle. Now, it’s virtually impossible to be exactly in the middle, because the key question of authority and assets always makes or breaks a church organization with multiple churches/campuses. The tension of centralized vs. decentralized will exist anywhere in the continuum, because local congregations will continue to want more autonomy, while a central leadership team will often want more control.

At Hope, we have decentralized our authority and assets so that each church functions as a local congregation with local leaders and elders who have full authority and control of their own assets. It took awhile to get to this clarity, but once we achieved it, it’s helped us clarify some big potential roadblocks.

With this said, we’re actually closer to multisite than a typical networked church because we do quite a bit of relationship and sharing together. Our pastors are constantly in communication with one another, sharing resources, encouraging one another, and helping serve the other churches and pastors when needed. We have multiple events that multiple churches voluntarily choose to partner together.

Our pastors meet once a month for six hours and attend a monthly two-hour lunch hosted by a network in which we’re a part. We go on trips together, we have a retreat together once a year, and we’re all dreaming about how to build our family together.

Each church contributes to a central fund in our family, and each church signs off on that central fund as we hope to start and empower healthy, urban churches together.

How to Choose the Best Model for You

I really don’t think one model is better than the other. There are positives and negatives in each model. Ultimately, I think it really depends on the charism (unique grace) of the leader(s). Of course, context matters a lot too, but I think the charism is harder to discern due to various factors.

It takes prayerful consideration then, for each leader and leadership team, to discern what is their church’s unique charism. Once this charism is found, I think the leader(s) of the church should lead with humility and boldness, because there is criticism on either side. Some will tell the leader(s) that they must be more controlling. Some will tell the leaders that they must be less so. Ultimately, I think it depends on the charism.

For instance, when I see a large church movement like Hillsong, there is a lot of alignment that’s leveraged for their kingdom impact in global cities. This is beautiful to see. I see other movements that are less aligned but more connected by relationship and heart. This is where we lie on the spectrum and I’m clearly a fan. Otherwise, I’d be doing something different.

What’s most helpful in the end is clarity about authority and assets, and ironically, this clarity must also account for flexibility due to the many organizational tensions that come with trying to do mission together.

By Drew Hyun: Over the past 40 years, the Christian church in America has been deeply impacted by the attractional church movement, a movement that emphasized for churches to be relatable and effective in reaching the unchurched. These attractional churches conducted services and programs in such a way that people would be “attracted” to church.

As a result, today we have many churches across many denominations and backgrounds that look a lot like Willow Creek or Saddleback, two churches that helped usher in this attractional church model that so many have implemented to more effectively reach people for Christ. Many church plant strategies heavily emphasize the attractional church model and for good reason; we’d all especially love to have people attracted to our churches rather than repelled by them!

But frankly, a church plant without as many resources has a hard time being as attractional as they’d like to be, mostly because of limited time, energy, and resources (both financial and human).

How can a church plant be more attractional with such limited resources?

Our Context in New York City

To share a little context, we live and minister in New York City, a city where there are a plethora of attractional gatherings, from music to art to fashion to film, that vie for people’s’ attention. Meanwhile, even the large churches in NYC are well known for their amazing music (like The Brooklyn Tabernacle and Hillsong NYC) or their once-in-a-generation preachers (like Tim Keller and AR Bernard).

How in the world can a church plant in NYC be as attractional as any of the above?

Three Essentials for an Attractional Church

When we start new churches in NYC, I encourage our church planters to think missional/incarnational and attractional. We should intentionally be living out both manners of outreach for our unchurched friends, family, and neighbors.

When it comes to being an attractional church, I know we can likely never be as “excellent” or maybe even as talented as some of the larger churches in our area. But I truly believe one word changes the game when it comes to starting an attractional community in the city.

It’s the word presence.

The Presence of Transcendent Worship

First, does our community have the presence of transcendent worship?

We don’t have to have the bells and whistles or the perfect stage environment or the best musicians. We simply need worshippers who aren’t faking it. If we can cultivate communities that inspire awe, wonder, and worship of God, then a space can immediately become attractive by its sense of transcendence, that people authentically and passionately believe in God and will cry out to Him in worship.

This is not to say that excellence shouldn’t be present (because it should), but it is to say that the presence of transcendent worship supersedes any cosmetic forms of worship.

Here are a couple of questions I often ask:

• Are our gatherings inspiring transcendent worship, everything from welcome to singing to preaching to liturgy?
• Are people not only hearing about God, are they experiencing God?

I truly believe that skeptics and seekers today are attracted to transcendent worship, and I think church plants should focus on cultivating this heart first, before working on some of the “forms” of attractive worship environments.

The Presence of a Loving Community

The second essential for an attractional church is the presence of a loving community. Building a loving community doesn’t necessarily take massive amounts of financial resources to build. Instead, the very opposite can be true!

The questions I ask when it comes to our environments are:

• Do people enjoy being there with each other?
• Do people linger to eat together, pray together, laugh together, and cry together?

This is why I believe the launch process is so important. It’s a time to really build a loving community.

There have been times when our church launched too soon, and I think it was because we had all the programs of our ministry in place, but we didn’t have the soul of friendship. There’s something incredibly sticky about a community that lingers in environments due to love, and this love is not easy to build, but it’s cultivated with “time, togetherness, talking, and tacos” (another phrase we often use).

The Presence of a Loving Community in a Neighborhood

There’s something awfully attractive about people who are generous with their time, energy, and resources, particularly for people beyond their huddle.

I truly believe these three elements of presence are our most powerful tools toward being attractional. We might not have the best preaching or the best music or the best family environments (although we’ll certainly work hard on these), but if we have presence, we have something far more attractive than anything this world may offer.