multi-site churches going to international locations

Seven multi-site churches are highlighted for their international satellite campus locations in Wall Street Journal's recent article, Inspired by Starbucks: Charismatic Pastors Grow New Flocks Overseas, Using Satellites, DVDs and Franchise Marketing To Spread Their Own Brand of Religion. The article highlights multi-site churches in the U.S. that are going international:

Mr. Gramling's Flamingo Road Church, which has a weekly attendance of 8,000, is based in Broward County, Fla. ...  Mr. Gramling says he tried to copy the success of Starbucks by assembling a creative team to hone "the look, the feel, the branding idea, of what Flamingo Road is." Like Starbucks, Mr. Gramling is thinking big. His goal is 50 churches world-wide, 100,000 members and a $150 million-a-year budget.

At least half a dozen U.S. mega-churches have opened international branches in recent years, and plans are in the works for many more. "If Starbucks can start four stores a day, why can't churches?" says John Bishop, the pastor at Living Hope Church. His congregation in Vancouver, Wash., which has a weekly attendance of 6,000, has 23 satellite churches, including new sites in New Zealand, India, Mexico and the Philippines. The Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, La., has eight U.S. branches, and in the past year opened churches in Mozambique and Swaziland. Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Fla., with 10,000 members, recently launched branches in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and Atiquipa, Peru.

Read the full article and check out the interactive map of seven multi-site U.S. churches that have international locations.

Do you know of other multi-site churches that have gone global? What are some of the unique challenges with going international?

[ht: Philanthropy Today]

--- DJ Chuang, Leadership Community Director @ Leadership Network

Comments

[toddh]

Christ the King fits the profile of having overseas sites, but it differs in so many ways from the other churches profiled in the story that it almost doesn't even belong in the same article.