Is the Multi-Service Model Really Practical?

One thing that comes to mind when reading D'Acquisto's column is that an awful lot of our culture today really derives from the steam engine mindset. Now since the main steam engines these days are in submarines and power plants, we don't see it directly as much, but the mindset is still there.

More or less, when a factory was built from about 1800 to 1950, it was generally built around a steam engine which provided heat, electricity, and power (often via power take-offs) to the rest of the factory. Since boilers don't handle thermal cycling well, you did what you could to keep that steam engine full time. It's why we have the graveyard shift, for example.

Now even though most facilities today aren't built around a steam engine, the mindset persists, and the multi-service church is testament to that mindset. The goal is to increase the capital utilization of the building and the pastor.

The trouble with that is that if our job is to "make disciples", from early believers to new pastors, (Matthew 28, Philippians 4:9) instructing large numbers of people at a shallow level doesn't get one there, and if one is to be a "shepherd", knowing one's sheep, there is, at least long term, a limit to the number of sheep in the flock.

This is really an extension of the same thing a lot of big universities face; they think they can maximize the use of their professors by teaching freshman and sophomore classes in lecture halls with hundreds of students, but it turns out that's not a good way of instructing students. I was actually a math TA as an undergrad, and saw a lot of young people go to the local community college to get away from lecture/recitation format. If we value spiritual maturity, we might do well to do the same thing and find the pastors who want to really make disciples.