Rhinos and Rabbits: Multisite at Summit

Multisite for Summit is changing and I am here to tell you why and how.

But first, a bit of animal trivia...

Pregnant rhinoceroses carry their young for 15-16 months, just a bit longer than our own Florida manatee. After that very long pregnancy, a single 100-pound baby is born (ouch). That baby then stays dependent on its mother for another three years. This leaves mother rhinos able to produce one new offspring about every five years. Assuming all goes well, which it often doesn’t, in 10 years a healthy mother rhino could see two or three babies to successful maturity. Assuming one of the babies was a healthy female, we could add another baby to the multi-generational total, making it a grand total of about four new, healthy rhinos in 10 years. Such an endeavor is slow, high risk, and demands a huge amount of resources.

By contrast, a single rabbit could produce up to 1,000 young in that same timeframe. Factor in the breeding potential of these offspring and there is the possibility of 100 billion new rabbits in the same time it takes rhinos to produce four offspring.

Information like that is an end unto itself for people like my 10-year-old, who will gladly let me know that “a peregrine falcon is the fastest animal in the world when diving but is outperformed by other birds in level flight,” just for the joy of sharing the knowledge. However, for Nairobi Chapel (a faith community with a strong focus on church planting and one of our longstanding global partners in Kenya), the rhino and rabbit comparison serves to illustrate the changing face of church planting in the world today. They note that up until now, most churches try to plant rhinos and most church plants try to be rhinos (big, resource-heavy, and labor-intensive). They contend that rhinos are not the ideal normative for church planting. While there is a place for rhinos, it is the rabbit (small, agile, easily reproducible, and resource-simple) church plants that seem to be proliferating better in nearly every context they are found around the world. 

I encountered this thinking when visiting Nairobi Chapel in 2018 and found that it confirmed much of what Summit’s leadership has been thinking in regards to the future of multisite at Summit. If our model for multisite in the past was more toward the rhino side of things, then how we will build new expressions of Summit in the years ahead will definitely be more toward the rabbit side of things (but without the dizzying proliferation rates!).

Let’s look at Summit Waterford, for example. As a church, it is a big one—larger than 90 percent of churches in the U.S. Summit Waterford was born to be a rhino! We took a ton of money and a ton of people and put it all toward getting the Waterford Campus to look, feel, and function like the present-day Herndon Campus as quickly as possible. I would not undo that strategy for the Waterford Campus, nor would I wish that church family to be on any other path than the one it is on. However, as we have learned along the way and now look to our future, we are building a different vision for how new expressions of Summit will come to life. 

In new expressions of Summit, we won’t be pouring all our resources into hurrying a campus toward the rhino status of the Herndon, Lake Mary, or Waterford Campuses. We will be starting small, agile, and highly contextualized. The first year of one of these new campuses will look more like the original Summit did in our own humble beginnings in an apartment complex clubhouse. It will look more like a church plant, like a community of people gathering to worship and serve God.

New campuses will come to life in new areas around our city through the passion of committed leaders in our Summit Connect communities and as we serve the most vulnerable. They will begin in homes, in Connect groups, in service projects, or in neighborhoods. They will look a bit different than other Summit campuses but will be exactly what Summit has always been—people bound together by a common vision and a passion to see God’s kingdom built through this church in all its varied expressions. New campuses won’t be in a rush to grow up, they’ll be in a rush to do good in our city. 

We entered last year prayerfully committed to seeing three new expressions of Summit begin life by the end of the year. I have to admit, stating such a goal made me a bit nervous. Compared to Nairobi Chapel’s goal of 150 church plants in the same timeframe, our goal of three seems like nothing. However, when I consider that it’s been over eight years since we last started a new campus, our goal of three seemed like a huge deal. The prospect was as exciting as it was scary. 

I want to be clear that our intent in moving toward new expressions of Summit is rooted in the following three things.

1. It is what Jesus intends for his Church.

2. New churches are the most powerful evangelistic environment in our context.

3. Central Florida needs more than just a few new churches committed to reaching the lost in our communities. With almost 1 million of our neighbors having never been to church nor having ever heard the gospel, we have a lifetime’s worth of opportunity and 1,000 new churches’ worth of redemptive potential in our city. 

As you read this, I would ask of you the following three things.

1. Pray for our church—that we will have a heart that is desperate to reach and love the lost in our neighborhoods. 

2. Engage fully in Summit’s vision in whatever Summit campus you attend—until such a time as God may let you be a part of launching a new expression of Summit. 

3. Give yourself with reckless abandon—if God asks you to participate, be willing to be used by him in seeing his kingdom built in new ways and places in our city. 

As we approached last summer, a family from the Lake Mary Campus, who has been traveling some distance to attend church for years, was (and still is!) well on their way to forming a new expression of Summit in their community.

Once we wrap our heads around the idea of a rhino giving birth to rabbits, I imagine, it will be hard to keep up with those who are eager to see God’s kingdom come to life in new ways throughout our city.

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John Parker is lead pastor at Summit Church.