Our initial plan for our second campus was to have live music and video teaching, but it soon became clear that since Mastic is less than 20 miles from Ronkonkoma, timing services appropriately would allow the same preacher to be in both locations every week. Teaching could be live.
We have a great worship band in Ronkonkoma. Capable, committed people who do an amazing job week in and week out. It amazes me sometimes that in a church our size we don't have any back-ups, musicians are in very short supply.
This has been a challenge in preparing to launch the next location and we have simply had to wait, pray and see what God would do.
One solution we have found is that the good folks at lifechurch.tv in Oklahoma make their band's worship sets available for download. So some weeks we will have the band on screen instead of the preacher. The trial run for this went over pretty well in Ronkonkoma a few weeks ago.
Twelve days before we are due to start, yesterday I wasn't sure what we would be doing for music on day one, but this morning I got the message I had been hoping for. Michelle Margiotta, an extremely gifted worship leader is going to be with us on Sunday 13th, so she will be fronting that first morning for us.
We have got to know Michelle over the past five or six weeks and she has committed to covering some Sundays for us, but didn't know if the 13th would be good for her.
So that has turned out very well indeed.
If it sounds like we're flying by the seat of our pants here, in some ways we are. I have read everything I could lay my hands on about multi-site over the past three years. I have talked with pastors who are doing it and those planning to do it. I have visited multi-site churches and attended multi-site conferences and workshops.
But in the end of the day, you just have to get out there and do it - and just can't wait until you have every single detail worked out before you move.
We're just walking this out and enjoying seeing God cover our glaring inadequacies.
