Hudson Campus Q & A

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In spite of the absolutely beautiful weather on Sunday, 50 plus from the Hudson campus came out to Faith Community Church in Hudson to hear from me about some of the changes coming to the Hudson campus. June 15 is the big date for our move to the new Hudson 12 cinema. It's also our target date to bring in an "understudy" for Pastor Bob and to add a part-time Worship Leader to our staff for the Hudson campus.

Hudson's attendance, after seven months, is averaging about the same Five Oaks averaged after seven years into it's life! Normally summer is a lower attendance period, but the move, the advertising we'll do for the move and the dedication of the congregation there may buck that trend.

After I talked about some of the changes, there were lots of good questions like...

  • "Is the Hudson campus here to stay?" (I certainly hope so and we're planning on it and investing in it.)
  • "Are we on track for 10 campuses in 10 years?" (We're still pursuing that dream, and the reality of what it will take is causing ripples in my priorities for the future. One of the major keys is leadership development. We've learned a lot and we're still learning, but I'm hoping we can unveil a comprehensive plan before too long.)
  • "Why don't we plan an event in Hudson to invite the Woodbury campus to?" (I forgot to mention that there's talk of Hudson sponsoring a men's golfing event. I really hope that happens. But the invitation usually goes the other direction because of sheer size and the opportunities afforded by the building in Woodbury.)
  • "Can you come and preach here more often in person?" (Actually, one of our learnings is that we need to elevate the role of Campus Pastor more than we have. So coming there more often runs counter to that. And we've got some plans for increasing in-person preaching that will become more evident in the summer. I would like to be there more often when I'm not preaching, because I feel like I'm missing a lot of the fun. But with Dana and Tim in the Woodbury Campus pastor role in addition to all their other duties, asking them to teach more seems a bit too much.)

This meeting also gave me a good chance to talk about our ministry philosophy, namely, our focused approached to ministry through a small groups strategy. We just don't offer a lot of programs because we don't want them competing with small groups or stretching us so thin that we don't do anything well. We do, however, have some programs and events to supplement small groups, so I fully expect our campuses to develop campus-specific programs and events. But we're pretty picky about programs and remain committed to streamlined programing in all campuses.

I'm very excited about the changes in Hudson for the summer. Pray for us to be able to leverage our move to bring more lives to Christ.