So, Gateway Church has been Multi-site for about 17 months. Our South Campus continues to grow steadily and we’re gaining more knowledge and experience in how this multi-site thing works for Gateway. Gateway is a church that was raised up out of the culture in Austin. The weird, eclectic, liberal and funky culture that is Austin. What Gateway is doing is working! Unfortunately, we’re limited in our current facilities. Multi-site is the only way to continue to reach this city.

We’re planning to launch one or two new campuses in 2010. This is very exciting. However, neither of these will be our next campus. We’re launching a new web campus by the end of 2009.

Our web campus will be a full experience. It’s not just about getting the video out on the web or getting a crowd in a virtual room experiencing it together. It’s all those things and community. Gateway was a church of small groups before it was a Sunday morning experience. It’s still a church of small groups. Now it will also be a virtual community as well.

To do this, Gateway hired a new Internet Campus Pastor (not sure if that is his specific title). He’s a pastor with a ton of tech and web know-how. So, he’s diving in head first to completely rebuild our current church website and then launch the web campus. Exciting!

As we venture into this whole web presence, it beckons me to ask, “Who do I do my job (Next Generation) in the online world?” For those of you with online campuses, what do you do for Kids and Students? Anything? Ideas?