Washington, USA - With 13,000 worshipers, a $93 million campus and multimillion-dollar budget, can McLean Bible Church -- the Christian colossus in Tysons Corner -- possibly get any bigger?
Yes, it can.
The evangelical megachurch, one of the country's largest and fastest growing, is launching an ambitious expansion. It plans to build a "spiritual beltway" around the D.C. region by opening nine satellite locations to bring tens of thousands more into its fold. Through televised broadcasts, congregants at each location would see and hear portions of the same service at the same time.
The church is hunting for space in the District and in Prince George's, Montgomery, Loudoun and Prince William counties -- as well as farther north in Maryland and south in Virginia.
Two weeks ago, the first satellite church was launched, with a regular Monday night service aimed at young adults, in leased space at the Rosslyn Spectrum after holding three preview services there in the fall.
McLean is on the vanguard of churches in the Washington area that employ this new growth strategy. Unlike the traditional church-growth strategy, where houses of worship spun off -- or "planted" -- independent entities, an increasing number of large churches in the Washington area are growing by opening multiple locations under the same name and considering themselves one church.
If successful, senior pastor Lon Solomon told worshipers in a sermon last month, "we can keep expanding our impact for the Lord Jesus in this town until we have touched the entire town for Christ."
Often using technology to beam in worship services from a central location, multisite churches are spreading their "brand" to new congregations that are many miles, or even several states, away. Sometimes the branches add their own touches, such as live music, a local pastor and on-site religious education.
"The culture has changed now," said the Rev. Deron Cloud, founder of the Soul Factory, a Forestville church, who now preaches to his 4,000-member flock via a satellite hookup from a new Soul Factory branch in Atlanta. He has raised $1 million and plans to open sites in North Carolina and Alabama this year.
"People used to talk on the telephone and meet in person, but now the culture is satisfied with e-mails and BlackBerries," Cloud said. "We as a congregation made a decision that if we are going to embrace people, we must leave the four walls of the church."
Nationwide, one in four megachurches, those with more than 2,000 worshipers, hold services at satellite locations, up from 5 percent in 2000. The number of megachurches with multiple sites is expected to double in the next few years, according to Scott Thumma, a professor of the sociology of religion at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.
The growth is part of the reality for contemporary churches, say church leaders and church consultants.
Today's worshipers -- particularly those under 40 -- are more fickle and demanding than previous generations of churchgoers. No longer satisfied with a lone church organist, a scratchy-voiced choir and a few Bible stories for their children, they expect a dynamic preacher, polished worship services in an array of styles with slick videos and professional music along with well-planned religious education.
To provide that, say ministers and church-growth consultants, churches are spreading their brand, rather than funding smaller independent spin-offs that wouldn't be able to afford upscale worship amenities.
Multisite churches have "got a common identity. It's just the geography is different," said John Vaughan, a Missouri church-growth consultant.
Pastors who have embraced the multisite concept say it is akin to franchising their brand.
"It's kind of like going to Starbucks. You know the product you're going to get," said Mark Wilkinson, lead pastor of Journey's Crossing, a Gaithersburg-based church that holds its services in movie theaters with a rotating team of ministers. It has two such satellite services and plans 18 more.
But skeptics wonder if the multisite trend is more about bolstering egos than spreading the message. By focusing on spreading their own name and brand, rather than assisting the formation of independent churches, megachurches get even bigger and their head pastors become even more famous, said Thumma, who studies the growth of large churches.
"Clergy who consider this approach really need to reflect on their motive," Thumma said.
At McLean Bible, which has clashed with neighbors over the thick traffic that clogs area roads Sunday mornings and earned the ire of Jewish leaders with its campaigns to convert Jews to Christianity, church leaders say they are launching their multisite expansion because, less than three years after completing their Tysons Corner campus, they have run out of room.
Since opening the final phase of the sprawling building on Route 7 in 2004, average attendance has climbed 30 percent, and its 2,400-seat main auditorium is overflowing at Saturday evening and Sunday morning worship services.
"We've reached our effective capacity in the building," said Mike Hurt, McLean Bible's director of community campus development.
Paying for the expansion isn't expected to strain the budget of the church, which counts among its members many of Washington's elite, including White House officials, members of Congress, Pentagon leaders and corporate executives. Church leaders expect to have the church's mortgage paid by 2009 and plan to devote $3 million a year to outreach efforts.
Hurt said the church plans to beam Solomon's sermons into each location, and sermons by the Rev. Todd Phillips to its young-adult services. To keep the spiritual feeling that might suffer from so much televised preaching, every venue will also have an on-site pastor, offer religious education and produce the bulk of the worship service, customized for each place. Ultimately, the church expects 60,000 worshipers to attend weekend services across the Washington area.
In the weeks before the Rosslyn Spectrum launch, volunteers handed out 10,000 fliers at the Arlington Metro stop during morning and evening rush hours.
On the evening of the service, volunteers clad in orange safety vests stationed themselves at the Metro to guide worshipers to the Spectrum.
But after more than 600 people arrived for the first service in the 387-seat Spectrum, a second service was hastily added, and Starbucks coffee and bagels were provided to the worshipers forced to wait. According to an informal survey, church leaders said, about 30 percent of the attendees were new to McLean Bible.
Chandini Burt, 35, an Arlington lawyer, said it was her first time at a McLean Bible service. Going to McLean for a service "is a bit far for me," she said, but friends who attend McLean have praised it, and she wanted to try it out.
During the service last week, youth pastor Phillips pleaded with worshipers to fill out cards letting the church know whether they would consider coming at a later time in order to fit in two services.
"We don't claim to have everything figured out yet," Hurt said with an air of calm as young worshipers in puffy jackets, looped scarves and boots poured in.
Nonetheless, he said, the church is aggressively pursuing space to continue opening more sites. "If we find our next spot, we're ready to move."