One Church: Preaching, Prayer & Presence—A Fresh Take on The Multisite Model

Welcome back to another special All About Multisite episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re joined today by Bo Chancey (Senior Pastor) and Jeremy Peterson (Executive Pastor) from One Church, a growing multisite church based in New Hampshire. With four physical “outposts” and a thriving online presence, One Church is reaching communities across rural and suburban New England with a mission rooted in prayer, simplicity, and incarnational ministry.

Is your church considering multisite but unsure how to maintain culture and avoid personality-driven models? Wondering how to develop more leaders or foster unity across locations and teams? Tune in as Bo and Jeremy offer practical insights into developing communicators, creating alignment, and launching new outposts with prayer and purpose.

• Pray for One. // At the heart of One Church’s model is a simple prayer: “God, please give me one person to share your love with.” This guiding prayer fuels the church’s evangelistic culture and aligns every ministry around loving neighbors and multiplying disciples. It’s not about growing attendance—it’s about stewarding people to become everyday missionaries where they live, work, and play.
• From video to incarnational teaching. // One Church made a deliberate shift away from video teaching at their outposts. Instead of relying on one communicator, Bo preaches a recorded message for their online service while local communicators deliver live messages at each outpost. This move has allowed for authentic, in-person ministry and increased leadership development. A weekly sermon planning table with 12 communicators fosters collaboration, feedback, and consistency across outposts.
• A multisite model without a mothership. // One Church rejects the “satellite campus” model of multisite as a way of avoiding the cult of personality issues that can develop within growing churches. Outposts are sized and shaped according to the communities they serve and no one location serves as the dominant hub. One Church feels increasingly called to planting outposts in rural communities of New Hampshire which have fewer churches reaching out to them.
• Alignment through clarity and collaboration. // Jeremy shares how alignment is driven by close collaboration between central and outpost teams. A detailed church-wide “playbook” defines ministry expectations, culture values (like creativity, love, and fun), and the balance of support versus autonomy. Worship, kids ministry, and preaching content are centralized, but each outpost can tailor community engagement based on local needs.
• Prayer as the foundation. // Bo and Jeremy both emphasize the power of prayer in creating culture and solving tensions between teams. Bo prays daily for every staff member, and One Church encourages its staff to pray for one another regularly. This practice has transformed team relationships and sparked a culture of mutual trust and grace. Waiting on the Lord in prayer has also allowed One Church to move farther faster and with fewer setbacks as they expand their reach.
• Raising up leaders through residency. // The church’s residency program has become a critical part of its expansion strategy. Residents receive hands-on experience in preaching, worship, production, and more. Oftentimes residents go on to staff roles or other ministry leadership positions. Bo and Jeremy believe developing leaders before launching outposts is essential for sustainable growth.

To learn more about One Church, visit them at church.one and check out their Residency Program to develop hands-on ministry experience.

EXTRA CREDIT // What if your greatest leadership breakthrough started with prayer?

Are you leading your staff with prayer… or just with plans? The Prayer-Powered Leadership Rhythm Guide is a hands-on resource designed to help you build the daily habit of praying for your entire team. Inspired by One Church’s leadership rhythms, this guide includes:

• Reflection prompts to align your leadership with what God is saying
• A daily and weekly prayer rhythm
• A staff prayer tracker with space for notes and next steps

This resource is exclusively available through unSeminary Extra Credit, our affordable membership that fuels the podcast and provides you with valuable tools like this and many others!

Click here to join unSeminary Extra Credit and get instant access to this resource and more!

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe

Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?

Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.

Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.

Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We’re in the middle of a great month of episodes all about multisite where we’re talking with some prevailing churches, trying to look under the hood and learn a little bit more about this incredibly important and movement that continues to impact churches across the country.

Rich Birch — I’m excited to talk with two leaders who I know are going to open up some insights that are going super helpful for you. From New Hampshire, One Church – this is a multisite church in the new Northeast ah with four outpost locations in in New Hampshire plus online. Bo Chancey is the senior pastor and Jeremy Peterson is the executive pastor. Welcome to the show. So glad you guys are here.

Bo Chancey — Thanks. Thanks for having us.

Jeremy Peterson — Thanks for having us, Rich.

Bo Chancey — Yeah, appreciate it

Rich Birch — It’s going to be, it’s excited that you guys are taking time to be with us. Bo, why don’t we start with you? Kind of tell us a little bit about One Church. If people were to come this weekend, what would they experience? Kind of set the picture for us. Help us know a little bit more about it. Fill in the painting for us.

Bo Chancey — Well, we are by every definition a church. So we love the Lord our God and love our neighbor. Those are the the two key components. And then we want to make disciples.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Bo Chancey — We want to reach as many people as fast as we can, ah the most people in the shortest time. And so that’s that’s who we are. The way that we um do that as far as a community, a local church is that we pray for one, which is very simple. It goes like this, God, please give me one person to share your love with. And so that’s what we invite everyone who is connected to One Church to participate in daily.

Bo Chancey — And that’s our primary strategy is to steward the church um and the church’s people. So lot of times when we think about church leadership and programming and stewardship, we think, um you know, programs, buildings, budgets, but really the the key thing is people. And so that’s what we’re about. We want to help people connect to God and then to people and then to the mission of Jesus.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Love love that. Jeremy, why don’t you fill in the picture there? Tell talk to us about the the kind of four different outposts. I love that you call them outposts. I love that language. Kind of give us a sense of the the communities that you serve. Tell us a little bit about that.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, so our four outposts are, um I would say two of them are located in probably two of the larger communities in New Hampshire. So all of New Hampshire, Manchester itself is about 100,000 people. Concord, where one of our outposts is, is about 50,000 people. Bedford is another community. It’s about 20,000. And then the newest one, which is in the Lakes region, it’s a community of about 7,000 people.

Jeremy Peterson — And what what we realized is we’re feeling more and more called to go to to some of these rural communities. There’s more and more churches that are dying in these rural communities. There aren’t a lot of church plants going um to these rural communities. And so really have a heartbeat um to go to some of these areas. And and we feel like that’s really what God’s called us to.

Jeremy Peterson — And and it’s really kind of shifted over the last several years where we feel a call to to to make ah a big shift from moving from from video. And so when I first came here, multisite was about to capture the message on video. We would broadcast it at the other um locations. And and we’ve made ah a shift where we really felt called to develop communicators and a lot of a lot of those time has been spent on that developing communicators. And Bo’s a phenomenal communicator, um but really developing some of those communicators that are communicating in person at the outpost on Sunday mornings. And so really pouring more and more time and into that.

Jeremy Peterson — We really feel like it allows for incarnational ministry. So whoever’s, whoever’s sharing, whoever’s preaching that week gets a chance to not only interact with people, um but actually like give somebody a hug, ah lay a hand on the shoulder as their praying over them. And we feel it felt like that’s really, really powerful, especially in this region.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. One of the kind of mis- common misnomers about multisite is that they’re all video. Like that’s like, it’s like, that’s the way to do it. And you guys are obviously not going in that direction, heading in a slightly different direction. Bo, unpack that a little bit from your perspective as a communicator, finding communicators, developing them, that that is a high task. You know, that’s a high calling. Why, why invest there? Why, why do you feel like that’s such an important piece of the puzzle at, at One Church?

Bo Chancey — A couple of reasons um that start with really, I think, the problems some of the problems of multisite. So there was the problem of kind of the megachurch world and the cult of personality stuff that was really troubling for me and and I know many others. That was that was something I was really struggling with.

Bo Chancey — And then the multisite model where no matter what it felt like you did, it was a satellite, no matter what. You had a mothership or a broadcast venue or whatever language you might want to use for it. There was one central location that everything else kind of orbited around. And I felt like we were losing kind of the best of what the local church in communities might have to offer.

Bo Chancey — And so a solution for that um would be to develop other communicators. And then I don’t preach at an outpost on Sunday mornings. That’s another key component. I fill in about once a month somewhere, different places, but I’m there to evaluate the communicators, the preachers, to give them notes. I’m coaching them. I’m there for support. But I preach 10 days ahead of them on a Thursday night for our live online recording. And so we look at online not as an outpost. Online is a separate thing.

Bo Chancey — And so our outposts are where incarnational ministry happen in community. Our online service is a primarily a distribution model. And so it’s methodology for distributing content, information, good news, music, sermons, all the things that we’re doing there and communicating back and forth.

Bo Chancey — So in order to do that, I shifted my planning ahead four weeks is a key thing to do. Turns out the same Holy Spirit that was working the week of, he’s working four weeks out.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Bo Chancey — Pretty cool how God does that.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Bo Chancey — And then inviting others in. And so it starts with them evaluating what I’m doing. And so ah we begin each each week we meet for about two hours um on sermon prep, but they have they have four weeks out to the each of the preachers do to look at.

Bo Chancey — We usually have about 12 people around the table every single week who are evaluating each other. Not all of them preach that week, obviously, so they’re evaluating each other, providing notes, taking a look at what I’ve just preached, because they’ll be preaching it the next week, and then working on the thing that I’m gonna preach that week. So and then they have a fourth sermon, so they can be reviewing that ahead of time. And then we’re also scheduled out for the year.

Bo Chancey — So the planning component and coaching pieces became integral, but because of that, now we we don’t have personality-based ministries happening. We are able to utilize personality and allow people to be who they are and use their gifts. And then we also don’t have any kind of satellite where things are revolving around.

Bo Chancey — I mean, we have two outposts that are seven miles apart. One of them was the original one. One of them’s newer and has a much bigger auditorium, which is where we record. But the other one runs a couple hundred people bigger than that one. So it’s like we have ah a thousand people at one, 800 people at another, 350 at another and 100 at another. So where it allows for a variety of size that is really more tailored to the size community and place that they’re in.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So, ah Jeremy, when you think about alignment, so I love the, you know, the the heart to, you know, to feel, you know, we want to feel local, we want to feel incarnational. But then by definition, if you’re one church in multiple locations across the region, they’re you’re obviously at some level trying to to drive some sort of alignment.

Rich Birch — How do you guys think about alignment? And what are you trying to do or to to to manage consistency? What are the things that you are trying to manage consistency across all those? How have you approached that?

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I mean, we definitely want to have consistency across all of our outposts. And so I think a big part of that is Bo and I work really closely with our central team. So our central team has a pulse on what’s happening. And so the central team rotates every single week. We’re not locked into a specific outpost.

Jeremy Peterson — And so I think that that’s a huge part of it is is if I show up at the Lakes, is it going to feel like a service at the Bedford outpost? Is there going to be a similar feel when you show up as far as the way that you’re greeted, um what we offer for kids is going to be the same as the message. So Bo works with the preaching team. They’re working on the message together. And so we want so our worship set, the message, all those will be consistent.

Jeremy Peterson — I think one of the things that’s been really helpful for us is several years back, we created a playbook. And so in the playbook, it it outlines all the ministries across the church. And so not only is it talk about um the culture of love ah that we want it to be so prevalent, we want to have a high level of creativity. And so we put a high level on creativity. We put a high level on fun. And we feel like those things are essential.

Jeremy Peterson — We really want to create and innovate instead of trying to like copy or replicate. So it’s something that we really, really focus on. But the playbook really helps kind of centralize what’s taking place, what’s happening at an outpost level, what what support the central level is is have is is having. And then where’s the collaboration taking place between the two of those? And so I think the clearer that that’s outlined, it’s helpful for the outpost pastors. It’s helpful for the central team to all know, okay, these are these are our lanes um and we’re focusing on this area.

Jeremy Peterson — So like an outpost pastor would have oversight of the staff at that specific outpost. The central team is more of like a coaching providing support, but then there’s always collaboration that has to take place. And the more that there’s collaboration taking place and everybody’s clear on what’s happening, I think that really helps drive um the mission forward. And so I think having that in place is really, really helpful for that clarity.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I’d love to kind of double click on that. I love the idea of a playbook and articulating clarity, obviously, as kindness, being super clear on here here he is, you know, this is what it looks like to be a One Church location. Can you talk us through an area that um maybe you were struggling on alignment? And how have you been able to kind of get, you know, better alignment over these last few years, Jeremy? Could you talk us through that? What what that’s looked like? How is the how has the playbook helped with that?

Jeremy Peterson — Yes, I think it it helps in several in several regards, Rich. I think part of it is, yeah so the typical church… So I went to a ah Christian college, and a lot of the training was, okay, as a pastor, you’re going to pastor this group of people, and you need to spend 20 to 25 hours a week working and and preparing your message.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — So if you’re doing that that, that really limits the amount of time that you can actually spend in the community, developing people, investing in leaders. And so a huge part of the the the preaching team, the teaching team that works together, is that there between the time that Bo’s putting into it, the other outpost pastors, the ones who are preaching or putting into it, nobody’s spending more than like six, seven hours a week specifically on message prep, which then obviously frees you up for a lot of things.

Jeremy Peterson — And so so there there’s a lot of things that we centralize in like the message will be the same across all the outposts. Kids curriculum will be the same. We do offer some freedom, though. So every outpost has different needs in that community.

Jeremy Peterson — And so the freedom there is the outpost pastor and the team at that outpost, like knowing what are the specific needs of that community. We’re not trying to make it cookie cutter and saying, OK, well, you need to do this with a food pantry, for example, because that may not be a need in the community that you’re in.

Jeremy Peterson — We have some communities that are more affluent. We have some that are much more blue collar. And so a big part of like being the church, um regardless of where we are, it’s finding out who are those strategic partners that are there in the community that we can love, that we can pour into, that we can invest in. And I think that’s where there’s some freedom um at every outpost level to figure out what are those needs and how can we meet those needs.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Bo, one of the things I love about what you’re doing, you’re modeling ah developing leaders, even within your teaching place, often, ah you know, the teaching seat, oftentimes that’s like the, it can be an exception in a video-driven environment where it’s like the the lead person is like, okay, everybody go develop leaders, except in my area. I’m not developing any leaders.

Rich Birch — I love that you’re modeling that. What is what is developing leaders look like in the rest of the church? How, how is, we know that this model is, it’s a, it’s a resource hog. It takes lots of leaders to make it happen. What is developing leaders look like for, you know, for you, for One Church, uh, beyond just the, the teaching stuff that we’ve not just, but the teaching stuff we’ve talked about there.

Bo Chancey — Yeah, I love that question. I want to dig into that. And I think it’s important because of what Jeremy was just talking about with alignment in that um having the the preachers ah aligned that are preaching there. Because there was a lot, and when we started this, there was a lot of talk around and even questions that we’ll get asked a lot would be, well, how do the guys make the sermon their own? And we don’t make the sermon our own. It is our own. Instead of trying to individualize every message, we’re working on it together and preparing it together. So getting outside of that mindset of going, okay, now here’s some great content. Now now I’ve got to go make it about me. No, let’s make it about Jesus. And let’s let’s keep it focused on Him and and and actually get some more of self out of this. He must become greater. I must become less.

Bo Chancey — And so the stripping away of self, and me personally living that out. We’ve always said to do whatever God’s called us to do is going to involve more dying to self than any of us are ever ah could ever imagine or be comfortable with, but we’re going to step into that.

Bo Chancey — And so the key component in developing leaders is prayer. Same thing with even considering multisite ministry. That’s the thing I tell everybody is don’t figure out if it’ll work, because we don’t even know what “work” means, you know, what success even looks like.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bo Chancey — I mean, God, we we’ve we’ve opened seven total outposts in the time that I’ve been here. Currently, we have four and a fifth one coming, but those the ones that we have closed down are are no longer a part of, we’re not failures in that sense. God called us into those. And so prayer is the key thing.

Bo Chancey — Are you, are we listening to the Holy Spirit? Before you ever consider multisite, is God calling you to multisite?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Bo Chancey — Is God inviting you into that and asking you to do that? Is that being confirmed in community? Not just you as an individual, but vision, but vision oftentimes comes to a person and it’s confirmed in community.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Bo Chancey — And so when that happens, then you have a higher degree of confidence in the voice of God and to trust him, regardless of the outcome. And now that gets to be really freeing and important. So the same would be true with developing leaders.

Bo Chancey — So we have a residency ah ministry where we invite residents to come be a part of One Church. So they, like this past week, we had six residents who were sitting around the preaching table, and they’re all giving coaching feedback to the people who preached. So they sat in and listened to messages and took notes and gave feedback.

Bo Chancey — And, you know, in between services, the residents sat down quickly with the preacher and gave them, hey, here’s something I thought you could do better or that could use some more clarity. The preachers then did those things and reported back in the meeting about what they was shared with them. So we’re creating, I guess, a culture around saying, hey, we’re all in this together.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bo Chancey — But then that goes back to prayer as well. And this is something I want to tell every leader everywhere. Pray for every single person on your team every single day.

Bo Chancey — The the one regret I have in ministry is that I didn’t do this sooner. This is the the thing that that would haunt me if anything did is that I didn’t do it sooner. But for the last several years I’ve prayed I pray every single day for every single person on our staff, for all of our leadership teams, and our key volunteers. And if you don’t have time for that…might I propose to you…

Rich Birch — Yes, we could just leave a big, giant, pregnant pause there. If you don’t have time for that, why are we doing this?

Bo Chancey — …[inaudible] a radical shift in thinking…

Rich Birch — Yeah. Wow.

Bo Chancey — …new change of mind a change in mindset as someone who was missing that and is now living in that. It is night and day. Like wanting to develop leaders and putting systems to develop leaders and having structure develop leaders and having amazing people like Jeremy Peterson helping create all that. It wasn’t happening until we started praying like that. We start praying like that and the fruit explodes.

Rich Birch — I’d love to double click on that because I think that’s, you know, caught my attention when you’re like, I want every leader to hear this. But but I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. What does that look like for you? How are you, you know, just kind of get us inside that world a little bit. I think that’s a great challenge of even, hey, let’s pray through all of our teams every day. Talk talk us through what that looks like.

Bo Chancey — Well, for me, I mean, it’s part of how I begin every day. So, you know, two hours in solitude and about an hour, hour and a half of that’s in prayer. That’s just a time component. You know, we we currently have about 35 staff on the team. And it doesn’t take, sometimes I pray, you know, just mention their name. Sometimes I know something that’s going on and and pray over them a little bit longer. But I can tell you relationally, when I see them, ah there is instantly something different.

Rich Birch — Yep, yep.

Bo Chancey — You know, different in me for sure. And I’m not in a hurry. So I spend time with residents. I spend time with staff. I enjoy and love, I mean, I don’t just love our staff. I enjoy them. I enjoy the team. I enjoy the preachers. It makes me want to coach them and they trust me. And it…

Bo Chancey — So, and and so that prayer, and then a lot of time, mean, for me now, this is gonna sound maybe crazy in our kind of busy obsessed culture. I usually spend another hour in solitude right after lunch every day, just being still, quiet…

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Bo Chancey — …praying, meditating. And so more of my time is is spent doing that than anything else these days, which feels pretty amazing.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. No, that’s, that’s a great, that’s great coaching for us, you know, in our culture, like you said, and you referenced it there. You know, we live in a, an overworked, you know, a self-obsessed, I can do it, worry, worry, worry, rush, rush, rush culture. And if we’re not careful as church leaders, we’ll just, we just jump on that train and run with it. So I, I really appreciate that, Bo. Thanks for, for, for leaning in there.

Jeremy Peterson — Well, just a quick…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jeremy Peterson — …a quick tag on that, Rich, is Bo shared this with our staff um couple of years back. And it was interesting because some of the frustrations between like Central and the Outpost level, like we realized there was some frustration and some tension that was there.

Rich Birch — Right

Jeremy Peterson — And when we simply asked the staff, like, can you take 30 minutes a day just to be still and pray for the staff members that you work with?

Rich Birch — So good.

Jeremy Peterson — It really changed culturally, even the way that people interacted with each other. I mean, even times now we can have conversations that, you know, I’m frustrated with so-and-so because, you know, this ministry didn’t do this and Central is supposed to provide the support. And usually when somebody is like amped up and frustrated, my first question is typically like, hey, when was the last time you prayed for them?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeremy Peterson — And I sometimes get this look on the ah you know they this look on their face like, oh, I haven’t been doing that. And and man, praying for that, even you know years back, there was some challenge with our eldership team and praying for them every day. When I sit on the elder team, I mean, that’s drastically changed the way that we do things, praying together each week for them. It’s just been a game changer. And it really has changed culturally ah things in our staff. But man, for some of them, it was a lot of dying to self to be like, I don’t have 30 minutes. I’m so busy. I’m busier than everybody else.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — It’s like, no, you have 30 minutes. Pray for your staff. Pray for volunteers.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — I don’t have volunteers. Then take time and pray that God would bring you some volunteers. And so I don’t want to undermine that just the power of prayer. I know it’s something we’ve heard and we’ve talked about, but I mean, it really is a game changer for to to put like, man, how how essential that’s been. And to Bo’s point, something I wish we would have done years and years ago.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. You know, so many churches inherent, and this has come up in multiple of these conversations this month, you know, there is an inherent tension in the campus/central relationship. That’s just that is it’s baked into the model. And I love the perspective of like, hey, maybe maybe maybe this is a prayer issue. Maybe it’s ultimately we got a wrestle rather than let’s find the next tactic. Let’s pull the right lever, get the right piece of paper. Hey, let’s let’s take a step back. I love that.

Rich Birch — Jeremy, could you unpack a little bit more about the residency? I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. How does that fit into your strategy as you think about developing the church, just thinking about the future, that kind of thing? How does all that fit together?

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I um the residency is something that started several years back. Currently, we have six full-time residents. We can have up to 10 at a time. And why I really believe in the residency is that it it really is truly a hands-on experience. And part of the beauty of the Outpost model is we’ll have some of the residents who are coming on and they’re really passionate about preaching, like preaching something that they want to do.

Jeremy Peterson — Most megachurches, you would not get a chance as a resident to ever get a chance to preach. But we’ll give them reps in that in that capacity because they’re they have the Outpost pastor poured into them; they’re coaching them. Bo’s doing that as well. And so they’re getting like coaching and feedback all the time, something that they love and something that most of them have never experienced. Most of them, even if they were preaching in college, like they didn’t, you know, all you hear is you leave and it’s like, hey great job. You know, great to hear that. It’s like, you’re not really…

Rich Birch — Slap on the back or whatever. Yeah.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, you’re not really getting coaching on that. And so that’s something that they’ve really enjoyed.

Jeremy Peterson — People on our our worship team—they’re doing like a worship residency—that are showing up – incredible vocalists, but, you know, trying to understand things like stage presence, even being able to play instruments. Like we have a couple of residents who came in with like very little or no musical ability. I mean, they’re now leading for our online service, which, you know, which reaches, you know, three, 4,000 people every single week.

Jeremy Peterson — And so given them some of these like tangible, real life experiences where whether they’re doing a one or two year residency with us, we will oftentimes hire some of those residents. Because at times we’ve hired somebody outside, you bring them in and it’s almost like you have to break some of these bad habits that were learned over time and to retrain them.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Jeremy Peterson — We have a resident who’s praying for one, who understands the culture, um who understands like what we’re trying to accomplish in the mission that we’re doing. It’s been become incredibly powerful. And so our prayer has been like, as God sends us residents, okay, how do we truly pour into them? We’re not just trying to get extra workers. Really we’re trying to get people that we can pour into, that we can invest into.

Jeremy Peterson — And if God continues to call them to New England, um whether that’s with oOne Church or there’s another church in the area or elsewhere, we really feel like this is an incredible opportunity to develop them um and to help them grow as leaders. And, and just to watch some of them flourish.

Jeremy Peterson — I mean, Rich, I wish I could show you some of the residents that, went from the interview process where we’re almost like borderline, I’m not sure that this is going to culturally fit.

Rich Birch — Yeah, is this going to work out?

Jeremy Peterson — Is this even going to work?

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.

Jeremy Peterson — To then like watching some of them thrive um in preaching, leading worship, even with our kids, production team. It’s just been incredible to watch them like grow and blossom in that space. And if we want to keep doing more and more um of that because I feel like that there’s, that’s a huge part of us um launching more outposts is is continuing to build this residency.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s, that’s so good. Is it open to people from outside the church? Like if there’s people that are listening in that might know a leader that’s interested, can they do check out your website, get connected that way, if they’re interested in learning more?

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, actually, yeah, you can just go to church.one/residency.

Rich Birch — Great.

Jeremy Peterson — It’s it’s open to anybody that’s been out of out of high school for at least a year.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jeremy Peterson — And so we’ll have anybody, you know, typically 20 to like the 28 in that kind of that age range. And and yeah, they can come and spend, we’ve had some spend a summer with us, like do 10 weeks. Most of them will end up doing a year long residency. and then there’s some that are doing a second year um residency. And so, yeah, by all means, we want to try to develop as many people as we can. And it’s just, it’s truly incredible watching, I’ll just talk about our worship team for a second…

Rich Birch — yep

Jeremy Peterson — …because Bo’s talking about the preaching side. But to watch some of our worship people come in that are almost like almost borderline fearful, like not really sure what to do. And then just to watch them bloom to where they could lead worship at just about any mega church around the country, to me, is just incredible to watch that.

Jeremy Peterson — And it really is our amazing team of leaders, not only the central, but the outpost level, like really poured into these individuals on a daily basis. Like I’ll walk by their office and literally just kind of breaking things down and getting some hands-on experience that I’m not sure I’ve seen elsewhere. I’m sure it’s happened other places, but that’s just really special to watch and see see some of them grow um in that area.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. And, you know, just we’ve seen this in multiple churches that we’ve talked to this month, this intentionality around a residency, a longer, some sort of longer structured leadership development process. We’re really seeing as a key part of this movement. It’s a critical piece of the puzzle for sure. Because as we’ve even, we’ve referenced multiple times through this conversation, you know, the finding the right leaders is critical to us expanding more outposts.

Rich Birch — Bo, shifting in a slightly different direction, so and I didn’t prep you this for ahead of time. So, you know, I’m throwing you a bit of a curveball here. But, you know, I feel like New England in a lot of ways, New Hampshire specifically, it’s like in some ways looking into the future. You know, that it is a um more post-Christian community than large portions of the country. And, and your church is thriving. God’s using it. Uh, and so are, there are lessons that I think churches across the country can learn about from One Church to help us thrive for the world that’s on, on its way.

Rich Birch — Talk to me a little bit about what you think some of those lessons would be. What is it that God’s using in the culture you find yourself in, ah at, at One Church?

Bo Chancey — Yeah, um that’s largely, I think, why I’m here. Definitely when I think about the the context we’re in I don’t, I personally don’t like the term post-Christian…

Rich Birch — Okay.

Bo Chancey — …just because Jesus is the alpha and the omega.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Bo Chancey — He’s the beginning and the end. And so there’s nothing after him. It’s him.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Bo Chancey — And, but we are definitely in a post-religious context, which turns out to be incredible for inviting people to follow Jesus um when they’re, they’re kind of done with the rules and regulations and, the rigmarole and you know the all the ah language and you know all the ah the things that kind of come with that.

Bo Chancey — This cultural context is largely over a lot of that. It doesn’t mean that people aren’t trying really hard to resurrect that particular thing, as they do. We love our religion. It’s a lot easier to control ah people with religion than it is an authentic Spirit-driven relationship with the Savior. But um that’s what we’re striving for. So I love being in the context.

Bo Chancey — And then, we at One Church, um we don’t look at our outposts as kind of the ultimate expression of the church. It’s a piece. It’s really one leg of a three-legged stool. The other, one of the other legs would be online. And so we are unapologetic about our presence online and how we utilize online to disseminate information and and to share good news in good news ways.

Bo Chancey — Outposts matter, but they’re not the be-all end-all. It’s not about butts and seats and buildings and brick and mortar and you know names on the back on the front of buildings or or even this kind of notion of, you know, closing the back door. We dropped the retention thing and said, we’re not gonna close the back door, we’re gonna blow out the back wall. And bless and send, bless and send, bless and send all day long. Cause God has a long history of of moving people and leading them and we want them to listen to him.

Bo Chancey — And then the third leg of the stool though is what we call life posts. So which is really just a matter of being the church where you live, work and play. And that is the most neglected because it’s the most difficult to evaluate, the most difficult to ah count, um control, everything else.

Bo Chancey — But so we’re looking to say, how can we resource people to be the church in their home, in their neighborhood, and the communities that they’re involved in and where they’re working or going to school, and that they understand that that’s what the church is and that that’s what they’re a part of.

Bo Chancey — And and so is where so even as we evaluate what we’re doing at the outpost level are we doing that or are we trying to get churchy people in churchy places doing churchy things, as opposed being the church um wherever they are, because we produce a lot more fruit. So we really want to reach the most people in the shortest time and release the church and steward the church to be the church.

Bo Chancey — This is a phenomenal context for that, ah because there’s not as much recent history holding them to that. So with that though, innovation is hugely important. Creativity. And so it’s, It’s not that we don’t learn from other places and other contexts. We certainly can and do. It’s very important that you know we’re creating. And so we’re creating music. We’re we’re creating the messages that we’re doing. We’re creating the the the methodologies that we’re using. You know, because and when you have a copy of a copy of a copy, it loses clarity every single time.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Bo Chancey — And the the freshness and so that is required here is really refreshing. So we get to step into that. So that’s the thing i always want to encourage everyone is is really look at where you are this time and place and go, what are the opportunities that are before us? And how do we step into those? Because it’s going to be uncomfortable. And it’s going to you know disappoint certain people’s expectations for sure. You know, but to count the cost of really being a part of building the kingdom and doing that.

Bo Chancey — We get to do that here in New England and feel a strong responsibility to do that and to continue into that. And but it’s also I will tell you, like only 4% of the population in in New Hampshire would consider themselves to be, you know, followers of of Jesus in the evangelical sense or anything like that. So it’s like shooting fish in a barrel up here. Like, I mean, they’re…

Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.

Bo Chancey — …they’re everywhere. Like we we got to baptize 400 people last year. And…

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing.

Bo Chancey — Yeah, so we’re just sharing good news in good news ways, loving people with God’s love like he loves, and having a lot, a lot of fun while we do it.

Rich Birch — Love it. This is part of why I want to continue to point people towards you guys. I think you have so much to teach so many of us. And so I, I yeah, I really appreciate that. Thanks so much, Bo.

Rich Birch — Jeremy, kind of as we’re coming down to land the plane here, when you look to the future, what are you guys thinking about in the future for Outposts and your multisite journey? What are questions you’re wrestling with as you kind of think to the future? Where does where does that lend you as you, yeah, just as you’re wrestling with those things?

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I think we realized that part of the what we need to do to carry out the vision is to have more worship services and more places to reach the most people. And so one thing we’re really working on is and we’ve already identified where the next location for our next outpost will be. And I think we’re trying to do that within like a 30 minute proximity of another outpost.

Jeremy Peterson — And so part of the challenge in the past is we had a church in in Vermont approach us. The the distance of like over two hours between us and them, it became a challenge. And so I think part of the some of the culture, some of the chemistry with the staff, I think some of the consistencies I think a lot of that is just is how do we continue to collaborate together. And if you’re not closely connected it becomes really really difficult to do that.

Jeremy Peterson — And so so, I mean, Bo and I have talked about, you know, we really want to, you know, we want to see us in having 10 outposts in the next, you know, three or four years. And and a lot of that, I think, is going to some of these more rural communities where people aren’t necessarily, I’m not hearing lot of church plants go into communities of 5,000 people, right?

Rich Birch — Yes. Right. It’s true.

Jeremy Peterson — They’re trying to find a community of, you know, 50-, 100,000 or more and trying to go to some of these areas.

Rich Birch — Right. Everyone’s reading the same statistical studies and planting their churches in the same places. And they’re not in New Hampshire, rural New Hampshire.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah. And so we really feel a call to find out several things, like where are people coming from?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeremy Peterson — Like we have we have people that are driving an hour to come to One Church. And so finding out where are some of these families coming from? How can we go there? How can we be, you know, how can we be Jesus in those communities? And so that’s that’s what we really have kind of on the forefront.

Jeremy Peterson — And a lot of that goes to continue to build the residency, continue to build leaders. I think one of the things that we’ve done this round is we brought on um the next outpost pastor in August…

Rich Birch — Oh, nice.

Jeremy Peterson — …and we probably won’t launch the next outpost until the following August.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jeremy Peterson — And so having people on our team to understand like like who we are a bit of deprogramming and reprogramming what we, what we’re trying to accomplish a church, I think is a big part of what we’re focusing on and really just developing leaders. And I think, as we continue to develop leaders, God’s continuing to open up more and more opportunities for those next outposts.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Love that. Exciting, exciting times. Bo, I’m going to give you the last word here. What would you say to leaders who are thinking about multisite, wrestling with this? Maybe they’re thinking about new campuses. They’re wondering, hey, is this what God’s you know leading us to? What would you say to some leaders that are thinking about about this approach to ministry?

Bo Chancey — Pray. I know I mentioned that before…

Rich Birch — No, it’s good.

Bo Chancey — …but I’ll give you even a little little prayer strategy in this regard. Get a a group of leaders together and share what you think is on your heart, what you’re hearing from God in regards to multisite ministry, or new outpost, or location, or campus or um whatever terminology you might be using. And share that with them and then invite them in to confirm or not confirm what you’re hearing in prayer um by joining you in prayer.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Bo Chancey — And so what we do is we’ll agree on a specific question to ask God. And so the question we we would have would be, um you know, God, we, or God, you want us to plant an outpost in this specific community. And then we’ll pray over that for a week, um fast and pray the last 24 hours, and then we’ll get together, break our fast, sing a worship song, and then share what we’re what we’re hearing from God.

Rich Birch — So good.

Bo Chancey — And so far, every time we’ve done that with anything, we have come to conclusions faster than you could ever imagine.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Bo Chancey — And so slowing down, praying and and waiting on the Lord a little bit in that way has enabled us to move further and faster and with fewer hiccups, you know, and and massive mistakes um than ever before. So the the prayer component is, I think, the most important one.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. This has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you guys taking time out to be with us today. Encouraging conversation, challenging conversation. I really appreciate it. Jeremy, if we want to send people online to track with the church, to track with you guys, where where would we send them? Where should we send people online?

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I think the best place is just go church.one. And that’s probably the best place.

Jeremy Peterson — If they want to check out our YouTube page, um just type in um One Church, New Hampshire, and ah you’ll be able to see, um yeah, just ah kind of a glimpse into what God’s doing in this area.

Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, friends. Appreciate you being on today.

Bo Chancey — Thank you.

Jeremy Peterson — Thanks, Rich.