Sites, Campuses, Parishes? We Plant Congregations

Churches all over the world use various words to describe their multi-site churches. You’ll hear language such as ‘churches, congregations, parishes, campuses, satellites, sites, mother-church, daughter-church, venues and expressions.’ It seems like a simple mincing of words, but Veritas is interested in planting congregations and utilizing the word “congregation” as the best descriptor to what we do.

In our context, ‘campus’ usually invokes the thought of The Ohio State University’s campus. Many corporations refer to a ‘campus’ as building locations around the city. Using ‘parishes’ invokes heavily on the predominate catholic community of Columbus. ‘Satellites’ are a poor reflection of our mission that each congregation is not solely linked to one congregation. While we don’t believe any of these approaches are necessarily wrong, referring to our multiple communities as congregations is the most accurate description of our church.

A proper definition for congregation is “a group of people assembled for religious worship.” The term was most popularly used in the 1850’s and has seen more of a resurgence in churches like Redeemer Presbyterian, NYC and CrossPointe Church in Orlando, FL. It calls for us to think more about a community of people rather than a campus or physical location.

With that said, Veritas has adopted the term ‘congregations’ and we encourage you to adjust your vocabulary to refer to each congregation properly, such as the Short North Congregation, Tri-Village Congregation, East Congregation and West Congregation.

Nick Nye
Founding Pastor & Short North Lead Pastor

Taken from Nick Nye’s blog.