Multi-Site Worship EXPOSED: How Saddleback scaled to 21 campuses without losing Quality & Heart

  Speaker 2 If you’ve ever wondered how mega churches like Saddleback structure their ministries to train all their volunteers to be musically and technically excellent, or identify and develop capable worship leaders for all their campuses, or how they audition and onboard enough new musicians for all of their campuses, we’re going to be talking about all that and much more with our special guest, John Caceto, who worked at Saddleback as the global worship pastor for 14 years and helped scale their worship department from a handful of campuses 21 campuses across the globe in six or seven different countries. It’s going to be an enlightening conversation. We’re going to learn all about his system, structures, processes, training to build the ministry in multiple locations. Even if you’re in a small church, it seems like this might not apply to you. I promise it will because the principles that John will expound will inspire you and also instruct you how to put similar types of systems into your church. Let me welcome John onto the screen. Hello, John.

Speaker 1 Hey, Alex. I’m so honoured to be here with you. And honestly, hearing you say all that, I’m like, yeah, wow, that sounds like a lot. And we don’t often look back at all the things that we’ve gotten to be a part of and really take stock of it. And so it’s really sweet to hear you say that. Thanks, brother.

Speaker 2 Yeah, man, I’m pumped. So under your leadership, I like to dive right in. Sure. How many campuses were you able to help add?

Speaker 1 I think we were three locations, and then Christmas Eve of 2011, I think we started six or seven locations on Christmas Eve, just that one. Oh my gosh. In Southern California. So we went from three to nine overnight. And it was really fun and wild. And It was such a winsome era of great faith and trusting God to do something new. That was all in Southern California. And Multisight, that was 2011. So Multisight, it was becoming more and more, but it wasn’t what it is today for sure. So we were learning a lot in real-time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you guys were pioneering. I mean, with Rick Warren at the helm, you guys pioneered a lot of different things. And so it makes sense that diving into Multisight, it was probably him and Craig Grishel and maybe a couple of other guys, right? So I can’t imagine. You It was really fun. It was fun. That sounds so stressful to launch seven campuses at once. And we’re going to get into some of the back-end, like how did you prepare your teams for those launches and all that? But I just like to know in terms of Saddleback’s philosophy, because there’s two different philosophies I’ve heard with Multisight two-side churches. One is franchise philosophy. It’s like church in a box. You do it exactly the same as the main campus. Everything looks and feels the same. And then the other one is more like each campus has autonomy, and maybe they even have their own preachers, but they’re underneath the net or the umbrella of the main campus. What was the philosophy for Saddleback? Was it franchise model or freedom model?

Speaker 1 That’s generally the question. There’s this spectrum of flexibility and freedom and autonomy and pretty locked in and dialled in. I would say we were striving to be somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, but things that were what we called core elements, the things that were happening at every location, was the video message. Rick Warren was our lead pastor, and so weekend teaching was all broadcast at every location. I’m going to say 52 Sundays a year. That was locked in week after week. And then beyond that, we would have core elements, but we also, especially in the early days, had a a lot of flexibility. So we were not doing, Here’s the songs everybody’s doing at every campus this weekend. I can’t speak to the way things are today because I think they’ve made some changes in the last year since we’ve been there. But when we were there, we had international locations. We had a lot in Southern California, but we also had Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Manila. We wanted to give them a level of freedom and leadership. And so we created what we would call the top 40 that we were all drawing from in a season.

Speaker 1 And not that you couldn’t draw from songs outside of those 40 songs, but with those 40 songs in every quarter that we would make sure we had resources for those 40 songs so that it was drag and drop. If you wanted to do goodness of God, here’s a few arrangements of goodness of God, a few different keys, your pro-presenter resources, your vocal isolations, all the different things you need to do goodness of God. Because frankly, we wanted to make sure, let’s say you’re a part-time worship leader at a location in Southern California. Well, at this point, you don’t need to be spending eight hours this week creating charts for goodness of God. We got you. But what you can do that we can’t do is shepherd your people, go to coffee, do the auditions, show up at the hospital when people are not well, show up and do the weddings and the funerals and all that stuff. We’d much rather see our team shepherding the people that way than spending their time making tracks charts and all of that stuff. We could systematise all of that stuff. I haven’t seen anybody systematise the coffee hangs and the team nights and the auditions and the rehearsals to the degree that that can all just be done from a central place.

Speaker 2 So your team at the central campus or the main campus would create maybe even video trainings? Because I think I’ve seen some Saddleback, here’s how to play the keys parts. And basically, you did your own little worship artistry or worship online type videos where you’re teaching them the parts. And then what you put those all in planning centre and you’re like, here are 40 songs for the quarter?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I know there’s different philosophies on this, too, Alex. We really value… One of the values of Saddleback at the time was every member a minister. So this wasn’t just about staff or doing all the work. We really believe that in the priesthood of all believers, in that everyone has a gift to bring to the house. And that includes drummers, that includes singers, that includes technicians. And so we really believe in curating space for volunteers to bring their gift. We also know that when we’re embracing a volunteer culture, we’re going to come with different levels of skill. We’re going to come with a variety of level of understanding. How could we develop across 21 locations a consistency of expectation without being so stringent that you had to have a degree in music, a production or something to serve on our production team or to have gone on tour to find room on our team? No, we wanted room for the touring musical artist as well as the dentist who plays guitar in his garage with his homies on Friday nights. We wanted a spot for everyone to bring their gifts to God in the context of church.

Speaker 1 And so those training videos I think you’re mentioning or the clear communication on how to play or how to read the Nashville number system for our vocalists. We wanted to not just say, Hey, you have to come to us, professional. No, we’ll take you at a variety of level of skill, but we’re going to equip all of us in the journey as we grow together.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that’s amazing. Was there anything besides just like song resources that you made every volunteer across all your campuses go through? Was there like an online course or an online onboarding process or anything like that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, there’s definitely onboarding processes. I feel like there was like pre-COVID and post-COVID, if I’m honest with you. I felt like we were getting everything really locked in before COVID, and then it got all weird. And we actually went through pastoral at our church. Rick and K. Warren, after 43 years serving Saddleback, transitioned to new leadership. There was just a lot of change in our post-COVID years. But yeah, we would definitely have a pretty great and clear onboarding process for, actually, I think of all four areas in terms of musicians, vocalists, production, as well as guest services. We were all on the same team. One of our values was that we welcome new team members. I know that sounds really basic, Alex, but we’ve encountered a lot of teams that say they welcome new team members, but there is no audition process. There’s no clear onboarding process. They schedule the same drummer four out of four weekends. So yeah, you say you welcome new team members, but there’s really no systemic or procedural backup to that. So we would go through seasons. I think if there was a woman on our team named Temeree, she was so diligent about making sure vocalists, anyone who came to anyone who said, Hey, I think I sing and would like to be a part, she would make sure they knew the process, how to get in the stream.

Speaker 1 And that evolved over the years. Some things changed, whatever. But I was always so proud of Timree and Kim and Sean, these gals who were really ensuring that there was a process and a plan to get people onboarded in a way that was really fun and joyful, but also discerning. The whole thing is a discernment process for both people, for us as the people trusted to carry that mantle of leadership, but also for the person who’s joining to say, Yeah, this might be more than I thought it was. This might be less than I thought it was. Just a lot of opportunities for clear communication. But then also, the second somebody, Alex, told us Hey, I’m interested in serving, they became our pastoral priority. So now we’re caring for them. They’re on our portfolio, so to speak, of care. Hey, great. For us, we had some large locations. Well, now we We have a real human, a real person reaching out to serve. We want to steward that pastorally, not just musically, not just from a serving place. But now we’re connected to them. Rick Warren used to always say, Saddleback is the largest small church in America.

Speaker 1 I grew up in a small church. Alex, I’m not sure what church you came from, but I come from small spaces, what I would call normal spaces. We just carried those same values of care to what we were doing. I’ve struggled, Alex, sometimes over the years with, I can’t always find my job in the Bible. There’s a lot of planning centre in my job. There’s a lot of lighting queues and queue sheets, camera angles, broadcast and internet. But We really made peace with our work in our ministry by ensuring that we had all those one another phrases from the Book of Acts within our ministry. We shared with one another. We were in community with one another. We We ate meals together. We met in one another’s homes with glad and sincere hearts, as it says. We really had to just ensure that in every season, every ministry, we were constantly taking the temperature to checking the pulse of, is this just become just professional music situation, or are we still the church? In the church, we care for each other. Iron sharpens iron. We have hard conversations. We dive into God’s word together, and we have a lot of fun together.

Speaker 1 Our onboarding process, that was beginning, the entry point into this ministry, not just band, not just production. It’s like, no, this is church, actually.

Speaker 2 Family, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I am.

Speaker 2 It’s interesting. I love that you’re sharing this because I wasn’t thinking about talking about what you’re sharing, but I feel like we need to dig into this because you started out actually at Saddleback as the missions or some missions-related job, right? I started out in ministry as a youth pastor. There was a guy who came to me yesterday. He wants to be a worship leader. I was like, do you want to sing songs or do you want to be a minister? Because there’s a big difference. I think the best worship leaders and a lot of the people that we attract in Worship Ministry Training Academy who listen to this, they are ministers first, not musicians first. I love that about our community. I just want to, if anyone’s listening who hasn’t fully adopted that, that’s your role. Your role is you use music as a tool to do ministry, and it’s not the other way around. But I love what you’re sharing there.

Speaker 1 Alex, praise God for you championing that and saying that. I’m old enough. I started before YouTube. I started before iPhone and certainly before Instagram. And so what you’re saying was like, Well, yeah, no, dud. That’s what we signed up for. But somewhere along the line, myself included, so this is not just for one generation or another. This is for all of us. Somewhere it just became different, Alex. It really did. We started seeing more videos and things started to feel a more attractive that pulled at our original call to humility, where we were setting up the chairs, we were rolling cables or unrolling cables. And of course, we had to clean up the house afterwards. But then somewhere along the line, they started putting cameras on our face, right? And they started shooting lights on us, and they would tell us to stand here or stand there. And then we get more followers, or we think we’re supposed to have more followers, which then means we probably got to start promoting things. And it’s like, man, I mean, I’m not on social media. I think the Lord gave it to us to further the gospel, full stop.

Speaker 1 I think that’s the only reason he gives us these tools is for his glory. But somewhere along the line, we use them for our glory. The posture of humility that we were called to is the one we need to continue and maintain. I’ll be honest, Alex, there are seasons where we feel like we’re in the centre and in the flow of the Holy spirit’s will, and we have that figured out. Then there’s been seasons where we’re all embarrassed to say, Man, no, it got misordered. It got out Out of line and out of order in my life or ministry. But I think the gospel, the good news of the gospel, is that it’s never too late to correct it. As shepherds, we would say that to anyone on our team, but it’s true for us, too. As Matt Redman said, let’s bring it back to the heart of worship. The heart of worship is not a prideful heart. It’s not a someone needs to serve me heart. The heart of worship is I came to serve. I came to minister to Jesus and to whoever is in front of me.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because if we can keep that heart, then it doesn’t matter how big the ministry gets around us. We’re still doing it as unto the Lord in the ways that he desires us to do it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that’s absolutely it.

Speaker 2 You said, Saddleback is shifting gears now. Are they dissolving the top down and giving more autonomy? Because I want to ask- No, we’re going the opposite direction. More structure?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay, interesting. The reason I wanted to ask is because I have several friends who they lead at multi-site churches, and they are dissolving. They’re not completely dissolving, but they’re giving way more freedom to each congregation. I’ve seen that to be a trend, but you’re saying Saddleback is now going the opposite direction.

Speaker 1 I think what you’re seeing is what I’m seeing, too. When I think about my sons, I have three sons, and when I think about their future in church, and I think about their future children and their children’s children, I think it looks a whole lot more like freedom and less like a machine and less like top down, I think. I do think I’m seeing a lot of places like you are expressing, too, where there actually was just talking to a friend who’s been at a multi-site church, a strong multi-site church that many of us would know, and they’re in the process of their location becoming its own church, even. I think you’re going to see actually more of that. There were certain things we had to be. When I went to a McDonald’s in Manila, or I went to one in Hong Kong, or I went to one in Anaheim, California, they’re 95% the same. Pretty cool that in Manila, you can get a site of rice at that McDonald’s that I can’t get in Anaheim. So there’s some localization context there. And I feel like at the end of the day, when people were signing up to be a part of Saddleback, you’re signing up to be a part of Saddleback.

Speaker 1 And so there are some things that we all lay down to be a part of some global organisation. We have to lay something down for the sake of unity and the sake of just alignment. And I do think the bigger and bigger it gets, the temptation is to get it tighter and stronger, and we’ve got to tell everybody what to do. I just think with the church, I think that makes a lot of sense, probably financially for some places. But I do think when we’re talking about the soft skills that are required to lead in the local church, my concern of what I’m seeing with some of that, Alex, is our worship pastors tend to pay quite a price. The big word that everybody wants is authenticity. Let’s be honest, let’s be authentic. But let’s put cameras on your face and you’ve got to sing a joyful song. Whether your wife just miscarried or not, you got to show up and bring all the joy. I think our artists get used to having to do something a certain way, and I’m not blaming anyone for this. I think this is just the reality of what the model has brought us.

Speaker 1 That I think to a degree, our worship leaders end up paying a price and something gets formed in us A performance muscle develops of like, well, we know what it requires. And I think we as shepherds who are shepherding those spaces, we want to do what we can to avoid that, to create space for true authenticity. And if that means somebody needs a week off platform to sort out what’s happening in life, then so be it. The idea of more and more constrictive things doesn’t seem like the future to me.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It’s almost like, perform your duty, put on the show, get up there, cheerlead us a little bit. That’s been one of the critiques of, you were in a mega church, I was in a mega church, and I guess technically my current church is still considered a mega church, but it’s a lot smaller than my last one. Yeah, There is that critique of mega churches that it’s, I think Aaron Keyes calls it Jubilistic triumphalism, where it’s always got to be happy, positive, up and to the right, and God is on our side, and we’re going to celebrate. And there’s truth to that. But then there’s the other side of life, which is this is really hard.

Speaker 1 Yeah. We just moved from California. We’re in Kansas City right now. Been at a couple churches and just this really great church. The preacher was talking about the Psalms and how much lament is in the Psalms. That’s a little hard for us to touch on because that means we’re going to have to go into some places with people. But the reality is we all relate to the lament. We can all relate to, Hey, things are tough, Lord, and we need to sort this out. We all need the reminder of the mountaintop. We all need the celebration, the jubilation. We do. Are they proportional in every season? I don’t think they are. But I used to tell our people, If you’re on the mountaintop, don’t We’ll never be ashamed to shout it. Because those of us who aren’t on the mountaintop, we need to remember there is a mountaintop. We need to remember where we’re heading and what God could have for us. I’m never down on anybody who’s going through the time of their life like, Man, thank you for sharing that. Post all about it. I need those reminders. And I’m never bummed when people say, Man, things are hard right now.

Speaker 1 That’s life.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I’d love to, while I have you, talk with you more about your process to find and recruit enough musicians for all these campuses. So you’re launching a new campus. You said you launched seven on one night. I think one of the biggest struggles worship leaders come to me with is, I can’t find enough people to serve. I know Saddleback was big, but you’re launching in new locations. How did you guys go out about finding and recruiting people to serve? If you’re feeling stuck, mediocre or inadequate in your ministry, if you know there must be a better way of doing things, but you’re not sure how, if you’re looking for fresh inspiration and new ideas that will improve your ministry and give you a team that you’re proud of leading, then I invite you to join me and over 1400 worship leaders from all over the world who are growing inside the Worship Ministry Training Academy. Our C3 format is proven to get you results because you get courses, coaching, and community. The courses teach you what to do, the coaches help you apply it to your specific situation, and the community helps you stay accountable and encouraged as you take the right steps to improve the ministry God has called you to.

Speaker 2 Get access to over a dozen practical courses, 20 time-saving templates, done for you team discipleship material, and live expert interviews with guests like Matt Redman, Christian Stanfield, Charity Gail, and others. The best part is it’s completely free to try for 15 days. Yes, free. And if you decide to sign up, the Academy is by the most affordable online worship school that there is out there. Join thousands of other worship leaders like Alicia and Hyme, who both say the academy has completely transformed their ministry. I hope you’ll start your free trial today. Take the guesswork out of building a thriving worship ministry and get a proven game plan to success. Go to worshipministrytraining. Com and click that big red button, and I hope to see you inside the academy this week. One of the biggest struggles worship leaders come to me with is, I can’t find enough people to serve. How did you guys go out about finding and recruiting people to serve?

Speaker 1 It’s like everyone listening to this. I’ll tell you that, Alex, there is no magic bottle of anything to go buy out there, right? So we have the same struggles. I’ve never met a worship team that’s like, We got plenty of drumers. We got plenty of guitar players. We got plenty of sound guys. No, we all would take three more of anything at any time, right? Because the need to support the church and to create spaces where people can express praise and worship, that requires people. We did the same things you do, but I think our biggest thing was with our team, and I think the bubble is going the other way on this. I felt like there were seasons where green room culture was big, and so worship teams would be on platform and then in the green room. We really pushed hard in every season to make sure team was on the patio or the lobby or the hallway, whatever your environment is. The more people know us, the more opportunities there are for them to say, Hey, I wouldn’t mind being a part of that. And yeah, I used to play guitar when I was in high school.

Speaker 1 Well, can I come over? You want to come over here? And I know a lot of places right now are keen to be like, Send me a video of you playing your guitar. I didn’t love that. We didn’t do that. It was in person. We tried to do as much personal touch and connexion in the lobby to meet people. There’s a woman who’s serving now at Saddleback who she stood in front of me at an Easter service. And this woman was just joyful. She had a It was a part of worship. Her hands were in the air. And we do a meet and greet at Saddleback. And so during the meet and greet, we introduced ourselves to her, and we ended up getting her name. And then I saw her and invited her to come to choir. Well, she’s a great volunteer worship leader now. And that’s just because we sat by her at church. I think her words were like, I just assumed you guys had everything you need. No, there’s room for everybody. And that’s just me. I’m just one person. But when our whole team has that posture and when they’re in the congregation and in the hallways and on the patio afterwards, that’s our mission the first 15 minutes after service.

Speaker 1 And even from the platform, we would constantly, I can remember some of our team being like, Hey, I saw this guy out there really worshipping. I’m just going to meet him and talk to him. He seems like he might be a worship leader or has some experience. The Lord whispers that stuff to you while you’re leading, right? The Lord will give you a vision or an idea from that platform even. And so I can just picture a friend of mine just beelining to some people after church to be like, I want to catch them before they leave. And so instead of going towards green rooms, we were always trying to go towards the chairs into where the people are.

Speaker 2 That’s amazing. Well, that’s for a campus that’s active. What about a campus that’s launching? How did you find people for that?

Speaker 1 Okay. I think that has a lot to do with who you’re hiring to lead in those spaces. Those have to be recruiters. Those have be pound the pavement people. Those are the guys and gals who love to go to the open mic night at the coffee shop and meet the people that live at the music store in town and know the guys and girls who are Giving music lessons in town and invite them in and come play with us. We could use a drummer or whatever. I can remember our international. When we started the international, that was the hardest. I can think of two locations in particular. I think the biggest component, and I know we We tend to gloss over this, and people are going to fast forward right now. But if we’re not praying, if we’re not asking the Lord to build the team, then we’re doing it by our own strength. Frankly, some guys are strong. Some guys have a lot of charisma, a lot of woo, and they can build that because they’re networked or they’ve got budget. I’m going to pay you guys $600, $1,000, whatever, to come play or whatever.

Speaker 1 Great. That wasn’t our model. There was prayerful pursuit for the right people that God would bring to launch the campuses. When I tell you, Alex, he did it all 21, 22, 23 times. He did it. Were they always a band that was ready to go into the recording studio and put out an album? Of course not. But does it need to be when you’re launching in a junior high cafeteria? I don’t know. Sometimes our appetite for what we see online, but then our reality of like, You know what? Our town has 14,000 people, and in the junior high cafeteria. What does God want there to curate an atmosphere of praise and worship? It might be different than what we’re seeing from these large spaces with millions of dollars of tech equipment, stuff like that. We were just constantly looking for who wants to be a part of this and who should be a part of this and evolve that as it goes.

Speaker 2 It’s such a Christ-centered approach. Come one and all. Everybody, come be a part. Be a part of this thing God is doing.

Speaker 1 When did it become something different? That’s what’s so weird, Alex, is that it would be anything different would be mind-baffling to my grandparents and to my parents. Frankly, to me, the church I grew up in, we didn’t have a worship band at the beginning. We had a piano and an organist. It was never on someone’s mind to be like, We should really stretch the budget to go pay for some professional organ players. It It was like, Who has God given us? Then all of a sudden, he gave us a guitar player. So we made space for a guitar player in this church. There was a few people who sang so beautifully. They were even writing songs for Jesus in this little church in the ’80s. They We need room for that special music after the sermon. Somewhere along the line, though, we started seeing these great churches who we all love. I was like, Oh, we all need to be that. We all have to be that. Well, we don’t have those people. But the Lord showed us and he built a team one by one by one. But back then, we never were like, Oh, we’ve got to start looking like Hillsong.

Speaker 1 No, we was always like, We got to look like the church that God planted us to be. I would say to the women and men listening, Gosh, resist the urge to look like anything other than what he has apportioned you with in your context. And of course, work hard. Work hard to invite and to curate space that people want to be part of it, where musicians want to be part of it. But also know that this is a long game. We’re building something one person at a time. And who you’re looking at, they’ve had quite a few years to get to that and to build to that. You don’t have to launch like that. In fact, I think people get a little suss when it is a little too polished and perfect out of go. Where these people come from?

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is something I think about a lot. We look at Hillsong today, and we don’t realise that they didn’t start like they are today. They started 35 years ago. Probably pretty crappy. In fact, if you even go back to the ’90s music that they were putting out, some of that was pretty bad sounding. I was listening to one of the songs the other day. I was like, wow, that guitar playing is really poor. But it’s like over the years they’ve built to that. But then people want to fast track their way to that by some shortcut. But it’s never a shortcut. It’s always the slow, hard work of building people up. That’s literally everything successful.

Speaker 1 I think what everyone we look at, we have such admiration for all of them. Elevation, passion, Bethel, Hillsong. Those guys, they have worked so hard, and the Lord’s hand was on them or is on them and doing great things. But like you said, we’ve been blessed to know some people that have been a part of those places, that it is, as Eugene Peterson says, it’s been a long obedience in the same direction of really tilling the soil to ask God to build something. For those of us doing it now or even just starting right now, God positioned you in this time and in t