we have been going through each chapter in geoff surratt’s new book, ten stupid things that keep churches from growing. chapter 6 looks into “clinging to a bad location.” each chapter has wisdom and advice from a well-respected pastor who knows of what he speaks. in this chapter, geoff interviews his brother greg, founding pastor of seacoast church. below is the profile in its entirety.
"we're located under the freeway behind the abandoned kmart"
I am often asked what it is like working for my brother Greg Surratt. On the one hand, he is a good boss, a talented leader, and a visionary. On the other hand, he used to put me in painful wrestling holds until Mom would make him let me go. Since Mom made him start being nice to me a couple of years ago, working together at Seacoast has been a great experience. We try to keep the ministry and family stuff separate, but we are also able to cut through some of the communication barriers quicker than others because we are brothers. (Let’s just say we occasionally have intense fellowship.) Nepotism seems to work, at least for us.
Greg started Seacoast in 1988 with a group of about sixty people out of Northwood Assembly in Charleston, South Carolina. Each year for the first three years, the church averaged fewer people on the weekends than the year before, but in 1991 the church began to grow and never stopped. Today more than nine thousand people attend each weekend in thirteen locations across three states. During the growth Greg has become a student of what will and will not lead a church to grow, and he has had the opportunity to share that knowledge with hundreds of church planters and pastors. I knew he would have insight into finding the right location for your church.
What is the worst church location you have seen?
A church planter came to ask my advice one time about a location he was looking at in his community. He said that it was easy to find, had good visibility, ample parking, a great auditorium, some side rooms for kids, the price was right, and to top it all off it was nearly new and immediately available.
I asked him where one might find such a choice piece of real estate, to which he replied that it was actually a funeral home. “Not good,” I thought. “No wonder it’s available.”
How do you explain to a well-meaning, naive, amped-up church planter that a place so closely associated with death is probably not the best choice of locations to plant a “life-giving” church? I have friends who won’t even go to their friends’ funerals because the thought of being where dead people are creeps them out. How are you going to get them to come to a place like that weekly? Sounds like a marketer’s nightmare. Let’s use common sense here. He didn’t listen, and within a few months they wrote the obituary for the once promising vision.
How important is a good location to the growth of a church?
In retail it is location, location, location. In church work I would argue that it is Spirit of God, Spirit of God, Spirit of God. But, that said, location is pretty high on the rest of the list. I think that God primarily draws people to himself and to our churches, but part of our job as leaders is to remove potential barriers that stand in the way of people finding their way to God. Location is definitely a biggie when it comes to barriers. If you can’t find it, or wouldn’t want to go there if you could find it, that poses a pretty big barrier. So I’d say location is pretty important.
How important was Seacoast’s location to the growth in the early days?
When we were looking for a permanent location for Seacoast, we wanted something that would allow us to be both local and regional. Pretty presumptuous for a group of two hundred people, but they don’t charge extra for big dreams. Local meant that there were neighborhoods close by; we could actually be a part of the community. If it was too local, though, buried too deep in a neighborhood and not close to major traffic routes, we would have a hard time reaching beyond it. Regional meant that it was accessible to more than just the local neighborhoods. People could easily drive from other communities, so we weren’t limited to just the few blocks around us. If it was too regional, it would be easy to get to, but no one would live there. Think airports, factory areas, and coliseums. Unless you are Joel Osteen, and you are not, it still might not be the ideal location until your attendance is about ten thousand or so. We’ve made mistakes being too regional with new campus plants. Easy to get to, but nobody lived there.
I think our choice of location definitely made an impact on both early growth and future growth. We researched where we thought traffic patterns and housing starts would trend toward. It is still a great location that is easily accessible to most of the Charleston area.
What makes a bad location?
Lots of factors make a bad location: you can’t find it, you wouldn’t want to go there if you could find it, no one lives there (and probably won’t anytime soon), the neighborhood doesn’t match the vision of the church trying to minister to it.
What advice would you give to pastors whose churches are “stuck” in a bad location? What practical steps can they take?
Move on. Sometimes the best thing you can do is throw in the towel and go somewhere else. About ten years into the Seacoast experience, I had the bright idea of doing church in a larger auditorium that happened to be a Masonic Temple. At the risk of sounding disparaging to both Masons and temples, it turned out to be a very scary place. Being a visionary, I saw only the potential — more room, better parking, easy accessibility — and ignored the huge downsides — children’s ministry would be done in a bar, frightening pictures in the foyer, occasional raffles and events that would supersede church services. I even brought in Peter Wagner to pray over the temple, and then I declared it a perfect fit for Seacoast. After six months of pushing a rope uphill, I finally admitted that the “temple of doom” experiment was less than successful. I ate some Southern-fried crow and we moved on. If you are in a bad location and you can do it, move on, but if you can’t . . .
Get God’s heart. If you are truly stuck, then it is possible that God has a plan for you and your place of ministry that you are not aware of yet. It will probably involve a change in the way you are doing things. We seldom change just because it is a good idea, so part of the “stuckness” may be a nudge toward being open to something different. I know a pastor who felt stuck. He didn’t feel fulfilled in that he was doing nor very fruitful in ministry; very few people were coming, and he felt like he couldn’t move somewhere else. So, as a last resort, he sought God — what a novel idea — and got a fresh vision for his community. The vision involved changing the way they did ministry and reaching out to a segment of the community they had previously ignored. Now they’ve had to move a few blocks away to a public school because the numbers of people they are reaching won’t fit into their previous location. Always remember your ministry location is never a surprise to God. He may very well have you where you are because he desperately cares about the people who live there and he wants to recommission you to reach them. But it probably won’t be with the same old, same old. Sometimes the best thing you can do with a bad location is to get a fresh vision.
This week I caught up with pastor, author, innovator, and Church catalyst, Geoff Surratt. He’s the new Director of the Exponential Conference and along with Todd Wilson and Dave Ferguson is a part of the senior leadership team. The Exponential Conference is the largest gathering of church planters on the planet with an expected attendance of 5,000 this April. Will you be there?
Geoff Surratt first met Larry Osborne, pastor of 
