New Ideas in Church Growth

I was talking with a friend today about church growth American style versus other ideas for church growth. We began the conversation discussing church planting models, and finally came to an idea that crossed the two ideas. What if churches, when they hit the point that they can afford to hire a second pastor would plant a new church. Then as the two churches grow, the pastors could continue to work with both congregations, but without the need to be tied to one large building in one geographic location. As the third, fourth, fifth etc. churches were planted, the geographic area impacted by the church as a whole would be larger. Once in a while, a large facility could be rented or borrowed that would be of sufficient size to hold the mother/sister churches in one location for a joint service that would be much like the "mega-church" experience, but without the constant overhead of maintaining the multi-million dollar structures that the larger church would need for a single location. (Note: I am not bashing large churches here; I am just throwing out an alternative hypothesis for church growth/church planting.)If there are any pastors of large churches/mega-churches that actually read my blog, I would be curious if you think there is any merit to this idea? Is there ever a feeling of being trapped by the need to maintain the structure of the church that inhibits the ability to do what you set out to do when the church was planted? Which was most likely that you wanted to reach people for Jesus Christ.