From One Campus to Six: Building a Global Leadership Model with Lane Lowery

Summary

unSeminary Podcast: From One Campus to Six – Building a Global Leadership Model with Lane Lowery

Date: October 2, 2025
Host: Rich Birch
Guest: Lane Lowery, Executive Pastor, Warren Church

---

Episode Overview

This episode explores how Warren Church, one of the oldest and fastest-growing churches in the U.S., expanded from a single campus to six, while also building foundational ministries like a Women's Crisis Center and a soon-to-launch Mental Wellness Center. Executive Pastor Lane Lowery unpacks the leadership structures, core values, and culture-shaping practices that have enabled sustainable growth and unity across multiple campuses. The discussion is packed with practical insights for churches preparing for or navigating multisite expansion, offering a candid look at operational, cultural, and staffing challenges—and solutions.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Warren Church: History & Growth Trajectory

• A storied legacy with innovation: Founded in 1898, Warren Church is now one of the fastest-growing churches in the U.S., located in South Carolina and Georgia. It emphasizes holistic ministry—Southern hospitality, generosity, strong Bible teaching, discipleship, and community health.
• Expansion history & scope:
  • Grew from one campus to six (four physical campuses, two major care centers).
  • When Lane started 19 years ago, they were a single location with ~3,000 members. Now they’re approaching 7,000, with a staff surge from fitting “in a life group classroom” to 270 employees ([05:05]).

“Going from one to two was a stretch. But going from two to six has been a huge stretch.” – Lane Lowery [06:37]

The Challenge of Structural Change

• Old vs. new models: The leadership model for “a single church” or even “dual church” became woefully inadequate once multi-campus complexity set in.
• A point of crisis: “We looked up, we had three different discipleship models going on at our campuses. That just wasn’t going to work.” – Lane Lowery [07:52]
• The prior structure promoted competition over collaboration among ministries, underscoring the need for unity (“We always say, ‘we’re better together…’ but our structure didn’t promote collaboration.” [07:53])

Crafting a Global Leadership Structure

The Global Leadership Team

• Led by Pastor Andrew Bryan, Executive Pastor of Ministries and Leadership Development.
• Eight ministry areas, each led by a ‘player-coach’ who is both a campus-level practitioner and provides leadership/championship at the multi-site/global level.
  • Preschool & Children (Carol Young)
  • Next Gen (Shane Padgett)
  • Spiritual Formation/Discipleship (Corey Baxter)
  • Missions (Mark Clyburn)
  • Worship (Joseph McKinley)
  • Communications & Connections (Drew Robinson)
  • Counseling & Support Groups (Brett Legg)
  • Hope Women’s Center (Dr. Jacqueline)
• Player-coach model: Ministry leads run their area locally but are responsible for vision and oversight across all campuses.
  • Example: Pastor Corey Baxter is embedded at Grovetown campus, manages day-to-day discipleship there, but also directs discipleship across the entire Warren network ([09:40]).

“They’re boots on the ground on a campus, but then they rise up and lead the greater ministry of Warren.” – Lane Lowery [10:53]

Benefits and Tensions of ‘Player-Coach’ Model

• Upside: Keeps leaders grounded in real ministry, brings credibility to their input, and fosters operational relevance.
• Downside: Risk of leader overload and burnout. “The challenge is saying, hey, you’re doing a great job, but I’m going to add more to your table … but our team has risen to the challenge.” [12:08]

Decision-Making: Local vs. Global Tension

• Clear rhythms and forums:
  • Executive leadership team meets every Monday at 2pm (includes senior and campus pastors, executive staff).
  • “Everything is funneled through that” – decisions and issues travel through this regular, intentional meeting.
• What’s global?
  • Key central ministries (e.g., life groups) are non-negotiable – each campus must execute, but with contextual flexibility (when, where, and how groups meet) ([13:21]).
• Who ‘owns’ issues and solutions?
  • Global leads are expected to have “their finger on the pulse” in each ministry, both at their campus and network-wide.
  • They identify local issues and escalate or collaborate as needed with the executive team ([16:10]).
• Staff interaction & cross-campus learning
  • All staff (not just leads) are encouraged to visit and shadow at least one other campus per year to drive unity and learning ([17:33]).

Core Culture: The 8 Essential Practices

• Developed after a strategic team retreat, these eight practices define staff behavior—celebrated openly, integrated into onboarding, and assessed in biannual reviews ([19:24]).
• Regular recognition: Monthly staff email highlights examples; peer-to-peer nominations encourage broad participation.
• Notable practice: “Leverage change to move the mission”
  • Example: Adjusting worship times across campuses to better handle growth, and allowing for campus flexibility within clear boundaries ([24:25]).

“Something we just did within the last year was change those worship times. … We loved our original times, but we had to do something different to help with the growth situation.” – Lane Lowery [25:00]

High-Touch Ministry at Scale

• Combating the “big church = disconnected” myth:
  • Every first-time guest—about 70 per week across campuses—receives a personal phone call ([21:53]).
  • Hospital/shut-in visitations remain a high value, supported by paid staff in First Impressions roles.

  • “We want people to be seen and known and welcomed.” – Lane Lowery [22:13]

• Rich (host) underscores: “That’s over 3,500 calls a year … I’ve had churches much smaller say there’s no way we can organize to call five people a week. Friends, you got to do that kind of thing.” ([23:22])

---

Practical Steps for Churches Considering Structural Change

[26:20] Lane Lowery’s recommended first steps:

1. Honest self-assessment: Admit if your structure is outdated or not working.
2. Leadership buy-in: “If one guy wants to do it, but no one else does, that’s going to be tough.”
3. Clarity on current and future state: Know not just where you are, but where you need to go—and why.
4. Research: Talk to other churches (Family Church in West Palm served as a significant model).
5. Secure buy-in from key stakeholders: One-on-one conversations with future team leads explaining the why and expected impact.
6. Implement and iterate: The process took about a year from concept to rollout, and required careful alignment to Warren’s unique context ([28:30]).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Leadership & Model Change

• “We realized a single church model of leadership no longer worked for where we were.” – Lane Lowery [06:44]
• “Our former leadership structure didn’t promote the unity and the collaboration that we really wanted from our staff team… our ministry teams were in competition.” – Lane Lowery [07:53]

Team & Culture

• “It brings credibility when they come to the table with an idea, because they’re doing it.” – Lane Lowery [12:38]
• “To grow bigger, we got to grow smaller.” – Lane Lowery [21:53]
• “We want people to be seen and known and welcomed.” – Lane Lowery [22:13]

Change Management

• “First, you have to be willing to admit your structure is outdated or it’s not working. Change is hard, but it’s one of our essentials.” – Lane Lowery [26:20]
• “I’m not afraid to go find out what other people are doing … [Family Church] had it figured out.” – Lane Lowery [27:22]
• “I’m embarrassed to tell you. About a year.” (on how long the process to structural change took) – Lane Lowery [28:30]

Practical Meetings

• “Our executive leadership meeting is every Monday at 2 o’clock. Our global leaders meet twice a month. … [People] go, my gosh, that’s six meetings. But yeah, it is—but they’re meetings with purpose.” – Lane Lowery [30:15]

---

Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------| | 02:12 | Warren Church history, vision, and unique elements | | 04:51 | Growth metrics and multi-campus story | | 06:20 | Rationale and tipping point for switching models | | 09:04 | The global leadership structure explained | | 11:09 | Deep dive: ‘player-coach’ model – pros and cons | | 13:21 | Decision matrix: global vs. campus autonomy | | 17:33 | Staff rhythms: cross-campus site visits | | 19:24 | The 8 Essential Practices and culture-shaping | | 21:53 | High-touch ministry in a large church | | 24:25 | Embedding change as a value – worship time example | | 26:20 | Step-by-step playbook for change | | 28:30 | Change timeline and lessons learned | | 30:04 | Meeting structure and communication as keys |

---

Final Takeaways & Encouragement

• Embrace Change: “If something’s not working, you need to know the why. If not, be willing to embrace change and work to make the change.” – Lane Lowery [26:20]
• Prioritize Culture: Systems (like meetings, reviews, first impressions, cross-campus learning visits) are the backbone of large, healthy organizations—if they have clarity and purpose ([31:31]).
• Team Collaboration Matters: Structural clarity, regular touchpoints, and proactively celebrating values are non-negotiable for unity and momentum.
• Learn from Others: Don’t reinvent the wheel—research, learn, adapt, and contextualize from practitioners who are further down the road.

---

Connect with Lane Lowery & Warren Church

Website: Warren Church
Contact Lane: Find his email on the staff page

---

“We should be working together as the body of Christ… Let’s go find [others who’ve solved similar problems], talk with them, ask those questions.” – Rich Birch [29:29]

Transcript

[A]

Hey friends. Rich here from the Unseminary podcast. You know, we often talk about churches not doing well, but maybe your church is doing really well right now and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep the momentum going. It could be the time to start a new location. Maybe you've hesitated in the past few years, but now, now is the time for you to step out in faith again and launch your next location. That's why I've partnered with Portable Church Industries for a new resource called Launch a new location in 150 days or less. Portable Church has assembled a bunch of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum in a new location by sending part of your congregation back to their neighborhood and on mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step by step plan to launch your next or new location and a five minute readiness tool that will help you know if your church is ready to go. Listen, I really want you to drop by portablechurch.com rich that's portablechurch.com rich to get this free resource. Launch a new location in 150 days or less. Listen, if your church is growing, now is the time for you to step out and launch a new location. You know I'm passionate about this. So I want you to drop by portablechurch.com rich today to pick up this brand new resource. Launch a new location in 150 days or less again, one last time. That's portablechurch.com rich today.

[B]

Welcome to the Unseminary Podcast, the place where church leaders get practical insights, tips and strategies for ministry growth. Today you're stepping into something bigger than just a conversation. This podcast is part of a bold mission to help 100 churches grow by 1,000 people. Whether you're dreaming of increasing your impact in your community, empowering your team or, or reaching more people with the message of Jesus, you're in the right place. We're here to bring you the stuff you wish they taught in seminary. Ideas and tools you can put into action this week to see transformation in your ministry. Let's dive in.

[A]

Well, hey friends, welcome to the Unseminary Podcast. Really looking forward to today's conversation. You are going to be rewarded for tuning in. Thanks for being here. I think we've got one of the oldest churches that we've ever had on an episode. Warren church, founded in 1898, is one of the fastest growing churches in the country, which I love that because so many times I think we think of fast growing churches and like they're, they're like celebrate their fifth year and they're so excited for how long they've been around but this church been around for a long time. They got four campuses in South Carolina, in Georgia, Southern hospitality, generosity, strong Bible teaching and a passion for making disciples and multiplying disciple makers have been a heart of Warren from the very beginning. And behind all they do they also have a sports and fitness center, programs they have that really try to minister to the whole person. Lane Laurie is with us today. He is the executive pastor. Welcome to the show. So glad you're here Lane.

[C]

Thank you so much Rich. I am grateful to be a part of this.

[A]

Oh, this is going to be a good conversation. Why don't you kind of fill in the picture. Tell us a little bit. That's kind of the bio of who the church is. Tell us about the church, kind of give us the flavor. And tell us a little bit about when you say executive pastor. I know as an XP it's like every XP looks a little different. Tell us about your role.

[C]

Sure, sure. Well, as you said, Warren is about 127 year old church. We are multi site and it's happened just incredible. We launched our first multi site campus Grovetown right at 11 years ago and then within the last five years we've adopted two other churches. So we did a church plant if you will which was our first multi site and then the Lord brought us two other churches and it's been incredible. We also have a Hope Women's center which is a crisis pregnancy center that we oversee and we are just launch what we're calling the Hope Mental Wellness center that will open the doors of that in January. And so we've already had a counseling ministry going on here but we've expanded that and we're really excited about about that. We've got a large church staff here and I get to serve as executive pastor. We have another executive pastor as well which I'll talk about later on who's just a phenomenal leader and so just grateful that the Lord allows us to participate in this together. And we've got an incredible leader. Dr. David McKinney. McKinley is our senior past. He's been with us 17 years and the Lord has just done an incredible work here. As you said, we are in the deep south and it's a fantastic ministry. I'm grateful that the Lord has allowed me to be here. I've been here 19 years and seen a lot of change. I've had a front row seat to some exponential growth and it's been a lot of fun to be a Part of that.

[A]

Why don't we talk a little bit of metrics there? In the time from when you came 19 years ago to today, what does that look like from a growth point of view?

[C]

Just to give.

[A]

Give people. I know you're not, like, you're not a bragging kind of guy. You don't want to brag about it, but talk us through that. That helps give a little bit of context for the conversation we're having.

[C]

Great. Well, when I came here 19 years ago, we were Warren Church, Augusta. That was it. And. And since then, we've planted three other churches and we've launched a Hope Women's center, like I said, the Crisis Pregnancy Center. And we are in the process of launching a Hope Mental Wellness Center. So we've. When I got here, we were probably around 3,000 members total. We're over almost 7,000 now. Like I said, we've, we've. We've been able to adopt some churches and we've been able to just really engage our community and just an incredible way. Obviously, you know, staff is growing. I remember when I got here, our full staff, we could meet in a, in a, like a life group classroom. Now we have to meet in a large. We're up to 270 employees at this point on our six campuses, if you will. So we've just seen incredible. Like I said, we just seen the Lord do incredible things over the last 19 years.

[A]

Well, I'd love to talk about that, particularly the kind of leadership structure stuff I know as we. It's like everyone sounds great. Let's add a bunch of staff, let's grow that side do. But that does come with some tension. I'm sure, I'm sure you've bumped into things along there that have been a little bit tricky. Talk us through what, what has that looked like as the kind of, as your structure has changed over these years?

[C]

You know, it's kind of like going from, you know, having no kids to a kid to a child, and then having two child. You know, two children. And then if you multiples after that, you know, you've just got to change the way you parent. And as our church has gone from one site location to really six now as we, you know, think about the other campuses, we just came to a place where we realized a single church model of leadership no longer worked for where we were, you know, going from one to two was, was. It was a stretch. But going from two to six has been a huge stretch. And so as I shared with, you know, we've had exponential growth, especially over the past five years. Rich, you know, adding the additional campuses and the additional, you know, the Hope Women center and Hope Mental Wellness Center. You know, so going from two campuses to six campuses, we realized that our single single church and then our dual church model, leadership model was no longer, it just wasn't effective. It became evident that Dr. McKinley and myself, that we couldn't effectively oversee the operations and staff on each of our campuses. You know, we've got incredibly gifted campus pastors and we had to equip and empower them to lead with vision. Not just give them tasks, but give them vision and responsibility. So the key tipping point that really caused us to regroup and to implement a new leadership structure was when we realized at one point we looked up, we had three different discipleship models going on at our.

[A]

Oh gosh. Oh my goodness.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. And as we noticed that, that just, that's just not going to work. And so we also noticed that our former leadership structure didn't promote, it didn't promote the, the unity and the, and the collaboration that we really wanted from our staff team. You know, it felt like our ministry teams, Rich, were in competition with one another Rather than really working together as a team. We always use a statement we're better together. We really believe that. But the way our leadership model was structured, it didn't promote unity, it didn't promote collaboration. And we needed more team collaboration.

[A]

Yeah, that's good. I love that. So, yeah, just kind of stepping back. Statistically, 50% or around 50% of multi site churches don't get beyond, still are not getting beyond three locations. And I'm convinced a part of the reason why that is, is because of these issues that this even just the structure stuff and how we interact with each other, it's like it's working against what we're trying to do. It's. It's working against the mission that God's called us to. So let's get a little bit practical there. Defining concrete turns. What do you, what are the roles? How does that all fit together? How do you, what's the like 2 minute explanation of how you talk about how you stuff gets done at Warren?

[C]

What's that look like? Sure. So we developed this, we call it a global leadership structure. And basically our global leadership team is. It's led by Pastor Andrew Bryan, who's our executive pastor of ministries and leadership development, one of the best young leaders I've ever been around. And this team consists of the following ministry areas. So we have eight global ministry Teams. Our preschool and children's team is led by Carol Young. Our next gen, which is our middle and high school team, is led by Pastor Shane Padgett. Our spiritual formation and discipleship team is led by Pastor Corey Baxter. We have a local and global missions team, which is led by Pastor Mark Clyburn. We have a global worship team led by Pastor Joseph McKinley. We have a global communications and connections team led by Pastor Drew Robinson. A counseling and support group team led by Pastor Brett Legg. And then our Hope women's center is led by Dr. Jacqueline. Each of these people are player coaches. They are overseeing an area of ministry on one of our campuses. But then they're also overseeing the, the greater the overall ministry for all the campuses. For example, example, Pastor Corey Baxter oversees our spiritual formation and discipleship. That's our, our life group ministry, our Sunday school ministry, if you will, and our discipleship groups and all of our discipleship ministries. So Pastor Corey, he's on our Grovetown campus and he is the day to day operations for that. But then he also kind of rises up to the 30,000 foot view and he oversees the discipleship and spiritual formation ministry for all of our campuses. Which is why, like I said, we got to a point where we looked up one day and we realized we had three different discipleship models going on, you know, within, you know, three of our church campuses. We thought, this isn't, this isn't right. This isn't working well. So we thought, let's go to a global leadership model so that we have input and someone kind of overseeing over watching that for all of our campuses. Like I said, these guys and girls are player coaches. They're, they're on boots on the ground on a campus. But then they rise up and lead the greater ministry of Warren as well.

[A]

So I'd love to double click on the player coach. That sounds like a conviction that you've had. That's something. Hey, we want to make sure we don't just have like the head office people who like, like their whole job is head office. We want them grounded in local ministry. Talk us through that decision. What's been maybe some of the upside of that, but then also some of the challenge of the player coach model.

[C]

Well, the challenge is it's a lot more to do. You know, they've got plenty to say grace over. Just like Pastor Corey, you know, our Grovetown church, they're running over 2000 every Sunday or about 1500. Every Sunday, about 1500. Excuse me. And so he's got plenty to say Grace over just dealing with his own stuff with, you know, we believe that every person needs to be in a life group. You know, we believe every person needs to be in a discipleship relationship. So the challenge is saying, hey, Pastor Corey, you're doing a great job, but I'm going to add more to your, more to your table, you know, and.

[A]

So, but you're so good at your job. We're going to give you more.

[C]

Isn't that how it works? But the good thing is we do have high capacity leaders, Rich. I mean these folks are so we've got to be careful not to overdo it and not to, you know, meet them to death. But you know as well as I do, you got to have meetings. I mean, you have to. And so the stretch was, are we giving them too much? But they've risen to the, to the, to the challenge and they've done a great job. I'm so proud of our team. They've done such a great job and they're continuing to. So I think it's a good thing that they're still in, you know, they're still doing the work of the ministry because it, to me, it brings credibility when they come to the table with an idea, they're doing it. And so the down. The only downfall we found is just that I got to be careful that I don't burn my, Burn my folks out.

[A]

Yeah, that's good. Okay, that's good. Well, walk us through kind of the decision matrix. This is my language. Not your, your language, but oftentimes there's like a global versus campus. There's like, okay, who gets to own what. What about local expression versus we're doing this together as a church. What decisions are campus level by default? What's get what. What's get escalated across the entire church. Talk us through what that looks like.

[C]

Sure, sure. Well, well, we have an executive leadership team and it consists of our senior pastor, Dr. McKinley. It consists of our Grovetown, each of our campus pastors. Pastor Joseph Humphries is on our Grovetown campus. Pastor Steven Newman is on our Belvedere campus. Pastor Andrew Skelton is on our Crossbridge campus. And then of course Andrew Bryan, our other executive pastor. So every Monday we meet together and everything is funneled through that. So we are constantly, every Monday at 2, it's, we're going, we're going to meet every Monday at 2 o' clock. And, and so therefore, you know, everything runs through that filter Whenever, whenever we're together. Our senior pastor on executive lead team. That they set the vision, we set the vision for the church and the ministry. And you know, an easy example of a global decision and how it translates to the campus level is like our life group ministry, Sunday school, if you will, our life group ministry. We believe that that biblical community is essential and we expect every church campus to have a strategy to offer and promote life group ministry. You know, when a life group happens to determine, you know, it's happened to determine at the campus level. You know, like for example, Grovetown, all of their life groups meet off campus because they don't have education space throughout the week so that all their life groups are in homes during the week. Our other three campuses, we have a hybrid model where we have some groups on campus and some groups off campus. But at the end of the day we're going to do life group. We believe that's a stack pole ministry. Just like we're going to have worship on Sunday morning, we are going to offer life groups. You can offer them on Sunday morning or you can offer them in, in homes during the week, but we are going to offer life groups. So that's kind of one of those big picture things that, that we are, that we make sure is happening on each of our campuses that we're intentional about that we are intentionally trying to get people from the pew into the life group. It's a little bit more difficult when you take them from, you know, being on campus versus in homes. You got to be a little more intentional. It. But to me that's, that's one of those big picture items that, that we, you know, we're pretty hard, hard pressed on. We're going to, to have life groups.

[A]

So again, I'm trying because I know there's people that are listening in that, that are living in the tension of this and they're trying to sort this out. Talk me through the kind of, in other contexts we've talked about the dotted line, solid line responsibility. So like, who is the first mover? So there's something, using your example, there's something happening in a campus like, hey, we're not seeing, you know, maybe enough people are experiencing that kind of life group biblical community. That's not happening well in one campus. Which team is that is going to be the team that's going to be like, okay, we got to solve this. Is it the global leadership team or the executive team or both or a combo of both or how does that, how does that work together?

[C]

Yeah, that's a great question. I'm counting on our global leads having Their finger on the pulse of what's going on with each of their areas of ministry.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

Singly as well as globally. Obviously, as an executive team, we. We look at statistics every Monday. I've got. I get. I bring a report to that meeting every Monday on attendance, on worship attendance, life group attendance, all of that. So, you know, we're seeing it as well. But I'm counting on my global leads to. That's why it's important that they're also in the mix. Not just leaving, but they're also in the mix with it. So I'm counting on them to bring to us any issues or problems they may be facing or any hurdles that they need to try to get over, and then we can speak into that and help them do that. But that's why we can't be all places at all times. But that's why we have teams that are doing that. So that's really. Has really helped. And honestly, going to this global leadership model, it's allowed us to employ more people into ministry who, like I said, aren't just tasked people. They're casting vision, set leading. And so we're counting on them to do that.

[A]

Yeah. Okay, that's good. How do you. Kind of an adjacent issue, the global leadership team is the expectation that they're getting out and seeing other campuses, like actually getting on to other locations on Sundays. What does that. What's the rhythm look like on that front?

[C]

Yeah, that's fantastic. Honestly. Yes, Rich. We need them to. And what we've challenged our staff to do, and it's hard because, like I said, you got enough to say grace over in your own. On your own campus on a Sunday morning. But we challenged all of our staff to try to get to another campus at least one time during the year. That's all staff people. That's not just the global leads. That's, you know, that's, you know, Beth Power, our Augusta preschool director. I'd love for Beth to be able to put her eyes on each of our campuses at least one time during. During the year. And they're doing that. And when they do, it brings greater, you know, unity. And she sees ideas. Every time I go to a new one of our other campuses, I see them doing something do. It's so cool to see. Like I said, we've got incredibly gifted leaders and they're smart and they're doing great stuff, but I would never know about it if I didn't go get on one of their campuses. But we got to be intentional about it. It doesn't just happen. Like I said on Sunday morning, my home base, if you would be, is on the Augusta campus. But I've got to make myself say, no, I'm gonna. I'm gonna not be signed up for any duties that this Sunday. I'm gonna go to the Crossbridge campus this Sunday. But it's got to be an intentional. It's like putting it on your calendar. I've got to do that or it.

[A]

Will plan for it.

[C]

Yeah. So we constantly talk to our staff about doing that, especially for our. Have to have them doing that.

[A]

Yeah, that's great. That's great. Pivoting in a kind of a slightly different direction, but talking about obviously these same issues. You had passed along a document that caught my attention, the eight essential practices document that really defines. Talks through, you know, the behaviors really of your team. Talk us through. How has this, these eight essential practices, how have they helped really take this kind of thing from being like, those are nice ideas sitting on a wall somewhere to like actually making a difference in the way you oper us through this. And we'll put it. We'll link to this in the show. Notes for folks that are listening in.

[C]

Sure, sure. Well, what you said is exactly what we didn't want to happen. This came out of a strategic leadership meeting that our executive team went on almost two years ago now. And, and that's what we. You know how you've done this too? You know, you're an xp. You go to, you go to a conference or something, you get some great stuff and you, and you bring it back, and next thing you know, it's in a folder, it's up on your shelf. We didn't want to do that. So what we do this is. So we constantly celebrate it. When we see somebody doing it, we celebrate it. Every person who is, who is hired during the inboarding process, this is part of the onboarding process. They get a copy of this and their leader, their, their, Their supervisor reviews it with them. We do biannual reviews. We have review and in March and in April. Excuse me, September. And in April. And our September review is literally they. On how they are working through the eight essential practices. Each of these are on that review. And we walk through that with them. We talk through that with them. You know, so, so we, like I said so. We make sure that, that, that we are it. It's becoming a part of our DNA. It's only two years old, but it really is now becoming our DNA. We send out a monthly staff email because again, you got so much going on. Try to keeping, trying to keep everyone informed of what's going on. Upcoming events we celebrate birthdays and you know, groceries and we always highlight a somebody who's done the eight essential practices. Plus there's always a link in that rich that if you see somebody doing that, you can click on that link and type up a little synopsis, you know, sharing some information how they saw so and so, you know, exhibiting one of these practices. So we're really trying to push this in making it part of our DNA.

[A]

Yeah, that's so good. I love it. It's so good. One of the ones that caught me, there's a friends, I would encourage you to check out this document and go and do likewise. You know, don't rip off their stuff but come up with your, your own on this. But one of the ones that caught my attention was connect with people. So one of the misnomers about very large churches like yours is that people aren't connected, that it's just everybody coming to the show. That's actually statistically not true. Churches over 2000 have a higher percentage of people connected to small groups and in volunteering opportunities than a church under 200. What specific behaviors do you expect from your staff? Staff to keep the ministry as high touch as possibly can as a large church. And how do you, how does it measure that? What's that actually look like?

[C]

Sure, great question, man. That's a great question. We always use the word, you know, in order to grow bigger, we got to grow smaller. Obviously we got to get people in life groups in that small group community. But we place a high value on our first impressions team ministry and therefore we have paid, we have a paid person who oversees our fit ministry first impressions team on each of our campuses because it's so important, important especially on a large church. You know, we'll have over 2,000 people on the Augusta campus on Sunday morning. We want people to be seen and known and welcomed and so we call every first time guest. Now on a typical Sunday we'll have 70 first time guests across our four campuses. But they will get a personal phone call within that week. We make sure that it's happening within that week and our connections pastor helps facilitate that. So we have, you know, first time, you know, guest calls. If you're a first time guest on a campus, we give you a gift and we, we want to engage with them. We still visit people in the hospitals. We place a high priority on that Rich. We, you know, we've got hospital lists from each of our campuses. And we. We have a person. We have, you know, pastors on staff who go visit folks in hospital. We pray with people before surgeries. We visit our shut in. Our shut in members. And so we. We really do place a high value on that. One of the best things is our senior pastor has a gift of shut up shepherding. He's a pastor shepherd, and so he exhibits that behavior as well. But it is a high value for us, and we spend time talking about it and we invest money in it.

[A]

That's so good. I love that. Friends, I want to underline something you blew over really quick, but I want to underline something here. You talked about 70, you know, guests a week, all getting personal calls. I've said this in other contexts. You know, we've talked about that kind of thing being a best practice. Like, hey, we've got to reach out to people. We can't just send them an email. We got to try to connect. So, friends, that's over 3,500 calls a year that this church is doing. That's a commitment to. I've had churches much smaller than your church say there's no way we can organize to call five people a week, 10 people a week, friends. You got to do that kind of thing. That's. What a great inspiration for us. Another one of these. Again, friends, check the link below. That really caught my eye was, I don't think I've ever seen this in a change document quite. Or like a culture document like. Like this. You said, leverage change to move the mission. It talks about the idea of how flexibility and kind of looking for what's going to, you know, need to be adapted in the future is embedded in your staff culture. So what did you stop doing? What's that look like? How are you simplifying? I love that that's embedded right in your staff essentials.

[C]

Love that. Well, I mean, something immediately came to mind is we changed our worship times, you know, and. And that's. No, I mean, that's a. A pretty big deal. But we changed our worship times on all four of our campuses and two of our campuses. We added more time between the worship services so that they could onload and offload their campuses because, you know, praise God. I mean, it's a winner's problem, you know, because so many people are coming. So. So at the end of the day, we said, you know, we loved our original times, but we. We had to do something different to help with the. With the growth situation. So we changed our worship times and, you know, and went through that whole process of doing that across and we even ourselves to allow different campuses to, to. To. To set up times. That's bet that best fits them. You know, I'm saying we're not like, well, that's. God, everybody's going to do it at this time. At that time, we're saying, look what works best in your individual context. So we, you know, that's what we did. We just. That. That was the thing that came to my mind immediately, that's something we just did within the last year, was change those worship times. And it made sense because we were setting, you know, we were setting away how we did it for many, many years. But it's worked really well.

[A]

Yeah, I love that. Well, I love how, you know what you're hearing, friends that are listening in, you're hearing, here's a church that took some bold steps to try to change their structure, to try to better have their structure better serve where they were as a church and looking to the future, which is fantastic, I think, inspiration for lots of us as we're thinking about those kinds of issues. Yeah, I want to leverage you as a coach. Let's say there's a church listening in today. Who knows, maybe it's an XP of a church of 15, and they're like, gosh, we know that maybe our structure is not working. We're at that. You know, we've launched a couple locations. We're trying to stretch to three or four. We've got vision for that. What would be some first steps, maybe 30 day, 60 day, 90 day steps that you would suggest that a church leader would take based on where you've gone through, as you've kind of, you know, reoriented your structure, tried to get better on this front. Help us think about that.

[C]

That's a great question, Rich. First, I think you got to be willing to admit your structure is outdated or it's not working. You know, change is hard, hard, and, you know, not a whole lot of people like change, but it's one of our essentials, so we've got to be able to embrace it and be willing to look at things differently. Second, I think your leadership has to be willing to change. You know, if one guy on the staff wants to do it, but no one else does, well, that's. That's going to be tough. Third, you need to identify where you currently are and where you want to go and the why behind it. It's kind of like the old statement where you start with the end in Mind, you know, don't. I don't think you need to change just for this, you know, to change. But if something's not working and, and you need to, you need to know the why. If it's not, then you got to be willing to embrace it and, and work to make the change next. I think you got to develop a new leadership structure that'll help you accomplish your desired outcome. Look at what you're doing. I called a number of churches before we did this. I mean I really looked and I saw some things that were happening. I tell you, Family church down in. Yeah. Down in West Palm is doing a great job. Honestly. I'm modeled our ministry after what they're doing.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Fits us our contact. But they had it figured out, man. And I'm not afraid to go find out, you know, what other people are doing. That's, that's. Then seek buy in from your key leaders and stakeholders. What we did was, was once we started, you know, developing this structure, I went to those, those, those team leads that we had identified and I sat down and myself and Andrew Bryan, our other executive pastor, sat down and had conversation with them and we really shared with them the why. Because guess what, we're getting ready to add a bunch of stuff to their plate. And they had to, I had to have their buy in before it to work and praise the Lord, they all bought in, man. They saw the, they saw the need for it, they felt the pain of not doing it. So, you know, so we met with, we took the time to have hour long meetings with all of those key stakeholders and they got and got their buy in and finally we made the change. You know, we just finally had to jump and do it.

[A]

Mm. What was the timeline, you know, in your. From like, hey, I think we need to make a change through research phase all the way through to adoption. How long did that process take?

[C]

I'm embarrassed to tell you. About a year.

[A]

No, that's not unreal. I heard something like that. That, that's. I say that because it's like it doesn't. It can't happen overnight if you're going to do it well, you know, and you've got to walk people through it. That does that makes sense. So about a year. That, that's good. What part of it was the longest piece of the, the, the puzzle, figuring.

[C]

Out exactly how it would work in our context. You know, I saw what family church was doing there. Now they're, I think they're up to 15 campuses or something like that. But, but I saw, you know, and so seeing what they were doing as well as some other churches and then saying, okay, how can this really work for Warren Church? How can it really? And so really figuring that out and then presenting that to our senior pastor and our global pastors because at the end of the day their people are going to have to take on more responsibility and do do some things. And so getting, I'm getting their buy in the cool thing. That was a pretty quick buy in on their part and then implementing it. So just developing that whole structure and showing the need for it and then implementing it was about, about a year.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That, you know, that doesn't surprise me at all. I think it takes time to work it through. I love the idea of listening to other churches. Obviously that's actually at the core of why we started this podcast was, you know, we're to able 800 and some odd episodes in. I really do think, man, there's, we should be working together as a body of Christ and somebody else has faced most of the problems that we face as a church. Let's go find them, talk with them, ask those questions. So this has been fantastic as we come to kind of land today's episode. Anything else you'd love to share? Any kind of final words or encouragements that people might be listening in today?

[C]

Yeah, I think Rich, I think the biggest thing is communication. You know, amongst our staff we've grown so much, which has been incredible and we've added so many more staff members. And I know a lot of people don't like meetings and I don't like to have meetings for the sake of meeting. That's why I encourage every person. If you're gonna have a meeting, make sure you have an agenda, make sure you have a set time, but you gotta get together. And so I think the biggest thing that's helped us to make for this move to be successful and it has been successful, I'm really encouraged by that, is we have an executive leadership meeting every Monday at 2 o'cl. Our global leaders meet twice a month. Our global leaders meet with their teams twice a month. Every campus has a Tuesday at 2 o' clock staff meeting every week. And that's for some people go, my gosh, that's, that's six meetings. But yeah, it is, but they're meetings with purpose and they're not, you know, three and a half hour meetings. They're you know, 45 minutes to an hour with an agenda, agenda with action steps. When the meeting's over, People walk out of there knowing what the next thing with the next thing is, but being willing to do that and seeing that that it really is important because there's so many moving parts and if we're not all on the same page, something's going to break down and but it takes getting together face to face. You know, email when you, when you need to. But those face to face meetings are really important.

[A]

Yeah, I agree totally. Well, and even the way you're thinking about it there I think is critical for folks to lean in on is thinking clearly on kind of what the system of meetings is like. When is the best time to have the right meeting? I love the idea of like, hey, all our the thing like you've said, hey, our campus teams all have a Tuesday at 2 meeting. It's like predictable. We know exactly we've got to make this. We got to make the rhythm of what we do. The weekly hey, every weekend it comes whether we like it or not. Use that rhythm to help us push the culture forward rather than being kind of of overwhelmed by it. Well, Lane, this has been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you investing time in us today. If people want to connect with you or connect with the church, where do we want to send them online?

[C]

Yeah, just go to Warren Warren Church. That's our website and you can connect with me right there on the staff page. My email address is lanel Warren Church.

[A]

Love it. Thanks so much, Lane. Appreciate you being here today. Thank you, sir.

[C]

Blessings to you, Rich. Thank you.

[B]

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Unseminary Podcast. If you found today's conversation helpful, I'd share it with a friend in ministry. It's a simple way to spark new ideas and grow together. Also, don't Forget to visit unseminary.com to sign up for our email list. You'll get exclusive resources and practical tools delivered straight to your inbox to help you lead your church more effectively. Most importantly, take what you learned today and put it into action this week. Ministry impact starts with small, intentional steps. See you next time.