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unSeminary Podcast
Pioneering Bilingual Multisite Ministry with Eric Garza
00:41:40
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Eric Garza, Executive Pastor at Cross Church in Texas. Founded in 1995, Cross Church has grown into one of the fastest-growing churches in America,
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- [00:01]
A
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B
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 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.
- [01:59]
A
Hey friends. Rich here from the Unseminary Podcast. Honored that you would tune in and listen today. Excited for this conversation. Literally this week I had two conversations around what we're talking about today with people who are wrestling with these issues and I'm sure that many of you are wrestling with these as well. Honored to have another executive pastor. We love executive pastors. At Unseminary. We've got Eric Garza. He is the Executive pastor at Cross Church. They were founded in 1995. They're located in Texas and is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. I think they've got 12 campuses if I'm counting correctly, which is incredible. Cross Church is in a predominantly Hispanic area and is likely has one of the largest bilingual ministries in the country. Eric, welcome to the show. So glad you're here, Rich.
- [02:46]
C
Thanks for the opportunity. Happy to be with you and happy to have this conversation.
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A
Well, this is great. So obviously you guys have experienced incredible growth and it's amazing things gone on there. Why don't you kind of unpack the story a little bit? Tell us a little bit about what the ministry looks like today and then about your role of executive pastor of campuses specifically. I know that kind of looks different in all, you know, every church, but tell us. Talk us through that.
- [03:07]
C
Yeah, well, you said it. 1995, almost 31 years ago, the church started senior pastors Jaime and Rosemary Loya here in deep South Texas. So for context, we're about 20 minutes north of the border with Mexico. So right on the bottom, Deep South Texas, right on the tip of Texas. And so our, our demographic is predominantly Hispanic. Latino. And we're in a part of the country that sometimes we're. We're the last to receive news or information, although that's changed recently with SpaceX here in the region and LNG just a lot of economic growth. Our church, over the last, I would say five years, we went from. Well, let me backtrack 2018 this way. We went from one location to now 12 locations. So it's been about a little over seven years where we went from one side where we had in San Benito, our main campus, our original location, and then expanded to the upper part of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, then to the southern part of the valley, and then now even in San Antonio, our first campus out of our, our region. So we got seven English campuses and five Spanish campuses. And so it's been a challenging. It's been a challenging season, but it's been. Been a very rewarding season. And God has just enabled us to really break the mold of what local ministry looks like here in our region and expand beyond one site to multiple sites. And in the last Rich, in the last 18 to 20 months, we've doubled in size as an organization. And so that's why Outreach magazine, I believe this is the third or fourth time in recent years have recognized it as one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And we're just really blessed by that.
- [04:57]
A
Yeah, that's so good. Give us a sense of the distance between those 12, like from the original location to the farthest. How does all that. What's that look like?
- [05:06]
C
So right now in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, within 20 to 30 minutes, you can be at a cross church location. So our first campus was in the upper valley in the Mission area. That's about a 35 minute drive from our original location. And then the other locations from our original site, they're about 25 minutes or so, no more than half an hour. So yeah, that's why we say anywhere in the rugan Valley within 30 minutes max you can be at a crosschurch location for service.
- [05:39]
A
Yeah, I love that. You know, one of the things that we've seen about multisite is even to the way you're talking about it there, you know, it really is a regional strategy. It's like, hey, we're trying to reach the Rio Grande Valley. This is a, you know, is a particular cultural milieu. It's an area, it's people are, you know, have a lot in common. And I love that you're, you've saturated that area. Well, multisite ministry looks different from in every context. You know, like multi site, there's like a number of different ways to skin the cat. At 12 locations you are in the rare minority. Last, last I saw 50% of multisite churches don't get beyond 3. It's like single digit percentage get beyond 10. You know, at 12 you are, you're in the rare thin air. So I'd love to kind of hear what does multisite look like for you when you say your multi site? You know, seven English, five Spanish. What's that look like?
- [06:31]
C
Yeah, so we got seven physical locations and so some of our locations double up. In other words, they have an English campus with their own English pastor and then they have a Spanish congregation with their own Spanish pastor. And so it's for us, we are the, I believe we're the largest church in, in, in deep South Texas. And you're right, we kind of broke the mold expanding to multisite several ago. Our pastor had that vision and desire to. The biggest thing is we wanted to go to where people are at instead of expecting people to come to us. And so our, our vision is to raise up an army to lead a spiritual revolution. And so we felt that in order to do that we had to go into the communities where people are located instead of expecting them to come to us. And, and when we started doing that through multi site strategy and campus campuses, well we just saw right. Our growth increase, we saw our reach increase, our influence in increase. And so for us we are a Latino predominantly area. And so we have a lot of speaking Spanish people that want a modern, contemporary, non denominational type of ministry that in our region really wasn't available up until several years ago. And we were kind of the forefront, the pioneers of offering that. And then now that God has given us resources and abilities to really be at the cutting edge of providing ministry for the whole family. And a lot of local churches are just not in a position to do that. And so we feel humbled and we feel responsible and we feel blessed that we get to go expand and do multi side with both reaching English speaking congregants and then of course diving into making sure that we cannot ignore, especially in our region, a predominantly Hispanic, excuse me, Spanish speaking, a demographic.
- [08:22]
A
Yeah, that's great. What do, what do you hold in common between the campuses? What, like, what does teaching look like? What does, you know, music, kids, ministry, that sort of thing, and compare and contrast, you know, both English and Latino, Spanish, you know, Spanish speaking, what does that look like? How do you, how's all that work together?
- [08:42]
C
So our services, our service formats, whether it's in English or Spanish, are very much similar and identical. The only difference is the language. Okay. And so we'll have worship set lists. The songs may vary differently, but as far as the structure of the service, the ministry we offer, whatever we offer in English, we offer in Spanish. Next gen, pastoral care, prayer, first impressions, cross, kids, kids, ministry, Whatever we offer in English, we offer in, in Spanish. And so for us, we've, we've really been adamant about centralizing all of our ministries and our systems to where every campus location pretty much looks the same. The building might be different, the size might be different, the size of the congregation might be different, but as far as the ministry apparatus, it's identical. Whatever you see in one location, you're going to see at another location. And so when we launch campuses and when we launch services, we do so first making sure that we're going to be able to provide as excellent a ministry as possible. And so for us, we offer the same, just, just in different languages. And so you're not going to go to one location in one part of the valley and then go to a different location in a different part of the valley and experience different teams or different structure or different layouts or different branding. You're going to see very much the exact same stuff.
- [10:04]
A
Yeah, that's good. And that's, you know, as a commentary, friends that are listening in. You know, I've been involved in multisite for a long time, 20, almost 25 years. And early on there was a lot of debate around, like, should we have lots of local contextualization? Like as in, you know, from one campus that's 25 minutes away from Another, like, how different should it be or how common should it be? And for sure, we've seen over the last two decades that churches like Cross Church that are really trying to focus more on what do we have in common, rather than, hey, let's try to do a whole bunch of things different at all. The various locations really are prevailing in this model, in this approach.
- [10:44]
C
Yeah. So for us, that's great. For us, what we do is, like I said, the ministry we provide is identical across the board. But campuses do have a little bit of local autonomy in this regard. Maybe their community that they're in is doing a citywide prayer walk or they're doing a Independence Day celebration that another community might not be doing. They have the opportunity to dive into a local context that may pertain to that campus, that another. Another city may not be having a similar or same event. So that other campus may not be doing it. So they do have, especially with our community engagement endeavors, if something is happening in their community that. That we can be a part of and that we want to be a part of, then we'll allow the local campus to make that call and do so. And then when we do, like, baptisms or child dedications, we'll do them all on the same weekend. But then the local campus might say, hey, our campus will do it Saturday morning. And then another campus will say, we'll do it the same day, but we'll do it Saturday afternoon or we'll do it Sunday after. So in other words, we try to have a calendar where everybody is synced up. That way we can tell the everybody, hey, no matter what location you're at this weekend, we're going to offer water baptisms. But then we tell them, go to our social media or at your local campus. They'll give you further details as to the time of those baptisms. So there is some local contextualization with community engagement with. Because not every community is created equal. Our ministry is similar across the board. It's identical. But then the local context does play a part. And so the campuses do have to be a little bit flexible with. With that.
- [12:27]
A
Okay, help us understand, you know, you're leading the way really here, particularly on, you know, having services both in English and in Spanish, really reaching and discipling people across language and cultural lines. I think this is an area. This is the thing where I said I had multiple conversations about this this week. I think every growing church in the country is asking this question. Every zip code is more multicultural, multiethnic today than it was 10 years ago and it will be more multicultural, multiethn 10 years from now. That's just true. And so we're all trying to figure out this question, but I think frankly a lot of churches have struggled with this, so unpack that a little bit. How, what are you learning? How are you keeping these things aligned? How are you working? You know, I'm sure it's easy, I'm sure there's no problems. But talk us through what you're learning.
- [13:16]
C
On that thinking, my man, that is.
- [13:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, talk us about that.
- [13:19]
C
So for us, there's been a lot of trial and error, right. We say we have a great system, but it's not a perfect system. And as you grow and expand, you're gonna have to adapt and tweak some things in your current system. And then some systems that served you in one season don't serve you in another season. So a system that served us with four or five locations doesn't serve us with six or seven or ten or more. Right. So you have to adjust yourself. So for us, the, the, you know, millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, those are the ones that even though they may come from a Spanish background, are English speakers. So you're going to see a lot of that English ministry. In fact, even in our Spanish congregations though, we offer Spanish ministry across the board. You'll notice or will notice that our next gen, a vast majority of them, I mean 85, 90 plus, are English speakers. And so we're not gonna do everything ex, you know, 50, 50 bilingual. We're going to do things that are going to help reach a demographic and reach people across the age spectrum, giving them their specific ministry in their required or preferred language. And so for us, how do you do multi site ministry in a bilingual context? If you know something that we don't, please tell us because we've, we've, we've grown to adapt this in our context. Rich, there is to our, to our knowledge, no thriving ministry in America that sets a precedent for how to do multi sided bilingual ministry. We're pretty much the trailblazers here. Our senior pastor, our, our executive team, our, our church and, and really pioneering what this looks like. And so that's why I say some things we've tried that haven't worked. You know, when do you offer service times? When do Spanish speaking people prefer Sunday service? English speakers? And, and so we've tried different things and we just learned over the years what's worked for us and what hasn't worked for us. And again, it's been through, through a lot of prayer, through a lot of trial and error and figuring things out as we go. Now, we have learned from other ministries, of course, that's, there's wisdom in that. But in our context, reaching a predominantly Latino area and where you have a dual language demographic, that has been a challenge that we've really. And here's the thing. We, we've become really good at it because we, a lot of our pastors and teaching pastors and speakers are bilingual, myself included. So our senior pastor, phenomenal. The man will preach bilingual and translate himself live on stage. He's got a gift. He's a phenomenal pastor, a phenomenal leader. And a lot of our, our pastors, our campus pastors are bilingual. And so they're able to flow in that dynamic that is attractive to families. It doesn't slow things down. And, and it gives them a greater footing in their community, being able to connect with dual language people.
- [16:15]
A
Yeah, that's, that's, that's incredible. I was going to ask the kind of. Is there like a profile difference between people that are attending the English and Spanish services? Maybe you could unpack that a little bit more. In the Spanish services, are you doing, I can understand, within the service, that makes sense. But are you also doing Spanish kids ministry associated with that or is it English? Because I know some churches that will do. They'll offer like a Spanish service in another room kind of thing, but then they're sharing a shared English kids ministry. But talk us through kind of what is the, the difference in the communities? Kind of Double click on that. On that. You know, it's a white.
- [16:53]
C
Great question. It's a wide spectrum, right? You're going to have, you're going to have guests and congregants from, you know, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different income levels, different in both services. And, and in one campus, you might have more of one, one specific socioeconomic background than another campus when it comes to kids, for example. Kids ministry. At our Spanish service, we will still offer kids ministry in English because like I said, really the next gen. And kids, you know, between the ages of really, you know, infants and adolescents all the way to high school, teenage years and beyond. Young adults are English speakers. So we'll have a Spanish service going on in the main sanctuary. And in kids ministry, it'll be in English with this caveat, we fully understand that there might be some Spanish speaking only kids that attend. And that's perfectly fine. We're prepared for that. So we'll have bilingual teachers, bilingual staffers, coordinators, that are part of our kids ministry, that should that occur, they're going to get exactly the same. We don't water it down. Our curriculum is in Spanish, our videos are in Spanish. We'll have teachers that'll speak to kids in Spanish, including with special needs. Right. And so there's. We do our absolute best to ensure that we provide as excellent a ministry as possible to every without. And I use the word watering down with. But you know, I hope you get the sense of what I'm trying to say.
- [18:19]
A
I understand. Yeah.
- [18:19]
C
Without minimizing the impact and the quality of experience or teaching that they're going to get.
- [18:26]
A
Yeah. That's incredible. I love that. That's. Yeah. You've set a high bar in a really great, beautiful way, you know, to make that happen. Let's double click on this again. We've kind of already touched on this, but I'd love to circle back on the alignment and you know, and autonomy issue. So, you know, most, we'll call them single language, multi site churches. They struggle with this issue. You know, this is like, it's a constant kind battle. How much alignment, how much autonomy do we give locations? But then you've added this extra layer of multiple languages. And so talk us through how you think about that. How do you work on alignment, how do you work on autonomy? I get the idea. Local kind of outreach, community service stuff that makes sense, but what else does, how else does that work itself out for you?
- [19:18]
C
So we are a, a centralized ministry organization. And so what I mean by that is every campus will have a kids leader and those kids leaders have a line to the central kids pastor or kids director. And so the central team. It's basically this. Central will set the systems. Campuses will execute those systems.
- [19:43]
A
Yeah.
- [19:44]
C
So cross kids central department. Right. Our kids central department with cross kids because that's the name of our church. They will set the curriculum, they will set the lesson plans, they will set the videos that are going to be shown the theme for that Sunday or for that month. And then the local campuses will execute. Central will provide the training to all of our kids leaders and teachers and staff and personnel the same. So every, every kids team at every campus will get the exact same training from the central director from the central department. Same with next steps, first impressions, worship. And so our alignment is very centralized. In other words, as far as our ministry systems are concerned, even our finances, even our, our, our, our marketing. Our marketing. We do central, but then we also allow our local campuses to do different things based on one campus might be having a business breakfast with local business leaders that another campus is not. So their local marketing might look different. So we're very centralized. And then the autonomy that we give is just that local context, ministry. What is your community doing that we're not doing? And so when we plant a campus, you're going to get the same branding, you're going to get the same banners, you're going to get the same logos, you're going to get the same signage, you're going to get the same teams that any campus would have, regardless whether you're a 200 member campus or you're a 2000. And we have both of those. We have that wide spectrum of campus sizes. They're going to get the same materials and branding and resourcing. And so we're very centralized. And then the local autonomy is just based on local context when it comes to engagement, to outreach, to reaching a local demographic or, or something that might be a little bit different. And that's the way we found rich that allows us to ensure that, number one, we're providing as excellent a ministry as possible across the board at any location. We want to be able to tell people, no matter what location you go to, what cross location you're at, you're going to get a great experience, a very similar experience. And we've over the years found that to be true. People love going to one, to our Brownsville location. People love going to our Mission, Texas location. People like going to our Bay Area location because they found they're not getting a different experience that they would at the original site from, you know, years ago. And so there's people now that are part of our church, they're members of our church who've never stepped foot in our original location. They've never stepped foot in other locations. They're just so adamant about their local cross church location. And they're getting the exact same quality that they would at the original location. So I hope that answered right. It's, it's, it's very, we're very centralized, systematically. But then there is some local autonomy where a campus pastor might make some decisions based on his or her local context that another campus might not.
- [22:33]
A
So this is like a super detailed church Wong question at the level of, at a campus level. Even this, the way you kind of set it up. We've got 12 locations. You talk about them all as campuses, but they're really, they're sharing physical locations, if I'm correct. So how do the campus pastors who are sharing a physical location. English Campus pastor, Spanish campus pastor. How do they relate to each other in that, you know, that location? What's, what does that look like for them?
- [23:07]
C
Yeah, great question. And so one of our core values is unity. And so we always try to instill that across the board, especially in that kind of situation where it's one physical location. But you have two, two congregations, one English, one Spanish. So the English will have their English pastor and the Spanish will have their Spanish pastor. And so the way we train our pastors and our, our, our top level leaders is this, we're one team. Right. And so we're not, you know, we don't come with the attitude of, well, I'm just, I just do English and I don't do Spanish. Right. Or I just do do Spanish and I don't do English. And that's, and that's perfectly fine in the sense that we understand you have a responsibility to serve your service, but at the same time, we believe that teams should help each other out. And so, for example, we have a 10 o' clock English service at our locations. And then locations have a. That's the other thing. Our service times are the same at every location. 10 o' clock in English. And then those that have Spanish, it's 12pm on Sundays in Spanish.
- [24:08]
A
Okay.
- [24:08]
C
So the teams will transition out. The Spanish has the exact same teams that the English does. And so they'll transition out between services to make sure that everything that the Spanish service is equipped and that the English service transitions well into Spanish. So basically, English service will be the first ones there on Sundays. And then Spanish will be the team that leaves in the afternoon on Sundays. And so those two pastors have to work very much in, in in tandem with each other. Hey, here's what's happened. First service, don't forget about this. Or here's what happened in the building. The first service, be aware of this. They both attend both each other's service. Right. It's not, hey, my, I'm done and I'm out of here. No. Right.
- [24:49]
A
They're there to equip each other, to.
- [24:51]
C
Support each other, to help each other, to back each other up, to provide a stronger pastoral presence. And so they have the responsibility, but they're not entirely siloed. In other words, where they abdicate responsibility in helping each other out. No, it's a very pastoral structure where we help each other out and we're there the entire Sunday to back each other up and to provide pastoral presence.
- [25:14]
A
Yeah, that's good. That's, that's fantastic. Like, yeah, you're doing something really unique here and it's, it's fun to kind of get a chance to dig around in it. Thanks for letting me ask some of those.
- [25:23]
C
You know, we're still learning, right? We're still learning. And as challenges and situations come up, we'll figure them out as they come. Right?
- [25:32]
A
Yeah. You talked about earlier, you said the phrase, hey, we've got a great system but not a perfect system. And that does, it's interesting. I'm working on this book about breaking the 2000 barrier for churches. And one of the interesting things we've seen as I talk with church leaders who have done that is there's this idea that under, under 2000, churches are trying lots of different things, but then eventually you get to the point where you're like, yeah, there's like lots of different ways to do this, but this is the way we're going to do it. Like this is, you know, this is kind of our thing and we're not even convinced. It's just like our approach. It's fine. Like we're not hung up on it. What would be some adjustments to the systems that you've made over the years to try to improve to, you know, some changes, you've maybe dropped some stuff or added some stuff to try to, you know, push the thing forward? What would be one of those or a couple of those that you could, you could think through?
- [26:25]
C
Yeah, as I'm thinking about it, as you're asking the question, I'm thinking back to a couple of our campuses that underwent some building renovations and building projects to create more space. And so it used to be that we could host our, our membership courses or our membership classes in a small space. And as the campus grew that space, we outgrew that space or that meeting or whatever. And so our system. Let me put it, let me put it this way. Let's just say that our next step system, all of our first time guests get a blue bag with their gift. Right. Well, that's the system that every campus has to do. What every campus can do differently is perhaps what exit they're going to have their station at or their next steps room at or where they're going to host it. And so for us, the systems have had to be adapted as we've done, grown. And that's what I mean. They're not perfect systems because sometimes things happen that are out of your control. You plan for 15 and 22 show up or 30 show up or 30 RSVP and only you know, 17 show up. And so they're not perfect systems in the way that they're concrete and they're cookie cutter in the sense that we can't maneuver or, or rework them to meet the demand of the local campus. And so our systems are, are the same, but the local implementation of those systems may vary campus to campus. Instead of using one mobile tv, you're using an LED screen, right? Because your, your spacing is different, but you're still teaching the same stuff. It's the same books, it's the same materials, same resources. And so as we've grown rich from, you know, to multi side and adding more, and we'll continue to add more into 20, 26 and beyond, we're obviously constantly evaluating our systems, right? Does this membership system fit, you know, for where we want to head, where we want to go? Does our cross kids curriculum, is it replicable across this, across the board to even more campuses? Our current systems, do they now that we're expanding even out of the Rio Grande Valley in deep south Texas to other regions, San Antonio and beyond, does how we do ministry in this region need to change how we do ministry in a different region? And so we're constantly evaluating and tweaking. And then like I said earlier, what system served us in one season? You know, they're not sacred cows or they're not sacred, you know, things. And as you, right, as long as it's not sin and it's not anti biblical or scriptural, you can change things, right? Nothing, nothing beyond the word of God is sacred in this, in the, in the context of this conversation, right? And so we're always thinking, hey, does what we do in, in this region, does it need to shift or change for the next region that we want to be in? And so that's what I mean. They're not perfect because you're, they're led by, and they're implemented by imperfect people. And so all of that, right, as we go multi side and expand, man, we're constantly thinking about all those thoughts perusing through our minds and our meetings and how do we get better at what we're currently doing?
- [29:32]
A
Yeah, that's fantastic. So is there a difference or kind of compare and contrast? The discipleship pathway between English and Spanish is like you talked about, someone's coming, they're getting a gift and some sort of new here thing. And then you're trying to get them connected to teams and groups somehow, I'm assuming. And you know, then we're hoping that they take these steps to Kind of grow in their relationship with Jesus. What does that look like? And are you bilingual at that level as well? Like, are the right to this, you know, small groups and all that stuff, but talk us through all. What does all that look like, that side of what's going on across.
- [30:11]
C
Yeah. So for us, we currently don't have small groups at our church. We have surf teams. And so we push, we highly encourage people into our surf teams. And a large percentage of our church is involved in surf teams. And so that becomes kind of their church family, their church group. We've, we've found that people have often said, man, we're so. We're such a large church, but we feel so connected because we're on teams. And so in their local context, people form those relationships. Yeah, our discipleship is bilingual. So for example, when we do Wednesday night discipleship classes or Bible studies, US English will meet in one room and Spanish will meet in another space. And. But it'll be the exact same teaching. So, for example, I'll use myself as an example. When I record the content for discipleship, I'll record the exact same content in English and then I'll record it in Spanish. So that evening or that Wednesday night, right. Those seven English congregations are getting their set, their English discipleship teaching. Let's say we're talking about gifts of the Holy Spirit. Spanish is going to get the same exact teaching on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, just in Spanish. And so that's why, Rich, we've, we've been so blessed and, and we've had to work at this where as best as we can. Now, not everything, right, not 100 bilingual, but as best as we can. We want to offer what we do in English, we want to offer it in Spanish and then vice versa. Maybe. Spanish has a great idea that we've never done in English. We want to see if we can explore doing that in the English as well. So we do our very best, and I say 9 out of 10, 90, 95 of the time, everything we do, we're doing it in both languages to accommodate and to serve. We're not trying to please one congregation over the other. I think when you're trying to please people, that's when you get into some trouble and you get into some pressure you were never meant to have. We're trying to serve the congregations as best as we possibly can. And I believe our growth has spoken volumes of. Like I said, hey, it's been impactful and it's worked for us. Not perfect systems, but this they're very efficient and excellent systems.
- [32:23]
A
Yeah, that's good. I love that. Years ago I had Derwin Gray on the podcast and we were talking about multicultural, you know, how our churches should, you know, continue to pursue multiculturalism and, and become, you know, reflect our community. And, you know, I was coming at it from like, hey, like our churches should represent. They should. When you walk into our church, it should look like the community we're in. And he totally called me out on the podcast and was like, rich, like, you need to think about a bigger thought. This isn't about. Since that's a marketing trick. This is the kingdom of Christ. It's like the, you know, every tribe tongue is represented, should be represented in our church. And I love what you're doing to try to make, to operationalize that, to try to. How do we actually make that happen in our context? I think it's, you know, I think it's amazing. It's incredible. Well, if there's leaders that are listening in today that are thinking, hey, we are thinking about, we might need, should add a second language service experience or we should maybe we have that at one location. We should be thinking about doing that at multiple locations. What would be some of the first steps that you would encourage someone to take, say in the next month, maybe two months? What would be some of those first steps?
- [33:41]
C
Great question. As a matter of fact, we're actually in that exact scenario with one of our campuses right now, only they've only been an English campus since their, since their launch, since their start. But the community they're in now, they're reaching, you know, they're getting interest from, from Spanish speaking, you know, residents. And so we, we don't launch a second service from one month to the next. Right? It goes through a series of months before. So we do market research, we do surveys. I'll give you an example. Last month in August, on one of the Sundays, one of our campuses, their Spanish service, they need to go to a second Spanish service because their Spanish congregation there has grown. So we did a community, we did a congregational survey, right? We asked our team, right? Because those are the ones that have the biggest buy in, is your team and your leaders. You know, between these two or three service times, which one would you prefer? And then we asked a congregation, hey, there's going to be service available. Would you help us out and answer that survey? Just let us, It's a one question survey. Just say if we had to open a second Spanish service, what time do you believe is at 2pm 6pm Is it Saturday? What, what, what service? What does that look like? And then at the campus where I said, we're actually going through that scenario, so they're going to launch a Spanish service, I believe in December. So we're still about three months away from that, but they already started a couple of months ago with worship nights, with canvassing the community, with starting marketing in Spanish, getting the names, the church's recognition out there in a Spanish context, meeting with local stakeholders, meeting with people in the, in the congregation. And then here's the thing, because it's a different service in a different language, we also have to build a leadership team that's going to serve that congregation in Spanish. So right now we're identifying candidates for leadership. We're training our, our executive Spanish pastor for the church is training leaders, identifying families so that by the time we launch that second service, we have a leadership team in place. We've had several months of branding. We've had, we know what the community is saying to us. We've asked them through surveys, through conversations, through local events. So by the time we open, and then we have families that are going to commit to being part of that service, worship teams, kids, teachers, I'm the across the board. By the time we launch it, we're pretty much in place to sustain it. And so what happens is if there's pastors or leaders, it's not, hey, we're growing, we're expanding. Right. Statistically, if a service is 70% full, then you can launch a second service. A lot of people say, well, I still got empty seats. Yeah, but your kids ministry might not. And so a lot of pastors, a lot of pastors consider, well, we're not ready for a second service because perhaps they're only contextualizing that decision based on empty seats in the sanctuary without realizing your kids space may already be overcrowded, your nursery is overcrowded, you got. And so you gotta consider. So when your sanctuary attendance is at 70 or higher, you're probably in a good spot to consider opening a second service. Regardless of the language in our context, opening a second service, we do a lot of backend work. We do a lot of due diligence before, but before we open the service. And then once we do a month, a month and a half leading up to it, we start promoting that service time so that people can become acclimated and aware that there's a new service time in their community at our campus, at our church, and, and they can be a part of that. So a Lot of front end work, but then a lot of it's a process. It doesn't happen from one month to the next. And then, of course, I, I would be remiss if I didn't say we also pray about it. Is God leading us in that direction?
- [37:23]
A
What's he telling?
- [37:24]
C
Because just because it's a, it's a good thing doesn't mean it's a God thing. Right. And so even in the context of ministry, even in us as a multi site bilingual ministry, which I believe we're the largest in the country, we're very adamant that, hey, we want to do systematic, but we want to make sure that this is a God thing for our church or for that campus before making the final decision.
- [37:45]
A
Yeah, that's so good. I, I love that. And you know, the couple things I want to underline there for our listeners. I love that you start with listening to your people. You know, you're surveying, but it's like, hey, let's, let's get out and have some conversations. Whether that's through survey or, you know, focus groups or just listening, you know, get 10 leaders in a room, have, have some conversations. Because I think sometimes as leaders, we can get in our ivory tower somewhere. And we're like, we think this is what we should do. And it's like, well, maybe we should actually talk with the people we're trying.
- [38:12]
C
And you, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
- [38:15]
A
No, no, it's fine.
- [38:16]
C
You have to talk with the leaders because they're the ones that are going to be helping you execute the ministry. 100 and if they're not, if you don't have a good segment of them on board, you're going to have a difficult time getting that service off the ground.
- [38:29]
A
Yeah, that's great. Okay. And then the other thing was, I love that your. There's like the decision to launch and then that sets off a whole bunch of other actions like it. You cannot just like pull the trigger and be like, okay, we're doing this in two weeks. Like, we got to work. We got to get ready for that. We got to actually, it's the difference between starting that service and launching it. Like, we really want to push it forward and, you know, do it well. So. Love that. So. All right, well, as we're wrapping up today's episode, anything else you'd love to share? You know, kind of final parting words to leaders who are listening in today?
- [39:02]
C
Well, Rich, thanks for the opportunity, man. I'm very grateful just to get to share our church. We Believe we're in a season of, of just growth and expansion really across the country. And our senior leadership, our senior pastor is very adamant about pouring into other churches and other pastors and leaders. In fact, he just recently launched a brand new organization, the 360 Global Network, that's available. You can go to 360global.network. And we're in a season and he's in a season where he now wants to pour into other pastors and leaders. And God has given us so much resource and so much wisdom and it's now a our responsibility and our desire to equip other pastors and leaders where they don't have to face some of the pitfalls that we faced early on as we expanded and grew and serve and served more people. And as the demographic of our country continues to shift and change and you have the Hispanic community just really growing in throngs and thriving bilingual ministry, we believe is going to become a key factor in how the church operates in different communities in the country. And so anything we can do, please reach out to us. We're more than happy to provide resources. You can be part of the network. You can be part of what God is doing. And man, it would just be our pleasure to help serve pastors and leaders around the country where it's more blessed to give than to receive. And so we want to be a blessing to the body of Christ at large.
- [40:25]
A
That's great. Love that. So again, that's just 360 global. So the numbers360global.network. You should check that out. A great resource. Lots of, you know, stuff going on there. You can chase that down more and learn about that. Well, I really appreciate you being here today, Eric. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
- [40:44]
C
Yeah, you can go to social media, Crosschurch RGV or Crosschurchonline.com and if I can be a resource to anybody, it would be my heart and blessing to be able to do so. It's Eric P. Garza on Instagram Social media man. Thanks for the opportunity, Rich. Very, very blessed by our conversation.
- [41:00]
A
Thank you. Thanks for being here today.
- [41:02]
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.