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unSeminary Podcast
When Growth Creates Pressure: Facilities, Space and What to Do in 2026 with Eric Garza
00:43:33
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- [00:03]
Risepoint Team Member
Do you feel like your church or school facility could be preventing growth? Are you frustrated or possibly overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your building becoming obstacles in the path to expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt like you could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the needs of your community? Well, the team over at Risepoint can help you. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is literally a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to move your mission forward. Check them out@risepoint.com that is RisePoint with an E. While you're there, schedule a free call to explore possibilities for your needs, the vision, your future, that sort of thing. Risepoint believes that God still uses spaces and they're here to help you again, reach out to them today. That's RisePoint with an e.com RisePoint.com and Schedule A call today.
- [01:20]
Eric Garza
You know, one of our core values at our church is excellence. And we've defined excellence as not having the best, but doing the best with what you have.
- [01:32]
Podcast Host Introduction
Growth, pressure, staffing questions, facility decisions, and the emotional weight of leading teams. That's the world executive pastors are navigating right now. Today on the Unseminary podcast, we're sitting down with an executive pastor from a prevailing church to unpack what leaders like you shared in the national executive pastor survey so you can lead forward with clarity.
- [01:59]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Hey friends, welcome to the Unseminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We are in the middle of in the in the midst of is maybe a better way to say these special set of podcasts where we're responding to what you said in the national executive pastor survey, which turned out to be the largest dedicated or direct executive pastor survey that we're aware of ever. Which is kind of cool. And hundreds of people, you know, logged in and told gave us a sense of where ministry is at and what we've been doing is spending time with an executive pastor from a prevailing church. And frankly people I like to get their thoughts on kind of what was surfaced and today we've got a big one. This is a significant issue. In fact, it was the single biggest fear that was expressed. We asked a question around what's your kind of biggest fear for this year? And nearly one in five executive pastors expressed fear about this. And what is that? Fear. It's the whole issue of our facilities, space, capital projects, that sort of thing. Many churches are running out of kids space, parking, seating, lobby capacity. You know, we're all worried about inflation of construction costs. If you got a building quoted on five years ago, you're going to want to get it quoted on again, you know, renovation, building, all of this stuff. And you know, we're excited to have today a return guest, Eric Garza with us. He is from a fantastic church, Cross Church, which is located in Texas. It's one of the fastest growing churches of in the country and they have 12 campuses, if I'm counting correctly. So Eric has thought about facilities and so excited to have you back on the show, Eric. Thanks for being here, Rich.
- [03:48]
Eric Garza
Thanks for having me back. Good to have an opportunity to have a great conversation about a big topic for a lot of pastors and executives across the country. Yeah.
- [03:57]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Well, you're going to solve all our problems for us today, Eric.
- [04:00]
Eric Garza
So just some nuggets of what I've learned and from experience. But if I can make your life and your world a little bit better. Awesome.
- [04:08]
Rich (Podcast Host)
That's great. That's good. Gotta tell us a little bit about Cross again. Kind of set the context, give us a bit of sense of the church.
- [04:15]
Eric Garza
Yeah. So we're in deep South Texas. Most of our campuses are within a half hour north of the US Mexico border. So right at the bottom of the tip of Texas. Texas. 30 years going on, 31 years as a ministry. In the last eight years we went from one site to now seven locations, physical locations and 12 campuses. We're a bilingual ministry, which means we do we have English campuses and we have Spanish campuses. And we recently, last year, in 2025, launched our first campus outside of our region in San Antonio, Texas. And you can imagine a lot of victories and a lot of challenges. Leav your space, your comfort area, the region where you've been for 30 years and then heading out and venturing off into what we believe God called us to do in Central Texas. So just phenomenal growth. We've seen God's hand upon our ministry and it's come with, like I said, a lot of wins and a lot of challenges we've had to navigate. And being a predominantly Hispanic ministry that reaches both English congregants and Spanish congregants, dealing with cultural political issues in our region of country has just been a whirlwind. But as anybody could imagine, it's been a big learning season for us for expansion. You know, I know we're talking about facilities going from one side to multi site and all of that that entails operationally, logistically, financially. So I wouldn't say we know it all, we certainly don't if we're always learning. But man, if we can just impart any wisdom, we're, we're all for that.
- [05:58]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Love it. Well, I would say I actually relooked at a lot of these fears and the overall tone, if you were to kind of summarize the, the conversation that people seem to be expressing is like there's this sense from a lot of executive pastors, listen, our ministry could grow, but our space frankly is holding us back. And we're not entirely sure what the path forward is. It's like we see the physical space issues, but I'm not sure where to go from here. So I'd love to jump right in. How have you, as you've looked at your seven physical locations, 12 campuses, how do you evaluate facility limitations and are they the things that are actually restricting growth or does the issue lie somewhere else? How do you, how are you discerning that when you look at, you know, this, this whole issue?
- [06:46]
Eric Garza
Yeah, a lot of our, of our growth has come from us planning campuses, but some of our growth has come from I guess what the corporate world calls mergers and acquisitions, where we've merged or really acquired other ministries who either had an existing facility that we took over or where we partnered with them through the acquisition and launched a campus in a new building or a new facility. So some of the things that we've done is there's a whole process, right, like that entail with going multi site. And one of those big key indicators of whether the campus or the church plan is going to succeed is whether they have a sustainable facility that can house all aspects of the ministry. And sometimes that can be difficult to find. For example, you don't just want a meeting space to have services, right? You need maybe an office space, you need childcare space, you need meeting space, you need lobby restrooms, you need adequate parking. And all of those factors come into play when you're looking to find the right space. And so for us, we've just been blessed that either we've gone through the capital campaigns, we've gone through the funding, internal funding to build new facilities, or the acquisitions that we've done over the last couple of years already had an existing facility, which is a plus because instead of building, we just went into a remodel phase to bring that building up to what we would call our cross standard to house our campus and facility. And so I mean, it's a holistic approach. You look at parking, kids, space. What you don't want to do and what we've run into in the past is it's okay to launch with limited space, but if you're launching and you already have a couple hundred people that are gathered, you're going to want to find a space that's going to give you ample room to have one or two services without having to crunch yourself in the short term. And it's going to, in a, in a, in a larger sense going to really facilitate some challenge and some angst and frustrations early on and you want to minimize as much of that, especially when you're, when you're launching and you're setting out to start a new campus or a new church.
- [09:07]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Yeah, so that's one of those kind of pinch points would be too small. Right. Like I'm assuming you've ended up in facilities where it's like, okay, this is, this just frankly is too small. And so we've got to, it's not going to work. We're going to have to start with three services and that, you know, or something like that, or, or we'll start with two and will be pinched too quickly. Are there any other kind of tripwires that you've run into that are like, oh, like it might be great on these five things, but this, these, if it's not these two or three, if these aren't right, we're not going in there. Are there any other things to get to, as you said, a sustainable facility? Are there any kind of big no nos that you've bumped into or maybe you wish you knew before? Yeah, tell me about that.
- [09:46]
Eric Garza
Yeah, a couple of things. Number one is don't start a church next to the railroad tracks. That may sound a little funny. No.
- [09:54]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Tell me more.
- [09:56]
Eric Garza
That during your Sunday morning message at your 10 o' clock service, roughly about 10:40am this train, who's two or three blocks away is going to come blaring out and just completely disrupt your sound and your service and your message for a few minutes. So it may sound comical, but yeah, definitely don't do that. Right.
- [10:18]
Rich (Podcast Host)
That's very good. That's. Well. And even going and seeing, that's a great takeaway because even going and seeing the facility during a Sunday morning, like, because you wouldn't know that if you're there to just Tuesday afternoon or something, you would have no sense of that. But, but because it might be A train. But there's, I could see lots of.
- [10:34]
Eric Garza
Things fine to Monday through Friday.
- [10:37]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [10:38]
Eric Garza
Every day as they need. And so you just, you just never know. That has happened a couple of times and it's incredibly frustrating.
- [10:45]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Yeah.
- [10:46]
Eric Garza
Middle of the service, but man, it can, it can mess, it can mess with some stuff. The second I would say is this. When looking for a facility, there's obviously some internal perhaps pressure or self imposed pressure as a pastor or an executive to want to get into a permanent facility right away. One of the things that helped us early on with a couple of our campuses is we actually rent it. And here's the benefit of renting or leasing even for a year or two as you grow that site is, number one, you're not worried about insurance, right? You're not worried about lawsuits, you're not worried about maintenance or you're paying for that, right? But there's a lot that you minimize when it comes to overloading your mind and your brain about what you have to handle, right? And so you pay a fee, but the building's clean when you come in. And right after you set, you know, you tear down your equipment for the service and your kids area, you don't have to worry about that because you're leasing a space. And so that's good. Like I said, as much of the overload of operations and facilities on the, on the front end, that's, that's a great, a great thing. And most spaces, right, what we did early on is if we had an event center where we would rent the main auditorium, we would use conference rooms or child care, we would safe proof them, right. All of our protocols in place. But that's what we would do early on and it would give us a chance to test and gather some data. Is this going to work long term? Right. Number one, we don't believe we missed God. But if after a couple of years this isn't going anywhere, well, thank God we didn't buy a building because now we're, you know, up a creek without a paddle, as they say. And so leasing is not, is not an entirely bad idea on the early concept. Definitely the neighborhood that you're in, right beside the town that you're in, you want to be in a centrally, essentially as you can, centrally located as you can and not next to a railroad track or any industry or warehouses where there's going to be trucks just for safety concerns, for the curbside appeal. And so that's why public libraries or where we actually launched started campuses was At a public library acoustic set because we couldn't be so loud. So all of those facility concerns are really things you want to keep in mind.
- [13:12]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Yeah, I love that. I love the idea of the rental on the front end. What a great way to. It's good use of capital. It's a good, you know, it gives you a chance to test. Even if you stay for a couple years. That's, you know, that's fantastic. So you've been through multiple, you know, capital campaigns. This whole process of, like, we got to raise money and then get a facility renovated or, you know, you know, expand it or whatever. What. What do you wish you would have known before all that? Are there a couple, like, things that either, you know, you stumbled upon, you stubbed your toe, or you wish. Man, I wish somebody would have told me this. Are there any things that stand out to you?
- [13:51]
Eric Garza
I think the first one is this. You have a number in your mind, and of course you believe God for it.
- [13:58]
Risepoint Team Member
And it's lower.
- [13:59]
Rich (Podcast Host)
It's going to come in lower every time.
- [14:01]
Eric Garza
It is every single. Unless God does a miracle, which he is more than able to do, it's going to come in lower. And so I think have. Have high anticipation, but realistic expectations. Because most capital campaigns are campaigns that are above normal giving. Right. And so at least for us, it's above normal giving. We encourage and we get people to give towards a specific capital campaign, which is for a specific campus or a specific project or what have you. But you have this number in mind. And then you can tend to early on, it's not coming in yet, or maybe you've done it for a year. I see.
- [14:42]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Okay.
- [14:43]
Eric Garza
And you can get quickly discouraged, especially with capital campaigns where you're like, we're halfway through this thing and not even half has come in yet or what we thought would come in. And so it's easy to get discouraged. But that was a big thing. Is that number in your mind, it's going to be lower. And that's not a bad thing, right? That's not a bad thing. People are giving to a capital campaign above give of their normal giving sacrificially. They're giving by faith. They're giving with expectation. But at the same time, for those of us on the inside, right. Those of us who are managing the resources and what have you, it's a. It's about having a realistic expectation that we have the faith that God can do it, but we're also going to budget ourselves knowing that if there's a high probability, not Impossible. There's a high probability that the number we had in mind is not going to be what comes in for the capital campaign.
- [15:34]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Let's talk about that. So there's an interesting, so I've seen that for sure in churches. There's an interesting kind of tension that pulls in two different directions. One, you can have exactly what you're talking about, which is we thought we would go in, we were hoping we would raise X and we raised something less than that. But then the other part of it is we were hoping the project was going to cost X and it costs X plus, you know, it's costing us more than, than we anticipated. How do you manage that tension? How have you been able to kind of navigate that? That's a, that's a tough tension.
- [16:09]
Eric Garza
Yeah. The longevity of the capital campaign is going to, is not always going to be exactly match. It's not going rather to exactly match what the building construction cost was at the beginning. Prices fluctuate and prices change. And so let's say you have let's a rough even number $1 million capital campaign for your church organization and the construction is going to cost, I don't know, 900, $950,000. Well, $1 million should cover it. But by the time the million dollars or shortly or short of that comes in, well, your Budget's now at 1.2 or 1.3. It's fluctuated. And so the what's congruent at the beginning can be really a little bit financially off by the time. In other words, the timelines of the capital campaign and your building project sometimes don't align perfectly. And we run into that too, where we've had to take from our operating budget a little bit or we've had to really emphasize a certain amount during the campaign because that's what needs to come in. We've met with key givers and donors of the church. And those are challenges that you navigate during the capital campaign process. And like I said earlier, it's, it's challenging because. Well, let me backtrack and say this. This is why on the front end, you should add margin into your capital campaign. That's good. Which is good. We didn't do that perhaps the first go around, but certainly the later seasons we added margin in our capital campaigns to account for any fluctuation in construction costs. And if there was ever in a surplus where we would tell the church, it's because of your giving and because of your support and generosity that we had more than enough come in. And now we're going to use those funds for X or they're going to go back to the general fund or, or whatever the case. But I think that the key that would be to incorporate some 10 to 15% margin in your capital campaign on the outset to account for anything that might happen 12, 15, 18 months down the road.
- [18:15]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Yeah, that's good. That's really good. That's good. You maybe just saved somebody a lot of headache two years from now because of that part of the conversation. I want to go back to something you talked about earlier. You've had multiple buildings that you've acquired or you've merged with and you were talking about remodeling and there's like, that can be a blessing and a curse. Like it can be amazing. Like, wow, this is great. And you know, you open up, you open up a wall and who knows what's behind that wall and you know, there's all that. And you talked about bringing it up to the cross standard. Talk me through. How have you decided what that is? What is the cross standard and how do you, what are the common things that you find? Oh, we've got to make this change. And how have you kind of defined that as you think about projects like that?
- [19:01]
Eric Garza
Yeah. So over the last few years we've pretty much honed in on, I guess, the vibe and the look of what we want our campuses to feel and look like. They may be different floor plans because some of them we built, some of them we acquired, properties we took over. But as far as color schemes, we do our very best to match wall colors, sanctuary colors. We use the same stage equipment, both branding and layout, as best as possible across all of our sanctuary auditoriums, our stages, our kids spaces. We have an internal ratio of how many teachers or volunteers per infants per toddlers for school age children we want. And so that determines our spacing. And so sometimes we've had to knock some walls down or build some walls in to accommodate for what, like I said, our standard of ministry, both in appeal but also in care for our congregants and for our families. And so when we remodel, you're right, there's some things that once you knock down a wall, you're not going to know until you knock it down. And that's where that, you know, that margin comes in. But for the most part, right, we've had it. We do inspections, we get, we get third party opinions on the building, on the cost estimates and like we would encourage anybody to do. Right, but that's our cross Standard is the look, the feel, the equipment, the wall colors, you know, is there enough space for our guest connect area, our next steps area for first impressions? Does every ministry have adequate space to store their items? All of those factors come into play in deciding how we're going to remodel a facility. And I'll say the second thing is this is why before you break or before you knock down a wall, get an inspector or get some people either in your church or in the construction industry or somebody that you know in your community. Because sometimes when you have a building, your initial thought is to remodel. That may not always be the most financially wise decision. And here's why. Because you may not know all that you're going to encounter. You may in the long run end up spending just as much as if you had built a brand new facility with the exact floor plan you want. And so that's where evaluating and deciding is it more feasible to remodel this building for X amount of dollars or are we within a 5 to 10% budget margin where we might just say it's in the best interest of the church perhaps to use either this facility as collateral for our next building or a brand new building or is it better to use it as a multi site building, excuse me, multi purpose building and we end up building a new facility for the church or for the campus. And so those cost estimates are going to help you make the best, most informed decision of where you're going to steward the resources financially in either remodeling or in building a site.
- [22:06]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Yeah, I love that. One of my favorite churches, Mercy Hill Church in North Carolina, they had a building that was given to them and they did. They weren't entirely sure what to kind of it was in a part of town. They weren't necessarily sure they wanted to launch a campus and just they had a campus closer and all that and they ended up using it, turned it into really a student center. And it's a fantastic ministry building and it's active, you know, five, six days a week now. It, they don't do Sunday morning services there, but they do all kinds of other stuff which is fantastic. Like it's a great, yeah, they use.
- [22:44]
Eric Garza
It for leadership meetings, for small chapel receptions or gatherings or next gen events, youth, young adult vaults, even renting it out to the community as a means to supply income, daycare or something, you know, aligned organizations, of course, whatever your church policy is. But yeah, sometimes the best use of that building is not for church services.
- [23:07]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Have you, have you run into Facilities that you've evaluated and then decided, no, like this is going to cost way too much to renovate and so we won't go forward with that. Have you run into that after evaluation?
- [23:19]
Eric Garza
Well, not entirely, but I'll say this.
- [23:23]
Rich (Podcast Host)
I know that risk is there for sure.
- [23:25]
Eric Garza
Yeah, there is risk. There is risk. And the risk assessment is different when you're leasing a space or remodeling, when you're obviously building your own facility as far as including the costs associated with that. One of our campuses recently, and I mean in the last 24 months before we moved into our new building, was leasing a space and we were given the option to remodel the space we were leasing because though it was, it was, it was suitable for what we needed for the ministry for the Sunday services and, and all the other ministries, parts of it were not really conducive to growth for the congregation and for the, for the ministry. So we did contemplate remodeling. I think, I think what kept us from doing that, number one, is whatever you remodel for the landlord, the landlord is going to end up keeping. And so the return on that investment would be short term and not long term. We were already in the midst of building our building, but we were growing at a rapid rate. And so we were 812 months out from, from being in our building and the campus was growing. And so we needed a short term solution. So we did think, well, we'll spend X amount of dollars to remodel our site where we're leasing before we get into the new building. But we found out that shifting our service times and doing different, different strategies ended up alleviating in the short term the constraints. We had to give us a time to get into our new building, which is now more than enough space for us to grow for, for years and years to come.
- [24:58]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Right. That's cool. Yeah. Because I've said as a, I feel like I've been in a ton of conversations with XPs where, you know, they're talking about this issue and you know, there's like a building that they're. Maybe it's another church that's come to them and they're having a conversation and they're, I would say their mindset is like, I'm not sure we should do this. Like this is. They're like this other church came to us. And statistically, actually the most likely for these mergers to succeed are when the joining church comes to the lead church. So they would come to your church and be like, hey, we're interested. So it actually happens a fair amount. And I've, I feel like I've talked to, tried to talk so many executive pastors into like, man, it's got to be a really bad building if, particularly if it's like, has debt or has no debt or very little debt on it, it's got to be a very bad building to not want to take it because it's like, you know, you can, you can take, invest, you know, a moderate amount of money. You don't need to dump a ton into it and get something great. And like you said, as long as you're above board with everybody, you know, five years from now, if it doesn't work, you could take that asset, sell it and move on and use those resources somewhere else.
- [26:06]
Eric Garza
And that's very good because when you talk about acquiring a ministry, especially if it has a low balance on their mortgage or they don't have much to drop the building, and if you're in a position to pay that off within the first year of acquiring the ministry, think of a collateral and the equity that your organization now has because of that new facility that's in your portfolio. And I know it sounds very business minded, but when you're looking to expand into the future, even at another site in your church ministry organization, you now have more collateral, more resources to leverage for a better financial position in the future when you do want to actually build a building. The second thing is this. If you're acquiring a ministry that already has an existing building, in most cases it's already built out for church purposes. So that's very helpful. So at that point, you may be putting in a smaller amount and just, you know, refurbishing it, painting the walls, putting some new equipment, some new screens, maybe changing out the flooring a little bit or some of the fixtures or whatever. It's already built out for a church. And so that's the benefit of going or acquiring a ministry if you're going that route that already has an existing facility.
- [27:18]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Yeah, we had, we were running, our budget was about $8 million. And we were, we had a church come to us and they had really, they had had a tough season. And the summer before we ended up merging with them or they joined us really, they had multiple Sundays where they had two people show up on Sunday. They had the person that was preaching and the guy that was opening the door like it was, it had really atrophied down. And I remember in one of those conversations they had had a bit of a roof problem that the facility was worth just probably south of 2 million. It was like a, a great facility, but they had a roof problem. And I remember one of the, the elders, leader person, he said, you know, we got a quote on the roof and it's, it's going to cost maybe about $15,000 to fix. Do you think you guys will be able to fix that? And they had no debt and we're going to give us their building. Well, like I humbly had to say, like, like, yeah, we'll be okay. Like it's gonna, it's gonna be fine. Like, you know, we, I, what I didn't want to say is like, I feel like our youth guys have like wasted $15,000 this year. Like, you know, like it's like we can, you know, the exchange just on paper. And again, that's not why you go into those conversations. But a part of that is, particularly in our seats as executive pastors, that's a part of what we have to wrestle through and think about those things when. So let's get back to the renovation thing. A lot of what churches were talking about is like pressure of like man, I just, our physical facilities are, are holding us back. Any other thoughts around, you know, changes you've made to increase capacity or you know, things that maybe are like some low hanging fruit or creative solutions that have that, that maybe we're not thinking about. But as a leader who's been through this, you know, you've been, you've wrestled through that that we, we could, you know, benefit from.
- [29:05]
Eric Garza
Yeah, absolutely. A couple of things. You can't please everybody, right?
- [29:10]
Rich (Podcast Host)
That's good.
- [29:10]
Eric Garza
I think one of the, one of the ministry pressures is, well, we want to please the next gen. We also want to please the child care. We also want to please the elders of the church and we also want to please the younger families of the church and young professionals. And when you're, when you're in a facility that wasn't originally built according to your specs, it's going to be difficult to do that. And so you have to focus as we have on the most critical areas, sanctuary and child care. If you don't have child care, it's going to be a barrier to grow because families or parents are not going to have, have the comfort level they need to come to your church on a regular basis and to be a part of the community. And so for us when we've remodeled, the first things we look at are sanctuary and then the kids space. Do we have enough space? Some of the solutions when We've been limited in space, is launching multiple services. We have a smaller sanctuary or smaller space, we'll offer more service opportunities. Or when it comes to our kids ministry, we've evaluated with our kids directors and our kids department of how can we best merge age groups to maximize the space that we have. So if you have an ideal facility where you have your childcare divided by grade level or age level, sometimes you have the amenity to do that and many times you don't. And so what we've done is instead of having first grade on their own, maybe we'll put, you know, kindergarten and first grade level kids together.
- [30:39]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Yeah, that's good.
- [30:40]
Eric Garza
Second and third together, fourth and fifth together as a way to consolidate because we don't have the space that we prefer to have, at least in this season. And so for us, sometimes you're not watering down, in essence, the content, the quality, but you are consolidating in the short term or even medium term, if you will, if that's even a term, to make adequate space for the constraints that you may have. And so you have 600 members and you only have a 200 seat sanctuary. 250. Well, that's an opportunity for three services. Is that a strain? Well, it can be if you see it from a poor perspective versus a perspective of man. We're so large and we have this space. You know, one of our core values at our church is excellence. And we've defined excellence as not having the best, but doing the best with what you have.
- [31:35]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Oh, that's good.
- [31:36]
Eric Garza
We may not have a thousand seat auditorium for this growing congregation, but what we do have, we're going to utilize it and steward it to our best ability. So if that means two or three services, will God give us the strength and the people to manage and to lead and to execute three strong services every weekend or every Sunday in order to meet the need of the congregation that we have. And I think one of the biggest things Rich is also communicating this is keeping the car right. You're not going to go into all the details per se, unless that's your preference, and that's your senior pastor's prerogative, but to share with them the overarching theme of, hey, here's where we're at as a ministry, here's our facility and here's what we're going to do to continue to offer as best ministry as we can, while at the same time being cognizant of the challenges that we're facing. We said this to our, to our Staff and to our, to our church many times is we don't look at obstacles as negatives. We look at obstacles as opportunities. Okay, that's so true. What we have. How can we be as excellent as possible with what we have? If that means going to a third service, well, then we're going to give it a shot. Because what we don't want to do is allow facility constraints to translate into diminished capacity or into a diminishing congregation. And I'm talking about numerically, because the diminishing congregation numerically also means a diminishing budget and revenue financially because you have less givers in the seats. And that's. Those are some of the challenges that you got to navigate. So we don't see it as obstacles. We don't see obstacles necessarily as a challenge. We see it as an opportunity of, okay, how can we navigate around this mountain, if you will, to continue to provide as excellent the ministry as we can?
- [33:20]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Yeah, I love that. I love your example of the kids age size rooms because I think you've. You're articulating a tension that whenever we're, particularly if we're launching, we talked a lot about this, like renovating other spaces and new campuses and all that. Where I think really is germane to our job as executive pastor to, to manage this tension of. We want it to feel, you know, the language you used was cross standard. It absolutely has got to be cross standard. But there will be areas where we're going to have to compromise. Like that is just true and a part of what we have to do. We have to use our leadership and our discernment and, you know, get the right players in the room and have the conversation and, you know, somebody using your example, somebody kids manage to be like, no, we can't combine them together. That'll be terrible. And it's like, we're gonna be fine. Like, we'll figure it out, you know. Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be okay. We'll. We'll help that navigate. And that. That's one example. But there's a ton of those that can come up up in these, you know, in these renovations for sure.
- [34:20]
Eric Garza
Yeah, absolutely. And people are always going to have opinions, right? But. But I'll say this from experience and I, I mean no ill intent towards anybody in your congregation or your ministry. Most of the people that are criticizing are not people that are not giving anyway. And so I'm not saying ignore them by any means. They're part of your. Part of your ecosystem. They're part of your church or part of your flock. That's very true, but it's always with a grain of salt, because the people that are really bought into your ministry are going to walk through those journeys alongside you, hopefully with the best attitude that they possibly can muster up. Because this too shall pass. Right. If you've gone out in faith to plant or to grow or to expand your congregation, this is a temporary season. It's not a permanent season. You won't always be at three or four services. Right. Or multiple services at some point. If God is in this and you really believe he is, and I believe he is. For many organizations and ministries, the timing will be right when you have a facility that can house what you need or that can provide the amenities and space that you need. And so for parents, for givers, for guests, is just letting them know, as best you can, even subtly, through announcements or even messages, is that, hey, we're in a season of growth and expansion. Growth doesn't always look, you know, perfect. And so we have seasons where we're going to navigate some. Some challenges and opportunities as best we can to get us to an end goal. This is a means to an end. What we're going through is a means to get us to where we want to go as a ministry. And as long as you keep that at the forefront, tying it into the vision of the house, you're going to see that in a large sense, you're going to have people rally behind that idea and unfocused, if you will, from the constraints of the facility to the broader appeal of what God is doing in the ministry.
- [36:08]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Yeah, that is so good. Friends, you should go back and re. Listen to what Eric just said there. That is some wise advice. And obviously from somebody that's been in the trenches a lot. That's been my experience as well. The people, the complainers. I'm reading through the book of Job right now, and I'm like, man, his friends are just like, this guy needs better friends. And that reminded me of the people you're talking about. Like, you know, there's these people who are just, you know, sniping from the cheap seats, and they're not really engaged in the mission where, man, those people that are right on in the middle of it, they're like, let's go. Let's lean in. And, man, that's the kind of person I'm hoping as I transition into older age, that I'm that person, you know, because I. We have a number of those people at our church that I look at that are like, these are incredible saints who have seen so much change and who I'm sure lots of things annoy them, but they're fired up for the mission. They're excited in our case, to reach on church people, to see people far.
- [37:01]
Eric Garza
From Jesus, to connect, making progress, right?
- [37:03]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Yeah, absolutely.
- [37:04]
Eric Garza
The fact that your ministry is facing opportunities or obstacles, rather disguised as opportunities, is proof positive you're going somewhere. You're not a stag in ministry. You're not a, you're not a lazy ministry. Right. You're not apathetic. You're really out to fulfill the vision that God has given you or to your senior leadership. And so it's proof positive. Right. And so take that as a badge of honor in some way to say we must be doing something right.
- [37:28]
Rich (Podcast Host)
So good. Well, Eric, just as we're coming to kind of land, this has been great conversation, hopefully been helpful for you friends as you've been listening in. But as we kind of come to land today's conversation, what's a question or two that you're kicking around for this year at Cross? As you're thinking about 2026, where's your head at? What are the things you're wondering? It doesn't have to be about this could be anything.
- [37:48]
Eric Garza
Yeah, well, thanks for letting me speak into that, Rich. I think for me as an executive and looking at our ministry, you know, looking at the previous 30 years and looking at the next decade, if you will, of where God is going to take our ministry, being one of America's fastest growing churches, being the largest bilingual, Hispanic led ministry in the country. We've, you know, like I've said in a previous episode with you, we haven't had any precedent for us in our context. And so we've navigated a lot of unchartered waters and learn from both wins and losses and different opportunities and struggles to get us to where we're at now. I think one of the biggest questions facing the church at large in 2026 is how the church is going to respond to the ever increasingly fast paced changes that we're seeing on the political front, on the cultural front. I'm not saying that the church has to be a political response. The church has to be, has to provide a big biblical response to what we're seeing. And with the fast paced nature of culture and society and trends, I don't believe it's the church's responsibility to respond to every trend or to everything, but certainly the overarching elements of our current culture and political dynamic where there is a biblical either mandate or precedent for it that the church would speak into that and provide biblical perspective and wisdom for how people should think about certain topics that have a biblical or moral prerogative. And so navigating that as an organization, because as a growing church and being in such a large ministry, you can imagine the opinions. We have people in our church who are conservative and some who are not. We have people who belong to one political party over another. We're in multiple communities. And so different communities have different demographics, different cultural contexts, different policy initiatives. There's a lot going on. And as a church ministry, especially us, that we're multi side, One of the biggest questions I'm asking myself and our team is how do we, number one, stay biblically founded, right and unwavering, and what the biblical standard is, Number two is how do we address the different things and different occurrences in different communities that we're in? If we were just one side in one community, well, then we would just be, I guess you could say, in our own little, little space and our own little focus. But we have multi side, so we have multi focus, if you will, and how we continue to provide as excellent a ministry as possible, keeping Jesus at the forefront, above the fray, and at the same time giving a biblical perspective so that people have the right biblical worldview for how to walk out their journey of faith, their relationship with Christ, but at the same time, how to respond to what's happening in our world.
- [40:35]
Rich (Podcast Host)
World.
- [40:36]
Eric Garza
I think for many times, for many years, really for decades, the church has abdicated its biblical responsibility, if you will, to speak into things not from a political perspective, but from a biblical perspective. And because that abdication of responsibility, we've seen a lot of things that have happened, thankfully, in recent seasons, in recent years, we've seen a shift where faith is now at the forefront. And so though I have that question, my biggest, I guess you could say, prerogative is to leverage that people are focused more on faith, that people are open to faith now, more so in our country, that people are focused more on this person of Jesus is to leverage that as an opportunity to really hone in and speak and to people's hearts and minds and into the different communities that we're in, so that they have the right biblical perspective, the biblical worldview to carry out what God has enabled them or called them to do.
- [41:31]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Yeah, that's so good. I love, I love what you're saying there. And you know, I know I had a friend say, you know, if you're, you know, we all are serving in a context. We serve in a particular time, in a particular cultural context, and God's called us to lead in that context. And if you're not feeling the pull from, you know, multiple sides, multiple polarities, you're like, well, everybody here agrees with me, then it means you're not actually reaching your community, you know, and the fact that you're feeling that tension means, okay, like there's. There's people from a wide variety of. And it can be all different. You know, political is one, but there's lots of different ways to think of that. And. Yeah, that's. That's so true. I really appreciate this. Well, Eric, you're. You're a blessing to us. I thank you so much for. For giving us time today and helping us think about these things as we kick off into 2026. If. Where do we want to send people if they want to track with you or with the church? How do we. How do we want to get people connected to Cross?
- [42:28]
Eric Garza
Yeah. Well, Rich, thanks for the opportunity. And it's what a blessing for us and for me personally to be able to just share some thoughts and if it helps anybody, we'll praise God for that. I think if you want to follow the church, we're CrossChurchOnline.com or Cross Church. RGB on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, all of you know, most of the social media platforms. You want to connect with me, I'd be happy to connect with you at Eric, Ericp Garza on any of the social media platforms. It'd be a privilege for me to help you guys and to share some thoughts and even answer questions. Be more than happy to do that. If I can serve your ministries in any way, by all means, feel free to reach out to me on any of the social media platforms.
- [43:05]
Rich (Podcast Host)
Nice. Thanks so much, Eric. Really appreciate you being here today, sir. Thank you.
- [43:08]
Eric Garza
God bless you. Appreciate it, Sam.