Meet Christ Fellowship
Based in Miami, FL, Twelve thousand people attend weekend services in one of Christ Fellowship’s Miami-area campuses. An additional 8,000 people attend online.
They have an audacious goal: launch campuses in each country they represent. With 26 different nations represented in their weekend services, this vision is massive.
The Solution
When the time came to build a new campus, the Christ Fellowship team went to work. Like most churches, they encountered some frustrating obstacles:- Lack of consistency. Each campus and experience was different.
- An ineffective plan. They hired an architect early who created a plan they couldn't use.
Overspending with no return. Even with healthy cash reserves, they spent too much on strategies that didn't bring a return.
Jim Tomberlin, the team member responsible for multisite strategy, knew Ministry Solutions from other churches who hired the team. He reached out, and Christ Fellowship began the Clear Path Forward process.
Defining a Strategy that Filters Opportunities
Clear Path Forward is a process of gathering information and facts culminating with three-days onsite where Ministry Solutions meets with a church to define the vision, strategy, and the best plan to fulfill the vision.
The process began by evaluating current campuses and the experiences across each location. A goal was set to build a new prototype and then implement it at the largest campus.
Over three days, Ministry Solutions helped the Christ Fellowship team re-imagine the ideal weekend experience. With this in place, the group tested this goal in a current setting.
Along with building a strategy for consistency across all campuses, the team built an ROI model for building new campuses. This model is simple: figure out how a new campus pays for itself within a certain time frame. Churches rarely have this information in hand when starting a project. Knowing this information up front creates enormous freedom for the project.
Time to Build
With a clear strategy in place, the Ministry Solutions team stepped in as the project manager, helping find the right architect to design plans for new campuses.Ministry Solutions also builds better financial models. These models are critical when evaluating which property is the right fit. When new opportunities arise, these models, plus a focused strategy, help guide the decision process. For example, the Miami Springs campus wasn't initially on the radar as a project. There was a demand for more space due to lots of families located in the area. Yet the options for building, setup, and other elements weren't quite right.
So when Christ Fellowship looked at spaces and measured it against the plan, only one property checked all the boxes for experience and space. The price was $500,000 less than the original budget.
In the end, Christ Fellowship hired Ministry Solutions for:
- Clear Path Forward workshop
- Project Management for all of their campuses
Strategy First, Move Next
Trying to chase opportunities and then build a strategy creates stress, wastes resources, and limits impact. Yet when you create a plan first, it's much easier to make better decisions.
Christ Fellowship has flipped their previous paradigm. Now they lead with a clear strategy for reaching more people around the world. And, after working with Ministry Solutions, they:
- Obtained tremendous clarity for the years ahead
- Saved $10m
- Freed up their time to focus more on people, not buildings
- Realized a plan to easily pay for each new campus
- Gained the ability to confidently launch more campuses each year
Christ Fellowship has a legacy of serving people in Miami and beyond. Because of their partnership with Ministry Solutions, they're poised to reach the world with new campuses, more outreach, and greater financial certainty.
