Pastor Di Beals explains how Venture Church helps people find their way in a big church.

Describe the culture of Venture Church and its surrounding community.

The wide view is that we are in the greater Seattle area. Culturally speaking, it’s a very liberal, unchurched area. Many people didn’t go to church as a child, nor did their parents. There is a little bit of hostility toward the church, so we walk this powerful line of loving people and serving their needs—and it’s sometimes hard to know what the needs are. Our main campus is in an upper-middle-class area. Venture has become multicultural, representing the demographics of our area.

We’ve worked for 20 years developing the culture of our church—consistently loving and serving people. On any given Sunday, multiple people have not only never been to our church but have never been to a church. So that impacts how we host our services—with lots of explanation of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. This is done ad nauseam every week for first-time visitors who have never been in a church. 

That also impacts the way we teach. Our team is skilled at teaching in a way that challenges people who have been in the church their whole lives, and doesn’t leave brand new people in the dust. We want to be strong teachers, but also believing that God still heals bodies and he still restores people and he still dramatically transforms people’s lives.

How do you support the growth you’ve experienced in just 20 years as a multisite church?

Growing churches have two sides: a good front door drawing people in, and keeping people from slipping out the back door. It’s one thing to have people visit and keep coming back to check out the church. But, how do you make the shift to them calling Venture their church home?

We’re very intentional about learning people’s names. But keeping people here, especially as you grow, is incredibly challenging. Our team was struggling to keep up with our own culture of knowing people well. We realized that our staff team was well spread out age-wise, and each staff member was challenged to focus on their own age group—a decade-based strategy. Of course, we’re still friendly to all, but when a group of 20 walks through the door, I can focus my attention on the few in my age group and let the next staff person catch the others.

Small groups are a huge way to connect people; again, using the decade-based focus. Each of our staff [members] is required to lead a small group—honed in on their own age group. When promoting groups, we even specify the demographics in the group description.

How does a first-time visitor get more connected with your church community?

Guests are welcomed multiple times when they walk in, and they’re invited back. Our staff and volunteers gather contact information. Volunteers send handwritten cards thanking them for coming.

If we can get their information, we are incredible at retaining them. They’re getting invited to multiple things, and I think that’s the key. We invite them to return the following Sunday and to the next Discover 101 to learn more about Venture and meet our staff. Women get invited to a women’s event, and men are invited to a men’s thing. Depending on the season, guests receive information about upcoming small groups and midweek classes. Children and youth are invited to come back and join the next event. So, they’re probably getting barraged with invitations.

Our retention rate at this moment is around 50% of a viable guest, which is somebody who lives in the area and gives us their contact information.

How are people invited through the “Discover Venture” process?

If people don’t make a single friend at your church, they’re not going to stay. Small groups solve this issue for most, but not all. For those who can’t or won’t join a small group, we’ve come up with “sticky points” in our assimilation process. The more sticky points someone has, the more likely they are to stay. Sticky points can include having a face-to-face coffee or lunch with one of our staff, finding a place to serve, or starting our Discover Venture process. 

The first step is Discover 101—including dinner with our pastoral staff and hearing more about Venture. Discover 201 focuses on growing in your walk with Christ, and Discover 301 covers opportunities to serve. Discover 401 explains how to officially become part of the Venture family. Those are all very simple snapshots for people to find their way in a big church.

We are not quick to consider new people as “retained.” We take a long time and want a few of those sticky points checked off. We’re looking for them to declare they’re “all in.”

How do you notice when someone leaves Venture Church?

Our database is broken down into decades, and the staff is responsible for knowing the people in their decade. Every six months, we comb through our database. If we haven’t seen someone (or don’t know who they are), we check on them. That is a massive task, but we make the time for it.

We work hard to stay united with the pastors in our area, and speak positive things about other churches. If Venture Church isn’t a good fit for a new family, we help them find another church in the area.

How has a specific person or family engaged and grown over time as a member of Venture Church?

We had a new man from Amsterdam join our Venture U classes, focusing on the basics of Christianity, breaking big concepts into small, bite-sized pieces for brand new people. I asked him what brought him to Venture. This stern guy in his 40s [started] to cry immediately. He explained that his wife and kids left him about six months before, and he picked up an extra job driving for Uber. A client wanted a ride to church and asked to play music in the car. The driver obliged and found this “worship music” to be beautiful. He asked where he could hear more, and got invited to Venture. He had never been to a church, never held a Bible. For months, he attended services and classes, and has been a beautiful sponge of learning. He was later baptized.

“A lot of people do want to come here because they can afford a house, but a lot of people want out,” Scott says. “It feels a lot like a military town. People get here, they get their house and get established, and as soon as they get a chance, they’re gone. So we don’t have a booming population, and economically we’re not a strong community. We have a lot of empty storefronts. Thirty years ago, it was a sleepy little retirement town. That’s really changed. There’s way more crime and gang-related stuff in our valley now.”

These facts make it all the more remarkable that Community Christian has seen so much growth.

“It’s not because we’re this booming suburb with a bunch of new housing,” he says. “We just feel like God is doing something here that’s beyond us, and we don’t want to mess it up. I’ve asked people who were new to the church if they’re new to Hemet, but they’re not. They just never found a church before they found ours.”

Grace Blair is one of the newcomers. Although she’s a Hemet native, she only started attending Community Christian in 2021. Her mom had died unexpectedly at the end of 2019, and then when the pandemic hit, she wanted answers to some big questions.

“I was lost for quite a while trying to figure it all out,” she says. “Community Christian is right around the corner from my house, and I have had so many friends go here. Church was never a big part of my growing up, but after those big life-changing events, I was getting curious. The church is such a welcoming place. There’s no judgment. It’s so easy to go, and you just feel at home. I started attending with a few of my friends, but now my girlfriends and I take up two whole rows.”

Blair echoes Scott’s sentiment that God is moving in Hemet. “Just within the last three years of me going, I’m sensing something changing in the valley. Something is pushing people to church, which is amazing.”

Part of that, Scott says, is fruit from the church’s efforts to keep connected with its people during COVID-19. A team of people called every member a few times during the pandemic, and he created a daily devotional called “Sixty Seconds with PJ,” which he continues to this day. The church also regularly hears that people begin attending after first watching online for several weeks or months, so their web presence has been critical.

The church has been intentionally reaching people with their invite culture. They began focusing on their “top five,” encouraging members to identify at least five people in their lives who need a relationship with Jesus, and to regularly pray for, serve, love and invite them to church.

“I think we’ve done a really good job of reaching the people who are in our community now,” Scott observes. “As people leave the church and new people come and take their seats, they reflect more of the diversity and differences in our community. I think that’s really good. We’re not trying to reach the same old church people; we’re trying to reach people who don’t know Christ. We’re on a record pace for baptisms in one year, so we know we’re getting a lot of people who are new to faith. That’s what’s important.”

And when people visit Community and decide to stay, Scott says, it’s because of the worship, the teaching, the children’s ministry and, most importantly, the feeling of belonging. 

“I think it’s just the personality of the church to welcome and love people,” he adds. “It really is.”

COMMUNITY CHRISTIAN CHURCH
Hemet, California
Lead Pastor: John Scott
Website: Community.cc
Founded: 1981
Fastest-Growing: 40
A 2024 OUTREACH 100 CHURCH

ONE BIG IDEA 
Offer a worship space inside their building.

When friendships flourish, beauty follows. Such was the case when a wonderful ministry opportunity came about from a friendship between Darin Wood, pastor of First Baptist Church of Midland in Texas, and Bob Fu, founder of ChinaAid, an organization that provides legal aid to Christians in China. 

In 2019, Fu told Wood about 64 Chinese Christians who were members of the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church. Led by Pastor Pan Yongguang, they had fled China to seek asylum, nicknaming themselves “Mayflower Church” because of their pursuit of religious freedom.

Wood and Fu prayed that members of Mayflower would find a proper home.

“We never dreamed that home would be Midland,” says Wood, who in January 2024 offered the church’s student ministry area as a worship space to the members of Mayflower. 

Founded in 1886, missions have always been the heart of FBC Midland. According to Wood, “This was a natural extension of who we have always been. Pastor Pan has been a joy to partner with. He has a bright spirit and loves his people as a shepherd should.”

Initially when children from Mayflower began meeting at First Baptist, they weren’t used to intermixing with FBC kids, but that’s all in the past now.

“They feel like they are at home when they’re in the building, and that’s what we want,” says Wood, who witnessed transition at their church picnic held four months after the Mayflower congregation began meeting at the church building. When people from Mayflower exited their cars, members of First Baptist welcomed them by showing them how to navigate a picnic.

“Language barriers aside, it was all about smiling and loving one another,” notes Wood, who especially enjoyed watching the kids play together in the bounce houses. In addition, some church members brought their horses to the picnic.

“Our Chinese friends had never been close to a horse, so they took lots of pictures,” adds Wood.

Another big turning point came last fall when Wood was walking through the church and heard First Baptist kids teasing Mayflower kids and vice versa. 

“I realized that there’s no more ‘ours’ and ‘theirs,’” he says. “There’s just ‘all of ours.’”

Church growth is hard to anticipate. Port Clinton Bible Methodist Church knows this all too well. After starting in 1996 as a Bible study in someone’s basement, it grew as invites increased. More people came, some of whom drove over an hour to get there. As numbers ballooned, it became clear that God was calling them to start a church. 

In 1998, the burgeoning church rented a small storefront and launched Pilgrim Chapel. For the next two years, different ministers took turns preaching until June 2000 when the church called Senior Pastor Deron Fourman to lead them. 

Located in Port Clinton, Ohio, which is at the mouth of the Portage River on Lake Erie, the church changed its name to Port Clinton Bible Methodist and focused on community outreach. The church is part of the Bible Methodist Connection of Churches (biblemethodist.org.) They added a Kids Club, which serves more than 80 children each week during the school year. The church purchased a 15-passenger van, and every Wednesday evening they continue to pick up students ages grade school through high school and bus them back to church for a hot meal, a lesson and an opportunity for mentoring. 

Every spring the church holds a giant 5,000-egg Easter egg hunt at a city park, and last winter they hosted a Christmas supper outreach, feeding families and distributing gifts to underresourced children. They also sent a ham home with each family.

According to Fourman, this summer they plan to host a community-wide yard sale, inviting anyone in the city who wants to have a yard sale to set up shop in the church’s parking lot, free of charge.

“Instead of people driving down every street [looking for garage sales], we will provide a venue as well as hot dogs, hamburgers and bottles of water,” he explains. 

Though its focus on meeting the community’s needs was growing exponentially, Port Clinton Bible still didn’t have the space to have a community center. In fact, between 2000 and 2024, the church continued to outgrow their worship spaces, which included rented buildings, union halls and a double-wide office building. At one point, they became so packed that about 30 attendees stopped coming.

“We did nothing to correct that [overcrowding], and that was a mistake,” admits Fourman. “We learned that you either have to have a vision to move forward or you will go back.”

They wanted to be sure that didn’t ever happen again, so in 2024 when the vacant, 32,000-square-foot grocery store across the street from their location went up for sale, the church decided to buy and renovate it. 

“It was a huge step for us,” says Fourman, noting that Port Clinton Bible is far from a megachurch, averaging a weekly attendance of 120 people. 

This move, however, would not only give them room to grow, but also would enable them to do a lot more to fulfill their mission of being a church focused on “building the kingdom, one life at a time.” 

So far, the church has completed one phase of a four-phase plan. They have created a fellowship hall, new bathrooms and a kitchen, but they also want to have an outreach center, a gymnasium to host 3-on-3 basketball tournaments, offices and Sunday school space. Fourman envisions a youth center where kids can shoot pool and play ping-pong. Outdoor basketball courts and pickleball courts may also be in the cards.

Over the past 25 years, Fourman, who also acts as Sheriff’s chaplain for the city, has become entrenched in the community.

“I can’t go anywhere in town without seeing someone I know,” he says. 

The church—which has the goal of being a place where everyone can find God’s grace and grow in their relationship with him—is full of people from every denomination, every walk of life and every stage of spiritual growth, according to Fourman. “We are here to serve the people of this community,” he adds, “not for them to come in and serve us.”

In the summer, Port Clinton swells to more than double its size, going from 15,000 residents during the winter to up to 30,000 thanks to all the boaters and campers who vacation on Lake Erie. 

“We have more people walking in now since we went to a newer building,” says Fourman. “It’s rare not to have a new person every Sunday, which we love.”

THE CHALLENGE 
Find God’s will for how a sewing group could serve him

ONE BIG IDEA
Start a quilting ministry to comfort those in times of uncertainty.

What started as a monthly sewing club is now a thriving ministry at Grover Park Baptist Church in Warrensburg, Missouri. 

Two years ago, club co-leaders Pat Breon and Shirley Moore were inspired to use their talents to serve God and others, but they weren’t sure what that would look like. 

Breon told the ladies, “God is moving me to find out what we can do with our ministry. I think we have something here. We need to pray about it.” So the women began to ask for God’s guidance.

One day, a group member alerted them to an upcoming auction benefitting Missouri Baptist Children’s Home (MBCH), an agency that offers foster care services, counseling, pregnancy resources and more to families in the Bridgeton, Missouri, region. And the women knew this was an answer to their prayers.

“We all got excited and decided to take baby quilts to the auction,” Moore asserts. “We got on the bus with 18 church members and took 70 quilts with us.”

At auction, the quilts go for hundreds or even thousands of dollars that directly help women and children in need, providing funds for baby and maternity items at the pregnancy resource center.

Today, about 20 women meet for “Pat’s Saturday Sew Day” to make quilts that provide comfort for foster children and single moms experiencing difficult times. With nearly 2,000 families served each year through MBCH, plenty of opportunities exist for the quilting ministry to bless those who are hurting. The women make twin- and full-size quilts, maternity and baby quilts, as well as burp cloths. The group prays over every quilt that is distributed and asks God to use them for his glory. So far, the group has donated 383 quilts. 

Most of all, the women hope the quilts help during times that can feel uncertain in the lives of foster kids and single moms. 

“We are so surprised that God answered our prayer about this ministry, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything,” Breon adds.

THE CHALLENGE
Refugees and immigrants need English language instruction.

ONE BIG IDEA
Come together with other churches to provide ESL classes.

Almost two decades ago, The Church at Brook Hills’ pastor at the time, David Platt, preached sermons about spreading the gospel worldwide. 

“It was already a missions-minded church, but from there, it became the heartbeat of the congregation,” explains Grace Thornton, Brook Hills’ English as a Second Language (ESL) director. 

Then church member Marilyn Day, who ministered to international students at a local university, suggested to church leadership that Brook Hills should offer English language classes to its international congregants and others in the community. It was an idea that was fully supported, so in 2012, the church launched its free ESL program. 

The program remained popular year after year, then the pandemic struck in 2020. Church and ESL class attendance dropped sharply. So, in 2022, the church began partnering with First Baptist Church of Hoover in Hoover, Alabama, and moved its Hispanic services, Iglesia La Conexión, and its evening ESL class to First Baptist to be closer to where many of its Hispanic congregants lived. 

Today, the church holds a Thursday morning ESL class at The Church at Brook Hills consisting of nearly 50 women and preschoolers, including Spanish, Japanese, Arabic and Chinese speakers. At the Thursday night ESL class at First Baptist, many of the students, which include adults and youth, are refugees from Ukraine. Volunteer ESL instructors who attend The Church at Brook Hills teach alongside instructors from several other churches around Birmingham.

Brook Hills advertises its ESL program primarily through word of mouth, Day says. “People tell their friends, and that’s been a huge help.” 

The program also is promoted through flyers sent to public schools, libraries, restaurants and to Birmingham Cross Cultural Connections, a local nonprofit that partners with churches to assist refugees. 

Today, Senior Pastor Matt Mason says Brook Hills’ ESL program is, in its own way, reaching the world for Christ. In fact, the church recently baptized a student who came to faith through the morning ESL class. 

According to Mason, “It’s been great to see the way God has started over the years integrating people into the church from the ESL program.”

When his wife and co-pastor Tabatha Claytor was diagnosed with breast cancer, Pastor Ken Claytor of Alive Church in Gainesville, Florida, felt that he had two choices: get bitter or get better. I’m not going to get mad at God, he told himself. I’m going to get mad at Satan.

As Ken pondered how best to “hurt the devil,” he received a vision from the Lord to help lead 2 million people to Jesus over the next 20 years. Since then, “Our church has been on fire, because it’s just about winning souls, making disciples.”

In addition to its Gainesville site, Alive now has campuses in Orlando and Tampa. During Sunday worship services, the church makes a point to celebrate how many people have been led to Christ. The emphasis on “winning” souls, Ken believes, motivates the congregation to leave services with a clear mission.

“We’ve been focusing on the power of God,” he explains. “We just feel like this is a season where people need to be healed, people need to be delivered, people need to receive the Holy Spirit in its fullness.”

Those saved include a 13-year-old girl who had made a suicide pact with another youth. She attended an Alive service after a friend invited her. 

“The presence of the Lord was so strong that the demon in her was crying out in service, ‘Leave me alone!’” Ken testifies. “Our prayer team got around her and basically just took her through some deliverance. She got saved that night, and she’s still living today.”

A sermon on the prodigal son led a woman who had not been to church in 20 years to answer the altar call and sign up for baptism. The diversity in the Alive congregation has also made an impact on visitors. Members are of all ages and from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, many of whom are bilingual. So, Alive offers a Spanish-language service. 

“We had a lady in our East Orlando campus who had been, for a long time, praying for a church like ours,” Ken shares. “She had tears in her eyes just to see a church that resembles heaven because of the diversity that we have in our church. Our church is not a white church, a Black church or a Latino church. People like that.”

The church has also seen congregants rebound from health problems including cancer and brittle bone disease. After undergoing radiation and a mastectomy, Tabatha Claytor is now cancer-free. In January 2023, the Claytors launched a marriage podcast called “Doing Life With Ken and Tabatha” that has netted more than 89,000 YouTube subscribers.

“We always knew that we had a lot more in us to give to people, other than what you can give people on a Sunday in 35 minutes,” says Ken. “We see a lot of people just struggle in a relationship, so we talk about intimacy, sex, division of labor, money, parenting, how to fight right, how to have family meetings and just everything that people wish they would have known when they got married.”

Focusing on the power of God has meant an openness to try new things, whether it’s a podcast or a move away from cookie-cutter worship services. Rather than focusing on making the service a set number of minutes, Ken has asked himself what his church can do to really inhabit God’s presence. 

As a spiritual leader, he’s also learned that church growth takes time. “It’s not about going fast, but it’s about going far,” he says. “Sometimes, we want to reach the world overnight, and we want success to happen so quickly, but God is more interested in integrity, character and holiness.”

THE CHALLENGE
Develop an effective outreach to a farming community. 

ONE BIG IDEA
Host Tractor Sunday.

Situated in northwestern New Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Leatherwood Church is surrounded on three sides by farms. The rural location inspired Pastor Doug Henry to come up with a new outreach centered on something almost everyone in the area has: a tractor.

In 2007 the church held their first Tractor Sunday, a gathering where people drove their tractors to the church to show them off, much like a car show, and everybody brought a sack lunch. At that time, Henry had been pastor for a couple of years, and the church ran about 40 attendees. Today, more than 150 people attend the church and Tractor Sunday is an annual event held the Sunday before Labor Day weekend.  

At one Tractor Sunday, Henry met Nancy and Leroy Stewart. “Right away they became vital members of the church.”

Both Leroy and Nancy have since passed, but church members still remember them fondly. 

“One year Nancy brought her vintage push mower,” says Henry. “It won second place in the miscellaneous category.”

For Tractor Sunday in 2024, the 112 machines on display were judged in five different categories: show, working, lawn, kids and miscellaneous; attendance approached nearly 1,000 people. 

“[They] even come from out of state,” Henry adds, even though the church only promotes the outreach through local newspapers, flyers and Facebook.

The family-friendly event included free doughnuts and coffee, food trucks, live music and bounce houses. Everything shuts down around 11:00 a.m. for a church service that includes music and a clear presentation of the gospel. 

“We may gain one or two families in our church each year [from the event],” notes Henry.

Leatherwood Church partners with local businesses, such as Tractor Supply Co., to provide prizes and supplies. Other churches also join in to help. Grace Community Church in Sligo, Pennsylvania, for example, sends people to help run activities with an eye toward sharing the love of Christ. 

In addition, Tractor Sunday has raised funds for such ministry efforts as purchasing a tractor for missionaries in Romania. 

With a little creativity, Leatherwood Church has turned a humble farm implement into a powerful tool for outreach.

THE CHALLENGE
A rural church was stagnating.

ONE BIG IDEA 
Refresh by meeting specific community needs

When Justin Holt arrived at Star City First Assembly of God to serve as youth pastor a decade ago, the church ran about 60–70 people on a Sunday and focused mostly on international missions. But the rural town of Star City, Arkansas, with a population of just over 2,000, needed help. Like many areas in the U.S., it has long battled a high poverty rate and the issues that result.. 

By 2018, the church’s lead pastor had left, and the church promoted Holt into the role. He knew they needed to serve their neighbors better. “We’re supposed to go into all of the world and make disciples, and we’re supposed to start right here in Star City. We’ve got to take care of what we’ve got here first so that we can continue to grow in finances to be able to bless missionaries and fund other projects.”

The church looked around and assessed local need. One of its biggest outreaches is now a community-wide distribution of food, clothes, shoes, backpacks, school supplies and other household items at back-to-school time. They also hold an annual block party for residents of a public housing development, and host a catfish and crawfish boil in a nearby park.

Perhaps the most noticeable local outreach has been the church’s addiction support services. Two years ago, a local drug-addicted man showed up at the church, and God radically changed his life. A year later, that man, now a Christian, started Celebrate Recovery at Star City to help other addicts. These days, 75–100 people show up for a meeting and dinner every Thursday night. Recently, teens have begun attending, so the church has started similar classes just for them.

As another avenue to reach out to troubled teens, the church is working with a local judge to possibly serve as a hub where the kids can complete community service hours. 

The church’s efforts have proven fruitful. Holt says its bigger presence has created a familiarity between the church and the community. 

“When anybody walks in here, whether they’re in shorts and a T-shirt or a suit, we treat them the same,” he adds. “We just keep loving people. We find the need and meet it with excellence.”

THE CHALLENGE 
Temporary housing and shelters aren’t a long-term solution for homelessness.

ONE BIG IDEA 
Build tiny homes on church property that provide community and resources.

Just north of downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, Mosaic Christian Community brings together a diverse group of people. Their mission is reflected in their name. Although a ministry of the Church of the Nazarene, Mosaic’s rhythms and ministries do not look like a “regular” Nazarene church. Outside of Sunday gatherings, the church is a center for the community to connect with each other, with Christ and with social services that community members need. 

One of these ministries, Sacred Settlement Mosaic, is looking to tackle homelessness. 

Social science data indicates homelessness isn’t solved by shelters or other temporary housing. Settled, a nonprofit organization dedicated to solving chronic homelessness, took that data and created a framework called “Sacred Settlements” for churches that are looking to effectively help the unhoused.

Ricky Campbell is a member of Mosaic Christian Community and also works for Settled. He and his wife Meredith co-lead Sacred Settlement Mosaic.

“Settled has the model, the research, and the nuts and bolts of what it takes to establish a Sacred Settlement,” he explains. “They were looking for churches to step up and say yes, and since hospitality to the stranger is key to everything we do at Mosaic, this was right in our wheelhouse.”

Following Settled’s framework, the church built a tiny home community on church property. Four of the small homes house formerly unhoused people, and two are reserved for “intentional neighbors” or church members who decide to live in the community. 

Members eat together weekly and gather in a common space for other needs like laundry or simply socializing. The ministry connects Sacred Settlement members to social services they need, such as finding permanent jobs and restarting their lives. 

Campbell says that two-and-half years in, the ministry is a success. “No longer do [residents] have to worry about their next meal, or whether or not somebody’s going to rob them, or if they are going to have to move their tent. They are stable in tiny homes with a church community that is supporting them and loving them, and they’re able to live into that more abundant life.”