These guys have started over 1,100 churches since 2001! Literally, holy sh-t!
You gotta love the product: more interesting sermons and the clergy apparently keep their hands off the youngsters. Plus the owners make huge profits and need not pay taxes.
God Inc.—Church Startups Spread Franchise Model Across U.S.
Entrepreneurial networks offer money and training to aspiring church founders, sprouting new places of worship as traditional congregations shrink
By Francis X. RoccaF, Arian Campo-Flores and Adolfo Flores, WSJ
May 19, 2024
Aaron Burke launched Radiant Church a decade ago in a rundown movie theater in Tampa, Fla., offering a model of Christianity increasingly popular among America’s faithful.
The church leans conservative on matters of gender and sexuality, and its services feature a Pentecostal-style exuberance with high-energy bands and entertaining sermons. Radiant drew fewer than 200 guests in the early days. It now averages nearly 8,000 in nine church locations.
Burke, a pastor ordained in the Pentecostal Assemblies of God, started his church with more than faith. He sold a thrift store in Pensacola, Fla., and raised other funds, including $30,000 from the Association of Related Churches, a franchise-style church network known as ARC.
ARC functions as a startup accelerator, providing money and mentoring in exchange for a continuing cut of church revenues that it invests in opening new churches.
Similar entrepreneurial networks are sprouting new, largely nondenominational places of worship at a time when many traditional church congregations are shrinking. The new churches are opening across the U.S., from urban centers to suburbs, red states and blue, as well as abroad. The “church-planting” networks, established as nonprofit organizations, deploy marketing, branding and social-media strategies akin to other franchise businesses.
“We need pastors that know how to lead in the church with marketplace principles,” said Burke, 40 years old, who has an M.B.A. and a doctorate in ministry. In addition to operating the thrift store, he has made money buying and selling used vehicles.
ARC has started 1,114 churches in the U.S. and abroad since 2001, including 40 last year. Average attendance on launch day was about 500 people in the first quarter this year, the organization said. Another church-startup network, Acts 29, currently has 644 churches, mostly in the U.S., as well as in Italy, Mexico and Thailand.
Officials at the church-startup networks say traditional Christian evangelism could use a boost. “Church planting is pioneering something new, for the sake of communicating these unchanging truths of the good news of Jesus,” said Adam Flynt, vice president of church planting at Acts 29.
Catholic, evangelical and mainline Protestant churches in the U.S. are losing membership, in part because more young people shun religious affiliation, studies show. Two decades ago, 42% of American adults attended religious services every week or nearly every week, Gallup polling found. Now, it is 30%. As a result, thousands of churches close each year.
The networks take a fresh approach. “It’s almost like a Silicon Valley venture capitalist model of church growth,” said Ryan Burge, an associate professor at Eastern Illinois University who specializes in religion and politics.
That anti-institutional character of these new congregations fits the current mood in much of the U.S., Burge said: “By every measure, it has been incredibly successful.”
‘New here?’
Burke and his wife, Katie Burke, rented a dingy movie theater in a strip mall in 2013 and went to work. They scrubbed carpets and cleaned bathrooms. Volunteers decorated spaces for a cafe and a spot to care for children. They bought a sound system, video equipment and lighting.
Burke set out to attract the devout and newcomer alike to Radiant Church. He set up parking-lot greeters and gave concise sermons, punctuated with humor and applicable to the workaday life. “We’re going to do everything possible to not make it difficult for people who are turning to God,” he said.
On a recent Sunday morning, congregants streamed into the church, passing bright orange signs at the entrance that read, “New here? Swing by and say hi!” Many people were in their 20s and 30s and accompanied by children. A live band and singers kicked off the service. People in the audience swayed to the rhythm and held up their arms.
Burke’s sermon focused on the perils of selfishness. He quoted the Bible and illustrated its messages with lighthearted stories about fad diets and the selfie culture. At one point, aides brought two ladders on stage, one labeled “Self” and the other “Sacrifice.” He strained theatrically to climb both at the same time, his legs growing farther apart as he got higher, to the point of nearly toppling.
“You can only go so far trying to live between the two,” he said to laughter.
After the sermon, Burke headed to his office with staff members and volunteers to critique the service. They discussed awkward musical transitions, adjustments to camera shots for the online audience and possible tweaks to the sermon.
One woman suggested Burke exaggerate the ladder scene by climbing even higher. “It almost has to be, ‘Oh gosh, he’s going to fall,’ ” she said.
“I don’t want to go viral,” Burke replied, jokingly.
Burke’s sermons are delivered to four services each Sunday at the Tampa movie theater. They also are streamed online and broadcast live to the eight locations in the area where Burke is projected on a giant screen. Those satellite locations—some in rented space at schools—have their own bands and worship programs.
Radiant took in nearly $18 million last year in tithes and special offerings. It paid $248,000 to ARC and individual church startups. Radiant spent $3.4 million for its expansion, $6.2 million on operations and $5.7 million for personnel.
Tarra Dimanche started attending the East St. Petersburg location nearly two years ago. She was a lifelong member of an African Methodist Episcopal church and said she felt she wasn’t growing spiritually.
Dimanche and her husband, Damas Dimanche, said they felt welcome when they visited Radiant. They joined in church activities, including a prayer group. Sermons from Burke and the other ministers resonated with her, “breaking down the information and the Scripture in a way that applies to your life,” said Dimanche, 48. “That’s the one thing that keeps me coming back.”
Sermon strategies
Churches like Radiant were what ARC’s founders had in mind when they formed their organization 23 years ago. Executive director Dino Rizzo said they started slowly. By 2009, they were launching an average of 50 new churches a year. The network, based in Birmingham, Ala., invested more than $7 million in opening new churches last year.
As religious nonprofits, the networks are exempt from requirements to file annual returns to the Internal Revenue Service. ARC said it had $16.8 million in revenue during 2022, the most recent year it has released figures; $3.1 million of that went to administrative costs and $13.6 million paid for program expenses, including conferences and training.
ARC provides church founders with as much as $100,000 in matching funds as a no-interest loan. The arrangement calls for the church, if it succeeds, to pay a portion of its annual revenue to ARC. About 90% of its new churches are still operating after five years, network officials said.
Those aspiring to open new churches with network help are generally married couples, according to ARC, which provides training. At a recent two-day session in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., speakers advised the audience to brace for an arduous challenge.
“Church planting is not for the faint of heart,” said T.J. McCormick, who started Coastal Community Church in Parkland, Fla.
ARC’s launch strategy is to set a goal of drawing at least 200 people to the first service. One speaker said pastors should strive for a launch team of at least 45 people to perform such tasks as setting up for services and being ushers. Another suggestion: Gather prospective congregants to deliver a pitch for the new church over drinks and snacks.
A couple discussed search-engine optimization, learning to push the name of their new church to the top of Google searches. They suggested buying Google ads and paying for certain keywords and phrases such as “church for young adults near me.”
In a training session about worship services, a speaker advised pastors to use plain language and provide principles people can use in their daily lives. Keep sermons tightly written, the speaker said: “TikTok has shortened the attention span of the world.”
ARC performs background checks on people applying to start a church, scrutinizing finances, assessing the health of a couple’s marriage and checking social-media accounts.
The process is intense, said Michael Matthew, who founded Houston’s Eternal Rock Church in 2020 with his wife, Lisbeth Hernandez-Matthew. Their credit scores didn’t reach ARC’s threshold—because of medical debt, he said—and the couple worked with a financial coach to boost them sufficiently.
The couple were asked to demonstrate their ability to preach, manage staff and attract volunteers. They needed a branding and marketing strategy and had to show they could produce a year’s worth of sermons.
Then they had to present their plan to ARC representatives. “It would be almost like a Christian Shark Tank type of atmosphere,” said Matthew, 47.
At Acts 29, based in Mission Viejo, Calif., pastors interested in starting their own churches first submit an inquiry online. The formal application requires sermon samples and theological reflections. Next is a two-day retreat, where applicants are assessed by experienced church founders.
Demeko Bivens, who wanted to launch a church in Houston with Raph Peters, a high-school friend, said the interviews gauged their religious calling, competency and character. They delivered sermons onstage in front of pastors and church leaders.
Bivens and Peters did a one- and two-year residency at two churches as they prepared to launch Sojourn Southside Church in October 2022. Acts 29 provided a $20,000 gift and at least eight churches in Mississippi and Houston gave another $30,000. The men raised $100,000 on their own.
Acts 29 had income of about $6 million last year. Of that, $5.2 million came from its churches, according to its most recent annual report. The organization’s expenses, including conferences, assessments and support for pastors and their wives, totaled about $7 million in 2023. Acts 29 said it covered its $1 million shortfall with savings. The group’s churches generally give directly to people starting new churches rather than to the umbrella organization.
Justin Serra, an Acts 29 participant, launched New City Fellowship in Orlando, Fla., in February. The 33-year-old said fundraising was the toughest part because he was raised to not ask people for money. He has nonetheless raised $150,000 since May 2022—$110,000 largely from Acts 29 churches and an additional $40,000 from family, friends and other church-planting networks.
Noah Herrin and his wife, Maddy Herrin, arrived in Nashville, Tenn., with $2,000 in 2022. They raised $675,000—$100,000 of it from ARC and much of the rest from other churches—and opened Way Church last year with 551 people attending on the first day.
The couple covered all of the church’s launch expenses and operational costs for the first year, said Noah Herrin, 29. He tapped his experience starting a social-media business. Back then, he said, he focused on promoting products.
Now, “it’s a totally different message,” Herrin said. “It’s more about community and God.”
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