Balancing Centralization with Local Context

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, with 12 campuses across the Rio Grande Valley and beyond. With a unique focus on bilingual ministry, Cross Church is pioneering new models of multisite ministry in a predominantly Hispanic region.

Is your church wondering how to expand across languages, cultures, or campuses? Eric shares how Cross Church has embraced a centralized, bilingual multisite strategy that unites excellence with contextual flexibility.

• From one campus to twelve. // In just over seven years, Cross Church expanded from its original location to 12 campuses. Seven campuses operate in English and five in Spanish, often sharing the same physical site. The church’s regional strategy ensures that within 20–30 minutes anywhere in the Rio Grande Valley, people can access a Cross Church service.
• Bilingual by design. // Recognizing the area’s demographics, Cross Church offers identical ministry in both English and Spanish. Worship services follow the same structure, prayer is offered in both languages, and even discipleship classes are recorded and taught in both English and Spanish. Children’s ministry and Next Gen programming is primarily in English due to generational language preferences, but bilingual leaders ensure Spanish-speaking kids are fully included. This high bar of excellence across languages makes Cross Church one of the largest bilingual multisite ministries in the U.S.
• Centralized systems, local flexibility. // Cross Church operates with a centralized model. Ministries like Cross Kids, worship, first impressions, and discipleship are standardized across all campuses, ensuring consistency in branding, curriculum, and training. Campuses then have freedom to contextualize through local outreach, such as citywide prayer walks or community celebrations. This balance allows Cross Church to maintain quality while adapting to the unique needs of each community.
• Unity across languages. // In locations where English and Spanish congregations share a facility and pastors work together closely. They attend each other’s services, providing a pastoral presence, and ensure smooth transitions between the 10 a.m. English service and 12 p.m. Spanish service. This intentional collaboration prevents silos and reinforces unity across language lines.
• Discipleship through teams. // Instead of small groups, Cross Church emphasizes serve teams as the primary environment for discipleship and connection. With large percentages of members serving, teams become relational communities where people feel connected in a big church. Midweek discipleship classes, offered in both languages, supplement these teams with biblical teaching and spiritual formation.
• Launching new services. // When considering a new service, Cross Church follows a deliberate process: surveying leaders and congregants, canvassing communities, starting with worship nights, building leadership teams, and branding months in advance. They also watch practical metrics—such as when a sanctuary hits 70% capacity or when kids’ spaces overflow—before launching. And above all, they pray to discern if the timing is from God, not just a good idea.
• Looking ahead. // Cross Church continues to expand, preparing for new campuses beyond South Texas. They’ve also launched the 360 Global Network to share resources and lessons with other pastors and leaders, equipping churches to navigate growth, multisite challenges, and bilingual ministry in an increasingly multicultural America.

To learn more about Cross Church, visit crosschurchonline.com or follow @crosschurchrgv. You can also connect with Eric directly at @ericpgarza and explore resources at 360global.network

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, Rich here from the unSeminary podcast. Honored that you would tune in and listen today. Excited for this conversation. ah Literally this week, I had two conversations around what we’re talking about today with people ah 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.

Rich Birch — 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 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 and is likely has one of the largest bilingual ministries in the country. Eric, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Eric Garza — Rich, thanks for the opportunity. Happy to be with you and happy to have this conversation.

Rich Birch — Wow, this is great. So obviously you guys have experienced incredible growth…

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …and, um you know, amazing things going 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 every church, but tell us, talk us through that.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Eric Garza — 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, ah we’re about 20 minutes north of the border with Mexico.

Rich Birch — Wow. Okay.

Eric Garza — So right on the bottom, ah deep South Texas, right on the tip of Texas. And so our our demographic is predominantly Hispanic, Latino.

Eric Garza — And we’re in a part of the country um that sometimes we’re we’re the last to receive news or information, although that’s changed recently with ah SpaceX here in the region and LNG and just a lot of economic growth.

Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, that’s good.

Eric Garza — Our church over the last, I would say five years, um we went from, well, let me backtrack. 2018 this way, we went from one location to now 12 locations.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s huge.

Eric Garza — So it’s been about a little over seven years where we went from one site 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.

Eric Garza — So we got ah seven English campuses and five Spanish campuses. And so it’s been a challenging, it’s beena challenging season, but it’s 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.

Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing.

Eric Garza — And so that’s why Outreach Magazine, I believe this is the third or fourth time ah in recent years, have recognized it as one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And we’re just really blessed by that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Give us a sense of the the distance between those 12, like from the original location to the farthest. How does all that, what’s that look like?

Eric Garza — So right now in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, within 20 to 30 minutes, you can be at a Cross Church location.

Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool.

Eric Garza — So our 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 ah from our original site, they’re about 25 minutes or so, ah no more than half an hour.

Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, that’s great.

Eric Garza — So that’s why we say anywhere in the Rio Grande valley within 30 minutes ah max, you can be at a Cross Church location for for service.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love…

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — 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, hHey, we’re trying to reach the Rio Grande Valley.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — This is a, you know, is a particular cultural ah milieu. It’s an area it’s like 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 multisite, there’s like a number of different ways to skin the cat.

Eric Garza — Sure.

Rich Birch — At 12 locations, you are in the rare minority. Last last I saw, 50% of multisite churches don’t get beyond three. It’s like single digit percentage get beyond 10. You know, at 12, 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 you’re multisite, you know, seven English, five Spanish, what’s that look like?

Eric Garza — Yeah, so we got seven physical locations. And so so ah 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.

Eric Garza — And so ah it’s for us, we are the, I believe we’re the largest church in in deep South Texas. And you’re right. We kind of broke the mold expanding to multisite several years 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.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Garza — 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 when we started doing that through multisite strategy and and campus ah campuses. Well, we just saw right our growth increase, we saw our reach increase, our influence in the region increase.

Eric Garza — And so for us, we are a Latino predominantly area. And so we have a lot of speaking Spanish people um that want a modern, contemporary non-denominational type of ministry that in our region really wasn’t available up until several years ago.

Eric Garza — 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.

Eric Garza — And so we feel humbled, and we feel responsible, and we feel ah blessed that we get to go expand and do multisite 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.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. What do what do you hold in common between the campuses? What like what does teaching look like? What does um ah you know music, kids ministry, that sort of thing?

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — 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?

Eric Garza — So our our services, our service formats, whether it’s in English or Spanish, are very much similar and identical. The only difference is the language.

Rich Birch — Okay. Okay.

Eric Garza — 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 whatever we offer in English, we offer in in Spanish.

Eric Garza — 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.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Eric Garza — And so when we launch campuses and when we launch services, we do so ah 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 just in different languages.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Garza — 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.

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — You’re going to see very much the exact same stuff.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. And and that’s, um you know, as a commentary friends that are listening in, yeah 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, um 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?

Rich Birch — 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 are prevailing in this model, in this approach.

Eric Garza — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, so for us, that’s 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.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Eric Garza — Maybe their community that they’re in is doing a citywide prayer walk or they’re doing a, ah you know, an Independence Day celebration that another community might not be doing. They have the 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.

Eric Garza — 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.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Eric Garza — 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.

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — And then another campus will say, we’ll do it the same day, but we’ll do it Saturday afternoon…

Rich Birch — Okay.

Eric Garza — …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.

Rich Birch — Good.

Eric Garza — 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…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Eric Garza — …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.

Rich Birch — Okay, help us understand, you know, you’re leading the way really here, ah particularly on, um 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.

Rich Birch — I think growing church in the country is is asking this question. Every zip code is more multicultural, multi-ethnic today than it was 10 years ago, and it will be more multicultural, multi-ethnic 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.

Rich Birch — 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 on that front.

Eric Garza — Okay. Yeah. Wishful thinking, wishful thinking, my man. That is, yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah, talk us about that.

Eric Garza — So for us, there’s been a lot of trial and error, right?

Rich Birch — Okay.

Eric Garza — We say we have a great system, but it’s not a perfect system.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Garza — And as you grow and expand, you’re going to have to adapt and tweak some things in your current system. And then some systems that serve 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 10 or more, right? And so you have to adjust yourself.

Eric Garza — So for us, um the then 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.

Eric Garza — 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 going to do everything, 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, ah giving them their specific ministry and their required or or preferred language.

Eric Garza — And so for us, how do you do multisite ministry in a bilingual context? If you know something that we don’t, please tell us, because we’ve we’ve grown to adapt this in our context, Rich. There is, to our to our knowledge, no ah thriving ministry in America that sets a precedent for how to do multisite bilingual ministry.

Rich Birch — I would agree.

Eric Garza — We’re pretty much the trailblazers here. Our senior pastor, our our executive team, our our church, and in 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 a Sunday service? English speakers? And so we’ve tried different things and we’ve 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 ah trial and error and figuring things out as we go.

Eric Garza — Now, we have learned from other ministries, of course, that there’s wisdom in that. But in our context, reaching a predominantly ah 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’ve become really good at it because we have a lot of our pastors and teaching pastors and speakers are bilingual, myself included.

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — So our senior pastor, phenomenal. The man will preach bilingual and translate himself live on stage.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Eric Garza — That’s is that he’s got a gift.

Rich Birch — Wow. That’s incredible.

Eric Garza — He’s a phenomenal pastor, a phenomenal leader. And a lot of our our pastors, our campus pastors are bilingual.

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — And so they’re able to flow in that dynamic that is attractive to families. It doesn’t slow things down and it gives them a greater footing in their community, being able to connect with dual language ah ah people.

Rich Birch — 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.

Rich Birch — 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. Talk us through kind of what is the the difference in the communities kind of double click on that on that uh you know that those dynamics.

Eric Garza — Yeah, so it’s a wide – great question. It’s a wide spectrum, right? ah different You’re have guests and ah and congregants from you know different socioeconomic backgrounds, different income levels ah in both services.

Rich Birch — yep.

Eric Garza — 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 and and kids, you know, between the ages of really, you know, it infants and adolescents all the way to 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.

Eric Garza — We fully understand that there might be some Spanish speaking only kids that attend. And that’s perfectly fine. We’re prepared for that.

Rich Birch — Yep. Right. Okay.

Eric Garza — So we’ll have bilingual teachers, bilingual staffers, ah coordinators that are part of our kids ministry that, should that occur, they’re going to get exactly the same. We don’t water down.

Eric Garza — Our curriculum is in Spanish. Our videos are in Spanish. We’ll have teachers that will speak to kids in Spanish including with special needs, right?

Rich Birch — Wow.

Eric Garza — 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 the sense of what I’m trying to say…

Rich Birch — I understand. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Garza — …without minimizing the impact and the quality of experience or teaching that they’re going to get.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s incredible. I love that. That’s, uh, Yeah, you’ve you’ve set a high bar in a in a really great, beautiful way, um you know, to to make that happen.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Let’s double click on this again. You kind of already touched on this, but I’d love to circle back on the alignment and, you know, and autonomy issue.

Eric Garza — Sure.

Rich Birch — So, you know, the most, um we’ll call them single language, multisite churches, they struggle with this issue. You know, that this is like it’s a constant kind of battle. How do how much alignment, how much autonomy do we give locations? But then you’ve added this extra layer of multiple languages.

Rich Birch — 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?

Eric Garza — So we are a centralized ah ministry organization. And so what I mean by that is um 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 is basically this central will set the systems. Campuses will execute those systems.

Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. Great.

Eric Garza — So Cross Kids central department, right, our kids central department, Cross Kids because that’s the name of our church, um they will set the curriculum, they will set the lesson plans, they will set the videos that are going to be shown, ah the theme for that Sunday or for that month, and then the local campuses will execute.

Eric Garza — Central will provide the training to all of our kids leaders and teachers and staff and personnel. The same. So every every kid’s 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.

Eric Garza — In other words, as far as our ministry systems are concerned. Even our finances, even our 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.

Rich Birch — Right, okay.

Eric Garza — 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. We have both of those. We have that wide a spectrum of campus sizes. They’re going to get the same materials and branding and resourcing.

Eric Garza — 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 wanna 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.

Eric Garza — People love going 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.

Eric Garza — 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 answer is right. It’s 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.

Rich Birch — So this is like a super detailed church wonk question um at the level of at a campus level, um even this the way you 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 if I’m correct.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — 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 and in in that, you know, that location? what What does that look like for them?

Eric Garza — 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 us English pastor and the Spanish will have their Spanish pastor.

Eric Garza — 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 so 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.

Rich Birch — yeah.

Eric Garza — And so for example, we have a 10 o’clock English service at at our locations and then locations have a twelve… 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 12 p.m. on Sundays in Spanish.

Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.

Eric Garza — So the teams will transition out. The Spanish has the exact same teams that the English does.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Garza — 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.

Eric Garza — 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.

Rich Birch — Right, yeah, yeah.

Eric Garza — No, they’re there to equip each other, to 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 and 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.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s that’s fantastic. Like, ah yeah, you’re 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 ask some of those, ah you know, detailed questions.

Eric Garza — Oh, absolutely. And we’re still learning, right? We’re we’re still learning as we go.

Rich Birch — Oh, yeah, for sure.

Eric Garza — Yeah. And as challenges and situations come up, up we’ll figure them out as they come, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah. You talked about um earlier, you met you said the we the the phrase, hey, we’ve got a great system, but not a perfect system.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And that does, it’s interesting, I’m working on this book um ah 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 2000, churches are trying lots of different things.

Rich Birch — 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.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And we’re not even convinced. It’s just like our approach. It’s fine. Like, we’re not hung up on it.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — What would be ah 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 um you know, push the thing forward? What would be one of those or a couple of those that you could, you could think through?

Eric Garza — Yeah, um as I’m thinking about it, as you’re asking the question, ‘m thinking back to a couple of our campuses that underwent some building renovations and building projects to create more space.

Eric Garza — And so it used to be that we could host our our membership courses or membership classes in a small space. And as the campus grew that space, we outgrew that space or that meeting room or whatever.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s great. Yeah.

Eric Garza — And so our 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 ah blue bag with their gift, right?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Garza — 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…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Eric Garza — …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 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.

Eric Garza — 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 ah an LED screen, right? because your your your spacing is different.

Rich Birch — Sure, sure.

Eric Garza — 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, multi site and adding more and we’ll continue to add more into 2026 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 so across the board to even more campuses?

Eric Garza — Our current systems, do they, now that we’re expanding even out of the Rio Grande Valley and 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.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Garza — 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.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Eric Garza — And as you’re right, as long as it’s not sin and it’s not anti-biblical or scriptural, yeah you can change things, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah, 100%.

Eric Garza — Nothing nothing beyond the word of God is sacred…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Eric Garza — …and in this in the in the context of this conversation, right?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Garza — 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.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Eric Garza — They’re not perfect because they’re led by and they’re implemented by imperfect people. And so all of that, right, as we go multisite and expand, man, we’re constantly thinking about all those thoughts, ah perusing through our minds and our meetings, and how do we get better at what we’re currently doing?

Rich Birch — Yeah, this fantastic. So is there a difference or a kind of compare and contrast the discipleship pathway between English and Spanish is, you know, like you talked about, like, so you know, someone’s coming, they’re getting a gift and some sort of new here thing. And then, you know, 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.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — What does that look like? And are you bilingual at at that level as well? Like are the right to the, you know small groups and all that stuff and talk us through all, what does all that look like that side of what’s going on across?

Eric Garza — Yeah. So for us, we currently don’t have small groups at our church. We have serve teams.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Eric Garza — And so we push, ah we highly encourage people into our serve teams.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Garza — And a large percentage of our church is involved in serve teams.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Garza — And so that becomes kind of their church family, their church group.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Garza — 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.

Eric Garza — 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…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Eric Garza — …and then I’ll record it in Spanish.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Eric Garza — 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.

Rich Birch — That’s fantastic.

Eric Garza — And so that’s why, Rich, we’ve, we’ve been so blessed and, and we’ve had to work at this…

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Eric Garza — …where as best as we can. Now, not everything, right, not a hundred percent 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.

Eric Garza — 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.

Eric Garza — So we do our very best. And I say nine out of ten – 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 they’re very efficient and excellent systems.

Rich Birch — 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, a hey, like our churches should represent, they should, when you walk into our church, it should look like the community we’re in.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And he totally called me out on the podcast, and was like, Rich, like you could need to think about a bigger thought. This isn’t about some 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 our context? I think it’s you know I think it’s I think it’s amazing.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — It’s it’s incredible. Well, if there’s leaders that are listening in today that are thinking, hey, we we are thinking about we might need should add a second language service experience, or we 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?

Eric Garza — Yeah. Great question. As a matter of fact, we’re actually in that exact scenario with one of our campuses right now…

Rich Birch — Oh nice.

Eric Garza — …that is 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.

Eric Garza — 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.

Eric Garza — 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?

Eric Garza — And then we ask the 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 that 2 p.m., 6 p.m.? Is it Saturday? What what what service? What does that look like?

Eric Garza — And then at the campus where I say 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…

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s great.

Eric Garza — …with ah 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.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Garza — 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.

Eric Garza — 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, uh, we’re pretty much in place to sustain it.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Garza — And so what happens is if, if if there’s pastors or leaders who, it’s not, hey, we’re growing, we’re expanding, right? Statistically, if a service is 70% full, ah then you can launch a second service. A lot of people say, well, yeah I still got empty seats. Yeah, but your kid’s ministry might not.

Rich Birch — Or parking or some other area. Yeah.

Eric Garza — 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 got to consider. So when your sanctuary attendance is at 70% or higher, ah you’re probably in a good spot to consider opening a second service, regardless of the language.

Eric Garza — In our context, opening a second service, we do a lot of back-end work. We do a lot of due diligence ah before but before we open the service.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love that.

Eric Garza — 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.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.

Eric Garza — 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 would be remiss if I didn’t say, we also pray about it. Is God leading us in that direction?

Rich Birch — Right, what’s he telling us to do?

Eric Garza — Because just because it’s ah it’s a good thing doesn’t mean it’s a God thing, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah. True, true. Yep.

Eric Garza — And so even in in the context of ministry, even in us as a multisite 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 um before making the final decision.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. And, you know, a couple things I want to underline there for our listeners. I love that you start with listening to your people.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — 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…

Eric Garza — Right.

Rich Birch — …you know, get 10 leaders in a room, have have some conversations.

Eric Garza — Right.

Rich Birch — 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 to serve.

Eric Garza — Right. Well, and and you have to, I didn’t i didn’t mean to interrupt you.

Rich Birch — No, no, it’s fine.

Eric Garza — And and you had you have to talk with the leaders because they’re the ones that are going to be helping you execute the ministry.

Rich Birch — 100%. 100%.

Eric Garza — And if they’re not, if if you don’t have a ah good segment of them on board, you’re going to have a difficult time getting that service off the ground.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah, it’s great. Okay. And then the other thing was, I love that you’re, there’s like the decision to launch and then that sets off a whole bunch of other actions. Like if 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.

Eric Garza — Right.

Rich Birch — We got to actually, it’s the difference between starting that service and launching it. Like where we really want to push it forward and um you know, do it well. So love that.

Rich Birch — So, all right. Well, as we’re wrapping up today’s episode, anything else you’d love to share, ah you know, kind of final parting words to leaders who are listening in today?

Eric Garza — Well, Rich, thanks for the opportunity, man. I’m very grateful just to get to share. Our church, we 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 um ah organization, the 360 Global Network that’s available.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Garza — 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.

Rich Birch — So good.

Eric Garza — And God has given us so much resource and so much wisdom. And ah 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 serve more people.

Eric Garza — And as the demographic of our country continues to shift and change. And you have the Hispanic community just really growing in throngs and and thriving. Bilingual ministry, we believe, is going to become a key factor in how the church operates in different communities in the country.

Rich Birch — 100%. Yeah, 100%.

Eric Garza — 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 ah man, it would just be our pleasure ah 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.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Love that. So again, that’s just 360 global – so the numbers, 360global.network. You should check that out.

Eric Garza — Correct.

Rich Birch — A great resource, lots of, you know, stuff going on there. You can chase that down ah 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?

Eric Garza — Yeah, you can go to social media, @crosschurchrgv 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 @ericpgarza on Instagram, social media. Man, thanks for the opportunity, Rich. Very, very blessed by our conversation.

Rich Birch — Thank you. Thanks for being here today.