Christ Fellowship Miami: Homegrown Leaders, Global Impact in a Thriving Multisite Model

Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. In this All About Multisite month podcast episode we’re talking with Omar Giritli, Lead Pastor, and Carlos Cardenas, Executive Pastor at Christ Fellowship. With campuses spread across Miami, the Caribbean and South America, Christ Fellowship has truly become a model of how to lead a diverse, multi-generational church with a powerful mission.

What does it take to lead a multisite church with a global reach? Tune in as Omar and Carlos share how they’ve developed a robust leadership pipeline, fostered a culture of empowerment, and navigated the unique challenges of international church planting.

• A leadership development culture. // Leadership development at Christ Fellowship is not an option—it’s a requirement. Each staff member has annual goals, and one goal is always centered on developing other leaders. Staff are encouraged to delegate responsibility, not just tasks, helping others grow into influential roles. Their internal development program, “Level Up,” formalizes this process, encouraging team members to train potential successors—redefining success as equipping others to step into greater leadership.
• Raising up leaders from within. // Recruiting from outside rarely works in Miami. The cultural uniqueness of the city—especially its heavily Hispanic influence—means long-term success requires deep contextual understanding. One of the secrets to Christ Fellowship’s healthy culture is staff longevity. Many leaders—including all members of the directional leadership team—have been with the church for over a decade. This consistency creates visible pathways for growth and strengthens team culture. Staff can look up and see real examples of advancement built on trust, integrity, and commitment to the local church.
• Global campuses, local DNA. // When Omar stepped into the lead pastor role, he reevaluated the church’s missions giving strategy. Rather than sending money to organizations with little oversight or visibility into outcomes, Christ Fellowship decided to launch and support its own global campuses. This strategic shift allows for greater accountability, stewardship, and relational investment. Each campus receives support in leadership development, sermon content, graphics, and operational tools, resulting in a globally unified movement that shares one vision, one strategy, and a recognizable culture.
• Building global campuses. // When establishing international campuses, some of the relationships have been mergers with dying churches. Other times Christ Fellowship begins with small groups led by an identified local pastor. These pastors are mentored and assessed for alignment with Christ Fellowship’s vision and theology. Once critical mass is achieved, a public launch is held with leadership support from Miami.
• Ongoing training and support. // Launching an international campus can fail if the global campus pastor does not share the mission and strategy. Christ Fellowship maintains strong relationships with global campus pastors, providing regular Zoom training, creative workshops, and even hosting an annual global leadership conference. This depth of investment ensures that international locations mirror the Miami experience in quality and culture—despite contextual differences.
• Missional generosity fuels growth. // Local outreach is just as important as global expansion. Through Caring for Miami, Christ Fellowship operates mobile markets, dental clinics, and clothing buses to serve under-resourced communities. The result? People give more generously—not because of flashy campaigns, but because they see their gifts changing lives in tangible ways.

You can learn more about Christ Fellowship at www.cfmiami.org and follow them on social media @cfmiami. For local outreach updates, check out @caringformiami.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in during this All About Multisite month. We’re having conversations, getting behind the scenes with some prevailing multisite churches. And to be honest, I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a long time.

Rich Birch — Excited to have a couple of leaders from Christ Fellowship. This church was founded in 1917 to impact Miami by helping people and their families follow Jesus. Today, Christ Fellowship really is a model church, a church you should be following, multi-generational, multicultural, international church with multiple locations. I can’t keep track in Miami, the Caribbean, Latin America, and online. We’ll get to how many later. Excited to have Omar Giritli with us, ah lead pastor, and Carlos Cardenas, the executive pastor and leads the directional leadership team. Welcome, guys. So glad you’re here.

Omar Giritli — Hey, glad we’re here.

Carlos Cardenas —  It’s good to be here. Yeah.

Omar Giritli — Absolutely.

Rich Birch — This this is going to be good. Why don’t we start with kind of filling out the picture a little bit. Omar, kind of fill out tell fill out the kind of the picture. Give us a bit more kind of on the bones of that description that I gave there.

Omar Giritli — Yeah, you know, we we are a church here in Miami that really even started before 1917. We’re the oldest church in Miami. In fact, our downtown campus opened a day before the city of Miami was incorporated.

Rich Birch — Wow!

Omar Giritli — And so we have a long, rich history here in Miami. Our downtown campus, back in the day, you know, sent sent off the the Palmetto Bay campus back in 1917. And ah that grew, God you know really showed a lot of grace to our to our church here in the Palmetto Bay area. And from there on out, we kept growing. The downtown campus, which was Central Baptist Church, became us, or like our sending church, merged with us. And so now we have five campuses all throughout Miami-Dade County in the different key regions in Miami. And then we also have ah campuses all throughout kind of Latin America, the Caribbean, and South America.

Rich Birch — Wow. Well, we’re definitely going to get to that ah today.

Rich Birch — Carlos, why don’t you tell us little bit about your story? How did you get connected to the church? You know, oftentimes the the great thing about, people understand what lead pastors do and they talk about executive pastors. It looks different in every church. Give us a bit of a profile. Talk to us a little bit about where you spend your time.

Carlos Cardenas — Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s good to to be here with you, Rich. And I actually have been on staff for 15 years already. And when I transitioned, when I came to Christ Fellowship for the first time, I actually started as a volunteer. I was a volunteer, worship ah member. I was, well, still played music, but I was a musician, played a keyboard, was part of band directing and things like that. And so I started as a volunteer and I became an intern for just a couple months, like three months. But right when I became an intern, a couple months later, I was was I was given the opportunity to come on staff as a worship director at one of our campuses.

Carlos Cardenas — That being said, throughout the years, you know, with other previous leaders, you know, I’ve been able to be developed as a leader, you know, and growing my leadership, growing my not only knowledge of God’s word, but knowledge of, you know, ministry life and and all that. And so I’ve had several positions here, from being a campus pastor, to eventually, you know, being the pastor of campuses. And then um became officially ah an executive pastor, you know, our, our lead pastor, Pastor Omar, he became the lead pastor in 2019. And a couple years after that, you know, um, the previous executive pastor was only here for a season. It was just a transitional thing and I would become a successor. So officially I became an executive pastor of Christ Fellowship about two and a half years ago.

Carlos Cardenas — So it’s been ah a fun ride. I mean, you know, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve made a a lot of mistakes and but but it’s been interesting and it’s just been a great experience to to learn the ins and outs of multisite, of ministry, of being in a city like Miami. You know, ah there’s there’s challenges that we have that other churches, other cities, you know, you may not come across these challenges. So, but it’s been ah it’s been an interesting and a good, really good experience, healthy experience overall.

Rich Birch — Love it. that’s That’s so good.

Rich Birch — Omar, you were talking earlier that you started as a part-time role at the church as well. To give us a little bit about your history, because this is, I think, super you know fascinating. Here’s two leaders leading at a senior level in a really influential growing church. Talks about how your journey from where you started to the role of lead pastor.

Omar Giritli — Right. So, you know I was you know, I was going to the University of Miami. I went to I was going to be an attorney, actually. And so, you know, I got i was going to be an accountant and then I and then went to law school. And between my first and second year of law school, I felt like God called me to the ministry.

Omar Giritli — So I decided, felt like God called me to ministry, but I decided just to finish off law school. And so after law school, instead of going to the law profession, I literally went to I started working at Christ Fellowship.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Omar Giritli — And I started working as an intern um during law school. I was not an intern at a law office. I was an intern at church. And and when once I graduated, ah by the grace of God, there was an opening here at CF, and it was a very entry level you know, position in small groups ministry. I was an intern in the student ministry. Then I came into in the small groups.

Omar Giritli — And then from there on out, kind of my journey is very kind of very similar to Carlos. I was a ah small group associate. I became the small group director, small group pastor. Then it became, then I transitioned to a campus pastor later on. Then I became the director of campuses. And then after that, there was a season where I kind of was doing executive pastor role without the official title. But then eventually, ah yeah, then eventually I just transitioned into the lead pastor when our former lead pastor, Pastor Rick Blackwood, transition retired.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Omar Giritli — But we both had a very similar similar journey.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that I love that. And that speaks to, we were joking about this ahead of time, your reputation as a church is you have like a great robust leadership culture. And, you know, have done a great job but um kind of helping people develop and helping, you know, your people develop people.

Rich Birch — Carlos, talk to us a little bit about maybe at a staff level, at when you’re encouraging your staff to develop. I think this is one of these things that all of our churches, we say we want to do, but it’s actually very hard to operationalize. What does the developing of particularly volunteers look like for the team at CF?

Carlos Cardenas — Yeah, absolutely. We we definitely try to create ah and cultivate a dynamic and an environment where there’s a lot of leadership development that takes place. Not only do we encourage that, we it’s part of our goals. So every year at our church, we, our staff, we have about four to five, sometimes six, you know, goals that we want to accomplish. And one of them always has to do with leadership development.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Carlos Cardenas — So, you know, you have your attendance, you have like small groups, you have volunteers, which is great, right? But one of them always has to do with developing a leader. And so, and so it is it is the norm here to to empower volunteers, to empower other staff members to do some of the some of the responsibilities that you’ve been entrusted with.

Carlos Cardenas — And one ah jokingly, I always tell people, listen, ah we don’t want Superman leadership here. Like, we don’t want you to be a Superman and do it all, right? Like, you’re the one that’s going save the world, and you’re the one that’s going to save the day, and you’re the one that’s going to know all the answers. No, we want to be able to delegate and empower as much as possible.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Carlos Cardenas — You know, if you, you know, I heard Andy Stanley many, many years ago share, if you, you know, delegate tasks, you’re just going to create followers. But if you delegate authority, you’re going to create leaders. You’re going to develop leaders. And so that is very, you know, as part of our culture, you know, something that we talk about often. And and we’ve actually throughout the, so, a lot of the leadership of development, ah some of it happens sort of organically, right? Because it’s the culture and you’re bringing alongside alongside someone with you. You know, when you go into a meeting, you’re, you know, you bring someone just to be a fly on the wall so they can hear how the dynamics of that meeting goes. You know, people that you entrust, right? Second Timothy 2.2, you know, entrust into reliable men who will entrust into others, you know, entrust into people that you’re going to, you trust and are are competent and have the character.

Carlos Cardenas — But throughout the years, ah several years ago, we actually formalized our leadership development process and we call it Level Up. So it’s like you’re leveling up someone ah to take on more leadership and possibly even taking on your position.

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

Carlos Cardenas — And so I know at times people can become insecure because they’re like, oh, my gosh, is this competition?

Carlos Cardenas — You know, I’m leveling up this person and then they’re no longer going need me. But vice versa. We we actually ah reward those who have leveled up someone to take on their position because if you level up someone to take on your position or another one, you’re you’re always going to have a job or a seat in the bus, right?

Rich Birch — 100%. 100%.

Carlos Cardenas — Because you’re just helping you know God’s mission move forward.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Carlos Cardenas — And one of the things that will will will be a hindrance to the mission that God has given us as a church is lack of leaders.

Omar Giritli — Yeah.

Carlos Cardenas — You know if you don’t have, you you can have the the resources. You can have the venue. You can have the finances. You know you can have even like the volunteers. But if if you if the Lord provides a campus for us, right? And we don’t have the right campus pastor or the the right person to lead that campus, then guess what? It’s it’s going to create a a lid or it’s going to create a barrier into what we want to do in the future.

Carlos Cardenas — And so not not only do we encourage it, Rich, but we we make it part of our goals to to you know that you are required to develop someone or develop leaders.

Rich Birch — That’s good. We’ll come we’ll come back. I’d love to talk about Level Up, kind of the formal program, what does that look like in a minute.

Carlos Cardenas — Sure. Sure.

Rich Birch — But Omar, let’s talk about the culture side a little bit first.

Rich Birch — How do we develop, before we just jump to a program, how do we develop a culture? How have you been seeing the culture encourage at CF around leadership development? It’s that nuance. It’s that caught versus taught thing, right? Somebody can get up and say, hey, we got to develop leaders, but it’s a whole different thing when it becomes a part of who we are. What does that look like? How have you been able to develop that culture, Omar, at the church?

Omar Giritli — You know, I I think just to like what Carl’s saying, I think, you know, you know we I think part of it is that, you know, we have a a system in place. And I think part of it is, is the the the the, when our staff looks up to the leadership of the church, not only Carlos and I, but even like our directional leadership team and our campus pastors, I can’t even think of one person we brought in from the outside.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Omar Giritli — So what happens is, is anybody that’s in our staff and looks up in the organization, they, you know, they, they can, you know, you know, they can see, wow, if I stick around it long enough, if I’m faithful, if I work hard, if I’m a man of a woman of integrity…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Omar Giritli — …if if I do what is asked of me and I’m faithful, what Ii have to do, there’s always opportunity for me here at Christ Fellowship. I, you know, I’m not a big fan of bringing people from the outside.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Omar Giritli — And really, the few times that we’ve done it, it’s very expensive, and they don’t last.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Omar Giritli — Good people, they just, they just don’t last. I mean, it’s they they’re here for two or three years, and they go. And whether, you know, Miami is very different. Miami is very Hispanic. I mean, little you know, you cross a Broward line, which is a county above, you know, Miami-Dade. And it’s it’s it’s a very unique place. It’s it’s it’s a very unique place. There’s a lot of, you know, Hispanics. It’s a melting pot of South America. And so there’s a lot of things going on here that, honestly, it’s not it’s not for everybody.

Omar Giritli — And so um so usually people just come and they’re here for just a few years and it’s not even us. It’s sometimes the cost of living, and the people, and you know the i just they just rather go somewhere else. But the people that stick around for long-term are all people who’ve been here 10, 15 years.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Omar Giritli — I think, if you think about it, like between Carlos and I, we’ve been here both over 15 years. The directional leadership team, every single person has been from 35 years to somebody else is probably like, all of them are over 10 years in directional leadership team here within CF.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Omar Giritli — The campus pastors, for the most part, have been here easily six, seven to 10 years. So what happens is you start looking up the organization and at any young intern, any young staff member entry level position, they see you know, we can talk a lot about leadership development and we can talk about, hey, but where the proof, you know, where the proof, you know, the proof is in the pudding, right?

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Omar Giritli — Look up and everybody here are people that have been here for a long time. So I think that in itself screams, you know, you know, you know screams, um says a lot more than anything we could ever say.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Omar Giritli — And I think people recognize that. And I think um the people that ah that are in our staff are here. And the truth of the matter is you want people that you raise up because not only are they they, they, you know, you know, you, they know, you you know who they are. You know that they love the Lord. They understand how we operate as a church. They understand our history of our church. But the reality is that they also love our church. There’s a deep passion not and love, not only for the Lord, but for our church, our church family.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Omar Giritli — And so I think that’s, you know, you know you can have all you can have all the leadership development pipelines and strategies in your in your church. But if the top people are not longstanding people that have developed through the ranks, it’s it’s kind of like you’re you’re you’re preaching something, but it it’s doesn’t really come to fruition, you know?

Rich Birch — Right.

Carlos Cardenas — You’re not you’re not modeling you’re not modeling we’re not you don’t not be modeling what you’re preaching what you’re what you’re you know vision casting for.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s a good insight. You know, and and there’s no doubt, you know, Miami obviously is a unique place, but every part of the country tells the same story, which is like, hey, this part of the country is just different for one reason or another.

Omar Giritli — Sure. Right.

Rich Birch — And it’s everybody’s convinced that they’re, but you know, that is obviously true in Miami. And you can see that where, you know, and we I think we get tempted by the cross country hire. We get tempted by the like, oh, here’s a person that was in a similar church and like we can just transplant them into here and like they’ll, but that it really is, it’s the rare person. And I did that. I made the 12 hour move and thought I was going to live there forever. And eight, nine years later, we moved back. I didn’t even think that was going to happen, but there it is.

Rich Birch —Carlos, tell us, talk…

Carlos Cardenas — And I think, and just to add to what Omar said about it, if you don’t mind if I can just add to what Omar said, because I completely agree with that.

Rich Birch —Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Carlos Cardenas — I think when you don’t when the culture is not healthy and it and it it’s in a specific ministry, then you may need to hire from the outside…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Carlos Cardenas — …like someone that may need to fix you know the ministry or fix whatever area department because the culture is toxic and and all that. But by the grace of God, we we’ve tried as much as we can within the last four to five years, especially when Omar became the lead pastor, to, to make sure the culture is healthy.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Carlos Cardenas — Like we work hard at trying to, you know, you know, reward people, you know, care for them, celebrate them, and encourage them.

Omar Giritli — Yeah.

Carlos Cardenas — And I think one of the biggest mistakes that people but fail in ministry is that they don’t want to let go of responsibility. They don’t want to like, and we are all about like, man, releasing, here’s an opportunity for you. You’re young, whether intern or yeah or a volunteer. I mean, we have volunteer staff that that and we hold accountable to.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Carlos Cardenas — Like they we hold them accountable. They go to staff meetings and they’re volunteers.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Carlos Cardenas — Lay men, lay women, you know, that love our church. But, you know, the the I think Omar brought up an excellent point. The high-performing leader stud from across the country, they know a lot, but they they don’t have that love for for the church…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Carlos Cardenas — …like like like like someone else who may not be, you know, a five-star, you know, leader, but they they’ll get there. They’ll get there, you know? So, yeah.

Rich Birch — Right. Well, yeah and I’ve, so I’ve said in other contexts, like what we do is not rocket science. Like I think sometimes we make it more complex than it is. But the culture stuff—and I love that both of you have hit on this—the love for the church, man, you can’t replace that.

Carlos Cardenas — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Like the, the, the heart, the heart for the house, man, we love this place.

Omar Giritli — Yeah.

Rich Birch — You know, God’s changed my life here. I want to be a part of that. That’s a very good, that’s a very good insight.

Rich Birch — Omar, pivoting in a totally different direction. As an outsider, Miami seems to be the capital city of Latin America, and your church has is in is taking that mission on very seriously. You’ve done the international campus thing. I’d love to hear more about that, just to put ah in a little bit context for our listeners. The vast majority of multisite churches are, in fact, less than 1% are more than an hour away from the original location. So the fact that you’re doing international campuses, very rare. It just doesn’t, statistically just doesn’t happen.

Rich Birch — But I’d love to hear the story of that, Omar. How did you get into that? What’s the vision behind that? Tell us a little bit of that story.

Omar Giritli — Yeah. So what happened was when I stepped into this role of lead pastor, one of the things that, and and it was a little bit also when I was doing the kind of the XP role, you know, I was noticing that we would send a lot of money to our, to different mission organizations. And what I noticed was we’re sending a lot of money, and I had no clue what they were doing with that money.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Omar Giritli — I mean, it was so much money. Yeah. Mission, mission, mission, but okay. Where’s the report?

Rich Birch — Right.

Omar Giritli — Where’s, help us understand how do we know what how you handle that money? You know, and again, it’s not I don’t think anybody was you know doing anything fraudulent, but there wasn’t any any real, you know, you know, what was the fruit of that? What was the fruit of all of our sacrifice to give to this mission organization, you know?

Omar Giritli — And so at some point we we we started we we have like ah we’re supporting some churches in Cuba. And at that juncture, we went to go see them and um the previous um executive pastor before Carlos, ah his name is Jim Tomberlin, you probably know who he is.

Omar Giritli — You know, I started thinking myself, why we start funneling all of our missions budget, not just to some random mission organizations that we have no clue how they’re using the money and how effective they’re using that money. But what about if we just plant our own churches? How what about we establish our own churches?

Omar Giritli — And these will be churches that have our same mission, vision, strategy. Our same name. Some places would have Christ Fellowship in some Latin American countries where there’s English speaking people. If not, they’re called Familia Cristiana, which is a very similar name with the same low, same thing. And they will be independent churches. They’re not ours, but they’re independent churches that ah we support the pastor. We provide resources, graphics, a sermon. I mean, anything that they they need. And how come, you know, what about we did this?

Omar Giritli — So we what we started doing is instead of giving all this money just to some, you know, random mission organization that we don’t know how effective they were being. We know that when we establish, when we plant our church ourselves, we know how to do it. We know that’s going to be effective. And we know that we can, with integrity, I could stand before the congregation and everything that you sacrifice and you gave towards this church, we know what every penny went to. And we, and here’s the proof. These are churches you have started or helped revitalize.

Omar Giritli — And it’s been awesome. It’s been awesome because they they, lot of these churches, we plant them and with the strategy, hey, we want to get you off the ground. And you’re free to go. You’re you’re like you’re you’re literally free to go and become your own church if you want to. But most of them just stay with us.

Rich Birch — Right.

Omar Giritli — They just want to just stay with us really.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Omar Giritli — And they have a great, great partnership. And it’s been really a really great, a really great thing for us where, you know, we’re able to establish all these churches in all these different places and, and we’re learning and we don’t have it perfected. But if you look at any of these other campuses globally, they’re going through the same series we are.

Carlos Cardenas — Yeah.

Omar Giritli — Same graphics, same, you know, sermon, you know, same teaching. I mean, It’s kind of funny. Some people have said that they go to these global campuses and they look more Christ Fellowship than some of our local campuses. I mean, they have really taken the identity, our strategy, our logos, pictures, and they’ve own it. They’ve taken ownership of.

Omar Giritli — And I think with those churches, when they realize, well, we’re being led by by a church who is not trying to you know be over-controlling, but we’re here, we’re together in this, right? We’re together we’re and we’re and, man, they really appreciate it. So, so yeah, so we have um campuses. I believe we have nine campuses right now um all over.

Omar Giritli — We’ve there’s been times that we’ve had 15, 16. There was a moment, for example, in Cuba where we came to a point, we had about six, seven campuses in Cuba that they said, you know, with the political tensions, better if we completely go independent because of everything going on.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Sure.

Omar Giritli — And so they they went off and they’re still doing great and we love them. They love us. But, you know, that’s, you know, our goal is not having a Christ Fellowship campuses. It’s really establishing and and planting new churches where there are no churches, you know.

Rich Birch — Right.

Omar Giritli — It’s been great. And I think our people are really appreciate it. Because they really feel that when they give their tithe and their offerings and they sacrifice to give to Christ Fellowship, that we’re really funneling that to to to to further the gospel to all nations.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.

Carlos Cardenas — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Could, Carlos, unpack that a little bit. When you say that you guys have planted, what does that typically look like? Like, are you identifying planters in the communities that you’re, you know, that you’re launching in? Talk us through some of the, how does some of the mechanics of that work?

Carlos Cardenas — Yes, some of them have been a—great question—some of them have been a church merger, you know, so it’s a church, a church that is, you know, a dying church. And then we’ve so we have a global pastor, you know, and our global pastor is the one who is ah but building these relationships with these men or these pastors, right? And and in those countries. And so then some of them have been of church merger.

Carlos Cardenas — Others have started just like we would start a local campus where they start with small groups. You know, we first of all, I identify the leader. So we have the pastor. Then that pastor, I can tell you one campus in Colombia, Villavicencio, this was the their their their pathway. Actually for several of them, on Honduras as well and Guatemala, where they begin ah small groups, right? In someone’s home.

Carlos Cardenas — And then they start having multiple small groups. And then they identify a venue. So usually they they lease space, you know. We do help them financially in that in that process. And then from there, we have our our grand our our our launch date, like our grand opening. For the most part, either Omar, myself, will be a part of that. We’ve even done ordinations and in in in some of these pastors.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Carlos Cardenas — We’ve gone there to do ordinations, like do the whole ordination process and the the ceremony. So it usually starts with identifying the pastor, starting off with small groups, investing and serving the community. And then we have our grand opening launch, launch date in, in, in, in that, in that community, in that city of of of the country that we we go to.

Carlos Cardenas — And just to, to really just to kind of add to what Omar shared, you know, there, if you were to go to one of those campuses, it feels like you’re at Christ Fellowship Miami. Like in in the context of that nation, it’s like, oh, like same graphic branding, um you know, even the vibe like guest services.

Carlos Cardenas — Because the other thing too, is that our ministry directors here, they spend some time ah developing their leaders there. So for example, Like our creative director will have a Zoom meeting with all the creative leads from all the different global campuses. So you will have like 15 people from all over the country, from all and over the world, right? From all over really South America, and Latin America and the Caribbean. So you have someone from several people from, you know, um Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, you know, Honduras.

Carlos Cardenas — And, and, and we’ll, you know, they’ll still have like a a workshop, you know, on hey here’s, here’s some of the best, you know, common practices when it comes to, you know, graphics and when it comes to, you know, ah videos on social media, think things like that. Right?

Carlos Cardenas — And then um not last year, but in 2023, we were going to do it this year, but we had to we we we we pivoted and we’re not gonna do it this year. But in 2023, we had our our first global conference…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Carlos Cardenas — …where we had about 200 volunteers. Some were staff, but most of them were volunteers from all these global campuses. And we did a full-on conference for them. So we took about 25 staff members, including myself, you know. That included the band. So we took like the bands, you know.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Carlos Cardenas — We did a full on, you know, main session, like I was able to preach in one of the main sessions. And then we have breakouts, you know, like, it was ah it was I think it was a day and a half. No, sorry, it was a it was a full day of a conference. And then we visited many of the locations that we we had in that in that country that we went to.

Carlos Cardenas — So um we not only do we want to provide financial support, like, you know, to Omar’s point, you You know, one thing is to write a check. Another thing is to, like, we’re going to invest in your leadership. We’re going to invest in you as ah as a as a leader, as a volunteer, as a person, as ah as a congregation, as a campus. We’re we’re going to invest in you. We’re going to walk alongside you and…

Rich Birch — I love that. Yeah, I love that.

Carlos Cardenas — …and tell you, you know, here’s how we do follow-up. Here’s how we do small groups. So we’re one church. You know, it’s it’s just a it’s we call it global campuses.

Omar Giritli — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Carlos Cardenas — And and every year, at least once a year, we bring our global pastors together. We have them on stage. They share, you know, we have a video. They share something. We cast vision. We remind, you know, God’s people like, hey, part of your giving, part of your generosity…

Rich Birch — Yeah, it goes to this.

Carlos Cardenas — …you know, goes to fund these ministries and these campuses that we have in all these different countries. So it’s it’s it’s been very fascinating. Pretty cool experience.

Rich Birch — Yeah, when sticking with you, Carlos, ah there may be churches who have had, you know, maybe interest from ah pastors in a different part of the world, or, you know, they might have people that are tracking with them. What would be like ah a pothole, like a thing that you would suggest, hey, watch out for this, because this part of it is the way that it could you know go bad or not go great. Is there something in that maybe you haven’t necessarily directly experienced that, but you could see, oh, hey, this could go bad if we don’t navigate this well in these kinds of relationships.

Carlos Cardenas — It always starts with the leader, with the pastor.

Rich Birch — Okay, good.

Carlos Cardenas — And and I think of it the same way with local campuses.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Carlos Cardenas — To me, the pastor is everything.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Carlos Cardenas — We call them campus pastors, global campus pastor. If the global campus pastor is not excited, fully on board, doesn’t believe in the vision, mission, and strategy. We’ve had different meetings where we’ve identified pastors and they, let’s be honest, like they they want to go into in a relationship with us. They want to get some funding…

Rich Birch — Right. Sure.

Carlos Cardenas — …but we know that their heart is not there. Like they don’t want, they, they, they don’t want to, ah ah you know, and, and contextually we, there’s, there’s certain things that we are, are flexible on, right? Like contextually, you got to tweak couple of things, right?

Rich Birch — Sure. Sure. Yep.

Carlos Cardenas — Because you you can’t be so boxed in and and we’re not in the States, right? So you have to, you have to also be contextual to the nation that you’re in. But but for the most part, you’ve got to have, you’ve got to adopt our discipleship pathway.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Carlos Cardenas — You know, our strategy, which is, you know, connecting to God, connect connect to God, connect to others, connect to ministry and connect to the mission. You know, and you have to, you know, doctrine is important, of course. And and understand, like, we’re we’re we’re aligned when it comes to our teaching, right?

Carlos Cardenas — Now, are there are there certain weekends that the pastor may have a one-off? Like, you know, it may not do the the not be a part of the sermon series. That’s okay. We we we we have to navigate those tensions, right?
Rich Birch — Sure.

Carlos Cardenas — But for the most part, they’re they’re aligned with us.
So you you got you got to identify the right person.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Carlos Cardenas — It always starts with them.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s so good. Well, just as we’re coming to land, Omar, as you think about the future, you think about the future of Christ Fellowship and you know campuses, multisite, what what’s on the horizon? Or maybe what are some questions you’re asking as you think about the future as ah you know as a church, as related to this, all the stuff we’ve been talking about today?

Omar Giritli — Well, as we look to the future, um you know, I think one of the things that we want to continue just to increase is, um you know, when it comes to here at Christ Fellowship, it’s really our local outreach. Because, know, we’ve been talking about our global outreach, our local outreach here at Christ Fellowship.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Omar Giritli — And one of the things that um that that really that we’re really just proud of as as ah as an organization ah is that we have two missional arms of Christ Fellowship. One of them is to families, which is Christ Fellowship Academy. We we have a school.

Rich Birch — Very cool.

Omar Giritli — But we also have Caring for Miami, ah which is ah really a nonprofit that really focuses on reaching the under-resourced and hurting in our city.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Omar Giritli — And, man, we have it’s an amazing thing where ah we have a, Caring for Miami does, you know, different things. For example, we have a more a brand new state-of-the-art mobile market that goes through all the hurting parts of the city and people…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Omar Giritli — …you know, the the Miami-Dade down the the county down donated one of their their buses and we gutted it and we renovated it to be a state-of-the-art market that they goes through all these different hurting parts of the city.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Omar Giritli — And people could go on there shop free of charge. We have a mobile dental clinic that goes to all these different parts and provides free resources, free services to cancer patients, to all these hurting people.

Omar Giritli — We have our, we’re just about to launch our mobile clothing market, which is a bus that actually goes to all the same places and people go on there and shop for, and not shop, but pick the clothes they want ah free of charge and and and all that.

Omar Giritli — We have a park marketplace. We have a backpack program which gives to children in schools. And so one of the things is that, you know, we need to continue reaching out, you know, being very missional.

Omar Giritli — One of the things that, you know, Carlos and I were talking about that part of our our giving has really increased in the last several years. And I think it’s not because we’ve done a great a huge sermon series on giving. We do talk about it you know regularly, and we’re not you know we’re not afraid to talk about giving.

Omar Giritli — We’re giving as examples. We’re taught to be good stewards of what God has given to us. But I really do think that when the people of God see the church being missional, whether it’s locally…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Omar Giritli — …for example, through Caring for Miami, or globally, really it’s, I think it really motivates people to want to really sacrifice and give towards a mission because they see that what they’re sacrificing for is not just to keep the lights open, but it’s to really reach more people for Christ, not only here in Miami, but abroad.

Omar Giritli — And so that’s one of the things that we do. We really want to celebrate what a God is doing through us and locally and and globally. And whether you know we’re you know ministering to a cancer patient through our dental clinic or whether we are planning a new church and do an outreach you know in you know in Costa Rica, they know that, hey, when you give to this church, we might not be perfect, but man, we’re going to be our best, do our best to be the best stewards of what God has entrusted to us through the generosity of God’s people, and and do that. So that’s one of the things that we’re that we’re looking to do as we move forward is continue just to be as missional as possible.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Omar Giritli — And and I think our people really buy into that. And they they really their hearts are really behind that because you know we all want to see people reach reach people you know. We all want to see people being reached for Christ, right so.

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.

Omar Giritli — That’s one of the things, you continue to be missional and and and develop leaders because as as people give, as we’re missional, as people give, more opportunities come up, which is that we need to be have the leaders ready to go, you know…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.

Omar Giritli — …which kind of ties into the inner circle of like leadership development.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, I really appreciate you guys being on today and thank you for letting us look under the hood a little bit. Carlos, if people want to track with the church, where do we want to send them online? Where where should we get to send them to stay connected with what you guys are up to?

Carlos Cardenas — Yeah, our website, cfmiami.org.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Carlos Cardenas — cfmiami.org, yeah.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Omar Giritli — Yeah, and social media.

Carlos Cardenas — Follow you can follow us on social media too, Instagram, you know Facebook, @cfmiami as well. That’s our account.

Rich Birch — Nice. You’re going to say something there, Omar, as well?

Omar Giritli — Yeah, so our social media handles are CFMiami.

Omar Giritli — And then also, if you want to look more and into like our Caring for Miami, which I just mentioned, it’s just @caringformiami.

Omar Giritli — It’s on social, on, on, on, and you’ll see it’s like, it’s pretty amazing.

Rich Birch — That’s so cool.

Omar Giritli — So on our main website, you’ll see us celebrate their global campuses. And then on Caring for Miami, we’ll celebrate all that we’re doing in the community.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Rich Birch — Thanks so much, gentlemen. I appreciate you being here today. Thank you.

Omar Giritli — You got it. Thank you so much, Rich.