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Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with James Griffin, the lead pastor at Crosspoint City Church in Georgia.

Is your church working through a difficult season and struggling to see fruit? Wondering how a church can overcome significant challenges and emerge stronger than ever? In this episode of the unSeminary Podcast James shares about the church’s growth following a difficult replanting phase, the hurdles they faced—such as rebuilding trust inside and outside the church—and the effective strategies they used to enhance community engagement.

• God isn’t done. // Crosspoint City Church was planted in 2006 but an event within the church rocked it to the core early on, causing a mass exodus of people. James took over as lead pastor during this time of recovery, inheriting a wounded congregation and a challenging staff environment. He knew he had to stop the bleeding in the church and earn the trust of its members while also being a positive force in the community and letting them know that God isn’t done with them yet.
• Build relationships. // People can’t know if you’re a man or woman of character unless you spend time with them. From the start, James made it a priority to be present and accessible, engaging with congregants through conversations, lunches, and community events. By building relationships, he wanted people to see that he is a man of character, hoping it would lead to trust sooner than later.
• Honor the past. // Things may not have ended well in the church with the people who came before you, but acknowledge the accomplishments and positive impacts made. Don’t dishonor your predecessors. Be honest about the current reality and the challenges being faced without ignoring the good that has been done.
• Work with other churches. // James also actively sought to establish relationships with local pastors, attending meetings and reaching out for one-on-one conversations. He firmly believes that God puts churches in their communities to be a blessing to them. If you want to have a Great Commission church, you need to think about the impact God is calling you to make on your city. Work in partnership with the other churches in your community to be more effective in your mission.
• Create a culture of care. // As your church grows, the pastoral care can’t fall entirely on the senior leader. Everyone needs to feel loved, but you can’t worry about everyone feeling loved specifically by the lead pastor. Instead build a culture of care by pouring into your leadership team and empowering them to offer pastoral care to the rest of the congregation. One leader can’t carry all the weight of that burden on their own.
• Service and compassion. // One of the most significant ways Crosspoint City Church has sought to serve its communities is through the establishment of their Compassion Center, which aims to address various community needs. The Compassion Center includes a counseling center, educational programs for kids and adults, resources for the homeless, support for women escaping sex trafficking, and a mobile medical clinic. This multifaceted approach demonstrates the church’s commitment to not only proclaiming the gospel but also actively demonstrating it through service and compassion.
• Focus on what each city needs. // Contextualize ministry based on your locale. Before planting a church or launching a campus, go into those communities and identify partnerships with local pastors, churches and community leaders. Start with service. How can you go in and bless the city based on what it needs before you even begin gathering?

To learn more about Crosspoint City Church, visit www.crosspointcity.com, or follow James on Instagram.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast! So glad that you’ve decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. A fun chance to deep dive with a great church! If you’ve never heard of Crosspoint City Church, it’s a multi-site church with three, I think, soon to be four campuses in Georgia, and has repeatedly been one of the fastest growing churches in the country.

Rich Birch — Today it’s our honor to have James Griffin with us. He’s the lead pastor, and it also serves as a church planting network leader in metro Atlanta with NewThing and Engage Churches. He’s passionate about seeing the Great Commission fulfilled, the church engage in a number of global and community outreaches. Super excited to have you on the show today, James. Welcome.

James Griffin — Thanks, Rich. I appreciate you having me.

Rich Birch — Oh, it’s going to be great. Kind of fill in the picture. Tell us a little bit more about Crosspoint City. Kind of give us a, you know, the thumbnail people arrive this weekend, but what they experience that sort of thing.

James Griffin — Yeah, yeah. Well, a brief history of the church. We are a replant. So I’ve been pastoring the church now for a little over a decade.

Rich Birch —That’s amazing.

James Griffin — Inherited somewhat of a difficult situation. And then we just took the resources and people who were left and we started over. And so, you know, if somebody showed up this weekend, I think what they’d experienced is, a deep commitment to the word of God. I think they would experience a church that is sold out to the Great Commission, the mission of God, and a great openness and dependency upon the Spirit of God. And so we’re just trying to press into to the work that God’s called us to do in the world. And and it’s a joy and an honor to be a part of it, for sure.

Rich Birch — Love it. Well, you have multiple locations, and we love to talk multi-site here at at unSeminary. Maybe give us a thumbnail about the kind of various, you know, what does that look like? The kind of different locations. Tell us a bit of those stories.

James Griffin — Yeah. So, original location is in a city called Cartersville, Georgia. So this is where it all began back in 2006. And then in 2011, things here, they went off the rails. And so I was actually on staff at the church that planted our church.

Rich Birch — Okay.

James Griffin — And in the season where things blew up, my wife and I were, were praying about going to plant a church. And then my pastor asked me if I’d come here and do this instead. And my original answer was absolutely not. Like, I don’t know I don’t know what idiot’s going to do that, but it’s not going to be this one, you know? And then here we are over a decade later.

Rich Birch — Yes.

James Griffin — But started in Cartersville and from about 2013 to 2018, I mean, things were just going really well, better than expected, which led to conversations about, hey, we need to think beyond just Cartersville. If we’re going to continue reaching people with a gospel, it can’t just be us trying to get people to one spot. And so we planted another location in the fall of 2019, in a city called a Adairsville, which is in the north part of our county, just about five months before the pandemic. So that was great timing.

Rich Birch — Perfect timing.

James Griffin — Yeah. So we joke and we said we did that one twice. You know, we launched it five months before…

Rich Birch — Yes.

James Griffin — …and then shut it down and reopen. And it’s going great. And then in 2022 launched a third location in a city called Rome, Georgia. Just had a great group of people driving about 45 minutes to Cartersville to come to church and asked us if we do something there. So we’ve been doing that for a couple of years, going really well. We just launched, about three weeks ago, our fourth location…

Rich Birch — Okay.

James Griffin — …in Hay State Prison in North Georgia.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

James Griffin — So we’re in the middle of this discipleship journey right now. Call all to him. just felt a great burden to take the gospel into prisons and started praying for God to open a door. And he opened a door at one of the hardest prisons in the state of Georgia.

Rich Birch — Wow.

James Griffin — So just to that, and then we’ve got a fifth location coming in January in a city called Acworth, south of Cartersville.

Rich Birch — Okay.

James Griffin — So we’re we’re in the trenches of that right now, just getting ready to send a group of people out. So that’s a that’s a quick look.

Rich Birch — Love it. Well, this idea of like, you know, relaunching, replanting, rebirthing…

James Griffin — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …you know, that comes with the, the inherent undercurrent there is like something wasn’t working. Like, you know, obviously you don’t take a church that was like, things are going great, let’s shut it down and restart over. Can you you know, I don’t want to dwell on the pain here…

James Griffin — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …but like, can you talk to us a little bit about, you know, what that inheritance, what that look like and how did you rebuild from there? I think this is a great story of hope. I think there are people who are thinking about this. And man, now to hear all the growth that you’ve had as a church. But let’s go back and kind of look at where things started.

James Griffin — Yeah. Well, I will say first and foremost, there is no good reason that our church should be here right now. Honestly.

Rich Birch — Okay.

James Griffin — Other than other than God is kind and God is faithful.

Rich Birch — So good.

James Griffin — And I will say as well, the fact that that the church that planted our church stepped in when they did. Westridge Church is the name of the founding church. If if Westridge and Pastor Brian Malloy had not stepped in when they did, our church would not be here right now. So I praise God for that. But, you know, the quick story is, church is planted in 2006, about four and a half years into the life of the church, the founding pastor had a moral failure. And and it was significant. It involved, more than one staff member, a few staff members. And it just rocked the church to the core.

Rich Birch — Right.

James Griffin — And so immediately there’s a mass exodus of people. Left behind is a very, very wounded staff. A lot of confusion, a lot of brokenness. And so I stepped into that less than a year after it happened.

Rich Birch — Wow.

James Griffin — And and I just remember in year one it was like, all right, we’ve got to stop the bleeding. We’ve got to stabilize. I’ve got to earn the trust of these people. We’ve got to love these people well. And I need to to let this community know that we’re not going anywhere.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

James Griffin — That that God is not done with us yet and that we want to be a part of what he’s doing here. And so in year one, it really was about just getting healthy, man. And, I tell this story. I still remember the moment that I knew we were going to be okay. I was in the lobby after preaching a gathering, and this little old lady, she comes up to me and she gives me a hug and she said, thank you for talking to us. And I was so confused, like, what do you mean? As she said, the guy before you never talked to us. She said he’d preach and tell us that he didn’t really like people, and then he’d hide in his office between gatherings. And he never talked to us. And she said, I’m just glad you talk to us. And in that moment, I knew if all I have to do is love these people, well, I think we’re going to be okay. And and we’ve been okay by the grace of God.

Rich Birch — Right. Well, let’s double click on that a little bit. You talk about earning the trust of these people. Let’s let’s dig in on that a little bit. What did you do when you look back on it? You know, I love the simple thing of like, hey, you should talk with people. That’s a good you know, that’s a good insight. But other things that were, you know, you look back now and say, oh, wow, like, the Lord really used that to help us rebuild trust here.

James Griffin — Yeah. Well, I mean, I remember at 16 years old, I read the very first leadership book I ever read by John Maxwell, “21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”.

Rich Birch — Love it.

James Griffin — And I learned that leadership is influence. Influence is gained by trust. Trust is gained by character. And I don’t think people can know if you are a man or woman of character unless you spend time with them.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

James Griffin — You have to be real and vulnerable and transparent and present. So that is what I tried to do, man. I just I started trying to get in front of as many people as I possibly could, whether it was on Sundays or scheduling lunches or coffees or whatever it might be. But it was like, I’ve got to build relationships with these people so that they can see I am a man of character. And the prayer was, this will hopefully lead to trust sooner than later, and then we can start to make some forward motion. I knew that what I couldn’t do is just come in and, you know, be guns blazing, which is…

Rich Birch — Right.

James Griffin — …very much how I’m wired. We got work to do. So let’s get after it and pull back on what came naturally to me and go, okay, I just I’ve just got to be a pastor and love people and build relationships. And really, that’s what it was both inside and outside the church.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. Let’s talk about, you know, one of the signs I think of a of a weak leader is they they dog the guy before them. They dog the leader before them. They’re like, but in this case, you’re like, there was actually some stuff that went sideways.

James Griffin — Yeah, yeah.

Rich Birch — And so how did you face that? What did that look like? How do you actually like okay, we gotta kind of acknowledge that’s where it’s at. And like both inside the church and outside the church, what did that look like? How did you kind of actually stare down, you know, owning that.

James Griffin — That’s great. Well, number one, I thought it was very important to honor the past because everything that had happened in the past was not bad.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.

James Griffin — And in all honesty, the first four and a half years of the life of the church, they were doing some great things and they were reaching people, and they were meeting a need in this community that that needed to be met. So I wanted to honor that.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

James Griffin — I have a mentor that always talks about how God can draw straight lines with crooked sticks. And so let’s not fail to give God glory for the things that have happened. So that’s first. Secondly, I did not want to in any way dishonor the guy who came before me.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

James Griffin — Dude, at the end of the day, here’s the reality, man. We’re all one bad decision away from blowing our lives up. And, I didn’t want to be that guy acting like, you know, he did something that that none of us could do. And so I didn’t want to dishonor him. But then we also needed to be honest about current reality. Hey, there there were problems. And there are issues that we still need to overcome. And I even needed to address with the other pastors and churches in our community, hey, this this church was not on your team for a while. We we we weren’t fighting for the kingdom alongside of you. And so I needed to own that and be honest about that without being dishonoring, because that was the reality is that that the church in the community had positioned itself against the other churches. And we were not playing well in the sandbox the other churches that were here, which was very problematic.

Rich Birch — That’s interesting. Talk a little bit more about that. Like that that’s interesting to me that, you know, it seems like you see, which I think makes sense, the connection between, hey, we’ve got to kind of restore some relationships internally, but then, hey, there’s these external other pastors in town. Talk to us about what that looked like. How did those those conversations go? What did you learn to that process? How did you kind of rebuild those relationships? And then maybe draw the connection for I think there’ll be some people that are listening in there, like, what does that have to do with restoring your church? How do those things, how does that connect, solve the problems internally? Yeah.

James Griffin — Yeah. That’s a great question. Well, again, it was very relational in nature. So when I first got here, one of the first things that I started trying to figure out is where do all these guys hang out? Like where, where are these pastors…

Rich Birch — Right.

James Griffin — …and and how can I put myself in environments where they are present, where I can just let these guys know, hey, man, I’m on your team. And I want to be on your team.

James Griffin — And so and I remember in the early days I would go, we’re a non-denominational church, but in our community there are several Southern Baptist churches that all get together once a month and they have their meetings. So I just invited myself. I was like, hey, man, I’m coming out.

Rich Birch — Right.

James Griffin — And and some of the meetings were fine and some of the meetings were a little painful, but…

Rich Birch — Right, right.

James Griffin — But I showed up, but I showed up every month because I just wanted to be in the room with these men and get to know them. And just let them know, like, moving forward. It’s not going to be like it was before. And so I just wanted them to know that. And then I started hanging one-on-one. I was just trying to find the most influential guys in the community, lead the most influential churches, because I felt like if I can establish trust with them, hopefully they’ll go to bat for me and our church…

Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.

James Griffin — …and the other guys know, hey, he’s legit. So I just started having coffees and lunches and meeting with guys one-on-one and really working to build relationships in that respect. And so going back to the second part of the question, what did that have to do with like reestablishing our church? I mean, from the beginning, I’ve wanted our people to know God has put us in this community to be a blessing to the community.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

James Griffin — Like, we’re not just here to meet together on Sundays and to do all the church stuff. But if we really want to be a great commission church, we’ve got to think about the impact God is calling us to make on our cities. And if we’re going to do that effectively, we have to work in partnership with the other churches here. We have to be unified with the other believers in these cities for the sake of the gospel. And so we can’t be at odds with these other churches.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

James Griffin — We’ve got to work in partnership with these churches. So that was an important piece, I think, of seeing our church move forward.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. I love that. That’s great. Great insight there. A part of what you’ve talked about is, you know, this idea of communicating with your people, which ultimately they have to feel, which is like, hey, we’re not going anywhere. Like, I’m I’m here. And I’m sure there are leaders that are listening in today that are there in that phase where it’s like where it’s like the long-suffering phase. We’re not really sure. Like I don’t see that, we’re not launching campuses, we’re just not seeing the fruit. But like, we’re we’re when you look back on that, what were some of the signposts that were, you know, there’s that one conversation. Hey, thanks for talking to us. Were there other signposts that were like, oh, we’re moving in the right direction here. Things are are heading and kind of talk through what that timeline looked like.

James Griffin — Yeah, that’s good. Well I remember one of the signposts was the relaunch. So as I said earlier, you know I took over January 2012.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

James Griffin — And for a year we operated under the umbrella of our mother church. So Westridge basically took us back in for a season. I came started leading the church under Westridge just covering. And and that first year was really telling, you know, we got to see God show up, restore health. And then by the end of that year, my pastor came back and said, hey, I think we need to turn you guys loose and you need to replant. And so mid 2013, when we relaunched the church as Crosspoint City Church, that was like a new stake in the ground, you know? God, God took what was dying and and on the verge of of being in the grave. He has breathed new life into it, resurrected it from the dead. And and here we go, man. It was like a rebirth, you know.

James Griffin — So that was huge. Now, during that same season, not long after, I remember another moment where I was like, okay, I think we’re going to be all right. We needed to refinance our building. At the time, we were trying to get it out of the former name and into the current name, which forced a refinance. And, we needed to come up with $100,000 in ten days to be able to to refinance.

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

James Griffin — Okay. Now at the time…

Rich Birch — That’s clarifying.

James Griffin — …you know, at the time, our church was considerably smaller. Our annual budget was like $650K a year. Right. And because of the former issues, we didn’t just have a bunch of money in the bank. And so I remember I met with our leaders on a Thursday night and I said, hey, guys, here’s here’s the reality, here’s the need. If we don’t do this now, mortgage costs go way, way up. That impacts our ability to do ministry. So, hey, I think we need to just challenge our people to give 100 grand in ten days. And so the next Sunday, I stood up, told the church, ask people to pray and to give. And ten days later we had $103,000 that was given.

Rich Birch — Wow.

James Griffin — And we were able to refinance the building and save a ton of money. So that was just another moment where I knew…

Rich Birch — Right.

James Griffin — …okay, God, God has us and and and we’re going to make it and we’re going to be all right. So and we’ve just seen God be faithful like that time and time again. And so it’s been a fun ride, man.

Rich Birch — What would you coach leaders in that or in that phase around, like there’s got to be a tension in that moment between like we’re going to push forward, we’re going to do new stuff, like we’re going to try to take some new ground. You know, the kind of the former’s behind us. And then all the relational stuff you’re talking about, like, you know, hey, we’re going to hold people’s hands. We want to have conversations, build trust. How did you pace that out? How did we you know, that’s like a there’s obviously no easy formula there. But what how did you do that? What did that look like?

James Griffin — Yeah that that pace conversation. That’s a fun one because I feel like since my time here, we’ve just been trying to keep up, man. It’s funny.

Rich Birch — Okay.

James Griffin — We, an executive team recently and it’s like we have done a lot of responding, and reacting over the years because God has just been on the move, which has been amazing. But I will say a couple of things, man. I had to make dramatic changes to my schedule. Dramatic changes.

Rich Birch — Okay. Right.

James Griffin — And it continues to happen until this day, like the relational piece I had to start and even to this day, I had to start pouring a lot more into executive team, key staff leaders, key leaders within the church, and then release a lot of the other, pastoral care, situations and things like that to my other guys. I have a mentor who who said to me years ago that there comes a point as your church grows, you’ve got to stop worrying about everyone feeling loved by you. And you just have to worry that people feel loved.

Rich Birch — So good.

James Griffin — And there’s a lot of ways, a lot of ways that you can make people feel love that doesn’t all fall on you as the leader. So again, it’s I think for us, it was building a culture of care and a culture of relationship that wasn’t entirely dependent upon me.

Rich Birch — Right.

James Griffin — And so we had to take a shared approach to that so that we could continue driving the work of mission forward. so I do think that’s a really important piece to this, is, is that the leader can’t carry that weight and burden alone.

Rich Birch — Right.

James Griffin — Whether it’s other staff or elders or key leaders within the church. You’ve got to lean on other people to get that right.

Rich Birch — Right. Okay. This is like, well, first of all, super rich conversation. This is fantastic. So helpful. I’m hoping people that are listening in that are in these kind of situations are feeling encouraged, because I think you’ve you’ve offered some really great insight here.

Rich Birch — Kind of going in a slightly different direction, super tactical. So you rebranded new name, all that stuff. How big deal was that? How, you know, what did you learn through that process? Was there anything that, you know, any kind of transferable lessons there as you, you know, thought about the future and how did that all fit together?

James Griffin — Yeah, yeah, it was a massive deal. You know, I think what what we saw there were a couple. I will say one thing that surprised me, and maybe this will help somebody. One thing that surprised me, you know, we put this new stake in the ground. Here’s the vision for the future. Here’s where we’re going. It surprised me that not everyone wanted to go with us.

Rich Birch — Okay. Yes. Interesting.

James Griffin — What I mean by that is we had people. We had people live through the the train wreck. That was before. They stayed with us through this whole period of transition. They they got a chance to see God resurrect this dying church. And then we put a stake in the ground and and we said, here’s where we’re going. And again, I was a younger leader at the time. Now, I’m not so surprised by this, but it did surprise me. I’m like, hold on, you guys are leaving now?

Rich Birch — Right.

James Griffin — Bro, we’re we’re full steam ahead. We’re about to charge the gates of hell together.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

James Griffin — And and you’re going to leave now. But I will say on on the other side of that, what surprised me in a good sense is I think that was God pruning people away that needed to be pruned so that we could make forward progress.

Rich Birch — Yep.

James Griffin — And so when we got a little bit further down the road, I started to realize we would not be where we are right now if those people hadn’t left.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good.

James Griffin — They would they would have stood in the way of the missional work that we set out to accomplish. So it was actually a strange blessing that that they left.

Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.

James Griffin — But man, after the relaunch and the rebirth, we picked up a lot of steam. Within about two years, we needed to start looking for another facility.

Rich Birch — Okay.

James Griffin — So in our former facility, we, we had 320 seats and 29 parking spaces.

Rich Birch — Wow. Oh my goodness.

James Griffin — It was crazy. Old renovated bar in the downtown area of our city.

Rich Birch — Yep.

James Griffin — So we, we started looking for property, man, and had a Christian school here in our city that was, meeting in an old church building was the old Cartersville Church of God. And they approached us and talked to us about buying their property, and we could not afford it. And we just basically told them, here’s what we can do and here’s what we can offer.

Rich Birch — Right.

James Griffin — And, praise God, they ended up saying, alright, we’ll work with that.

Rich Birch — Wow, wow.

James Griffin — So we in 2018, we, we moved facilities and, and went from 300 seats to 900 seats and 12 acres of land. And, you know, it’s been a fun ride.

Rich Birch — Wow.

James Griffin — And, and again, shortly after that started launching location so that, I mean, that rebirth, like I said, it was like stake in the ground.

Rich Birch — Yes.

James Griffin — And then we were off and going.

Rich Birch — Yes.

James Griffin — But without that year of just building trust and building relationships, I don’t think any of that would have happened.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good, that’s good. Yeah, that’s an encouragement. I love you know that that other that church of God like they’re heroes in the story…

James Griffin — Absolutely.

Rich Birch — …because they, you know, they they could have they could have held on tightly and said, no, forget it. And you know, who knows? You know, obviously God can do anything you don’t know. You can’t live in two different worlds. I don’t know what would have happen. But man, what they’re heroes in that story.

James Griffin — Yes.

Rich Birch — So I, I’m, I feel a little bit dumb. Here we are like two thirds into the interview and I’m just asking this question now.

James Griffin — Yeah.

Rich Birch — What was Westbridge connection with this church originally like? Why did Brian step in and help in the first place? Because there might be leaders that are listening in that are like, hey, maybe I’m that person in this story.

Rich Birch — I need to think about that.

James Griffin — Well, Westridge has a long history of planting churches. And, several years ago, they they started a church planting school. And the guy that planted the church that I now pastor was graduate number two from their church planting school.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Okay.

James Griffin — Did a year long internship at Westbridge and they actually sent him out to plant. So there was a partnership and a part of the story that I haven’t shared. I’ll make it really quick, but this is it just it just shows the sovereignty of God. So this guy was going to leave and go plant another church in another city. While there was hidden sin in the back stage of his life, and he had come to Crosspoint in 2010 or Crosspoint excuse me, Westridge in 2010, and asked Brian if they would consider taking the church on as a campus. And so Brian and the elders prayed, hey, yeah, we’ll do it. They decided in in 2010 will do it. And so in January of 2011, this church officially became a campus of Westridge. And the news of this moral failure broke two months later in March of 2011.

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

James Griffin — So man, it was the providence of God like God before the situation in a very significant and apparent way.

Rich Birch — Absolutely. Yes.

James Griffin — And again, if Westridge wouldn’t have stepped in, I don’t know if we’d be here. So I’m just so grateful for them and for Pastor Brian.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, that that’s one of those like that’s you know, you can’t just say that’s a coincidence, right? Like that’s the Lord at work and stepping out in front and and saying, hey, we’re going to we’ve got I’ve got a different plan for this. We’re not letting this one go.

James Griffin — Sure.

Rich Birch — That’s that’s amazing. So changing directions. Totally this is an incredible story. I want to make sure people track with you on this, but I want to hear a little bit about what you guys are doing with the Compassion Center. So this is a way that you’re investing in the community. Can you tell us kind of a little bit about that and how that fits in? It seems to connect to your story you were talking earlier about, man, we want to be we want to be a blessing to the community, want to improve the city that we’re in, that sort of thing. Talk to us about the Compassion Center. What’s that look like and how does that fit in the overall mix of the church?

James Griffin — Yeah. So the idea for this came back in like 2019. We had already moved into our facility and renovated a portion of the facility. What we bought was 83,000 sq ft of building space on 12 acres of land.

Rich Birch — Wow, wow.

James Griffin — So initially we renovated about 30,000 of it for kids, space worship, all of that. And then in 2019 we were getting ready to launch another financial initiative. And we just knew because I mean, we had prayed for a property that we could give back to the community, told our elders, like if we buy this and it sits empty throughout the week, we are horrible stewards. So we had to figure out ways to keep the doors open…

Rich Birch — Right.

James Griffin — …Sunday through Saturday. So we just started praying for clarity on that, and I went and met with our county commissioner. I met with our city mayor, and I met with our school superintendent, and I just said, hey, we’re getting ready to raise money. We want to bless the community. We’ve got about 50,000 sq ft of building space we’re trying to figure out what to do with.

Rich Birch — Wow.

James Griffin — And I just asked, what does the community need?

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

James Griffin — What are needs exist that are not being met, that we could meet if we renovated this space in the right way. And so between the three guys, they said, hey, we need more counseling space. We need more space to mentor our kids. We need space to serve the homeless population. We need space for adult literacy, job training, all this stuff. So they gave us all these answers. And so we came back and as an elder team and executive team, we started praying through it. And we just decided, man, let’s let’s make this happen. So out of that came this vision for the Compassion Center.

James Griffin — So it’s basically, there’s four pieces to this thing. One piece. We have a counseling center so people can come and and they can get professional biblical counseling at discounted rates. It’s all on a sliding scale based on income. A part of the center is devoted to education. So we’re mentoring kids. We are teaching adult literacy, those types of things.

James Griffin — Another portion of the center is dedicated to serving the homeless population. So we have a laundromat. We’ve got bathrooms and showers. We’ve got resources available for them. And we got people serving in there that are praying with them, hearing their stories, sharing the gospel. It’s absolutely incredible.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

James Griffin — And then two other pieces, we’re also serving women who are being rescued out of sex trafficking through the center.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow.

James Griffin — Which was happening previously, but we we just relocated them. And then the final piece of this, we have a mobile medical clinic.

Rich Birch — Wow.

James Griffin — Because because part of it was, hey, we’ve got under-insured and uninsured families in our communities that don’t have access to medical care. So we’re like, I think we can do something. So, when we were working on the project—this is when the pandemic hit—inflation went through the roof. And our building costs went up by a million and a half dollars.

Rich Birch — Wow.

James Griffin — So we step back and we said, how do we still make this work? Because we can’t afford that. And then we came up with the idea of a mobile approach. Well, what if we what if we buy a big RV and retrofit it and we take it on the road and we serve people where they’re at?

Rich Birch — That’s so cool.

James Griffin — So we found a company that does it, man. They just they take RVs and build out mobile clinics on top of the the frames.

Rich Birch — Yes.

James Griffin — We’ve got this clinic that we’re taking into all of our cities and it’s it’s taken off, man. So it’s been cool to see it all working.

Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Yeah, again just want to commend you for that. You know we see this time and again with fast growing churches that there is a clear imperative for the the proclamation of the gospel. But there’s also a clear demonstration of the gospel at work in people’s lives that there’s like this, hey, we got to actually make a difference.

Rich Birch — And that, you know, we don’t see those in conflict with each other. We want to we want to really work both sides of that equation.

James Griffin — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And I just love that. You I answered the question there a little bit at the end, which was, as you’re looking at new locations, how are you keeping that embedded in the in the story? This idea of, you know, being, you know, improving the cities you go in, when it’s, you know, when you have something like the compassion center embedded in one location, how do you spread that to other locations without, you know, necessarily duplicating all of that in all these different locations. What does that look like?

James Griffin — Yeah, yeah. Great question. You know, part of it for us, when it comes to locations, we try to contextualize ministry based on the city that we’re we’re starting in.

Rich Birch — Okay.

James Griffin — So we have always been very intentional about going into these cities before we ever launch and trying to identify partnerships, establishing relationships with local pastors and churches and community leaders. And we start with service. We don’t start with gatherings.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

James Griffin — We’re like, how do we go in and bless the city based on what this city needs? And so some of it’s unique, based on city, and then some of it is very much the same. So like in Cartersville and Rome, we’re placing a big emphasis right now on foster care. And so we’re working with local organizations that really do a great job with foster care. The mobile clinic, we can take anywhere, and that’s what we’re doing.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

James Griffin — And then some of our bigger initiatives, like all church initiatives, we do a big Christmas event and we just serve thousands of kids in our cities. We have just reproduced that. So like Acworth, that we’re planning in ’25, that starts in January, but we’re actually doing Hope for Christmas event this December of 2024.

Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.

James Griffin — And we’re starting with that because we just want people to know…

Rich Birch — Love it.

James Griffin — …we’re not just showing up and like singing and teaching on Sundays. Dude, we’re here to love and serve. We want to be a blessing to the to the cities that God’s called us to.

Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, yeah. That’s so good. And what a great way to enter into a city. You know, even people who don’t necessarily aren’t excited about what the church is about. They look at that stuff and say, well, that’s a good thing. Our our hope over time is that they see you as not just a good thing. It’s a God thing. It’s what what God’s called us to do. So yeah, I love that. This is this has been just what, a rich conversation. So fantastic.

Rich Birch — You know, anything else? Just as we kind of. There’s a lot we could talk about here. There’s a ton we could continue to dive into. But anything else you’d love to kind of make sure we’re aware of just as we wrap up today’s episode.

James Griffin — Yeah, I would say with anybody trying to figure this stuff out. Any church leaders trying to figure this out, I would just encourage you be patient. Be patient.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

James Griffin — I think, shifting culture, building trust, establishing a strong reputation in the community of what you talked about earlier. We’re not just here to tell you stuff. We’re here to do stuff. We’re going to proclaim the gospel, and we’re going to do justice because both matter to the heart of God. It just takes time. And so I think you got to plug away. You’ve got to be consistent, stay focused on mission, keep doing what God’s called you to do. And over time, the tide will turn. But, but, but be faithful. Be patient is what I would say.

Rich Birch — That’s so good. What a great way to end. I know there’s people that are in that seat today and have, you know, our hope, our prayer is that they’ve been they’ve been encouraged. If people want to track with you or track with the church, where do we want to send them online?

James Griffin — Yeah, a couple places. The church: crosspointcity.com. That’s our website. So you can find us there. Reach out to us. I have an Instagram page, @pastorjamesgriffin. I don’t manage that at all, but, but you can find me there. My team does that. But you can find us there as well. And and, stay connected. So, yeah, man, would love for you guys to to look us up – if we can help in any way, reach out.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, James. I really appreciate you being on the show today.

James Griffin — Yeah. Thanks, Rich.