Like many people in Long Island, New York, Colleen Price grew up Catholic. In fact, she says, the Catholic church has more members than any other single religion in the area. Despite a dearth of evangelical churches, one such church is growing and thriving: CenterPoint Church, founded in the hamlet of Massapequa.
Price, long seeking a deeper relationship with Christ, found what she was looking for at CenterPoint four years ago when she attended at the invitation of a friend. “I went to Catholic school my whole life, but then I ran away from God for a very long time. I had tried other Christian churches very briefly, but CenterPoint is where I tried it once, and I never stopped coming.”
As soon as she entered, Price remembers, she felt known, like being welcomed into a family. “You realize that you can connect with these people, and you feel their love of God when you walk into the room. You’re not just a number. They truly know you by name. It’s just such an incredible feeling, one I’ve never experienced in a church before. CenterPoint comes alongside you in this journey and does that so well.”
CenterPoint understands that its community is largely tied to other religions or no religion at all, so it works hard to reach these groups.
“You don’t have to know God in order for CenterPoint to love you,” Price emphasizes. “No matter who you are or what your background is, you feel accepted, and CenterPoint does that at the most incredible level.”
She adds it’s that powerful sense of God’s love that has people returning again and again, and ultimately deciding to make CenterPoint their home.
“[The church’s] love for God is so on fire that you just want more of it,” she explains. “It’s filling that void that everybody has. It’s something that I so desperately craved my entire life, you know? And that’s why coming in through those doors, I have been forever changed because of the love they show us.”
A multisite church with seven locations, CenterPoint welcomes people from all backgrounds and pours out the love of God, making such a church an anomaly in a place where evangelical churches are hard to find. According to Lead Pastor Brian McMillan, the key is nothing exciting or surprising, but in their Long Island culture, consistency is actually what makes it work. And it’s more than just adding another campus.
“We are boringly consistent,” he says. “There’s just something about doing a really solid, consistent job that is often overlooked and underrated. We’ve been doing the same thing for 23 years in a healthy way, which builds a strong reputation in a non-Christian culture, which is rare and beautiful.”
He continues, “Our focus is always on reaching the lost and those who are far from God. We just keep honoring God, trying to reach our community, being missional and attractional, and person by person, they keep coming through the doors.”
CenterPoint didn’t reach its current state overnight. According to McMillan, the first 10 years were spent trying to prove their legitimacy in a land of other churches. He says they slowly replaced the Catholic church as Massapequa’s “community” church. Finally, when CenterPoint went multisite, they became the community church to many of Long Island’s other ZIP codes.
They were able to grow via a multisite model only through connections. Five of their seven campuses came to them through relationships with dying churches of other denominations who chose to merge with CenterPoint rather than shut their doors. Many of them had paid-off properties, which made growth possible and affordable in such a high-cost-of-living area.
“We could never have done it another way,” McMillan remarks.
Because CenterPoint exists in an area with an evangelical population of just 3–4%, according to McMillan, almost all of the church’s growth is through conversion rather than church transfer. About 80% of their attendees find the church through personal invitation, exactly as it happened with Price and her family.
Price says her identical twin sister ultimately decided to join her on her faith journey, and her sister invites her own friends to church now. Even their parents, who are still practicing Catholics, occasionally attend if invited.
“They love Jesus, and now they want their friends and family to love Jesus too,” McMillan says. “We want people who are going to be very focused on trying to reach the lost and not just be comfortable as a church within its own walls.”
But McMillan cautions against making numerical growth the ultimate goal or the be-all and end-all of a pastor’s ministry.
“You have to check your heart all the time,” he cautions. “That perspective of growth can be extremely dangerous. Your church could be growing, with people filling the seats, but no one’s coming to Christ because [the message] is so watered down, or you’re growing because you’re taking people from another church. The objective needs to be reaching those who aren’t saved. Then growth is a great thing, because it means the kingdom of God is growing.
“There’s such an important distinction between growing a church and growing the kingdom of God.”
CENTERPOINT CHURCH
Massapequa, New York
Pastor: Brian McMillan
Website: CPChurch.com
Denomination: Christian and Missionary Alliance
Founded: 2002
Fastest-Growing: 74