OAKVILLE – When two declining south suburban St. Louis churches partnered with a larger church in ministry, the result not only increased attendance for the two but increased kingdom impact locally and globally for all three congregations.
Windsor Baptist Church in Imperial, just outside of south St. Louis County, had been running 50–60 worshipers on Sunday mornings before it was adopted by Canaan Baptist in Oakville, about 10 miles away.
However, after several pastoral changes and church conflicts, the Windsor congregation had been experiencing decline for about 10 years, says Pastor Daniel Carr. Carr is the pastor of the adopting church, Canaan Baptist, which became Canaan Oakville after the adoption. Windsor was renamed Canaan Windsor.
Canaan Oakville sits between the Windsor congregation and another adopted congregation, The Groves Church—previously Sherwood Baptist—in Webster Groves. It had declined to about 15 people for Sunday morning attendance. After the adoption, it was renamed Canaan Webster.
“The churches had very committed people who yearned to see the Lord continue His great work through them,” Carr says.
He explains that the adopted congregations are now equal in the Canaan family.
“We don’t use ‘main campus’ language because no single campus is more important than the others.”
The joint work started to form when Carr was approached by two Baptist associational leaders.
Chad Hodges, the former interim pastor at Windsor and former Associational Missions Strategist (ASM) for the Jefferson Baptist Association, approached Carr with the possibility of adopting the Windsor congregation.
Shortly afterward, Darren Casper, the ASM for the St. Louis Metro Association, discussed a proposal with Carr for the Webster Groves church.
“We weren’t structured for a multi-site church concept,” Carr says. “We had begun the process but were very early in the process when we were approached by both ASMs within a month of each other.”
“We felt like two might stretch us too thin, so we thought we had to pray and see which one God wanted us to do. He led us to do both. Adjusting our structures and philosophies of ministry from a single-location church to a multi-site church has been a steep learning curve. We also had to convince both adopted churches that we were in this with them for the long haul.”
The adopted churches offered several advantages to Canaan’s overall ministry, he says. “Both adopted churches were debt-free and are in very strategic locations for the gospel. This is what drew us to them so strongly. Both churches have very committed lay leadership and have been amazing to serve Jesus.”
“We also had two men on our staff who God had set apart to be the campus pastors. Both—Bryan Davidson at Windsor and Justin Yeary at Webster—are doing a phenomenal job shepherding their campuses, and both are seeing steady growth by God’s grace.”
The Webster Groves congregation joined Canaan in September 2023, with the Imperial location joining the following Easter.
Today, the combined congregations have Sunday morning worship attendance of around 1,000.
Pastor Davidson says the change has impacted all three campuses. “It is my hope and prayer that God is glorified across all our campuses.”
Carr says that Canaan is “seeing many new people come into all three campuses.” Oakville members who joined the other campuses were “welcomed and embraced, achieving a great deal of unity.”
Both smaller churches have seen good attendance growth on Sunday mornings. The Imperial location has doubled in attendance to around 150, and Webster Groves is now hosting about 100.
“Our Webster campus now has nine babies in the nursery,” Carr says. “They just had 15 people when we started this process!”
With each campus having its own pastor, Sunday morning services are conducted by that pastor, though there’s unity in the message because the pastors are involved in message planning.
“We have a team preaching approach where we all preach the same series, same text,” Carr says. “This provides unity for our campuses but also allows each campus pastor to contextualize the message appropriately.”
Carr says the three campuses benefit through a shared budget and shared services for communications, administration, maintenance/custodial support, IT, and others.
Davidson says, “The cooperation and communication among our leadership team has been invaluable. The ability to navigate challenges together, deal with conflict, plan, and openly share ideas has created a support system that I wouldn’t have had on my own.”
Financial giving and mission activities have grown. “Finances increased beyond our expectations, allowing us to do more gospel ministry,” Carr says.
The church structure change allowed Canaan to launch a new missions program—the Nations Initiative (TNI). “We have missionaries in Senegal, Zambia, Malawi, Liberia, Kenya, Burundi, Nepal, and India helping about 200 church plants.”
“We are sending teams to train these pastors several times each year.”
The missions program also partners with an academy that starts Christian schools in many of the same areas where TNI exists. “We’ve seen quite a few more (people) get involved with our missions ministry,” Carr says.
Canaan also heavily invests in children’s ministries, including AWANA; basketball, soccer, and T-ball programs. Local outreach also includes a partnership with a non-denominational, evangelistic group that ministers to the homeless and addicted in north St. Louis.
“Our main Christmas outreach is the Windsor campus Live Nativity. All three campuses did the exact same outreach for Easter,” with egg and scavenger hunts, a petting zoo, food trucks, bounce houses, “and quite a bit more.”
“I perceive a great deal of momentum has been gained for kingdom work and growing all three campuses in a kingdom mindset,” Carr says.
He says one of the biggest results of the adoptions is seeing the new excitement toward church and ministry.
“We are seeing significant growth in all three campuses, but it is really exciting to see the growth in the adopted campuses. We’ve seen people come to Christ and be baptized at all three campuses. And, for Windsor and Webster, they were the first ones in several years.”
Pastor Davidson says the change has been positive for Canaan Windsor. “It has made a big difference in all areas of ministry.”
Carr says revitalizing a church can be a lot of work—for both the adoptee and the adopter.
“It is a lot of work, but so rewarding! I would seek much counsel as you prepare to take on another church. For those considering revitalization, I would say this: Most churches wait until it is far too late for revitalization.”