From One Campus to Six: Building a Global Leadership Model with Lane Lowery

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Lane Lowery, Executive Pastor of Warren Church in South Carolina and Georgia. Founded in 1898, Warren is one of the fastest-growing churches in America, with over 7,000 members across its campuses. Known for its Southern hospitality, Bible teaching, and focus on whole-person ministry, Warren has also launched a Hope Women’s Center and is preparing to open a Hope Mental Wellness Center. Is your church wrestling with how to scale leadership and maintain unity as you grow? Tune in as Lane shares how Warren Church transitioned to a global leadership model, developed essential staff practices, and keeps the large church personal and relational. From single-site to multi-site. // When Lane first arrived at Warren Church it was a single-campus church of around 3,000 members. Today, with multiple campuses and ministries, the church has grown to nearly 7,000 members and employs 270 staff. Lane notes that what worked for one or two campuses no longer fit once the church expanded to six ministry expressions.The global leadership model. // To address challenges of scale, Warren implemented a global leadership structure. Eight global ministry teams oversee preschool, next gen, discipleship, missions, worship, communications, counseling, and the Hope Women’s Center. Each leader is a “player-coach,” serving in a campus role while also providing oversight across all locations. This ensures alignment while keeping leaders grounded in local ministry.Why unity matters. // Before adopting the global model, Warren found itself with competing ministry silos—at one point even running three different discipleship models across campuses. The new structure promotes collaboration, vision-sharing, and consistency, ensuring that ministries move together rather than in competition.The player-coach advantage. // Asking leaders to both manage a local ministry and oversee their area globally is demanding, but it builds credibility. Leaders bring ideas from real ministry experience and share them across campuses. To prevent burnout, Warren Church emphasizes intentional rhythms, regular meetings, and clear communication.Eight Essential Practices. // To embed culture, Warren Church developed a set of eight essential practices guiding staff behavior. These are celebrated in staff communications, reinforced during onboarding, and reviewed biannually. Practices like “Connect with People” and “Leverage Change to Move the Mission” ensure values don’t stay on the wall but shape daily ministry.Keeping it personal. // Even as a large church, Warren prioritizes personal touches. Each location has a paid staff member who oversees the First Impressions Team at that campus, and every first-time guest receives a personal call within the week. With about 70 new guests each Sunday across campuses, that’s more than 3,500 calls annually. Hospital visits, prayer before surgeries, and care for shut-ins also remain a priority, modeling shepherding from the senior pastor down.When it’s time to change. // Lane encourages leaders to admit when structures aren’t working, secure leadership buy-in, research and learn from other churches, engage stakeholders early, and clearly communicate the “why” behind changes. Transitioning Warren’s model took about a year of planning, listening, and implementation—but the results have unified and strengthened the church. Visit warren.church to learn more about Warren Church and reach out to Lane here. Plus, download the Eight Essential Practices document that Lane talks about. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ...