| Notes |
Named the fastest-growing church in America in 2015, Crossroads has been described by the Cincinnati Business Courier as both an entrepreneurial church and a church for entrepreneurs. Indeed, it was originally a startup—or more accurately an unofficial spinoff from Procter & Gamble Co., the $65 billion conglomerate based downtown, a few freeway exits south of the main church. In 1990, Brian Wells, a brand manager for Clearasil, started a singles Bible study with a P&G power couple, Vivienne Lee Bechtold, then a brand manager in beauty care, and Jim Bechtold, a marketing executive. The group, which met at the Bechtolds’ home, quickly grew to more than 100 people. Eventually the singles started marrying and having children, and Jim Bechtold asked Wells one morning, while the two carpooled to work, whether it made sense to start a church.
Over the next few months, a core of 11 people, some of whom had helped build billion-dollar consumer brands, reimagined church as one might expect P&G executives to do. (The company more or less invented brand management, and it’s been a prime breeding ground for business talent—Microsoft ex-CEO Steve Ballmer, Intuit’s Scott Cook, HP’s Meg Whitman, and GE’s Jeffrey Immelt, among many others, are all P&G alumni.) They gathered demographic data on Cincinnatians’ churchgoing habits, with a focus on the city’s affluent east side, which includes the P&G enclave suburbs of Hyde Park and Oakley. They scoured secular popular music and TV comedies for tips on how to keep churchgoers’ attention. They settled on a target demographic, 25- to 35-year-old males, figuring that if they could get the guy, they would get his wife. They wrote brand positioning statements—a church for friends who don’t like church; a church for people who’ve given up on church. Finally they built a slide deck featuring a mix of data and Scripture and began raising money from friends, family, and business connections.
relates to What Would Jesus Disrupt?
Tome.PHOTOGRAPHER: JOSH ANDERSON FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK
In the spring of 1996, Tome led Crossroads’ first official service, speaking before more than 450 people at a rented auditorium in a local junior high school. Five years later, its rolls swelling, the church purchased a vacant big-box store, using the homes of some senior leaders as collateral. Crossroads spent millions converting the space into a 3,500-seat auditorium with two balcony tiers and enough stage lights to rival a Broadway theater. Today, the church has nine locations in the greater Cincinnati area (with another opening soon), some 30,000 congregants, an annual operating budget of $33 million, and a staff of 274 people, many with ties to P&G. |