When Compass Christian Church first engaged Goff Companies in 2013, the immediate challenge was obvious: the church was running out of room.
At the time, the Colleyville, Texas-based church was already experiencing rapid growth. The original campus occupied three corners of a major intersection, while a growing campus in Roanoke was meeting in a school.
But the real challenge wasn’t simply adding square footage. It was determining how to grow intentionally — not just for the next building project, but for the next decade. That forward-looking mindset ultimately shaped every expansion decision that followed.
What began with a Strategic Assessment for Facility Expansion (SAFE) evolved into a multi-campus roadmap that still guides Compass Christian today: start humbly, invest in the right facility in the right neighborhood, and build future growth into the plan from the beginning.
More than a decade later, that strategy has produced a thriving network of campuses across the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, including a North Fort Worth (NFW) location now approaching the attendance of the original campus. More importantly, leaders say the process created something many fast-growing churches struggle to maintain: continuity.
Building beyond the immediate need
According to Maureen Hilt, now Associate Pastor at the NFW campus, Compass Christian’s leadership team recognized early that outside guidance would be critical.
“At the time, the church was definitely starting to take off with growth,” she recalls. “We were at 80% capacity, so that metric kept coming up.”
Leadership began visiting other churches and exploring future possibilities. “Goff Companies’ name kept coming up,” Hilt says. “They were really good on putting a vision together for us. It was something that [Lead] Pastor Drew [Sherman] liked right away.”
The SAFE process established the master-planning framework Compass Christian still uses today.
That long-range approach became especially important as the church transitioned its Roanoke campus from portable to permanent.
Colleyville campus
Lessons learned in Roanoke
The Roanoke campus began meeting in a school as a portable congregation. Once land was purchased and a permanent facility was built, growth accelerated quickly.
The original 500-seat worship room filled almost immediately.
Rather than expanding the physical footprint, the church adapted by maximizing the space it already had.
“The Roanoke campus hasn’t expanded any square footage at all,” explains North Fort Worth Campus Pastor Nate Grella. “It has just changed the layout of their building.”
Lobby space became classrooms, kids ministry areas were reconfigured, and additional weekend services were added.
Today, the campus operates four weekend services within the same footprint originally constructed. But the experience also revealed several key lessons about church design. “In terms of lobby space, Roanoke honestly doesn’t have enough of it,” Grella says.
Parking and entrance flow also created challenges. “Where Roanoke put their parking lot in relation to their building was problematic,” he explains. “It only really has one entrance that actually gets used.”
Children’s ministry security became another major consideration.
“One of the things the Roanoke campus didn’t think through originally was security and lockdown,” Grella says.
Those lessons would directly shape Compass Christian’s next major project.
Roanoke campus
Designing for future growth
By the time planning began for the NFW campus, church leaders knew they needed to think differently.
Instead of building for current attendance, they decided to build for future growth.
Grella — who had previous church construction experience before joining Compass Christian — intentionally gathered feedback from the Roanoke team.
“I sat with the staff at Roanoke who helped build that facility and just asked a lot of questions,” he says. “‘What do you like? What do you not like about this? What would you change?’”
The result was a dramatically larger campus.
While Roanoke totaled roughly 20,000 square feet, North Fort Worth came in at nearly 50,000.
“We built for phase two in phase one,” Grella explains.
The auditorium was designed with future stadium seating already accounted for structurally, while curtain walls can eventually be opened to expand capacity further.
Growth has happened so quickly that the church is already using folding chairs in spaces originally reserved for future seating, with plans underway to add approximately 450 permanent seats.
The campus also incorporated more intentional circulation, parking flow, gathering space, and children’s ministry design.
“To me, that begins in the parking lot and extends until you leave,” Grella says of the guest experience.
The building placement was carefully studied to improve traffic flow and distribute guests across multiple entrances.
“We wanted the best chance of flow for traffic into all the doors and not one singular door,” he explains.
Inside, the goal was to create a space that felt warm and welcoming.
“We wanted it to feel warm, inviting — not necessarily a church atmosphere, but a home,” Grella says.
Large glass walls, intentional lighting, warm finishes, and carefully planned production systems all contributed to that environment.
Compass Christian also approached children’s ministry differently at NFW.
Rather than building heavily themed environments that might quickly feel dated, the church focused on timeless branding elements.
“We did shapes, patterns, and colors that I think are fun, vibrant and welcoming,” Grella says.
Hilt agrees.
“I don’t think these elements have dated themselves,” she says. “It feels very fresh and clean, and we get comments all the time about how inviting and warm it feels.”
NFW campus
Renovating the original campus
After delivering both campuses, Compass Christian turned its attention back to the original Colleyville campus.
Unlike Roanoke and North Fort Worth, Colleyville was a 20-plus-year-old facility that had evolved incrementally over time.
Prior to renovation, Hilt says, the campus lacked gathering space altogether.
“People just came in and then left,” she recalls. “There was no place to visit. There was no lobby. It was a bunch of hallways, literally.”
Feedback from the congregation made the solution clear.
“Our people kept coming back with, ‘I wish we had a place to visit. I wish we had a place for a lobby,’” Hilt says.
Today, that space is known as the Family Room.
“For Pastor Drew, it was really, really important to have a place where people could actually come and stay,” she explains.
The renovation touched nearly every area of the facility except the worship center itself. Circulation improved, children’s ministry spaces were modernized, a dedicated online-campus production area was added, and exterior branding elements were refreshed.
Perhaps most impressively, all of it happened while the church remained fully operational.
“In a word: communication,” Hilt says.
Hilt describes weekly meetings, detailed timelines, contingency planning, and constant coordination between church leadership and the construction team.
“When we had to shift — if we needed to stop using this door because we were taking a wall down nearby — Goff [Companies] was ready with plan A, plan B,” she says.
Three campuses, one identity
As the Colleyville renovation unfolded, Compass Christian also faced another challenge common among growing multisite churches: creating a cohesive identity across campuses.
The original Colleyville campus consisted largely of “big, boxy buildings,” Grella notes. It couldn’t simply be rebuilt to match the newer campuses. Instead, the design team focused on carrying over recognizable architectural and visual elements.
Two-story glass walls were added to the newly expanded lobby. Exterior metal trellises mirrored features used at Roanoke and NFW. Updated flooring and finishes brought the older building visually closer to the newer campuses.
Children’s ministry branding became one of the most significant unifying elements.
Before the redesign, each campus largely operated independently in how those spaces looked and felt.
“We really didn’t have a brand before for our kids’ spaces across the campuses,” Grella says.
Those environments were eventually replaced with a unified Compass Kids identity built around modern graphics, vinyl wall treatments, coordinated flooring, and consistent playground elements.
“That continuity translated to the playgrounds,” Grella says. “Everything from the color of the slides to the playground structure materials was all branded around Compass Kids.”
The result: families moving between campuses immediately recognized they were part of the same church.
The value of continuity + looking ahead
Compass Christian leaders point to continuity as one of the biggest factors behind the church’s expansion strategy. While many churches experience turnover during long-term building initiatives, Compass Christian maintained consistent leadership throughout multiple projects. Hilt has served at the church for nearly three decades, while Grella has remained closely involved in the design and operational planning of several campuses.
That consistency allowed lessons from one project to inform the next. “Everything we do with our buildings is scalable,” Grella says. That philosophy now shapes future campuses throughout the rapidly growing Dallas–Fort Worth region, including the church’s mobile Mid-Cities campus. While future permanent campuses may look different, the core principles — flexible expansion, cohesive branding, operational efficiency, and guest-centered environments — remain unchanged.
For Compass Christian, buildings are simply tools that support the mission to “navigate people to God,” Grella says. Future campuses will likely continue beginning as portable locations, while leaders balance strategic expansion with debt reduction and long-term stewardship. Ultimately, the church’s growth strategy centers on creating a repeatable model designed to anticipate growth rather than react to it.
