LifePoint Church’s Tiny Town, Tenn., campus showcases the value of pairing strategic planning with collaborative design-build leadership — and a clear understanding of local culture.
By RaeAnn Slaybaugh
When Mike Burnette talks about church growth, it’s worth listening.
When it comes to major church building and expansion projects — something many pastors do only once in their careers — Burnette has already led three major projects … so far.
“I never took a seminary class on fundraising and building,” says Mike Burnette, lead pastor of LifePoint Church in Clarksville, Tenn. “I learned the hard way by making some mistakes in my first projects.”
Those lessons, refined over three major construction projects and nearly 16 years of leadership at LifePoint Church, are now reflected in the newest and most strategic expansion: the recently opened Tiny Town campus.
The 39,000-square-foot campus — featuring an 800-seat worship center and expansive environments designed specifically to accommodate young families — represents more than another building project. It reflects a leadership philosophy Burnette says he believes is essential for churches hoping to expand sustainably while remaining deeply connected to their communities.
Expanding without losing identity
Burnette arrived at LifePoint in 2010 when the church had just 52 voting members. On his first Sunday — on the 4th of July — 85 people attended services, many curious about the church’s new 30-year-old pastor.
“Since then, we’ve never had a month without some kind of numerical growth,” he says.
Today, LifePoint operates four campuses — three in Tennessee and one revitalization campus in New York — along with nine weekly services and a growing online community. But despite that growth trajectory (and maybe even because of it), Burnette remains convinced that bigger is not always better when it comes to physical church design.
Smaller rooms, multiple services
Before launching Tiny Town, LifePoint’s existing campuses were stretched beyond capacity. The church’s broadcast campus routinely relied on overflow seating in the lobby during multiple Sunday services.
Strained under continued attendance growth, Burnette says he knew the church’s next expansion would require more than additional square footage. It would require a building strategy capable of preserving LifePoint’s culture while accommodating growth.
That search ultimately led the church to partner with Broken Arrow, Okla.-based Churches by Daniels on what would become the Tiny Town campus — a project Burnette says differed significantly from the church’s previous building experiences.
“With Tiny Town, we’d be building from the ground up and wanted the best experience, the highest quality we could get,” Burnette says. “And Churches by Daniels came with incredible recommendations.”
Burnette embraced a philosophy popularized by leaders like Craig Groeschel: smaller auditoriums with more services and multiple campuses.
That thinking directly shaped Tiny Town’s 800-seat worship center.
“If we could fill that space three times on a Sunday, we could grow a campus of 3,500-plus in one location,” he explains.
The strategy also reflects Burnette’s broader philosophy about expansion: build because growth already exists, not because leaders hope it will.
Designing for young families, military culture
Located less than five miles from Fort Campbell, the Tiny Town campus serves a uniquely young and family-focused population heavily influenced by military culture.
That reality impacted many design decisions.
“We knew we’d be catering to a lot of young families,” Burnette says. “To do that, we knew we’d need two seats in kids’ space for every three seats in the auditorium. That changes how you design a building, for sure.”
Children’s ministry became a major strategic priority from the beginning. The church intentionally designed its KidPoint offerings to accommodate roughly 325 to 350 children at one time — a significantly larger ratio than at LifePoint’s other campuses.
“We sometimes think missions happen overseas and under bridges in major cities. Really, mission happens wherever you are. As a Christian, that’s your mission field.” — LifePoint Church Lead Pastor Mike Burnette
Parking requirements also shifted because of volunteer patterns common among military families.
“Dad may go to an early service to help run the parking lot while Mom comes with the kids later,” Burnette explains. “So, a family of four doesn’t come in one car; they need two parking spaces.”
Even the aesthetic choices were shaped by the surrounding community.
“Being near military culture, we want to be a church that attracts men,” Burnette says. “We’re intentionally thinking about how to be a church where men feel welcome to attend and lead. We’re not obnoxiously masculine, but we’re intentionally not feminine.”
Why design-build changed everything
Tiny Town also marked an important operational shift for LifePoint.
Having tried different construction methods, the design-build approach aligned better with both Burnette’s leadership style and the church’s organizational culture.
Working with Churches by Daniels on Tiny Town created alignment and efficiency.
“With a design-build firm, it’s all done in-house under one roof,” Burnette says. “It expedites things.”
From the beginning, Burnette emphasized exhaustive planning to minimize expensive change orders later.
“I remember telling the team: ‘I want to plan everything — every contingency and every possible change — before we start because I don’t want to pay for change orders,’” he says.
That preparation paid off. Aside from a single major adjustment involving additional children’s ministry square footage, the project avoided significant midstream changes.
Burnette credits much of the project’s success to collaboration during the earliest vision-casting stages.
“The designers were in my office for the vision casting meetings,” he says. “And they took my sketches and made them into a church.”
Building a cohesive LifePoint identity
One unexpected challenge involved ensuring the Tiny Town campus still felt unmistakably like LifePoint after branding updates occurred mid-project.
“I wanted the Tiny Town campus to feel like LifePoint — we’re a place where people enjoy gathering for the purpose of growing in their relationship with the Lord,” Burnette says. However, some original finish materials from older campuses were no longer manufactured. Rather than compromise, LifePoint upgraded finishes at both the new and existing campuses.
“We put better carpet in the new campus and then came back to the broadcast campus and upgraded that carpet to match,” Burnette explains.
That attention to consistency matters strategically, he says.
“By making sure the textiles, the wall designs, the carpets and the colors are all the same, people won’t visit a different LifePoint campus and feel like they’re at a whole different church.”
Leadership lessons learned
With Tiny Town, Burnette used an intermediary who could communicate directly with contractors during the building process while allowing Burnette to remain focused on vision-casting, fundraising and organizational leadership.
“Our team at the table for decision-making and execution was small, but we were the right people,” he says. That clarity helped keep the project moving while preserving healthy relationships among staff, contractors and church leadership.
“When I’d show up on property — which I did regularly, for social media drops or making videos for donors — I was there to celebrate everybody and thank them for the great work they were doing,” he adds. “Now, behind the scenes, as the primary visionary, I had the freedom to speak into anything.
“That’s one thing I love about Churches by Daniels: They knew my heart from the beginning. They’d tell me, ‘Pastor, you can say whatever you want. We want to help you.’”
The financial outcome reflected similar discipline. By project completion, LifePoint had paid cash for roughly 75% of the total cost despite post-pandemic inflation pressures.
And while weather and supply-chain delays extended the schedule somewhat, the project still finished under budget by approximately $500,000 without sacrificing quality.
“Be a missionary to your city”
For pastors preparing to lead their own major construction projects, Burnette believes the most important mindset shift has little to do with buildings themselves.
“God wants to grow the church,” he says. “So, I would shift those prayers to say, Lord, how do we grow? How do we see growth? And what can we do to accommodate the growth? How do we prepare our hearts? How do we grow as leaders? How do we walk in the integrity that God needs us to live in so that He can trust us with people coming to Him? What we should pray about is the ‘how,’ not the ‘what.’”
Burnette also suggests that church leaders think less like institutional managers and more like missionaries.
“When I coach, I often tell pastors they should be the No. 1 missionary of their cities and treat their churches like mission outposts,” Burnette says.
That philosophy requires deep understanding of a community’s culture, rhythms and values — something LifePoint intentionally pursued at Tiny Town.
“We sometimes think missions happen overseas and under bridges in major cities,” Burnette says. “Really, mission happens wherever you are. As a Christian, that’s your mission field.”
This requires knowing the history, theology and the culture of your community “better than anybody else in your town,” Burnette says.
“Build a strategy around reaching people far from God in your context. Then, put a great team around you, whether it’s your building partner, your capital campaign team, your board and key staff members — they all need to be onboard.
“Be a missionary to your city and build a strategy around that.”
