In 1992, Dr. Brent Taylor joined the staff at First Baptist Carrollton as the summer youth minister. Seven years later, he was lead pastor. It was his first pastor position.
As a new, young pastor, he admits that fundraising represented a very steep learning curve.
“I grew up in the church and was part of capital campaigns, but I paid absolutely no attention to any of them,” he recalls. “Then, I became a pastor. All of a sudden, wow — I’ve got to raise money. I’ve got to figure out what this looks like and how to do it.”
When the church decided to sell its 10-acre campus in central Carrollton — just two years into Brent’s Senior Pastor role — and relocate to 100+ acres in the northernmost part of Carrollton, the need to get “fluent” in raising money (fast!) became that much more urgent.
“We began to dream about, What does God have planned for us?”, he explains. “And this large acreage, located off a major highway, would allow us to extend our reach to the thousands of people God would be bringing to this location.”
“It wasn’t an inexpensive plan …”
But, the relocation would be costly: about $20 million. For a pastor who’d never led a capital campaign before, the goal loomed large.
After vetting several options, Paul Gage, president and founder of The Gage Group, emerged for Brent as the best choice, given his experience and success with leading churches.
“One of the things that really stood out for me about Paul is that he’s very personable,” Brent says. “I was a pastor who didn’t know what I didn’t know. At times, I didn’t even know what questions to ask, or what questions I wasn’t asking that I should be asking.”
As Brent explains, Paul walked him through the capital campaign process in its entirety.
When Brent made key donor presentations, Paul attended, providing detailed coaching afterwards. Paul introduced Brent to different ways of encouraging and inspiring people to be a part of the campaign. He provided samples, examples, stories — real-life solutions that proved to be effective. “And, Paul never tried to insert himself [overly],” Brent adds.
“He never tried to look like he was ‘the guy.’ He was happy to work with my staff behind the scenes and let me carry the ball in public settings, while coaching me every step of the way.”
Upon completing the first capital campaign with success in 2005, the stewardship aspect of the church’s relocation plans had shifted in an unforeseen way. “We had this land we’d planned to build a big sanctuary on, and we just kept getting doors closed,” Brent recalls. “The process kept stopping.”
Ultimately, he and his team decided it wasn’t the right time for the church to build so extensively.
“I’m so grateful for that now,” he says. “I think we would have leveraged ourselves in a position, financially, that would have been negative for the church. Ultimately, I think we would have ended up building something we didn’t need at the time.”
Instead, in 2009, the church took a bold (and unusual) first step: it built a large sports facility on the north Carrollton property. It was the first building phase on the extensive site.
“In retrospect, that sports complex is where we’re impacting more lives than just about anything else we’re doing,” Brent says. “As many as 1,000 people per day visit the sports complex. Had we gone out and built this gigantic [dedicated worship space], it would have probably sat empty six days a week.”
Two years ago, a worship facility was added to the site — but as a multipurpose, multifunctional space. It serves as a worship space on Sundays and hosts basketball and outreach programs the other six days of the week.
Most recently, in 2017, leaders at First Baptist voted overwhelmingly to sell the central Carrollton campus, pick up roots, and make the move once and for all to north Carrollton. On Palm Sunday, they broke ground on the new building that will finally house both campuses together on one campus. By next Easter, they will be fully set up at their new Carrollton campus.
Of course, each step in this process has required funding. To make it happen, Paul and Brent have worked together numerous times, seeing pledges of nearly $22 million.
The strategies introduced in the 2005 campaign have proven to be very productive; however, the demographics have changed at the new location. “Paul recognized we are reaching a younger audience with many new church attendees,” Brent says. “I’d meet with Paul and say, ‘Well, I guess we need to do this because this is what we did in the first campaign.’ And he’d say, ‘Let’s try a different approach that will connect with your people today.’”
These revised strategies included a shorter campaign schedule, utilizing multimedia and digital communication, and also coordinating more casual group gatherings to share the vision and future expansion.
All this, Brent says, helps him feel like he’s a pastor on the cutting edge of what’s happening today to raise money for major projects.
“That’s really beneficial personally,” he points out, adding that it has also lent confidence to the laypeople in the church who are involved in the process.
“I’m very loyal when I find somebody who I feel is helping me achieve what we’re trying to accomplish as a church,” Brent adds.
“Paul is one of those guys.”
Paul Gage is President and Founder of The Gage Group in Colleyville, TX. He has personally provided consulting for 500+ successful capital campaigns, assisting pastors and church members to raise in excess of $1 billion.
