Ryan Britt, Executive Ministries Pastor at The Church of Eleven22 in Jacksonville, joins James Forrest to unpack what it takes to sustain one of the fastest-growing churches in America — from launching with over 3,300 people on day one to 15+ campuses fourteen years later. Ryan traces the growth to a handful of unglamorous but essential factors: healthy governance set up from the start, Pastor Joby Martin's unique preaching gift, an obsession with assimilation over attendance, and an early, decisive investment in digital ministry that paid off when 2020 hit.

Ryan is candid about what's changed as the church has scaled — the same problems just multiply, and culture becomes the only real lever for holding a growing staff together. He draws a sharp distinction between the "momentum" side of the XP role (discipleship, vision, culture) and the "business administrator" side (finance, facilities, legal), arguing churches are healthier when those are split between different people with different gifts. He also names a blind spot he sees often in second-chair leaders: using "helping" the lead pastor as a stand-in for personal significance, when the real work is loving and following someone God has placed in that seat — chemistry and all.

The conversation moves through hard conversations (clear beats cute, and the longer you wait the worse it gets), how The Church of Eleven22 systematized decisions like campus launches and staffing formulas to stop re-litigating the same choices, and Ryan's practical, unpretentious habits for staying grounded: an obsessive hobby, actually having fun, sticking to whatever spiritual rhythms your own church prescribes, and prioritizing his marriage over the day-to-day of ministry.