October 2, 2026
ROCK SPRING, Ga. — If you travel anywhere in Walker County, Georgia, odds are you have seen a sign that says “I love my church. Peavine.”
It’s one part of a larger marketing strategy that Peavine Baptist Church, one of the fastest-growing churches in the United States, uses to reach the lost for Christ.
“Of course, nobody is perfect, but they do almost everything well. There’s an intentionality in everything they do,” said Steve Foster, Evangelism Catalyst for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board.
Peavine’s blueprint is for familiar church, but in a different way, and church attendance has tripled since 2017 from 800 to 2400 on average. Baptisms are in the hundreds each year.
“God is doing amazing things in our midst. That’s it in a nutshell,” said lead pastor Joel Southerland. “We’re seeing weekly life transformations.”
Peavine's growth strategy is three-fold. The first focus is on the gospel. “We’re gonna keep the main thing the main thing,” said Southerland.
The second focus is on offering an amazing Sunday morning experience thought out in detail and improved upon each week.
“Every Sunday is someone's ONE day. That’s the one day they are going to show up to church. Their family has been praying for them, their coworkers have been inviting them, and we owe it to them and the Kingdom to be prepared and ready for them when they get here,” said Southerland.
The experience begins in the lobby. Foster preaches at Peavine on occasion and said his first time was a positive experience. “I walked in and first, there was a greeter, and then I ran into another greeter, and I said where is the nearest restroom?, and instead of just saying like most people, ‘Hey, go down the hall and take a left and take a right,' this guy said ‘Follow me and I’ll take you right to it.’ And, as we walk to it, he’s asking, ‘Is this your first time being here?'"
After the traditional worship and sermon, visitor cards are taken. “I need first-time guest cards. That’s the lifeblood of our day-to-day operation,” said Southerland.
Every person at every service in every campus every week, including regular attendees, fills out a card. An average of 83% of attendees fill out the cards. They gather the cards by having each person hand the card to the person to their left, and it goes into a bucket at the end of the row. “The crowd psychology is everybody is filling it out, and so I will fill it out,” said Foster.
Peavine uses this data to engage visitors. Southerland texts all first-time guests (about 40 per week) from information on the cards. He regularly leads people to Christ. The church averages between 1700 and 2100 first-time guests per year. “I’m just trying to get them in a spiritual conversation. If I can get them in a conversation, I will win with the gospel.”
Every month, the church prepares a report of attendees who have missed four Sundays in a row, and those names are divided up among pastors who make outreach phone calls and texts to those people, saying they haven’t seen them in a while and asking if everything is OK. “To get them reconnected if they have gotten disconnected. We discover sicknesses. We discover marriage issues. We discover financial issues," said Southerland. "We don’t use shame as a motivator. We reach out and try to help.”
They also try to make it easy to respond to the Sunday morning invitation. They have next step locations around the church and staff in the welcome center to talk with, as well as the traditional altar invitation.
The third vision focus is on the surrounding city. “It’s not about filling a building," explained Southerland, "it’s about reaching a city.”
Peavine City focuses on reaching a 20-mile radius of their campus. There are 497,000 mostly unchurched and lost people in that area. They hope to reach 1%, or 4970 people. “We’re gonna do it one person at a time as we go out and reach our corner for Christ,” said Southerland.
Church advertising is a big deal at Peavine. This includes radio and TV advertisements, and online targeting through social media. Their most popular advertisement are the yard signs that say, “I love my church. Peavine.”
Foster was told a story about a bumper sticker that read, "I love my church, but it’s not Peavine." He said Peavine is being promoted anyway by just saying the name.
Southerland said, “Every single week, we have 2000 of those signs in our community and every single week, I have somebody come back to me and says ‘Hey, we found this church because our neighbor had a yard sign that said I love my church and we’ve seen dozens of them, so we figured if that many people love their church, then we need to come and try it out.'”
Life can be messy and people need spiritual help, Southerland added, and having top of mind positioning is important so people will think, "I have heard a lot of good things about Peavine. I see them everywhere. Let me go try that out.”
Tools for engagement start with the church website and online service. Online viewers average 1500 per week.
“Most guests that come to our church say to me, ‘We’ve been watching online for two months,’” said Southerland.
A girl baptized last year told him she had been watching for four years.
The church constantly pours resources into online church to make it better, because now it’s the front door. It used to be the website, then social media, and now it’s online worship. Foster said there is a person online actively engaging with people, asking questions such as ‘Have you given your life to Christ?’ Or if they made a decision, explaining to them what they need to do next.
Churchgoers are encouraged to push people to the website first and get them engaged.
Members hand out physical invite cards, and twice a year, every member is texted a digital invite card to save in their photos to send to people.
The church app is promoted as a way to connect. “We tell people, even if they don’t come to our church, tell them to download the app and get them connected that way.”
Members also do outreach in Peavine City. They have provided 10,000 water bottles for school children, donated to foster children groups, helped underprivileged kids and their families with a full weekend of food, and have a program to help pay off medical debts.
Southerland said any church can replicate their growth. “You don’t have to be a big church. You can be a very small church, and the blueprint still works. It’s all repeatable. You just have to scale it down to your size or scale it up to your size. Because it’s all systems and day-to-day operations that get you into gospel conversations.”
Southerland said church growth is about seeing life change week in and week out, from lost to saved, from saved to committed, from committed to serving, and on down the line.
He adds, “It’s about organizing your church life, including Sundays, including Wednesdays, and even Mondays too, that’s geared to leading people to Christ and life change.”
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