Chapter 11: JV Christianity
A big part of CenterPoint’s story is the fulfillment of the vision to build a building on the freeway. In doing so, we went from a place where we were hard to find to a place where we were impossible to miss. From 2016 to 2026, the church has grown from under 400 to around 2,500. In the fall of 2026, CenterPoint is opening a new campus in Payson, 25 miles south of Orem.
Some of this growth has come from move-ins, but primarily the growth has come from the people of Utah Valley. The growth of CenterPoint is not measured in buildings but in changed lives. One way to measure that is in baptisms. Since COVID in 2021, CenterPoint has baptized over 1,100 people. The Lord has done way more than we would have ever asked or thought.
This is not just happening at CenterPoint but all over the state of Utah. Evangelical churches have grown significantly over the last generation in this state. In 1990, the largest Protestant church in the state had around 600 people. Today, there are around eight churches that are a thousand or more. There are many more that are growing, healthy churches.
In the end, buildings have played an important role in growing these churches. Church buildings give the local church a presence in the community. We need to keep that evangelical presence in perspective. To put it simply, evangelical churches do have a presence, but Utah remains an environment where the LDS Church seems almost omnipresent.
We saw that firsthand at CenterPoint a few years after we moved into our new building. Beginning in 2019, the LDS Church began building the Orem Temple across the freeway from CenterPoint. The temple is one of the most visible buildings in the valley. It was completed and dedicated in early 2024. Every time we drive into our parking lot, the Orem Temple looms in the background and serves as a reminder of where we are.
There are nine temples in Utah Valley that are already built or are being built. There are around 800 meetinghouses in Utah Valley where around 1,700 wards (congregations) meet. Then there are all the buildings overseen by the Church Educational System, which include LDS seminary buildings attached to every high school in the state. You have the LDS Institute of Religion located at the center of Utah Valley University. On top of it all, there is the BYU campus, which includes a 20,000-seat basketball arena and a football stadium that seats 65,000.
All of that gives us an idea of how they see us. The best analogy that I can think of is that they see us as Junior Varsity Christians. JV teams exist in high school to prepare athletes for the varsity team. Junior varsity teams simply cannot compete with varsity teams. Mormons see themselves as varsity Christianity.
Mormons are not unkind to people who belong to churches like ours. On the contrary, sometimes it feels like they are being overly nice. I have had leaders in the LDS Church applaud our growth. I heard a BYU religion professor say once that Mormons should be kind to pastors and members of other Christian churches because they are preparing people for the Restored Gospel of the LDS Church.
In this view of things, the service we provide is that we are putting on display a lesser kind of Christianity. Once people come to a church like ours and experience life on the Junior Varsity, they will jump at the opportunity, when it comes, to join the varsity. The truth is that through the years, many non-Mormons have moved here, looked at the non-LDS church options, and decided to join “the varsity team.” During the 1990s, I was told that the Utah County area mission had been one of the most successful missions in the LDS Church in terms of baptisms.
It is hard to live in an environment where people see you as JV. When someone who is not LDS displays something that is virtuous, often Latter-day Saints are surprised. One of the clearest examples of this occurred years ago when the kindergarten daughter of a couple in our church came home one day and told her mom and dad that the teacher had asked the class if there were any children in the class who were not Mormon. This little girl was the only one in class to raise her hand. She was embarrassed.
Her mom and dad went to see the principal, and the teacher was brought in and asked about it. The teacher’s response was that she assumed everyone in the class was LDS. When it came to this little girl, the teacher said, “She is the most Christ-like little girl that I know, and you seemed like you were the best little family—I just assumed you were Mormon.”
She had assumed that Mormons had cornered the market on good families and Christlikeness, and that this family was already on the varsity team.
How do we respond to people thinking of us as JV Christians? You can’t live here and define yourselves by what your LDS neighbors think of you. We must define ourselves by who we are rather than what we are not. The followers of Jesus have seldom been held in high esteem by the prevailing religious cultures they find themselves in.
As the church begins in the Book of Acts, the apostles were not respected by the religious elite. I love the scene in Acts 4 where Peter and John are on trial before the Sanhedrin. Acts 4:13:
“When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished, and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”
The members of the Sanhedrin were trying to figure out what it was about these guys that gave them courage. They could only point to one thing. They took note that they had been with Jesus. The apostles were not worried about what the religious authorities thought of them. They had been with Jesus.
Being with Jesus produces courage along with humility. “Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking about yourself less.” Proud people compare themselves to others. We cannot compare ourselves with the LDS Church. You cannot worry about whether people respect you. It only matters what Jesus thinks of us.
When you look at the property, size, wealth, and resources of the LDS Church and compare them to churches like ours, there is simply no comparison. We are not here to compare or even to compete with the LDS Church.
What are we here to do? Let me use one more analogy. When we moved from Orange County to Utah, one of the things I missed the most was In-N-Out burgers. In-N-Out is a popular drive-through hamburger restaurant that originated in Southern California. Over the last generation, they created fanatically loyal customers, from the rich and famous all the way down to guys like me. There were no In-N-Outs in Utah.
I would tell anyone willing to listen, “If you want to make some serious money, buy an In-N-Out franchise and bring it to Utah.” I read a book called In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look. It was fascinating. I learned that you cannot buy an In-N-Out franchise. It is a family-owned business and remains so to this day.
Harry and Esther Snyder opened the first In-N-Out in 1948 in Baldwin Park, California. The reason they did not take their company public is that they did not want anyone telling them how to make a hamburger. Harry and Esther Snyder were committed Christians. To this day, on the bottom of every cup there is a Bible verse. Harry Snyder, the founder, put their secret to success this way: “Keep it real simple. Do one thing and do it the best you can.” They made great hamburgers and made them fast, and they never compromised on quality ingredients or great service.
As I read the In-N-Out story, I expected to read about a well-oiled corporate machine. The reality is that their story is kind of messy and chaotic. As you read the story of In-N-Out, you wonder how they made it. The answer is simple. No matter which family member was in charge, they never lost sight of their original purpose: “Keep it real simple. Do one thing and do it the best you can.”
The family was committed to making great hamburgers, making them fast, and never compromising on quality. Today, if you get a hamburger at In-N-Out in any one of over 400 locations, it will be the same hamburger that was made in Baldwin Park in 1948. It is the same old thing every time, but the same old thing is powerful. Through it all, In-N-Out has not only survived, but it has thrived.
I realized after reading their story that we have something to learn from In-N-Out. In-N-Out understood that they were not in competition with anyone else. They were not competing with McDonald’s. They were trying to be In-N-Out.
As I read the In-N-Out story, I could not help thinking of this thing that Jesus created two thousand years ago called the church. The history of the church down through the ages is incredibly messy and chaotic. I have often wondered how the Church of Jesus Christ has survived. Closer to home, I have wondered how CenterPoint Church has survived.
Whenever things got messy, we kept it simple and continued to make it about Jesus and the Gospel and reaching the people we live around. When the church exists to do what Jesus created it to do, it becomes an unstoppable force.
There is another chapter from the In-N-Out story that is instructive for the church in Utah. Back in the mid-2000s, a fast-food restaurant opened in American Fork, just ten miles north of us, called “Chadders.” I began to hear people talk about this new hamburger place called Chadders that was just like In-N-Out. Make something great, and people want to imitate it.
I walked into Chadders with great anticipation. It was easy to see that this was an attempt to replicate In-N-Out under a different name. The look, the feel, even the menu reminded me of In-N-Out. After eating one of their hamburgers, my response was, “Nice try, Chad.” My finely tuned taste buds knew the difference. It was not In-N-Out.
When In-N-Out headquarters heard about Chadders, they were not amused at this blatant attempt at creating a knockoff. They sued Chadders and won. Chadders was required to change its menu and do all sorts of things to stay away from the look and feel of In-N-Out.
My opinion? I think In-N-Out wasted a lot of time and money trying to put Chadders out of business. They did something far more powerful—they came to Utah. In 2009, they opened an In-N-Out in Utah Valley. Today, there are 14 In-N-Outs in the state. By the way, Chadders closed because people could now get the real thing. Don’t worry about the competition. There is no competition.
To be clear, the goal is not to put the LDS Church out of business. As a local church, we are not trying to win the lawsuit. Our primary efforts are not directed toward trying to prove that the LDS Church is not what it claims to be. Our goal has been to do the one thing we were created to do: make it about Jesus and the Gospel and reaching the people that we live around.