Local church 16th largest in the United States

A church that started as a Bible study with 40 people in the pastor’s living room has grown into the 16th largest church in America.

With an average weekly attendance of 18,965 people, Christ Fellowship made 24/7 Wall St.’s list of 25 largest churches in America. The nondenominational church with a sprawling campus on Northlake Boulevard has seven other locations in South Florida. It also offers services in Spanish and streams worship live via its app.

Many of the churches on the 24/7 Wall St. list are in Texas. Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale is the only other Florida church that made the list, reportedly the 17th largest.

Outreach Magazine named Christ Fellowship the seventh largest participating church on its 2017 list compiled with Lifeway Research’s Annual Report. That report put Christ Fellowship’s attendance at 26,200.

By the fall of 1984, after meeting for less than a year, the church outgrew the living room of founders Tom and Donna Mullins and moved to the cafeteria of Grove Park Elementary School. The church bought an old horse farm on the south side of Northlake Boulevard and started meeting there in 1992, according to the church’s website.

Christ Fellowship expanded to a three-building campus on the north side of Northlake in 2000. Todd and Julie Mullins, the founders’ son and daughter-in-law, now lead the church as its senior pastors.

To determine the 25 largest churches in America, 24/7 Wall Street staff compiled weekly attendance for the congregations of megachurches from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. The study considered a megachurch one that has a regular weekly attendance of at least 2,000.