Branching Out and Building a MultiCampus Network For Lenexa Baptist Church
A continually growing and expanding church, Lenexa Baptist Church is no stranger to the challenges of building a multi-campus network. A large church with a rich history and strong growth, they had built up a network of several smaller satellite churches all throughout the Kansas City Metro area over the course of 2011 through 2017.
Building off the model used for the two prior spin-offs, Cenetric implemented a robust, secure, and cost-effective network throughout the campus and then integrated it into Lenexa Baptist’s main campus network.
August of 2017, Lenexa Baptist Church made the decision to divest itself of its satellite churches, spinning them off into autonomous churches in their own right. To help with that transition, Lenexa Baptist turned to their long-time IT partner, Cenetric Network Services.
Challenges
Working alongside the Lenexa Baptist IT staff, Cenetric built a standardized design for the infrastructure at the newly autonomous Fellowship West campus in Bonner Springs, KS, and Fellowship Greenwood in Greenwood, MO. Together, Cenetric and Lenexa Baptist migrated terabytes of data and dozens of assets to the new networks, providing a seamless transition for the two campuses simultaneously. When the transition completed in January 2018, both new Fellowship churches were fully online and ready to begin serving their communities on their own terms.
Never one to rest, Lenexa Baptist Church almost immediately began expanding their services once more, taking on a new church replant in the form of the former First Baptist of Olathe in late 2018, now renamed to Fellowship Olathe. Once again, Lenexa Baptist turned to Cenetric for help in designing the new network. Building off the model used for the two prior spin-offs, Cenetric implemented a robust, secure, and cost-effective network throughout the campus and then integrated it into Lenexa Baptist’s main campus network.
Solutions
In late 2019 and early 2020 Cenetric had the opportunity to assist not only Lenexa Baptist, but also both prior satellite spin-offs, to grow once more. In July of 2019, Fellowship Greenwood announced it would be expanding to a second campus, the former First Baptist Church of Raymore. With their intimate knowledge of Greenwood’s network, Cenetric was the church’s immediate choice to build out a new campus network for Raymore and integrate it in with the existing Greenwood campus. This they did, creating a robust and secure network that acted as an extension of Greenwood’s internal network for minimal cost.
Finally, in the summer of 2020, Lenexa Baptist expanded once more, building out a new church in DeSoto, KS. As ever, they turned to Cenetric for assistance, and a new network was developed once more. Like Olathe, the new DeSoto network was designed to function autonomously, but also provide access to the resources of the main Lenexa campus as needed. In the span of just a few weeks, the network was designed and implemented, providing another campus with a strong backbone for their IT needs.
Results
Over the course of four years, Cenetric has implemented new network designs and integrations for Lenexa Baptist and its various satellites and spin-offs five times, each time iterating on the original design and each time providing a strong and reliable network on time and under budget. As all three church bodies continue to grow, Cenetric will be there, helping them ensure their IT infrastructure is up to the task of supporting their thriving congregations.
