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The Well Community Church is only 10 years old, but in the past five years this group of believers has helped launch four church plants to reach the fast-growing North Texas region.
“There are not very many churches that I know of where the lead pastor stands in front of his entire church and says, ‘Hey, I want 100 of you to leave our church and go to King’s Church in Denton,’” said Zach Cunningham, lead planter of King’s Church.
The Well started as a plant from RockPointe Church in Flower Mound in 2015. Ten families joined staff member Matthew Harding and his wife on a core team that met in their home for three months. When the group grew to more than 70, they moved to Argyle High School.
“We just celebrated our 10-year anniversary this past August, and we had 2,700 people attend our worship service that Sunday,” said Harding, senior pastor of The Well. “We average over 2,000 a Sunday now, and in 2022, we were able to build our first building on 30 acres that we own in Argyle.”
New churches can be especially nimble and strategic in reaching new communities, Harding said.
“We have to start new churches for the purpose of evangelistically reaching new waves of generations of people moving in all these new areas all through North Texas,” he said. “For example, in our small town, within five miles of us, there will be 50,000 people moving near us in the next three to five years.”
Since The Well cannot reach 50,000 new residents alone, it plans to keep multiplying. “We were planted with the DNA inside of us that we knew we were going to be planting churches for the rest of our existence.”
“We have to start new churches for the purpose of evangelistically reaching new waves of generations of people moving in all these new areas all through North Texas.”
In 2020, The Well planted The Parish Church in Denton with Justin Jester as the pastor, “and they’re thriving,” Harding said. In 2023, The Well planted Grace Bible Church in Ponder with Mike Waldrop. In 2025, The Well helped launch King’s Church in Denton with Cunningham aiming to reach college students. This year, The Well started The Hope Church, an Indian fellowship in Argyle led by Naveen Kaukuntla.
“We’re excited to plant Bible-preaching, gospel-centered, church-planting churches,” Harding said.
Each of the church planters sponsored by The Well has been through a church planting residency hosted by the Denton Baptist Association with a goal of training leaders for more sustainable plants.
By embedding with The Well for a year before planting, the pastor planters are able to connect through community groups and preaching so that when it’s time to launch, a good number of church members could be open to God’s call to follow them.
“That way they can be launched with people from our local context who live close and can go with them and tithe and support them, which is really important and helpful for sustainability,” Harding said.
Cunningham grew up in Denton and moved to Iowa with The Salt Network before helping plant a church in East Lansing, Mich., to reach students at Michigan State University. When that church wanted to send him to another college town, he felt a passion for the growing number of students at his alma mater, the University of North Texas in Denton.
The Well is seven miles from Denton, but it might as well be 700 miles away, Harding said, because few UNT students make it to The Well. As the church felt burdened to reach college students with a new plant, God led them to Cunningham at a time when he needed a local church sponsor for the work he hoped to start in Denton.
Through The Salt Network, Cunningham’s primary sending church is The Commons Church in East Lansing, and The Well is his local church sponsor.
The Salt Network is “a theologically-aligned ministry that cooperates with the Southern Baptist Convention for the purpose of planting new churches near university campuses,” Harding said.
King’s Church has a young staff, Cunningham said, and The Well’s staff has “encouraged us, they pray for us, they have bought meals for us, they have offered coaching and any advice that they can give us as a more seasoned church plant, and financially they have backed our church plant pretty significantly.”
College students have a lot of time and a lot of energy, but they don’t often have a lot of money, Cunningham added, so the financial backing from The Well plays a critical role.
Between UNT and Texas Woman’s University, about 15,000 more college students live in Denton now than a decade ago when Cunningham was a student.
“There are some great churches in Denton that are engaging the campuses, but there’s always a need for more churches that are willing to reach college students in this very unique time of life,” Cunningham said, adding that The Well has been “such a good, consistent help down the street from us.”
