Springdale Megachurch Adding Satellite Campus in Neosho, Mo.

Springdale-based Cross Church, already the largest church in Arkansas with an average weekly attendance of almost 9,000, is expanding its footprint into southwest Missouri.

Cross Church Neosho is scheduled to launch April 20 and will be the megachurch’s fifth campus.

Pastor Ronnie Floyd, who has led Cross Church in Northwest Arkansas for 27 years, announced the expansion plans Feb. 23.

A small church in Neosho known as Refuge Church will transition to Cross Church Neosho, Floyd said. The church began in January 2013 with three members and has been showing live-streamed Sunday Cross Church sermons on a big screen.

The church now has a weekly worship attendance of about 50.

The Neosho campus will meet in a 6,500-SF of leased space. Michael Shafer, an associate minister at the Springdale campus, and Ronnie Parrot, an associate minister at the Fayetteville campus, will coordinate the organization, planning, communications and launching of the Neosho campus.

Sermons from Floyd or his son, Nick Floyd, pastor at the Fayetteville campus, will be live streamed to Neosho each Sunday.

 “This will be a very different model for us,” Ronnie Floyd said. “Initially we’ll have no full-time staff. It will be all part-time, plus volunteers, and a video-venue preaching experience.”

Cross Church members currently worship at one of four campuses throughout Northwest Arkansas. In 2001, First Baptist Church of Springdale became a multi-campus ministry with the beginning of The Church at Pinnacle Hills in Rogers.

In 2010, the church changed its name to Cross Church and expanded to Fayetteville, with a campus on Wedington Drive.

 A fourth campus, formerly College Avenue Baptist Church, launched in April 2012, and is also in Fayetteville.

In September, Cross Church, which is part of the Southern Baptist Convention, was ranked the 53rd largest church in America in 2013 by Outreach magazine, with weekly worship attendance of 8,808.