Texas megachurch embarks on $22M expansion, including soccer fields for future Christian sports league

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Friday, May 15, 2026

CyLife Church, a former Southern Baptist church in Cypress, Texas, is undergoing a $22 million expansion and renovation of its campus facilities, which will feature new soccer fields as part of an upcoming Christian sports league.

"Our church had been growing 25 to 30 percent a year," CyLife Executive Pastor Hugh Ansley told Chron. "We are just ... basically out of space. ... We're doing everything we can to accommodate the growth."

CyLife began in 2009 as a campus of The MET Church, a prominent Southern Baptist church in Houston. The church is now a non-denominational congregation after becoming an independent church in 2019.

“From our early days at Hopper Middle School to becoming an independent church in 2019, our heart has remained the same. We are not a spectator church, but a disciple-making community rooted in God’s Word and committed to people,” the church states on its website.

Ansley told Chron that the church has already prepared the site for expansion in the first phase of the building project. They now expect to step into phase two of the work in August with a plan to finish by fall 2027.

The church building currently occupies 35,549 square feet. The building project will see that expanding to 45,187 square feet. This will include a 2,000-seat sanctuary and additional parking spaces.

Ansley revealed that the church has already spent $4.2 million on phase one of the expansion, thanks to the generosity of church members who pledged to directly fund $6.6 million of the total cost. They also sold 3 acres of church land for $2.7 million and plan to finance the remainder of the development cost. 

While most American churches are not growing, according to recent data, CyLife Church stands out among the approximately 39% to 50% of Protestant churches that have reported some form of attendance growth.

And they are doing that by catering to both the bodies and souls of the people they serve.

"We plan to have soccer and sort of a Christian league sports network that we know a lot of families are looking for in the area," Ansley said. 

The development plans also feature a community outreach space and a gym.

"We're trying to make room for the future, and we're trying to really focus also on Next Gen and young families that are primarily the people we see coming to us now," Ansley told Chron.

"(The project includes) a little bit of remodel in the current building to help accommodate our kids, teenagers, all that kind of good stuff. We also added about 350 parking spaces in phase one.”