In January 1996, Life.Church was founded as Life Covenant Church in Oklahoma City with 40 congregants meeting together in a two-car garage. From 1996 to 1999 the church membership grew rapidly. During this time, Life.Church built its first facility. In 2001, MetroChurch, a 25-year-old, nondenominational church in nearby Edmond, Oklahoma merged with Life.Church, effectively making it a multi-site church. With this merger, they changed their name, combining Life Covenant Church with MetroChurch to arrive at the name "LifeChurch", a nod to both previous churches. Their staffs were combined under the leadership of Craig Groeschel as lead pastor. Groeschel said he would be calling on MetroChurch members to help them grow in God. Life Church has had tremendous success in reaching people, but MetroChurch is a proven developer of faith, he said. During these early years of the merger, Craig Groeschel traveled back and forth between the two campuses to deliver his sermons live to the congregations. For a while, this meant he gave five sermons each Sunday, as there were multiple services at both locations. Following the success of the multi-site services, the church launched campuses in Tulsa and Stillwater, Oklahoma in 2003, with these new campuses incorporating satellite video teaching into their services. Life.Church opened an additional campus in Oklahoma City, the South Oklahoma City Campus, in Spring 2005. In February 2006, Life.Church introduced a campus in Fort Worth, Texas, its first location outside Oklahoma. In April 2006, the church established its "Internet Campus" which broadcasts weekly, interactive worship services live over the internet. On Easter Sunday, 2007, Life.Church began broadcasting from their new campus in the online gameSecond Life. Also in 2007, Life.Church opened campuses in northwest Oklahoma City; Wellington, Florida; and Albany, New York. In 2012, the church had more than 26,000 members. In 2015, the church had 15 campuses in different American states. In 2019, it had 34 campus locations as well as their online church. They also make available past sermons for churches to use as materials in their sermons and bible studies.
Life.Church Open Network
In 2016, Life.Church launched its Life.Church Open Network to provide other churches with resources of digital content and platforms for free. This includes Church Metrics and the Church Online platform.
