Lakewood Church Central Campus
— — the room a basketball arena learned to sing in.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest congregation in the country meets here every weekend, in the room that used to be the Compaq Center. The Rockets played their final home game under these rafters in the spring of 2003. Two years and roughly ninety-five million dollars of renovation later, Lakewood opened the doors. The seats are the same. The catwalks and the spotlight grid are the same. What happens under them now is different.
Lakewood Church Central Campus, on ceramic.
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The place, in three passes.
Lakewood Church holds its weekend services at 3700 Southwest Freeway in Houston's Greenway Plaza, an office district about four miles southwest of downtown. The sanctuary is the former Compaq Center, opened in 1975 as The Summit and home of the Houston Rockets through their 2002–2003 NBA season. Lakewood took the long-term lease in 2003, completed a renovation of roughly ninety-five million dollars, and held its first service in the renovated arena on July 16, 2005. The seating capacity runs to about 16,800.
Lakewood holds English services on Saturday evening and Sunday morning and a separate Spanish service on Sunday afternoon. Joel Osteen has been senior pastor since 1999, when he succeeded his father John Osteen, who founded the church in an old feed store in northeast Houston in 1959. The Sunday gathering averages around 45,000 in person across services, with several million more reached through broadcast and online streams each week, including the church's SiriusXM channel and its long-running television feed.
Doors open about an hour before each service and parking fills early on Sunday mornings; the Greenway Plaza garages absorb most of the overflow. Admission is free and the bookstore on the lower concourse stays open before and after services. Visitors are welcome at any service without registration, and the church asks only that the reserved front sections be left for members who use them weekly. The Sunday afternoon Spanish service is among the largest Spanish-language Protestant gatherings in the country.