SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Adam Weber didn't want to be a pastor.
Nearly 11 years later, he's leading the fastest-growing United Methodist Church in America.
Embrace Church began on a September night in 2006 with a meeting of 32 people. Today, the church has five physical locations, thousands of worshippers and an online church of about 2,000 people.
From the beginning, Weber worked to grow the church one person at a time, with a focus on meeting people where they are in life both spiritually and physically.
"We don't try to be anybody but ourselves," Weber said.
Weber's commitment to that mission and his ability to reach young people has propelled Embrace to be a leader in the Sioux Falls faith community as well as an example of the power of word-of-mouth and online engagement in building a brand.
"I think people sense an authenticity about our church," said Travis Waltner, pastor of the Embrace campus in Tea. "We don't try to come off as holier-than-thou. We make a lot of mistakes, and we've got a lot of issues in our own lives."
The Argus Leader (http://argusne.ws/2mZvNnL ) reports that Weber, a S.D. native, was 24 years old and pursuing his master's degree in Kentucky when his pastor asked him if he wanted to start a church.
"I said, 'No,'" said Weber, now 34, chuckling at the memory as he sits in the church office on 57th Street near Southeastern Avenue.
His pastor encouraged him to pray about it and give it a trial run. The two men would each send out an email announcing the new church service, and they'd see what happened.
On Sept. 4, 2006, 32 people showed up for what became the first-ever Embrace Church service.
Though it was an initial success, it took time for Embrace to hit its stride in terms of growth. For the first three years, the congregation didn't grow above 100 members, and the church was on the verge of closing.
"Those are the three years that no one else sees," Weber said.
Then, one week in 2009, Embrace moved both its location (to a spot in the Fellowship of Christian Athlete's building on 69th Street and Cliff Avenue) and its evening service to the morning.
That was the tipping point.
"We doubled in one morning," Weber said.
It was around that time that Tyler Goff and his wife began attending Embrace. Goff said he'd heard from a friend that he should check out Embrace, but he joked that he had been procrastinating it because of his love for Sunday Night Football.
Now, Goff not only attends Sunday morning services, but he's a part of several small groups that meet throughout the week.
"We've developed really good friendships with a lot of the people there through small groups," Goff said.
After switching to morning services, Embrace saw nothing but growth. The church moved from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes building to its current location near 57th Street and Southeastern Avenue in 2011.
That building filled quickly, and over the next five years the church grew to more than 4,000 members across five locations, including a church in St. Croix, Minnesota.
The growth wasn't spurred by a desire to become a mega-church, Weber said. It's come from a desire to always reach one more person.
His Sunday sermons urge parishioners to spread the story of Jesus to just one more person, and his mission quickly spread through the church.
Ask most anyone at Embrace how they started going to the church, and their answer will almost always start with, "I heard from a friend."
Alecia Martinez, a student at the University of Sioux Falls, began attending Embrace in 2014 after seeing a Facebook friend post a photo of the church bulletin.
Martinez moved to Sioux Falls from Sibley, Iowa, for college, and she spent her freshman year "shopping" for the right church.
When she saw the Embrace bulletin on Facebook, it piqued her interest.
"I figured, oh, OK, this looks a little more modern," Martinez said. "That's when I went and checked it out."
After she began going regularly, Martinez has invited friends and family to come to Embrace with her. She stayed with the church because she appreciates the "contemporary" feel and the almost concert-style praise and worship music.
The Sunday sermons often encourage Embrace worshippers to invite their friends and share the messages from the services, but Martinez said she invites people to Embrace not because she feels pressured to, but because she wants to.
"You want the people you love to experience something you live," she said.
Reaching one person at a time doesn't just happen through word of mouth.
It's all about meeting people where they are, and for the young worshippers like Martinez who make up the majority of Embrace's congregation, where they are is online.
Weber started the church's online presence alongside the church's own beginning.
He said trying to target young people and ignoring social media is like taking a job in Mexico and refusing to learn Spanish.
"You're saying you're not willing to speak their language," Weber said.
Embrace has a following of more than 33,000 on Facebook and more than 13,000 on Twitter.
While Weber downplays social media as a factor in the church's exponential growth, it's hard to ignore that type of following in a space where not many churches operate.
Weber shared the story of a person who tweeted that they were new to Sioux Falls and looking for a church. The only respondents were people who went to Embrace, followed by a tweet from the official Embrace Church saying something like, "See you Sunday."
It's not just the social media that's engaging worshippers online. Embrace's online campus has given rural churches and families a chance to bring the Embrace service remotely.
A family in Sioux City tunes into the online church services, as does a woman in Paris.
In Salem, a town of about 1,300 people, a group of 115 get together each Sunday at a local church to stream the Embrace service.
"Growth is people sharing," Weber said.
And people who go to Embrace really love to share.
Weber's stories about Embrace's growth carry a common theme.
He didn't want to be a pastor, but he took a chance and started Embrace.
He was uncertain about whether the church could afford its building on 57th Street, but the church grew so quickly that the building not only filled, but overfilled with worshippers.
When approached about writing a book, he was not sure it was a good idea, but now he's published a book on prayer, "Talking with God," with the Christian branch of Penguin Random House.
Weber's path with Embrace has involved many leaps of faith, but each risk has paid off.
"As a Christian, when I really step out in faith, when we take that one step out," Weber said. "God promises to meet us in that place."
Weber doesn't know if Embrace will continue to grow at the current rate. He's considered new locations in Fargo, Sioux City or another branch in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. But he's not looking to be a mega-church.
Embrace has stayed true to its mission thus far, and Weber wants to keep that going in the future.
"Our hope is only to continue reaching one more person," he said. "I mean that wholeheartedly."