Why Churches Should Work Together...other than the obvious.
I spent all day on Thursday with Scott Fields of Wheatland-Salem United Methodist Church and Greg Wenholdt of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church They are both the Senior Pastor at their church and really great guys. Anyway, we all went to The Chapel up in Grayslake to observe a one-day conference that Catalyst put on. Catalyst is an aggressive attempt to get all the churches in that area to work together as the body of Christ. It got me thinking about some reasons why churches should work together...other than the obvious
1. Healthy Competition
Ted Haggard and Jim Tomberlin were speaking at this conference and Ted told about the reason his children's ministry is as good as it is today is because he learned how to do it from the church that Jim pastored. The partnership created a healthy competition that made them both better. For two years we were in a Leadership Community through Leadership Network with about ten other leading churches in the multi-site movement. That Leadership Community created a healthy competition that made us all better. I know that if churches in close proximity would work together it would make all of them better.
2. Creative Colloaboration
On the car ride home with Scott and Greg we talked about video venues, small group ministry and about a half dozen other church-related topics. I know that if were having regular conversations like that some great collaborative ideas would emerge that we could work on together!
3.Better Score Keeping
One take away for me from the conference is that I need to know the number of people (in this case Naperville) and the number of people that are in church on a given weekend at all churches in the town. This percentage would then become the way we keep score of success - what percentage of people are churched! It won't tell all, but it will tell alot. And it is a better way of keeping score than just saying, "CCC has increased by 20% in the last year and has 670 more people attending this year than last year.
1. Healthy Competition
Ted Haggard and Jim Tomberlin were speaking at this conference and Ted told about the reason his children's ministry is as good as it is today is because he learned how to do it from the church that Jim pastored. The partnership created a healthy competition that made them both better. For two years we were in a Leadership Community through Leadership Network with about ten other leading churches in the multi-site movement. That Leadership Community created a healthy competition that made us all better. I know that if churches in close proximity would work together it would make all of them better.
2. Creative Colloaboration
On the car ride home with Scott and Greg we talked about video venues, small group ministry and about a half dozen other church-related topics. I know that if were having regular conversations like that some great collaborative ideas would emerge that we could work on together!
3.Better Score Keeping
One take away for me from the conference is that I need to know the number of people (in this case Naperville) and the number of people that are in church on a given weekend at all churches in the town. This percentage would then become the way we keep score of success - what percentage of people are churched! It won't tell all, but it will tell alot. And it is a better way of keeping score than just saying, "CCC has increased by 20% in the last year and has 670 more people attending this year than last year.
posted by Dave Ferguson at 8:18 AM
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