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Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work
Download Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work
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From the Inside Flap
BETTER TOGETHER THOUSANDS of Protestant churches are perplexed by plateaued or declining enrollments, while other congregations nearby thrive. Is there a way for them to combine forces, drawing on both their strengths in ways that increase their missional impact? Church merger consultant Jim Tomberlin and award-winning writer Warren Bird make the case that mergers today work best not with two struggling churches but with a vital, momentum-filled lead church partnering with one or more joining churches. Based on solid research and practical experience, the authors provide a hands-on guide so that lead churches and joining churches can each understand the issues, select an appropriate model, and develop strategies that will create a positive, healthy merger. This much-needed resource describes the range of mergers for strong, stable, stuck, and struggling churches. While many congregations are motivated by survival, an increasing number identify "mission" as their primary impetus. No matter what type of merger a church may be considering, the authors address key questions about the process: How can a merger help a church go forward? How will a merger process unfold? Where can a declining church find another congregation to join? What are the pitfalls that both pastor and congregation should avoid? How can "better together" lead to more, rather than fewer, life- giving, high- impact, reproducing churches? No matter what your motivation for merging your church with another— to begin a new church lifecycle, cross racial lines, reach more people for Christ, multiply your church' s impact, or better serve your local community— Better Together will give you the tools you need to create a thriving new entity.
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From the Back Cover
Praise for BETTER TOGETHER "Better Together is certain to become the standard reference for churches that see mergers as a strategic tool for kingdom impact. Tomberlin and Bird give us useful language, a helpful guide to the opportunities and challenges of church mergers, and the tools to navigate a successful merger." —ANDY STANLEY, senior pastor, North Point Ministries, Alpharetta, Georgia "As part of the Ginghamsburg team that engineered a merger to create a 'new', thriving, urban congregation, I deeply appreciate the information, inspiration, and practical toolkit in Better Together. It will help your church navigate the pitfalls and potholes that we had to discover the hard way." —KAREN SMITH, executive director, Missional Operations, Ginghamsburg Church, Tipp City, Ohio "Better Together will become the go-to book on how to do mergers well—the kind of mergers that are about multiplication more than subtraction and expansion more than elimination. Jim Tomberlin and Warren Bird provide invaluable help through research, great examples, practical guidance, and helpful language." —ED STETZER, president, LifeWay Research; author and blogger, edstetzer.com "As Mars Hill expands, we are experiencing exactly what Tomberlin and Bird are reporting—multisite churches have an opportunity to merge with existing churches to multiply gospel effectiveness. This is a very timely and helpful book for our church and many others." —MARK DRISCOLL, founding pastor, Mars Hill Church; founder, Resurgence; co-founder, Acts 29 Church Planting Network "Jim Tomberlin and Warren Bird are on the front lines of a church world changing so rapidly most of us have a hard time keeping up. Better Together is the best kind of work: based on real-life facts, marked by thoughtful interpretation, and filled with a vision for the beauty and flourishing of the church. This book could open untold doors for your church and ministry." —JOHN ORTBERG, senior pastor, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church; author, The Me I Want to Be
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Product details
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (April 24, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781118131305
ISBN-13: 978-1118131305
ASIN: 1118131304
Product Dimensions:
6.2 x 1.2 x 9.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.5 out of 5 stars
66 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#104,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
In past decades, church mergers were often two struggling churches hoping for survival and coming together as equals, often not being very fruitful in partnership and declining to the level of the largest of the two churches. But there is a growing trend for more vibrant partnerships forming between a strong vital church (called the “lead churchâ€) and other churches that need fresh life and momentum (called “joining churches’). Instead of being motivated by survival, they are called together by a vision for mission and for doing more together than they can do apart. 80 percent of 300,000 Protestant American churches are declining or plateaued. 1 percent close each year, often not prepared for the cost of change. But 2 percent of them merge annually and another 5 percent have been talking about it. But how can they discern whether a merge is an appropriate step and then navigate the process?Jim Tomberlin and Warren Bird explore the models, processes, opportunities and pitfalls of church mergers in their Leadership Network book Better Together. Tomberlin pioneered the multisite strategy at Willow Creek and founded MultiSite Solutions that consults to churches exploring multisites or mergers. Bird is the research director of Leadership Network, through which he has been doing extensive research over five years on church mergers, multisite development, revitalization and planting. They argue that church merging is becoming recognized as a viable revitalization strategy for stable but stuck churches, and also strong churches who are dissatisfied with the status quo. Like Peter who caught a load of fish and needed another boat to come and partner with him to capture all the blessing, churches are asking whether they can better reach their community and advance the Kingdom of God by working closer together.Better Together is compiled as a valuable resource and fieldbook for churches and leaders considering partnering or merging with another church. In four sections it explores the new landscape for mergers; processes of healthy church mergers; practical next steps for churches open to exploring a merger; and appendices and resources including a checklist of merger steps and case studies of successful mergers.Drawing on broad research of what is fruitfully working, the authors outline the issues for lead churches and joining churches: how do mergers help churches grow? What is an appropriate merger process? How can churches find another church to join? What pitfalls should church mergers look out for? What happens with existing pastoral staff? Do merging churches need an exterior consultant, a vote, a name change, plans for likely conflict? The book offers advice on preparing well, initiating the conversation, assessing how the churches compare, monitoring the legal and financial aspects, and following a merger process through well – managing transitions, integrating systems, clarifying structure, avoiding overpromising, and committing to a bigger bolder vision of mission. One of the key issues is communicating thoroughly at all stages of any process, as one survey respondent suggested: “Church mergers are more like merging two family businesses. Relationships, trust, and communication are absolutely critical†(p.91).One of the key challenges of the book is for churches to understand who they are – whether strong, stable, stuck, struggling and declining – and why they are considering merging – for survival or missional purposes, and whether with multicultural, multisite, church plant network, reconciliation or other ends in mind. The best success, the writers maintain strongly, comes to churches with clear sense of mission and a shared approach to theology and ministry practice. The best model is not the “ICU†combination of two sick churches, but either a healthy church combining with another healthy church in an equal “marriageâ€, or more helpfully a string church “adopting†a stuck or stable church or helping “rebirth†a struggling or dying church. A helpful question is what Steven Gray asks declining churches: “What if we were able to help you live out the vision that you were founded for in the first place, leading to an exponential impact in your community?†(p.134).The idea and even the word “merger†may carry unfortunate overtones of corporate takeover. In my Australian context we have seen few successful mergers that produce more than the sum of the parts. This volume points to the promise of new possibilities and careful processes that are worth exploring and trialling for the sake of more fruitful local mission.Better Together is essential reading for any church leaders looking for new options or exploring possibilities of closer partnership or association with other churches, and for consultants and denominational resource-people planting ideas for the future of the church in declining contexts.This review was originally published in Mission Studies 30 (Fall 2013), 268-269.
We are seriously looking at a merger with Menlo Church in the San Francisco Bay Area. What a great guide for considering such a major move. The book definitely takes the approach that merging can be a good, sometimes great, thing if the circumstances and motivations are right. I highly recommend it for anyone exploring such an opportunity. We bought over a dozen copies and placed in our church library. We’ve subsequently placed an additional order as they have been extremely popular.
Don't go past this book. It is well written and clearly set out. It is a must read for everyone in ministry today because the context of mission has changed and we need to take advantage of the momentum of new and younger churches who are rich in human resources but lacking the material resources to leverage this advantage. This is a manifesto for a new mobile e of the Holy Spirit.
This is a valuable book for those in vibrant, growing churches and for those in struggling churches. Sometimes one plus one equals more than two. Sometimes churches can do far more together, than they can do alone. When done properly, churches can merge and together their ministries multiply. This is about sharing vision, resources, and structure. In this book you will learn about the merged church structures that have worked best for the growth of ministry. Denominational churches have learned how to merge failing small churches with a more successful growing church and see the churches growing together.
Just went through a church merge and didn't get a hold of this book until the end of the process. My only regret is that I did not have this six months or even a year before to think through the process. If you are a struggling church don't look for another struggling church but rather read "Better Together" and turn your struggle into fruitfulness.
Whether you are thinking about mergers or not, there is no denying that God has used this tool to exponentially expand the kingdom footprint and infuse life into dying congregations...this book is a great missions tool in that regard
This book focuses on church mergers and is wonderful resource for what it is intended. However I was looking for something that applied in broader way to church networks. Still good information, it just needs to be applied to my situation.
Our church is going through a merger. This book explained the purpose and process to go through church mergers. It was good to read that our merger is following the book. I feel more at peace and comfortable with what is going on now.
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