Yesterday I spoke at a gathering of associational churches. My message to them was that we need to find ways for our churches to work together to do ministry. The needs of the world are too great for any church to be able to meet them alone. I recently read that no county in the US has more than 50% of its people actively involved in a church. That means that half of every country is a mission field. If that mission field is to be effectively reached it will require our churches working together. We are not in competition with one another, or at least we shouldn't be. If we are more interested in advancing the Kingdom of God than in adding bodies to our churches we must find ways to work together to impact our communities. I believe that if we do that God will take care of bringing people into our churches.
Many bivocational churches believe they are too small to have any kind of significant impact, and many of them believe that they have nothing to contribute when working with other churches. I disagree. I believe that God has people in every size church with gifts, abilities, and passions that are needed in all our churches and that can contribute much to the work of the church in the world today.
I encourage you to find other churches with whom you can work together and explore ways you can do so in your community. Are there some needs that may be too big for one church to tackle but could be served by several churches working together? Would such unity send a powerful message to our world? I think so.
If your church is already involved in ministering with other churches, please respond to this posting and let others know what you are doing. It might encourage others to explore similar ministries.
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