When churches work together

 This past Sunday I had the privilege to speaking to a group of churches who have joined forces to operate a home to help addicts get clean. They held a number of outdoor services in a city park during the week, and Sunday evening was the final service. Each evening a resident of the home shared his story of how the ministry of the home was helping him overcome his drug habit.

When churches come together to minister to a community great things can happen. No church, regardless of size, can provide all the ministry needed in any given community, but when churches join forces they can accomplish much. In my message to these churches I encouraged them to try to involve even more churches in their combined work because there is much more to do than just this one ministry.

Too often, we become so focused on seeing our church grow or to see our church develop ministries that we don't see how much more we could do if we joined forces with other churches. We should never see ourselves in competition with other churches. Rather, it's important we see ourselves working with other churches to expand the reach of the Kingdom of God into people's lives.

Over the past two decades I've had the opportunity to lead numerous conferences and workshops for a variety of denominations. While there were theological differences between each of these denominations, what we shared in common was far more important. Each of them held to the fundamentals of the faith that I, as a Baptist, believe in. What differences that did exist were minor compared to what we had in common.

The task that lies before our churches is greater than what any one church can do alone. I often share that a minimum of 50% of every county in the United States is unchurched. In some counties the number is much higher. In the county in which I spoke the census reports a population of about 28,000 which means a minimum of 14,000 can be considered unchurched. Many of these individuals are not saved. No church working alone could reach out to that many people spread out across a county, but all the churches in the county working together could reach out to them. This is what we must do if we truly believe that Jesus Christ came for all people.

I encourage you to begin talking to other churches in your communities to see what you could begin to do together. Find some common ministry emphases that your churches could come together to accomplish.