I learned the hard way years ago what it’s like to do ministry alone.  It leads to a competitive spirit, resentment toward those I think aren’t working as hard as I am, and eventually depression and burnout.

Conspiring with others in ministry is not only needed for making a difference for Christ, it’s needed to help us maintain our own sense of ministry balance and self-care.
Thanks for your post.

While I agree that we desperately need more cooperative work, I have also seen the difficulties of making such things happen.  I was an Associate Pastor in a small community church here in East Dayton, Ohio.  In East Dayton, there are 19 churches within a 3 mile radius.  I attempted to get those churches to work together to reach the community.  The silence with which my proposals were met was deafening.  Everyone was either too busy doing their own thing or too sure they were superior to our church in some way.  Many of them rejected me personally, out of hand, when I told them that I had no seminary degree.

I was seen mostly as a brash newcomer with quaint and idealistic notions about what koinonia means.  At any rate, nothing I said seemed to have any effect other than to get some nods of agreement about the sorry state of our area and regrets about the impossibility of making anything happen on an inter-church basis.

Throughout the entire process I kept being reminded of a quote from Mike Warnke about the Mighty Army of God being busy “polishing their armor or fighting amongst themselves.”

Todd -

Over the last three years, our church has partnered in regular, visible, united prayer with roughly nine other local churches.  Now this has grown through patience and perseverance, and, above all, through the work of the Holy Spirit.  From a monthly local/extra-local pastors’ lunch hosted at our church, we have grown to a monthly evening prayer meeting with all churches involved, as well as weekly morning prayer with pastors and elders.  Out of this have come joint conferences and outreach opportunities, worship project collaboration and support, and recently, we have combined youth groups with one other church within our local fellowship.  This means that our two youth pastors share the leadership and discipleship responsibilities, as well as the bringing along of youth staff.  It’s thrilling!  Our overall aim, though, is not simply to work together for a common cause, but to show through our unity that Jesus Christ is supreme in all things, and that His resurrection power, love, and mercy provide real and lasting hope for a hurting world.  If you’re interested, check out our website at http://www.cryforawakening.org/.  I can say, with all honesty, that this is the greatest kingdom endeavor I have ever been a part of, and I praise God for it.  Thank you, Jesus!

Hi Todd,
Good thoughts there, but the sad thing is that many people are not geared to work together for any number of reasons.  Denominational pressures, local history, and theological differences keep us from getting on the same path towards Christ together.  I think one of the greatest reasons that churches don’t work together is the
a) lack of a clear vision why they exist and
b) lack of visionary leadership to implement programs to accomplish their kingdom purposes
Churches that are growing and making a difference will partner with other churches and organzations that are doing the same and will invite those who aren’t to join them but will not wait for them to catch up…
my two cents worth

In our church’s Identity Statement, we include:

Knowing Our “Competition”, What We Are Competing For:

The hearts, minds, will and eternal future of all who we have the opportunity to be in contact with.

Who We Are Competing With:

NOT other Bible-believing, born-again churches!  BUT, with anything and everything that competes for people’s hearts, minds, will and eternal future in a manner that is contrary from Jesus!  The “Marketplace of Ideas.” Consumerism.  Rugged individualism.  Humanism.  “Talking Heads.” Other teachings/religions/philosophies.  Etc. . .

I’m part of an inter-denominational group of pastors here in our area.  We have Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostal/Charismatics, Salvation Army and some others (I’m Wesleyan).

We focus on what we have in common: a belief that a person needs Christ to be saved.  We joke about our theological differences on the secondary stuff.  We don’t dismiss the importance of those differences, but we determine to not let those stand in the way of reaching people for Christ.

We sponsor a number of outreach activities in the area, and at each activity, a number of the pastors are involved on a personal level.

We’re all good friends, and I believe that has helped us reach more for Christ.

Let’s have more Kingdom-minded people!

Brian L.

I can say a couple of good things about some of our local churches.  One church partners with another for VBS.  They share resources and experiences so they aren’t doing it alone.  It helps that they’re not really close so aren’t “competing” for the same souls, but it’s still a good attitude to have.

My current church hosts Upward Basketball, but the teams come from all over the area.  That’s kind of cool because it doesn’t so much matter if someone who doesn’t go to a local church joins ours or not, they’re exposed to others and may go there.

Still, I would agree that there is a lot of competition to take members from other churches and so on.  It’s even prevalent among getting new staff members - would you rather get an experienced pastor or someone just out of seminary?  I think that our current leadership has really developed more of an attitude of not trying to win people from other congregations, but from those who are not attending a local church meeting.

Could we pool our resources better?  Probably.  It is very hard to have that attitude of not caring what local body someone joins, but caring that they have joined the Body.  I look forward to reading some of the responses on this thread.  I’m sure that there will be some great ideas.

For us, it has taken seven years to get to his phase of “a progressiing tactical unity.” Our key is relationship. This relationship is based on the heart of Jesus, “I pray that they will be one . . . so that the world will know . . . “ Jn 17. Once we begin to pray the prayers Jesus is praying for us we have a hope. This is the great omission in my mind, the key to real church today and reaching the outsider.
After praying for a year - weekly - we did a retreat with 13 senior pastors. No visible agenda, but to pray, love, learn and support. Fear and power were present. We spent another three year praying - no events but community wide communion once a year.It forced ambition to be exposed and die.  It allowed us to come to a place of love and trust with a core group. We have not arrived but we have seen kingdom power in our midst and salvaged pastors and churches that left alone would have likely emploded. You need large and small church pastors, but like people when we appear self sufficient it is hard to find our way to walk with others. John 17 consider seriously the prayer of Jesus, encourage that we pray the prayers that are prayed in heaven and we may indeed see His will be done on earth.

This article is just saturated with all kinds of presuppositional fallacies.

1. “the Christian community is sometimes competitive, protective, and egotistical. ...too many of us, while we’d never admit it, turn our whole ministry career into a competition with other churches and rivals that we constantly try to out-maneuver and out-wit. ...there is actually more power in working together than in looking at everyone else as our competition.” Only someone who has a corporate mindset to write an article entitled, “What is the biggest need in your church: Leaders vs. Managers” would even perceive that there exists any competition among churches. And if there does exist compeition among churches, it’s probably among those pastors are the ones being considered great leaders.
2. “Too many of us think we have original ideas (while few of us do).” That’s because that’s what churches who have pastors as “leaders” do: trying to come up with new visions and new ideas. And when churches have bought into this heretical concept that pastors should be leaders, they learn to expect and demand that their pastors become competitive in producing the most and the best in their church. This article is a complete oxymoron to last week’s article.
3. “some ways you can put aside your competitive nature and conspire for more Kingdom impact.” So the solution to avoiding competitive tension among churches is by having an evangelistic zeal, a missional compassion, and a pastoral network. I truly hope that, at best, Todd Rhoades is simply naive and idealistic to think that these are the solutions. To tell churches to hire a CEO corporate leader as a pastor in one article and then to say be evangelistic, missional and networking to avoid competitiveness in this article is like telling a church to hire a prostitute as a pastor, and then to avoid HIV, go wash yourself in the river for a week and pray for deliverance.

To avoid competitiveness, here are the biblical mandates:
1. The church must be Gospel-centered in its ministries.
2. Repentance of sins is only by looking to the Cross.  Evangelism, missions and pastoral networking do not cleanse anyone of sins.

I wish Todd Rhoades would give more solid and more correct biblical advise.

Some benefits of conspiring together

Bigger perspective;
Sense of community;
Less comparing-less envy-less pride;
More ideas-better ideas;
Synergy;
Cooperation;
Sharing the load