How Fast-Growing Churches Help Other Churches Thrive
* At North Jersey Vineyard, Chorlian has worked to develop relationships with local pastors. Recently, he had lunch with a church planter from a different denomination. They decided to invite more pastors in their county to a prayer meeting every other month with a focus on praying and building relationships.
“I think it’s really important for us to realize we are not competing,” he says. “We need lots of healthy churches. We need Vineyard churches. We need Baptist churches. We need Assemblies of God and nondenominational churches. I just felt the Lord stirring me to be intentional about building supportive, encouraging relationships with other pastors.”
A Kingdom Culture
Establishing a culture of helping other churches doesn’t just happen. Leaders need to be intentional.
Britt says that because The Church of Eleven 22’s vision statement is “We’re a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ,” they realize that vision has to include other churches.
“While we invite all people, we’re not necessarily going to be the [only] way that all people are reached,” he says.
Similarly, Wayne Bray, lead pastor at Upstate Church, says, “We’re a church for the [upstate area]. By saying that, we’re not just a church that wants to reach the [upstate area]. We actually are a church that wants to help other churches as well.”
Traders Point’s vision is “Taking ground for the kingdom across Indy and beyond.” According to Bryant, “When you look at the local churches, we want to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them to take ground in Indy. Why wouldn’t we want to do it with other churches?”
Traders Point’s work with other churches is very organic. “One of our values as a staff is really helping the big ‘C’ church. We have budget numbers connected to that. It’s actually in my job description,” explains Bryant. She notes it’s not formulaic, but it is as simple as responding to emails and phone calls to help by giving away policies, procedures, organization charts, graphics and videos.
Visconti’s wife recently modeled this same attitude by inviting half a dozen local pastors’ wives to brunch to hang out and encourage each other.
Eric Garza, executive pastor at Cross Church, says, “We’re very adamant about fulfilling our own mission but doing so in a way where we equip other churches and leaders to carry out whatever their assignment is for their community.”
Christiansen describes this same perspective. “Our mission is specifically stated to create opportunities for people to experience God in a life-changing way. Those opportunities could be at another church.”
All of these churches understand their growth hasn’t come through isolation but involvement in all that God is doing in and around their communities, including in other churches.
Churches may find it is surprisingly easy to begin helping other congregations, but they do have to be intentional.
“Developing other churches and training leaders has got to be something you really want to do. It’s very much a posture before it’s a practice,” says Britt. “It may feel like it comes at a cost to your local church, but you won’t be in training and resourcing other churches for very long before you realize what a blessing it is.”
