A year ago I wrote that the thought of a church merging with another church had never crossed my mind 20 years ago when I started full time ministry.
Mergers were something that companies did, not churches. But if you’re paying attention to what’s happening in church-world, mergers are becoming more and more common. And for a lot of reasons it’s a movement that I believe we’ll actually see more of in the future not less.
There are a lot of reasons your church may consider merging with another church in the future but apart from the obvious calling of God there are a couple of reasons that are at the top of the list.
Revitalization
New churches are started to reach new people with the Gospel. But as churches go through their lifecycle they’ll one day find themselves with a few people hanging on at the end if they don’t reinvent themselves, and most don’t. Many of these Kingdom assets are in real estate locations that a church planter will never have the opportunity to be in due to financial barriers. If these declining churches don’t choose to merge with another church their buildings will eventually be sold, leveled, and someone will make a bunch of money developing that location for commercial purposes.
Momentum
If your church doesn’t have momentum, acquiring another campus through a merger won’t infuse momentum into your church. You simply cannot pull off a merger if you don’t have momentum. In a merger the culture of the lead church needs to wash over the culture of the joining church. If you don’t go into a merger with momentum instead of having two thriving locations you’ll be left with two floundering sites.
Want to learn more about church mergers? These previous posts will help you get ready to lead through your next church merger opportunity.
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