Jim TomberlinBetter Together: Making Church Mergers Work

In past decades, church mergers were often two struggling churches hoping for survival and coming together as equals, often not being very fruitful in partnership and declining to the level of the largest of the two churches. But there is a growing trend for more vibrant partnerships forming between a strong vital church (called the “lead church”) and other churches that need fresh life and momentum (called “joining churches’). Instead of being motivated by survival, they are called together by a vision for mission and for doing more together than they can do apart. 80 percent of 300,000 Protestant American churches are declining or plateaued. 1 percent close each year, often not prepared for the cost of change. But 2 percent of them merge annually and another 5 percent have been talking about it. But how can they discern whether a merge is an appropriate step and then navigate the process?Jim Tomberlin and Warren Bird explore the models, processes, opportunities and pitfalls of church mergers in their Leadership Network book Better Together. Tomberlin pioneered the multisite strategy at Willow Creek and founded MultiSite Solutions that consults to churches exploring multisites or mergers. Bird is the research director of Leadership Network, through which he has been doing extensive research over five years on church mergers, multisite development, revitalization and planting. They argue that church merging is becoming recognized as a viable revitalization strategy for stable but stuck churches, and also strong churches who are dissatisfied with the status quo. Like Peter who caught a load of fish and needed another boat to come and partner with him to capture all the blessing, churches are asking whether they can better reach their community and advance the Kingdom of God by working closer together.Better Together is compiled as a valuable resource and fieldbook for churches and leaders considering partnering or merging with another church. In four sections it explores the new landscape for mergers; processes of healthy church mergers; practical next steps for churches open to exploring a merger; and appendices and resources including a checklist of merger steps and case studies of successful mergers.Drawing on broad research of what is fruitfully working, the authors outline the issues for lead churches and joining churches: how do mergers help churches grow? What is an appropriate merger process? How can churches find another church to join? What pitfalls should church mergers look out for? What happens with existing pastoral staff? Do merging churches need an exterior consultant, a vote, a name change, plans for likely conflict? The book offers advice on preparing well, initiating the conversation, assessing how the churches compare, monitoring the legal and financial aspects, and following a merger process through well – managing transitions, integrating systems, clarifying structure, avoiding overpromising, and committing to a bigger bolder vision of mission. One of the key issues is communicating thoroughly at all stages of any process, as one survey respondent suggested: “Church mergers are more like merging two family businesses. Relationships, trust, and communication are absolutely critical” (p.91).One of the key challenges of the book is for churches to understand who they are – whether strong, stable, stuck, struggling and declining – and why they are considering merging – for survival or missional purposes, and whether with multicultural, multisite, church plant network, reconciliation or other ends in mind. The best success, the writers maintain strongly, comes to churches with clear sense of mission and a shared approach to theology and ministry practice. The best model is not the “ICU” combination of two sick churches, but either a healthy church combining with another healthy church in an equal “marriage”, or more helpfully a string church “adopting” a stuck or stable church or helping “rebirth” a struggling or dying church. A helpful question is what Steven Gray asks declining churches: “What if we were able to help you live out the vision that you were founded for in the first place, leading to an exponential impact in your community?” (p.134).The idea and even the word “merger” may carry unfortunate overtones of corporate takeover. In my Australian context we have seen few successful mergers that produce more than the sum of the parts. This volume points to the promise of new possibilities and careful processes that are worth exploring and trialling for the sake of more fruitful local mission.Better Together is essential reading for any church leaders looking for new options or exploring possibilities of closer partnership or association with other churches, and for consultants and denominational resource-people planting ideas for the future of the church in declining contexts.This review was originally published in Mission Studies 30 (Fall 2013), 268-269.

Good book for helping in small group of church going through a merger. Well written, using it in our small group to guide us as we merge with another, larger church. This is really helping. By the way, we viewed the YouTube video by the authors at our first group meeting. That helped get us all in the right mindset, seeing this may be the new norm.On the second session (going over chapter 2), we viewed the recommended YouTube video about the New Life Church. What a wonderful story about church rebirth.

This is a valuable book for those in vibrant, growing churches and for those in struggling churches. Sometimes one plus one equals more than two. Sometimes churches can do far more together, than they can do alone. When done properly, churches can merge and together their ministries multiply. This is about sharing vision, resources, and structure. In this book you will learn about the merged church structures that have worked best for the growth of ministry. Denominational churches have learned how to merge failing small churches with a more successful growing church and see the churches growing together.

We are seriously looking at a merger with Menlo Church in the San Francisco Bay Area. What a great guide for considering such a major move. The book definitely takes the approach that merging can be a good, sometimes great, thing if the circumstances and motivations are right. I highly recommend it for anyone exploring such an opportunity. We bought over a dozen copies and placed in our church library. We’ve subsequently placed an additional order as they have been extremely popular.

If you're thinking about incorporating a church into your church or be incorporated this book is very useful. The information seems well researched. There are great anecdotal examples and hard numbers that give us a good picture of what's happening across the country and what it looks like on a local level. Tomberlin and Bird do a great job of pointing out some obvious and not so obvious pitfalls for church mergers. Of course they start out by telling us why it's a great idea and why it's the latest greatest movement. Better Together is a great resource for those leading church mergers.

Opens your eyes to possibilities and roadblocks. If your church is content with the way it is and happy to exist as a social club for its members, this book is NOT for you.

Don't go past this book. It is well written and clearly set out. It is a must read for everyone in ministry today because the context of mission has changed and we need to take advantage of the momentum of new and younger churches who are rich in human resources but lacking the material resources to leverage this advantage. This is a manifesto for a new mobile e of the Holy Spirit.

This book focuses on church mergers and is wonderful resource for what it is intended. However I was looking for something that applied in broader way to church networks. Still good information, it just needs to be applied to my situation.

A very helpful and very well-written book. Organized in such a way that it is easy to follow up ad with helpful schedules.

This is a classic text book for churches considering any sort of merger. Helps answer the questions and covers all the bases.

Excellent background on mergers

Some good practice models & practical checklists that can be applied in UK even though it’s US based study and report.