Can Churches in a City Work Together?
“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free,
there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
- Galatians 3:27-28
“Who’s ready to plant churches together?”
This was the question that Jim Essian, a friend and fellow pastor in my city, asked 15 folks around a table in 2017. This was the third question he asked, with building gusto, after receiving rousing and unified responses from his first two questions: “Who believes Fort Worth needs the gospel?” “YES!” “Who believes that church planting is a way that can happen?” “YES!” Then came the climactic moment: “Who’s ready to plant churches together?” …crickets. No response. The air was sucked out of the room. No one was ready to work together.
Churches in our city – perhaps like yours – are very territorial; there are philosophical and doctrinal divides that seem insurmountable in many leaders’ minds, and block any chance of collaboration before it even begins.
Undeterred by the lack of response to his third question – and with great patience – Jim bought lunch for church leaders every month for three years. Sometimes he brought in a speaker, but most of the time, these lunches were filled with prayer and conversations. Over time more came, and over time, trust and relationship were built. A sort of camaraderie came about, and many discovered that – despite the “insurmountable” differences – church leaders from other denominations, and even those who held different secondary beliefs, were not actually that bad.
At the end of the day, many discovered that there are lots of ways to start, serve, and lead a gospel-centered, Spirit-led, mission-focused, and kingdom-minded church, built on orthodox theology and passionate about making disciples of Jesus. None of us has a corner on the market related to Chrisitian formation and discipleship! And in our city like yours, no matter how many people are in our given church when it gathers, there will always be more people “out there,” who need the love, hope, and good news of Jesus.
So Plant Fort Worth was formalized in 2019, and I have been honored to serve as its director. We continue to host open-invite monthly lunches for church leaders. Some 60+ churches are now represented. Each desires to see multiplication “for Fort Worth and from Fort Worth,” and each is involved in that mission to varying degrees. Those churches represent dozens of denominations and networks, and multiple secondary(+) beliefs. We also now coach planters in their early years of church planting, and offer two different ministry residencies to help prepare people for planting and leading churches! A lot has happened since Jim’s three questions: leaders in our city are now working together; churches in our city are now actively planting churches together!
How does it actually work?
Over the past five years I’ve been asked how we have established this collaborative, cross-denominational work in our city. I truly believe the first answer is that there is a unique grace of God on our city in this season. There is truly no silver bullet for collaboration; only God can break down dividing walls and bring people together, as he has been doing since at least Galatians 3. I also credit the prayers of a few faithful leaders, and the patient generosity of Jim and his church: over three years, he worked to establish relationships and build trust among leaders from different churches, networks, and denominations. That foundation was slow to take shape, but was humble and strong, and we’ve gotten to build on it since.
But there are a few things that we have fought for since formalizing Plant Fort Worth, which I believe God has used to create a truly collaborative spirit among churches in our city. In talking with church leaders who desire a similar thing for their city, some of the things we’ve done seem counter-intuitive – so perhaps they’re worth sharing, in hopes that you can seek some of the same, and that God might help churches in your city/area work together too.
1. Install cross-denominational leadership
The first thing I did in Fall 2019 when I was asked to direct Plant Fort Worth was to create a diverse “lead team.” This team represents different geographies and socio-economic mission fields around our city, as well as different ethnicities and secondary beliefs (Baptist and Presbyterian, cessationist and continuationist, house church and megachurch, etc.).
As much as Plant Fort Worth had always aspired to be collaborative, being hosted by one church who was part of one network gave some people some pause. But the moment we put five leaders, from five different church veins, in front of Plant Fort Worth’s participants, something seemed to unlock: in putting our money where our mouth was, people saw that no church, network, or denomination “owned” Plant Fort Worth. It wasn’t a subversive way to built some other organization. We weren’t mandating the kind of churches that were being planted. Our lead team represented our organization and mission: Plant Fort Worth was truly independent, collaborative, and cross denominational.
2. Do not create a network
Once we had a lead team established, the first big decision I led them in was NOT creating a network. Networks – or denominations, or something to “belong to” – seem to be the common trend for organizations like ours. But if we were truly going to work with churches in other networks or denominations, we would become “competition” if we created a network of our own.
On one level, the idea of competition should not exist among any Christian group; we’re truly one, seeking one kingdom under the one name of Jesus. But on another level, even if accidental, organizations often make decisions that lead to division and competition, rather than unity and collaboration. More tangibly…
We decided against centralized funding: on one hand, Plant Fort Worth does have a centralized operational budget. We intentionally keep this small; it primarily covers meals and gifts for leader lunches, a stipend for a couple part-time staff, and some scholarship funds for potential residents. In keeping the budget small, we are freed from too much time going toward fund-raising, from the administrative headaches incurred by some similar organizations, as well as the need to always be bigger and better lest funders pull out. On the other hand, we retained from having centralized funding for church planters. Rather than everyone contributing to one “pot,” and a few people deciding how to allocate those funds to various planters, we serve as more of a match-maker: new planters share their plans and prayers, and we invite local churches and teams to prayerfully consider who they will support – whether through prayer, finances, or people, churches thus support planting directly. Win-win.
We decided against mandatory dues: along with the lack of centralized funding, we decided against having mandatory dues. We ask our lead team’s churches to support the small centralized budget mentioned above, as part of their leadership. Beyond that, we invite churches to contribute to Plant Fort Worth operations if they want, but our encouragement is for each church to set funding aside, to directly support new planters and churches. This decision has proven to be fruitful, both in churches getting to decide which plants they want to support, and being confident in knowing their funds aren’t supporting churches they would not align with. Perhaps more than this though, many Plant Fort Worth churches are required to give percentages of their budgets to their denomination or other network – so if Plant Fort Worth were to mandate giving as well, many would have to choose between supporting the local work of our organization, or the connection and benefit of their border organization. We believe this choice to be a false dichotomy, so we have decided against mandatory dues. As a side benefit, this also means that any church’s involvement in Plant Fort Worth is truly, purely the decision of that church – by choosing to participate and give, the buy-in of many churches is stronger than if it were mandated.
We decided against assessments: our team decided not to host church planting assessments. Philosophically (and similar to the way a wedding ushers a couple into a broader family) we believe that a church should be assessed into the network, denomination, or broader organization who will support them, hold the accountable, and walk with them for the duration of the new church’s ministry. If a church or network does not have an assessment, we’re happy to help them find one that fits – but most networks or denominations have a required assessment. So ours would be superfluous. Since most organizations assess planters based on its specific convictions, ministry philosophies, and nuances, we simply encourage planters to be assessed by the network, denomination, or organization their church is joining. We have found that most denominations and networks agree on 85-90% of the training content needed for a church plant, no matter the vein, philosophy, etc. So in Plant Fort Worth's choice against becoming a network, we are freed to train and coach planters across multiple organizations in that 85-90% of unified content, while freeing each to cover the final 10-15% and assess in their specific way.
We decided to unite around one thing – only: perhaps your city has never seen churches try and work together. Fort Worth has seen a few organizations try to rally churches around various causes. Sometimes the collaboration worked for a season, then fizzled as too many causes were added. One leader lamented, “more just kept being added to our calendars; our church has specific things we’re doing too – we all can’t do everything together.” Other times, the collaboration started with one goal but (in a hopefully unintentional bait-and-switch move) became a collaboration around more goals. In still another attempt, the collaboration was around an issue that the rallying group cared deeply about, but that was off-mission for many churches. This history – and the hesitation it produced – meant that Plant Fort Worth has championed only one goal, and calls churches to collaborate for church planting, and church planting alone. This means we’ve had to say “no” to other city-impacting ideas, events, and causes. But by keeping our mission pure, we’ve protected our non-network stance and gained trust.
3. Remember that you serve churches, not vice versa
A final decision we made was less tangible and related more to posture: the goal of most parachurch organizations is to start by serving local churches. But over time, the tendency in many seems to shift from serving churches, to asking churches to serve the organization. By setting metrics too high, and/or offering too many opportunities, and/or over-structuring, and/or many other well-meaning, Plant Fort Worth wants to maintain a servant’s posture, helping each local church accomplish their goals – rather than asking each local church to help us accomplish ours!
Our stated mission is to plant 200 churches, for Fort Worth and also from Fort Worth (in part, recognizing the number of theological schools and churches with capacity to host residents in our area). But we have no timeline on that goal. We don’t want to pressure a church to host a resident in the wrong season, or worse, pressure a resident to plant if he shouldn’t(!), or pressure a church to be involved in Plant Fort Worth if it’s not God’s design for them. As with the literal definition of any “parachurch” organization, we exist alongside (para) the church, in support of and service to the local churches who choose to be involved. This counter-cultural decision admittedly creates a little confusion, and certainly creates some inefficiently, but we will fight for it because we believe that it’s the right posture for us to take.
Bottom line: building & maintaining prayerful trust is key
To be clear, this is Plant Fort Worth’s story – these principles work for us, in our specific city and situations. But other methods might work in other places and scenarios: Houston Church Planting network, for example, has a stronger centralized structure; Saturate prioritizes multiple “city gates,” rallying around several initiatives at once instead of championing just one cause. And the work of both these organizations are thriving.
But for us, these three principles, and the tangible decisions that follow each, all flowed from the three-year foundation I inherited. None would have worked without the deeper heart of patience and prayerfulness, which was modeled before I took the lead, and which I hope undergirds everything we do, past, present, and future. Building trust is a long but necessary process, but it’s worth it.
And prayerfulness reminds us that this unity itself – like the ministry we get to do together – is utterly and ultimately reliant on God, his Spirit, and his grace, not our efforts or strategies. If our aim is to seek the kingdom, and see his kingdom come in Fort Worth as in heaven, we remember our right posture: we need the king of the kingdom to do what only the king can do!
And like you, participants in Plant Fort Worth are grateful to be part of what God is doing in our little part of his kingdom, as we collaborate and seek unity. We celebrate our secondary differences and we each humbly bring our best to the shared table, as we all pursue gospel saturation through planting churches – together.
