Kingdom-Minded 4 (of 4)
Intentional Partnerships
I’m becoming increasingly passionate about intentional ministry partnerships.
The driving question should be: How can we do more for the glory of God together?
Here are some ideas. We could:
Share buildings. (I know I already mentioned this before. It’s worth mentioning again.) When does your building go unused? Who could use it at that time? (If you need to charge them to cover your costs, do so. If you can give them a gift and let them use it for free.)
Partner in target ministries. Maybe your church can’t afford a full-time singles pastor. Consider bringing four or five churches together for monthly combined singles events. (What other areas could you partner in?)
Offer free pulpit supply. If you believe in the power of video teaching, here’s a great idea… Say a church loses its pastor, and is struggling to find another one. Your church could let them use your video messages during their search.
Give all our video teaching away to churches… for free. We’re very excited about “network” churches. These are separate churches who use our teaching. Praise God that His message is getting out. We don’t get money for this. We don’t count their attendance. We simply get to help. Yeah!
Partner in missions. Instead of all 400,000 American churches trying to do separate mission work, consider partnering with another church (or two, or 20) to make a difference in one significant place. Instead of your overseas trip not filling up and ending up canceled, maybe it will overflow and you’ll have to book a second.
Merge ministries. We’ve partnered with a few churches who decided to become a part of LifeChurch.tv. Across the country, many ministries are realizing they can do more united than they could divided.
Do a series together with other churches. Our church and three others decided to do the same series simultaneously. As pastors, we prepared the messages together. All of our churches prayed for one another. We played videos of each pastor and reported what God was doing in each church. All our people loved it and grew together in an awesome way.
Adopt a church. Find a church that could benefit from what you’re doing and adopt them. What does that mean? I’m not sure. You prayerfully decide. How can you help? Maybe your leaders can mentor theirs. Maybe you can give them your old choir robes, or your church van. You might help them find the worship leader they’re looking for. Whatever it means to you, do it.
I’ll ask it again: How can we do more for the glory of God together?
Visit 
Let me say a loud “amen!” i think the issue that plagues us all is who is going to get the credit and glory. We want to ensure people see our ideas and buildings and blessings because we have imsecurity issues. If we truly believe we are on the same team we will work harder for His glory than we do for ours. we will have wide open hearts set on helping not hoarding.
There is probably a drive in many churches/pastors who want to lead a revolution like this but don’t want to follow a revolution like this.
That is where we must be willing to give up to go up. Probably an easy way to get started is meeting with 1 or 2 pastors in your area and build a relationship with them. As the relationship develops you will be able to work on things together or brainstorm ways of working together. Get started by developing a relationship now. Even if it is only to come together and eat lunch/breakfast with each other.
Craig, Great post! One of the ways we’re doing this at Crossroads (Atlanta) is through Unite! - a network of churches serving together for Kingdom impact. This past weekend, some 60 churches and thousands of church volunteers provided a major force of that served together throughout metro Atlanta, blessing the people in our communities with the love of Jesus Christ. Unite! churches coordinated more than 250 service projects. Highlights included: 5 houses were framed in church parking lots for Katrina families, 10,000 lbs of food was collected for local food pantries through grocery store and neighborhood food drives. There were 7 public school landscape projects, 7 home repairs projects, and more than 20 apartment block parties. For the article in the AJC see http://www.ajc.com/search/content/metro/gwinnett/stories/2007/10/04/compassion1004.html
Norwood Davis, Crossroads Church
Fantastic ideas! Honestly as a children’s pastor, I find we cps do many of these things because we are on limited budgets and have some super expensive stuff we use. But if we could ALL think this way, the Kingdom of God would radically be enlarged. Way to go brother!
Lee, Thanks! Your comment reminded me of a quote I read recently, Before we can say, “Thy Kingdom come, we have to say my kingdom go.”
Jason, I agree. Personal relationships bring tremendous kingdom gains!
Norwood, Wow! That is awesome! Thanks so much for making us aware. I hope others follow your example!
Lori, You are so right. Children’s pastors often work well together. For some reason, they seem less competitive than other pockets of ministry.
Hey Craig, I haven’t had your direct email for years now, but I thought this would be a good way to pass this info on.
I spoke with several folks from radically different church backgrounds about catalyst and highlights of the conference. Several of them mentioned your talk as being a “home run” and right on the money. So I thought I’d pass that on to you. Way to go! It’s sounds like a message that hit home with a lot of folks.
My Dad was a pastor for 35 years, he did this one. If members from another church started visiting, he would notify their current pastor of the visit. He would also speak with the visitors and encourage them to work out any problems with thier current church. They wouldn’t be totally welcome until they did. Suprisingly not too many Pastors returned the favor.
Craig,
Great post.
But I’m a little miffed at you. I have not been able to sleep all week. I’ve been waking up every morning @ 3:00 AM. Any significance to that time?
I believe that planting churches together can be a powerful shared experience and utilize a great spiritual synergy. We are trying to develop a template for planting 4 to 5 churches at the same time… all sharing many resources.
I think this post is a great example of something I’ve always thought about the way LifeChurch works.
In the 1960s forward thinkers in the programming world started talking about this new way of working together “open source” programming. While it took many years for the idea to catch on, today open source programming is becoming a gold standard of working in that industry.
LifeChurch works in much the same way in the church world. Rather than hording resources and trying to squeeze every ounce of financial juice out of those resources LifeChurch works to share, collaborate, and ultimately make other and their own ministries stronger.
I love the missions idea. Missions is not about what you do most of the time. 5 years later you might not even remember what you did, but you will remember the people there and the people who you created new relationships with. The more the merrier. Thanks.
Riddle, Thanks for the encouragement about Catalyst. God’s presence was evident to all. Hope you’re doing great.
Johnny B., Sounds like your dad was a great pastor and friend to pastors.
Kevin, My evening wake up time is 2 a.m. Maybe we’re in different time zones and it’s the same time…
Harley, Great stuff. I pray God blesses your church planting!
Mike, A ton of churches are following suit. I’m excited about the kingdom minded climate!
Tyler, I agree. Partnering in missions is a great opportunity.
Craig, shout it LOUD!
Imagine the impact that we “will” make when “we” do it all for the glory of God and not for our selfish pride. The ministry of Jesus Christ is the only occupation that is not a zero sum game. By this I mean there are no losers. Jesus has won for all of us, it is only a matter of how many will join in the celebration when He comes again.
What is obvious to me, is that God reaches the lost by different means. For me and thousands of others, God has intentionally used His ministry at LifeChurch to forever change lives, but LifeChurch is not for everyone. God provides for an infinite number of paths to be drawn closer to Him. It is by no means a cookie-cutter approach. When all of us band together as followers of Christ to share our story, God will move the man-made mountains that we have selfishly created.
I am sensing a Kingdom-Minded message series. Imagine how many of our LifeChurchers will be squirming in their seats when God challenges them not only to serve in an intentional capacity at LC but to go outside of our comfortable walls and participate and contribute their resources to other Kingdom-Minded projects and ministries. WOW! When we heed that call, the world will never be the same.
Craig, thank you for your incredible leadership and passion to lead all us (world-wide) to become a fully devoted follower of Christ. I am humbled and blessed to be a part of this glorious mission.
Hey all. Craig, excellent post again. This really reminded me how much I love the idea of churches working together.
Although we’re not a huge church, we are trying to share and work with other ministries. Here are some ways.
1. we’re doing a building campaign, and are giving 100,000 out of that to other ministries, and part of that is going to another church here in town to help them finish their building
2. we’ve been partnering with a couple of Hispanic churches in the area, and it’s been a really great thing seeing the ministry explode there
3. my pastor is mentoring some other pastors in town, and prays with them every thursday morning
4. We all have tried to help other local churches move along any way we can. We almost shared our building with the church in #1 (until they got their own). I’ve tried to meet with other associate-type guys and swap ideas, etc.
Again, I think we need to be “teaching” churches, in the sense that we share what we’ve learned with others anytime we can (and they want to hear). Often you learn as much from them as they do from you!
BTW Bobby- I don’t remember hearing other thoughts about the AppleTV… any other uses you’re looking at with it? When do you think Apple will have a loop playback feature so that it could be used for digital signage?
Craig has my head hurting “In a good way” after his talk at our all staff meeting today. Thanks for the Kingdom Minded Series and thanks for giving me a headache!
Craig—we have been blessed to have merged with LifeChurch here in Wellington. We are about 7 months into the merge and it has been good for us and the community.
I think what is making our merge successful [in addition to God] is that two healthy ministries came together. In our particular case I think that one added to one equals more than two and that is kingdom multiplication
Craig-
How can we see or hear your Catalyst Conf message?
love your posts. thanks heaps
Ages ago i had the idea that if every youth ministry adopted another youth ministry. Every Youth ministry would be better for our King!! Same could be applied to churches.
I love your partership idea too.
Are any other churches offering free dvd downloads like life church is?
You guys are awesome. Thanks so much!!
Kemper, I’m with you all the way! Thanks for your kind words and passion for Christ!
Larry, Great stuff! Thank you for sharing the awesome kingdom ideas!
Scott, Thanks man. Great to see you at staff today.
Larry, I have loved our merge with you all. The other ingredient is your great leadership. (I’m sure I’ll get a copy of the Catalyst message soon. I’ll get it out to staff when we get one.)
Tasha, I think Seacoast Church is offering free resources. We have also “opened open” to let other churches contribute. I’m sure Bobby will write about that some.
This sounds like it would only exist in a fairy tale. Everyone wants to lead; pushing and clawing their way to the top of themselves.
I know of a struggling church in Mississippi that I am going to visit at Thanksgiving and see if they would be interested in becoming a partner with life church so ya’ll be in prayer. God is Good and has put this on my heart, so we will see….
I’m also on some weird 3am kick as well. Spooky. (Actually, Holy)
I was hesitant to post this earlier, but I can’t get it out of my head that another important anchor is to make sure that the congregation knows exactly what we are doing. We’ve got to squash any kind of church “competition” and get members out of the prideful mindset that kills spiritual growth personally and corporately. We must be known as a churches who never bash other ministries, but helps to build them. Satan works overtime in dividing churches. I think that Satan is often very efficient and knows how best to get us squabbling. Let’s recognize the enemy for who he is take back some ground.
Have you seen http://www.powerofconnecting.net? It’s an entire website devoted to the advocation of partnerships among the Body of Christ.
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One thing I quickly learned about church folks, when God led me to start a church using my young family. Most could care less about what others are doing for the kingdom. We were looking for a place to meet, starting on Saturdays, I left messages and never got a return call back. We can’t afford much, but could pay something. Yet others have been more then happy to help, expecting nothing in return. As God propers us in this journey, I will never forget my struggles, so I can help others. I will be using some of your offerings in the future.
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