Church Mergers: Strategy for Growth or Sign of Struggle? Lessons from Franklin & Southeast Christian

Merging churches can lead to revitalized communities and expanded outreach, provided that church leaders embrace strategic partnerships and prioritize effective communication throughout the process. This episode discusses five essential lessons learned from Franklin Christian Church and Southeast Christian Church's merger.

• Embracing strategic partnerships enhances community impact 
• Addressing congregational concerns builds trust during transitions 
• Managing resources effectively amplifies ministry outreach 
• Preserving core values maintains unity amidst change 
• Fostering a unified vision inspires purpose and direction goes forward

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Chapters

• 0:08 Church Mergers
• 8:00 Healthy Church Staff Resource Partnership

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Church mergers. Are they a strategic move for the future or a sign of struggle? More churches are merging than ever before in the United States, and today we're going to talk about the union between Franklin Christian Church and Southeast Christian Church. It's a prime example, but here's the big question what makes a church merger successful? And we're going to talk about that right here today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Thanks for joining me. My name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom, and today we're talking about church mergers.

Speaker 1: 0:41

What makes a church merger successful? If your church has ever considered merging, partnering or even just collaborating with another congregation, I think there are five critical lessons that you need to know, and we're going to dive in today. So let's go ahead and get started with lesson number one embracing strategic partnerships. First, this merger that we're talking about between Franklin and Southeast highlights the importance of strategic partnerships. Here's what they figured out that by joining forces, these two churches figured that they could enhance their collective impact. Okay, as church leaders, we should consider how partnerships with neighboring churches or organizations can strengthen our ministries and better serve our communities, for example, in this case, the merger between Franklin Christian Church and Southeast Christian Church, a much larger church, was driven by a shared vision to reach more people with the gospel and to be able to pool resources for greater community outreach. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to do like they did. They were open to this strategic partnership. As they started talking about that, they discovered hey, what this means for us, for our two churches, is that we come together as one. That doesn't mean it has to be that for you, but you do need to be open to those strategic partnerships to begin with.

Speaker 1: 2:10

And lesson number two is there are going to be congregational concerns. Okay, I'm sure there were from both Franklin and from Southeast. Mergers are going to raise some concerns among your church people. If you get to the point where you identify that you want to merge with another church, either by taking on another church or by merging with a different church. It's going to be crucial to address a lot of these concerns and apprehensions through church really good communications and you really need to have inclusive decision making, so engaging your members in open dialogue and making sure that they feel valued and heard during times of transition. These are huge issues for churches if they're giving up their identity and becoming a part of a new entity.

Speaker 1: 2:59

So, in the case of Franklin, here's what they did. They had numerous meetings to discuss the potential murder, murder Some people would look at mergers and say they're murderers, but no, they had numerous meetings oh my goodness, I crack myself up sometimes Numerous meetings to discuss this potential merger, and they allowed their congregations to voice their concerns and to ask questions and that really helped, according to them, to ease some of the anxieties and to help build trust in this whole process, because this is what they felt God had called their two churches to do. They had to communicate and sell that to the congregation, and that meant answering a lot of questions, allowing communication to happen and to ease anxiety, and to the congregation, and that meant answering a lot of questions, allowing communication to happen and to ease anxiety and to build trust. Okay, lesson number three how can you manage and leverage these combined resources? Combining resources can lead to more effective ministry and that's what they found at Franklin and Southeast. So they get to pool talents, they get to pool finances, they get to pool facilities and that allows for expanded outreach and improved programs. At least that's what they're hoping for, right. So we should assess if we're thinking about this and more and more churches are actually thinking about this. It's an out-of-the-box idea of merging with a different church Absolutely out-of-the-box idea for most congregations. You really do need to assess how resource sharing with other ministries could amplify your efforts and fulfill your mission. For example, the merger enabled the combined church to utilize Southeast Christian Church's extensive facilities and Franklin Christian Church's strong local connections. So what that resulted in is a more robust community presence for this new merged church.

Speaker 1: 4:53

Okay so, lesson number four you need to be able to preserve those core values. If these two churches did not share the same core values, this is a recipe for disaster. So, while structural changes occur, you've got to, you've got to maintain the core values. It's absolutely essential, and this merger underscores really the need to uphold doctrinal beliefs but also cultural identities. So, as leaders, if you're thinking about a merger, you really need to ensure that the growth initiatives align with foundational principles. Now, here's what I mean by that. Both churches emphasized and they had to, because it was true number one and because, as they communicate this, they have to emphasize their commitment to biblical teaching. Hey, we're doing this merger, but we're not changing our theology. Okay, we still have a commitment to biblical teaching. We still have a commitment to community service, and, in fact, this merger is going to allow us to do more community service, and what that does is it allows these values that were central to both of these churches to remain central throughout the merger process and in the new church at all.

Speaker 1: 6:06

Okay, and then lesson number five, and this is my last one for today you need to foster that unified vision, okay. So finally, as you're sharing this vision, you absolutely have to do a good job at sharing the whole vision with both churches. Both churches aimed to create a unified community focused on common goals, so they needed to develop and communicate a clear collective vision that inspired both unity and purpose within both of those churches. If they didn't do that, it just wouldn't work. The leadership teams had to work together to craft a mission statement that reflected their combined aspirations, and they had to provide this roadmap for their churches, for a joint future, together.

Speaker 1: 6:55

As we wrap up this topic here today, we're looking specifically at what happened down in Kentucky with Franklin, christian and Southeast Christian, happened down in Kentucky with Franklin, Christian and Southeast Christian. I do think that this case study shows us some key elements, those five key elements I talked about the partnership, the communication, the resource management, the value preservation, the vision casting All of those things are just vitally important, and they were in this case. If you take time to reflect on these and if you're considering a merger, go back and re-listen to this and write these things down. I've got a link hopefully in the comments for this article as well where you can read a little bit more about this. But if you do that, you can navigate your own ministry challenges, hopefully with a little bit more wisdom and grace and really what the hope is that you have greater impact and a healthier church, and that's what we're all about here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.

Speaker 1: 7:52

We want to resource you and your church with resources and services that help you achieve your mission better.

Speaker 1: 8:00

So if there's any way that I can help you or your church, particularly in the area of Healthy Church Staff maybe you're looking to hire a new staff member, maybe you need some help with some compensation studies, some relocation things, some restructuring, all those kind of things we can help you with I would love to be able to talk with you and partner with you. If that's something that would be of interest, you can reach out to me anytime, anytime at podcast, at chemistrystaffingcom, and I thank you for joining me here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. You can catch me anytime. I live over at the website 24-7. I never sleep Chemistrystaffingcom. You can find a whole bunch of resources blog articles, podcasts, youtube videos all different kinds of resources that will help you, as a personal staff member, to be a healthy church staff person and for your church as a whole to develop that healthy church staff that will lead you into the future. All right, thanks so much for joining us. We'll be back here again tomorrow.