Church Mergers (with Jim Tomberlin)

Church Mergers have often been thought of as a generally negative thing. We conjure up ideas of large churches eating up congregations, and the number of churches declining. However, if done properly, a church merger can be an exceptionally healthy thing. Jim Tomberlin is the master at helping churches merge in a healthy way and shows us the ways to think through merging churches successfully. 

About our Guest

Both a multisite and church merger expert, Jim began his multisite journey in the mid 1990s when he was the senior pastor of Woodmen Valley Chapel. In 2000, he went on to pioneer the multisite model at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago. He founded Multisite Solutions in 2005 to help churches develop and implement the emerging model of location expansion. Jim gained over 20+ years of multisite and church merger experience before joining The Unstuck Group in February of 2019. 

Key Points

1.      Hi Jim, thank you so much for joining us. You’ve got quite a long history working with church mergers. Could you tell us about how you got started on your journey with helping churches merge? 

2.      With COVID-19 starting to ease, I’m sure that many churches in the U.K. may be surprised at how much re-building they need to do. Why do you think merging is a credible option for churches? 

3.      What are the biggest mistakes you’ve seen when helping churches with Mergers? 

4.      When you talk about merging, you say it’s a bit like a slow dance, how do you mean? (Lead Church, Following church) 

5.      In your book you talk about four types of mergers, the first one is a Rebirth merger. What is that? 

6.      Your second type of merger is Adoption, how is that different? 

7.      The third type of merger is Marriage, what does that look like and how do you journey to getting there? 

8.      The fourth type of merger is one you advise against, which is the Intensive Care, or ICU Merger. Could you describe that for us and why you think it’s not a great idea. 

9.      I was writing about church mergers the other day, and I likened how we’ve traditionally thought about mergers to the TV show Married At First Sight. The temptation is that churches that want to merge do it too quickly with generally bad results. What’s a healthy timescale to think about? 

10.  In the Post-COVID world, there may be many churches that won’t be financially viable with reducing congregations, or churches that can’t afford to stay open due to lack of giving over the last few months. What steps would you recommend that churches take if they’re starting to think about potentially merging?

Resources

Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work by Jim Tomberlin & Warren Bird