Church Mergers - Coaching For Interims

Know Your Options for a Future with hope

15 min 33 s

When the energy gets low, churches often don’t know there are other options to closing;
Thoughts on various options: merger restart, adoption, consolidation, redevelopment…;
Barrier for vitality is shame and blame;
Avoiding the “Twin Titanic” model (throwing a rope from one sinking congregation to another);
Key to church mergers: learn to love other things together;
The challenge of trying to do vitality work and consolidation work at the same;

13 min 49 s

How we were able to tell the truth about our reality without also predicting gloom and doom;

My own process from being one of the people in denial about the congregation’s reality, to embracing it and moving forward;

How we were able to build the trust necessary for people to listen to the truth of their reality and move forward;

What I did when I realized that the church was not going to have another full-time pastor after me.

13 min 37 s

Simultaneously raising and lowering anxiety in the process of change;

A copy of the letter we sent to the congregation laying out our reasons and reality….

The details of our deliberative and thoughtful approach to ….

The specific steps we took to reduce the congregation’s anxiety level to allow a constructive conversation about our future;

How we named the options we had for the future;