Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work
Jim Tomberlin · Warren Bird
Oct 2019 · Christian Audio · Narrated by Maurice England
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6 hr 43 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
Thousands of Protestant churches are perplexed by plateaued or declining attendance, while other congregations nearby thrive. Is there a way for them to combine forces, drawing on both their strengths, in ways that also increase their missional impact? Church merger consultant Jim Tomberlin, with cowriter Warren Bird, makes the case that mergers today work best not with two struggling churches but with a vital, momentum-filled lead church partnering with a joining church. In this new book, they provide a complete, practical, hands-on guide for church leaders of both struggling and vibrant churches so that they can understand the issues, develop strategies, and execute a variety of forms of merger for church expansion and renewal to reinvigorate declining churches and give them a "second life."
About the author
Jim Tomberlin is an ordained minister who has served in a variety of ministries, including pioneering the multisite strategy at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago. He is the founder of MultiSite Solutions, devoted to multisite and merger consultation.
Warren Bird, an ordained minister, is the research director at Leadership Network. He has conducted numerous interviews and surveys on topics of church restarts, church planting, multisites, and mergers, and is coauthor of more than twenty books, including Culture Shift, Viral Churches, and The Other 80 Percent.
Craig Groeschel was born on December 2, 1967 in Houston Texas. He is the founder and senior pastor of LifeChurch.tv which is considered the largest church in the United States and has fifteen locations in five states. He attended Oklahoma City University on an athletic scholarship and was a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and received a Bachelor's degree in Marketing. In 1991, Groeschel entered the ministry as an associate pastor in the United Methodist Church. He attended Phillips Theological Seminary, which is affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and earned a Master of Divinity degree. He was an associate pastor at First United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City during the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. In 1996, Groeschel and a handful of people started Life Covenant Church in a two-car garage. He later told Business Week that he started the process by performing market research of non-churchgoers and designed his church in response to what he learned. Groeschel's non-traditional style was successful and attendance of Life Covenant grew rapidly, eventually evolving to become the second largest church in the United States with fifteen LifeChurch.tv campuses. Groeschel began using video to deliver some of sermons. In 2006 he set up a website called Mysecret.tv as a place for people to confess anonymously on the Internet. LifeChurch.tv was named America's Most Innovative Church by Outreach Magazine in 2007 and 2008. LifeChurch.tv innovations include its free resource library with sermons, transcripts, videos, and artwork. Craig Groeschel's title Fight: Winning the Battles That Matter Most made The New York Times Best Seller List in 2013. His book, Hope in the Dark: Believing God Is Good When Life Is Not, was published in August 2018.
Maurice England's story begins with listening to over 1,000 audiobooks while trucking over the road... and dreaming of possibilities behind the mic. In 2006, Maurice began his narration career recording in Chicago. He now has more than one hundred and sixty-five titles to his credit.
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