Are Church Mergers the Next Big Thing?
According to Leadership Network research, 2% of U.S. Protestant churches have been part of a merger in the last two years. Another 8% say they will probably merge in the next two years. Those two groups represent 30,000 churches. Our conversations and tracking confirms similar trends among churches in Canada, Europe, Australia and other places where churches have been long established.
Two years ago we conducted a focus group with a dozen or so churches that have been successful in mergers, posting the notes here, titled “Church Merger Phenomenon Continues to Expand.” In an earlier blog, I asked people if they knew of a successful church merger, and we received lots of comments, mostly saying yes: Leadership Network staff have also tracked various merger stories in this blog series, such as one multisite church merging with another multisite church, LifeChurch.tv’s approach to mergers, and how church mergers become multisite locations
Bottom line: we suspect there’s a new set of rules for how mergers can succeed. Would you take a survey about mergers and tell us what you know? Please take a look and give us your thoughts: http://tiny.cc/churchmergersurvey. Everyone who participates can get a free report from what we learn.
