Shifting the Tracks
Will Plitt | Christ Together
As we slowly emerge from the instability and tumult of the last two and a half years, there is a deep sense of urgency, dependency and awareness that is leaving our cities more profoundly lost and broken. But, we have seen the Spirit of God move powerfully with pastors. This has opened the door wide for Christ Together to be invited into more and more cities as we help to align The Church to more fully embrace what God wants for their place. We rejoice in all that God is doing! We believe that the Great Decline of The Church across our nation will take the Great Collaboration of The Church in order to see the Great Advancement of God’s mission once again.
Recently, we wanted to get a sense on how well we were going after our mission. Do the cities that are collaborating together actually experience more unity? Are they planting churches together? Going after the brokenness of a city together? Are these things happening, or is it a lot of smoke, but not fire? We’ve put a lot of time, energy, and effort into this; but really...what’s the fruit?
So, in many ways, we wanted to get our report card.
We worked with a third-party organization to have them survey 2700+ pastors from across North America not connected to the vision of Christ Together to get a sort of “baseline” for the state of collaboration in the church. Then, using the same process, we had 600+ pastors, who are part of Christ Together, take the same survey. Essentially, we wanted to see how our leaders were stacking up against the “average” experience of pastors in North America.
Friends, the results were staggering.
I won’t give you all of the numbers, but here are a few highlights:
• Doctrinal Differences- According to the survey, only 27% of pastors would collaborate with another evangelical church if they had small doctrinal differences. However, in our movements, almost 98% of pastors would collaborate even if there were small differences.
• Collaborating with other Churches in their City- This, perhaps, was the hardest one to see, but also the most encouraging about the work we are doing. Only 7 out of 100 pastors felt that collaborating with other churches was a mission necessity. Put another way, the vast majority of churches feel they can accomplish their mission alone. The churches that are joining in the Christ Together mission feel very differently. Ninetysix out of every hundred believe the mission of their local church can only be accomplished working with other churches in their city.
• Church Planting- As you know, with all of the challenges of the last 2+ years, planting new churches has never been more important, but it’s also never been more difficult. We’ve been fascinated to see how Christ Together churches have been responding. We already knew that very few churches were planted nationally, but how did these city collectives do? Well, almost half of CT churches planted at least one church in the last three years. More impressive? More than 25% of them planted at least three.
As you can imagine, we were not just blown away by all the ways God is moving, but overwhelmed with gratefulness. Which brings me back to you. Thank you, Chapel, for continuing to be a model and example to other cities across the US and Canada of what it looks like when churches unify in order to reach every man, woman and child with the good news of Jesus. Your kingdom investment in CT is making a difference as we endeavor to help the church across our nation change the narrative of what has been, to what could be when a John 17 unity is on full display. May God continue to richly bless you as you strive toward the fulfillment and completion of the Great Commission in Western NY and beyond.
