Our team planted Redemption City Church in August 2021 with the desire to reach people in Fort Worth who have never experienced the saving grace of Jesus. By the blessing of God, our church has experienced miraculous growth— salvations and baptisms aplenty! But we, like virtually all new church plants, didn’t have the resources or facilities to expand into the community like we wanted. We had a great YMCA to meet in on Sundays, along with the needed equipment to carry out our weekly services, but our church was limited from starting vital outreach ministries during the week such as ESL or premarital classes.
Along the way on our church planting journey, I was introduced to South Hills Baptist Church and Pastor Chris Wright. South Hills was an historic church in Fort Worth with decades of great ministry under their belt. To answer a question recently asked by Dr. Jeff Iorg, however, by their own admission the church had “buried more than they baptized” for over a decade.
All churches have life cycles, and a church in decline is not necessarily a failure. In fact, it may be time in that church’s life cycle that they would benefit from cooperating with another church, joining forces to make more disciples of Jesus. And late last year, that’s what South Hills Baptist Church voted to do. As a church, they chose to put personal preferences and fears aside to maximize their Great Commission impact.
This was preceded by over a year of talking, getting to know each other, planning, and most importantly, praying to seek God’s will for our churches. It wasn’t easy. It still isn’t easy. There is a lot of work yet to do, but by the grace of God we are merged, and we are working together to build a healthy congregation that seeks to make new disciples in Fort Worth.
Though we are still in our infancy stage, let me outline a few of the things that have helped us prepare for and execute a successful merger process.
Step one: Kingdom-minded outsiders initiate the idea and spur the process along.
Two retired pastors saw this opportunity before anyone else. Gary Smith (Fielder Church in Arlington, Texas) and Russ Barksdale (Rush Creek Church in Mansfield, Texas) met separately with me and Chris to share their idea, then they coached us through the entire 16-month process. These two men were kingdom-minded outsiders who spurred our two churches toward greater cooperation and mission. I cannot overstate how important these two men were to our successful merger. Redemption City would not have approached a church experiencing decline about merging, and South Hills would likely not have initiated this process on their own.
These men then walked with us throughout this entire journey. There were times the merger didn’t look like it would happen, but Gary and Russ continued to lead informally and promote kingdom-minded cooperation. The leadership of these elder statesmen of Baptist life, who gently initiated and carefully kept the merger conversation going, was the single biggest factor in this process.
Baptists are at our best when we champion cooperation for the sake of our mission. Whether you are an associational missionary or a pastor with influence in your community, I urge you to follow in the footsteps of Gary and Russ to promote mission-minded cooperation.
Step Two: Pastors from each church need to be eager to proceed before forming exploratory teams.
I chose that word “eager” with great purpose. If the leadership of both parties are not zealous and optimistic about the possibility, then I suggest stopping there.
You can continue to pray that God would make this happen, but the pastors of each church need to be enthusiastic about the missional possibilities of partnership. They can have important questions and need clarity on crucial items, but the leadership at South Hills and Redemption City were each excited that this merger would allow us to reach more people for Jesus, bring in more young families, and start more churches together than apart. To be clear, we were in lock-step with our theology and doctrine and with our philosophy of ministry. The key points of discussion that required a lot of conversation were the name of the church, our leadership structure, and merging memberships.
Step Three: Form exploratory teams.
When forming these teams, think of adding the kind of people you’d add to a pastor search committee. Select an appropriate representation of the church membership, and, of course, choose godly church members who fear the Lord. This group will make consequential decisions regarding what will be presented to their church. It is not a negotiation, but the exploratory teams need to accurately represent their church body.
Our teams met four times before the larger church bodies were brought into the process. We weren’t making final decisions but aggregating what would amount to suggestions and recommendations to be brought to each church body throughout the discussions.
Our main task was determining: Is God doing this? Do we believe that God is bringing our two churches into one?
Step Four: Cast vision for each church on a Sunday, followed by town hall meetings that day.
Candidly, by the time Chris and I shared the idea and vision for this merger with our churches on Vision Sunday, it was the worst-kept secret in Fort Worth. We, along with our leadership teams and members of the exploratory teams, met with and called as many people within our churches as possible before Vision Sunday.
My former pastor says, “What people aren’t up on, they’re down on.” We made sure to bring people along before we simply unveiled a plan, and we worked hard to over-communicate everything.
On Vision Sunday, we held town hall meetings where church members could ask questions and give thoughts. As you might imagine, these meetings were a little more intense and involved at South Hills than at Redemption City, but we knew they were vital. We had multiple town hall meetings over the next few weeks and gave people ample time to ask questions and share their heart and opinions.
Step Five: Before the churches vote and the merge is final, bring the people together.
Honestly, I was very nervous at this point. The cat was out of the bag, and though not everything had been decided, we began to introduce our two churches to each other.
We had 3 highly relational events with a purposeful order:
- Prayer night
- Friendsgiving meal
- Worship night (no preaching; all music and prayer)
We started with spiritual bonding, then moved to being friends over a meal, and then we worshiped together.
By this time, it was clear that we wanted to become one family. The two churches voted in the affirmative: one vote was unanimous and the other was over 97%… a miracle among Baptists! This process catapulted us into a Day-1 unity that few (including me) thought possible.
We just completed a month of meeting together on Sunday mornings for worship, and it’s been amazing. God is in it. Attendance has been higher than our combined attendance pre-merger. We’ve had multiple baptisms, miraculous unity, and today, as I write this, the IMB is commissioning one of our families as missionaries to Africa.
There are still some growing pains that we are going through and will continue go through, but we know that if we face them together in a spirit of love and humility, God will continue to bless our work. In a day when so many Baptists are building walls to separate ourselves from each other, what if we doubled down on cooperation? America is becoming increasingly de-churched as mainline denominations dry up. We need to be laser-focused on the mission of making disciples of Jesus in this generation, and I believe local church mergers and cooperation will play a part in that mission.
Matt Kendrick
Matt Kendrick has served in pastoral ministry for over 20 years and loves the people he pastors at Redemption City Church in Fort Worth, Texas. He completed his undergraduate degree at Mississippi State University, and he completed his M.Div and D.Min at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Courtney, have three children: Taylor, Cole, and Judah.