Pastor Neil Cole

A few weeks before a young pastor began his ministry in a new town, he decided to visit the largest-attendance church in the area, just two blocks from his own new church. As he sat through a worship service he decided quickly that he "could do church better than this." It didn't take him long after leaving that worship service to realize his attitude was "ugly." Neil Cole is a pastor, church planter and author of several books, including The Organic Church. He is also that young pastor who decided he needed to apologize for his judgmental attitude that surfaced while sitting in the pew at his neighboring church. "I wrote a letter to that pastor," Neil says. "I confessed what I had done and I committed to pray for that church every time I passed its facility. Since it was just two blocks away, that meant I prayed for them a lot."

Neil's honesty and humility led to a friendship with the pastor and ultimately to the collaboration of authoring two books together.

"That was my first experience partnering with another church," Neil reports. "It was Conservative Baptist and I was Grace Brethren. I learned that if it's from your heart, it can be a natural flow. You work withleaders who will work with you and you keep praying for the ones who won't."

Networking for Greater Evangelism
Neil isn't alone in discovering that partnerships and alliances can benefit all parties and, ultimately, the kingdom of God. In major cities across America, alliances and partnerships are being formed between churches to achieve the goal of evangelism.

Sometimes these partnerships are as simple as two pastors working together in one community. Sometimes partnerships become strategic alliances among a group of churches working toward a common goal.

"We're seeing churches across the nation networking with each other for the purpose of church planting," says Margaret Slusher, director of the Church Planting Leadership Community for Leadership Network. "The greater purpose is reaching every man, woman and child for Christ in a city or a region. They're crossing denominational lines, sharing

information and resources, all for the purpose of seeing people come to Christ."

In Houston, Union Baptist Association, a group of more than 630 Southern Baptist churches in the metropolitan Houston area, has formed an alliance with several different church groups.

"Union Baptist Association is committed to church planting as one of its major missions," Tom Billings says. "Our goal is to be healthy producing congregations cooperating to transform their communities in Houston and the world. But we've realized we can't do it alone."

For years, Southern Baptists were a significant presence in Houston, but as the population growth exploded, the churches began to lose ground. "We were still evangelizing and starting churches, but we couldn't keep up with the growth," Tom admits. "We started working on this in the 1980s and by the 1990s we realized we couldn't do this by ourselves. We decided to look at what the church in Houston is supposed to be. Obviously, it's broader than just one denomination." For the past 10 years, church leaders in the association have focused on prayer, research, sharing information and local ministry. Last year, the association joined with other denominations, churches and civic organizations to sponsor an evangelistic event called CityFest Houston. The event brought churches, across denominational lines, together for one goal. "We decided we needed to come together around church planting," Tom says. "It grew out of my intent to have a church planting seminar, and then it grew even bigger to include multiple denominations."

That's when Tom came up with the idea to write a church planting manifesto and ask fellow pastors to make a public commitment to church planting. In January 2007, about 50 key church planters and denominational leaders met for two days. The first night, participants were asked to sign the manifesto.

"By the end of the weekend, 133 people signed it," Tom says. "It was a symbolic step and now the work begins." Collectively, a group of churches and organizations can do more than one church alone. Pooling resources and knowledge from like-minded