WHY CHURCHES DON'T COOPERATE

Last fall over 1000 people gathered at our church from across Greer Baptist Association to celebrate our 50^th anniversary. It was a great night of worship, but I wondered while the service was going on why we couldn't cooperate like that more often. For the last several years I've wondered why, for all the talk we do about cooperation, the Southern Baptist churches and association of churches I've been part of don't really cooperate.

After quite a bit of thinking about this subject, I've come up with two conclusions. First, there is the obvious problem of competition. To be quite frank we're all primarily concerned with our own churches and their growth (both in numbers and financially). Publicly we rejoice when we hear great things happening elsewhere, but privately too often we wince in pain and jealousy (sad to say but too often true). The business model of doing church, counting numbers and money and allowing those to determine success, contributes greatly to the spirit of competition.

Everyone talks about the problem of competition, but there is a second reason that is not so obvious. In fact this one is not discussed at all as far as I know. It is the problem of the ever increasing number of disgruntled members who populate other churches. People become upset where they are, move to another church, but remain upset with their previous place of worship. Churches are made up of everybody else's members who are still smarting over the various reasons they left. Usually that means a less than cordial relationship with the people with which they once attended church. Cooperation becomes difficult at best because they are very hesitant to rub elbows with those folks on any project. Church splits, which always bring acrimony, make cooperation even more difficult to impossible.

Of course the bottom line is that we've lost biblical fellowship. We've relegated that to fellowship meals or ice-cream socials. The NT teaches that fellowship is loving others Christians as much as you love God. Until we get back to that we won't cooperate much, and the world will see a splintered Christian witness. That of course sends the wrong message and gives unbelievers another reason to stay home on Sunday.