Ministry Collaboration: Linking Arms to Make an Impact

Ministry Collaboration: Linking Arms to Make an Impact

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Doug Gamble

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 8/18/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:

Hello friends. Welcome to another Stand in the Gap Today. I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell, director of church culture at the American Pastors Network. Have you ever heard the phrase, “We can get more accomplished together than separately?” Now, I was unsuccessful in finding out who exactly said that, but two great Americans said something very familiar and similar. Helen Keller said this, “Alone, we can do so little. Together, we can do so much.” And then the great inventor, Henry Ford said, “Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” Both sayings are tremendous and so truth, but here’s one more. A guy by the name of Solomon said this, “Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up.

Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one, who is alone? Two will withstand him. A chord of three is not quickly broken.” That comes from Ecclesiastes four, and it’s the wisest man in the world. And whether it’s Keller and Ford, Solomon, or Anonymous, they all knew that if we could come together, put our differences aside, link arms and collaborate, we could make a great impact. Collaboration is what I want to talk about on today’s program. I’m not talking about ecumenicalism where we basically throw out what we believe or water down the message of the gospel, the authority of scripture that has no actual life-changing message to impact people. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I am saying is that when we talk about collaboration within the Christian community, it’s finding unity outside of maybe our comfortable setting and harnessing churches, ministry, organizations, community groups who want to impact people and bring the good news to the greatest number of people possible.

Yet what I found is collaboration is almost like a four-lettered word within some Christian circles. There can be a hesitancy or a fear of joining forces with other believers. And today I want to encourage, inspire, and give you some practical ways to broaden your churches or your ministry’s impact and start working with others for the sake of Christ. To help me is a good friend of mine and someone who has made collaboration, both an art and a science for nearly 40 years of ministry. He has been a great networker for the cause of Christ. In one city, Doug Gamble, the pastor serving at Crossroads Fellowship in Raleigh, North Carolina for, well, about four decades. And because of his longevity at that church, he has served about in every ministry in the church. Yet what he’s best known for is his ability to find, identify, and relate to and unite literally hundreds of organizations.

He’ll be retiring kind of from his church role, but he’s launching a model for other cities and churches to take hold of called Triangle Uniting. We’re going to learn about this new venture. We’re going to tap into Doug’s experience and understanding about collaborating with other Christian ministries. Doug, welcome to Stand in the Gap Today.

Doug Gamble:

Thanks, Jamie. Nice to be with you.

Jamie Mitchell:

Doug, before we talk about Triangle Uniting and the amazing collaboration that you’ve been spearheading for decades, when I first heard your name, when I moved to Raleigh, someone said, “Well, he’s one of the most natural networkers I’ve ever known.” Now, being your friend for many years, I can say amen to that. Doug, what does it mean? What does it mean to be a networker? Is it a personality trait, a gift? Or can someone really increase their ability to know and connect with people?

Doug Gamble:

I’m sure that God, by my history, gifting and otherwise, I’ve probably got set up to be a networker, but I’ve had dozens and dozens of colleagues in 35 years here. I’ve coached many of them to become networkers. And they don’t have to be like me. I’m a bit of a unicorn, but there are many other of my clergy brothers who are consciously networking in a space that makes sense for them and their church. So it is, I think, a mindset. It’s something you have to be intentional about. You can get better at it. You can learn from it. But it takes a conviction. You kind of mentioned that if our mindset is afraid or against it, I think we’re limiting what God wants to do in and through us and in and through our church.

Jamie Mitchell:

Doug, we all have our own ministries to worry about. And that takes up a lot of our effort, our energy, our mental capacity, all of that. And that basically as ministers and as people who attend a certain church, you want to focus your attention on your church. But you have found, and one of the things we’re going to talk about today is there is a great value and a real positive impact if you get outside yourself and you start mixing it up with other churches, other ministries. And you’ve been there at Crossroads for almost 40 years. You have seen that value and the church has seen the value of getting outside of its own four walls, haven’t it?

Doug Gamble:

That’s true. And you may have known, because you knew one of my colleagues, Mike Garrett here. We were blessed that when we were started, some of our founding elders was a navigator, crusade, intervarsity, people from three different denominations. So we were formed as a biblical but interdenominational church with a kingdom mindset. Our founding pastor worked for John Wesley White at the Gram Association and brought people together for citywide crusades. So I was blessed to land in the church with the right DNA and with my own background in sales and young ministry. It was the perfect place for me to land. So I have to say, I know not all context, the elder board, the history, the culture of the church is as open as mine, but it can be open. I had to constantly over the years with subsequent pastors and other colleagues sort of fight for this outward focused attitude.

And if you go around our town, you know, you could go all over town. There’s lots of former members, lots of people who’ve never been to our church that know about us because we’re outward facing and trying to bless our community in ways that may not help us, but how do you value a reputation in town where people appreciate that you’re here? And if you went out of business, they’d be very disappointed. They’d be very sorry about that. That’s not a small matter.

Jamie Mitchell:

You know, Doug, it is an important thing. And we’re going to talk a lot about this issue about collaboration and serving in ministry together with other churches. It’s also a tremendous testimony. And that’s one of the things, friends, as we talk today, one of my, should I say, one of my hidden agenda today is that I have watched and talked to a lot of people in the community, in the public square, even elected officials. And they wonder why Christians can’t get along, especially when we talk about grace and love and mercy and forgiveness and all of that. And yet in some respects, we have a difficult time getting along. And so I’m hoping that if we can learn about how to collaborate, it will change our testimony throughout the area that you serve in, that you’ll have a greater witness. Who knows? Maybe if you’re listening today, you’ve just figured out you’re a natural networker.

Therefore, God can use you to help your church and your pastor be more collaborative. And when we come back, I want to discuss with Doug what collaborating is and isn’t. Don’t go anywhere. Today is going to help you and your church make a greater impact for the cause of Jesus Christ. This is Stand in the Gap. Stay with us. Don’t go anywhere.

Well, welcome back. My guest today is Pastor Doug Gamble from Raleigh, North Carolina, where he’s pastored for four decades. And during that time has been a catalyst for churches and ministries in that region to work together. Doug, this idea of collaborating in ministry with churches and ministries, it may be new and even scary for some. I want you to take a couple of minutes here and just speak about what collaborating is. And especially in regards to ministry and what that looks like and the things that you’ve learned about this whole idea of collaborating.

Doug Gamble:

Yeah. I think Jamie, that we could go to the business world who often does this. We forget the business world often learns things from the Bible in church history, God’s people. And we have a great history of collaboration going back to the Godhead and the early tribes and on and so forth, right up through New Testament and the church fathers and so forth. But it’s kind of lost. It’s been lost in America, certainly in the last 100, 150 years. But it’s making a comeback in the global scene. And I believe it’s also happening throughout America as we realize the problems in the harvest field today are bigger than any one church can do alone. We have to find legitimate ways of putting our voice together, much like APN is doing and at the local level, whether it’s helping with a school project. But collaborating is really two things.

There’s two biblical ideas. Unity. We find God asking his people to be unified as something bigger than themselves from the very beginning. And then diversity. God hasn’t given all of us everything. It’s almost like he has designed us to need each other. It was true in the tribes. It was true in the apostles in the early church, and it’s true today. And I also believe God has a blessing. Psalm 33 in other places. He pours out blessing when we act united. He’s not required to do that. And when we don’t unite, guess what? We’re missing a blessing on our churches, our own pastors, our people, our city. You think about Jeremiah. When you go there, pray for the city and do these right things. Act like my people and bless the city. And as it goes, it’ll be better for you. So when God’s people act like his people, and that means unity and diversity, not uniformity, not division, but an appropriate way of finding it on an outcome based level, how can we partner and get more collective impact by being humble enough to meet each other, work together, defer to gifting and capacity and special things God’s called us to do?

And I’ve seen that for years. And it always still amazes me that people sit on the sidelines and they cheat themselves a blessing and opportunity for their people.

Jamie Mitchell:

Doug, I probably should state this disclaimer that I lived in Raleigh and you and I did a lot of ministry together in a lot of respects. We collaborated in doing a lot of ministry together. And in that time, we used to talk a lot about how different churches have different uniquenesses. They have different specialties. You used the word diversity. Isn’t it true for a pastor and a church to really understand what they’re good at? We’re not good at everything, are we? But sometimes a church really needs to look at themselves and ask the question, what do we do really well? Is that a key to learning how to collaborate?

Doug Gamble:

I think it is. We have to get comfortable with the fact that we’re not given all the capacity of the kingdom of God. And that’s okay. I mean, Crossroads has weaknesses. I’ve been there 40 years and we’ve had people come and go and they needed to go because they had kind of gotten all they could in a decade with us and they needed to go to a different fellowship. I’ve had people come here from the Catholic church and then go into a Pentecostal fellowship or move to a more Baptist fellowship. There’s reasons that God’s people vote with their feet throughout the kingdom. I used to, in my early formation, though that was a bad thing. I’ve got you, you’re my member, you’re mine till Jesus comes. And I quickly learned that the Lord had a bigger plan. I was only part of the plan, not the plan.

It’s a humbling thing, but it’s a good humbling thing because freely I receive and freely I give. And the Lord brings people that need my church. And I think recognizing that is twofold. It gives us the freedom not to try to be everything. Get good at what God seems to have honored and blessed you with, giving you passion and aspiration for, but then realize you need fellow other churches. I refer people to other churches for programs they run that we don’t. And guess what? People refer people. We’ve had the longest running Celebrate Recovery. We have people from 40 churches. We don’t try to steal those sheep. We want to go back to their own church. So I think this way of sharing, our people know how to vote and know where their home base is, even if they go and drink from the well of other Christian ministries or churches.

That’s a good thing. That’s not a bad thing.

Jamie Mitchell:

And part of that, Doug, it comes down to simply making sure that we realize that we’re not in competition with each other. I mean, I’m right now an interim pastor at a church and we literally have absolutely no musical talent. We don’t have an instrumentalist in the church. The church has been using videos for worship. And one of the things that I have brought immediately is this idea of collaboration that, “Hey, we got to work together.” And I’ve identified churches in our area that have a plethora of musical talent. I’ve gone to their leadership. I said, “Hey, listen, this church is in a recovery and a revitalization mode. Occasionally we’re going to need help with worship. Could you help us?” And you know what, Doug, when you approach a church that way and you say, “Listen, you have something that I need. And maybe in the future I’ll have something that you’ll need.” All of a sudden we have collaboration happening and churches are being strengthened together.

And I think that a great value that we have to begin to own and understand. Doug, if somebody’s listening today and they’re thinking to themselves, you know what? We could be so much more effective in our city or in our county if we would work together, but I’m not sure our pastors or our board is open to this. I want you to help them sell this idea. From your perspective, why is collaborating a good thing? And over the years, what are the benefits that you have seen as churches would collaborate with each other? Do you have a list or maybe a whole idea of the benefits of collaboration?

Doug Gamble:

Yeah. Later, I’m going to give your guests, your listeners, a website, but I would just say we have available for people a wonderful 10 page document on the biblical basis for collaboration. Goes all the way back into the character of God, the Old Testament, the New Testament, right up until today. The great commandment and the great commission, two of our shared obligations as brothers and sisters in Christ. When you look at them, Paul never spoke to individual churches. He spoke to the church in Ephesus, to the church in Rome. That tells you the mindset, the default mindset of the apostles was there’s one church and it got expressed many ways in a city. And they often shared something geographically, maybe ethnically, culturally. And yet they might. And he would have referred to house churches, but he wrote to the whole church. And I think we can find comfort in that, that God doesn’t expect us.

He does expect us to know. And we know that the body of Christ is a continuum. And there’s a point where heresy is real and we don’t want to be associated. Wesley is probably one of our best historical figures. He has circles of collaboration. When he was discipling people, it was a very tight knit. They shared ecclesiology, shared conviction, they shared values. But he would preach with Whitfield who was a Calvinist. He would go out there and preach all day to the minors and in the open air. And then when he was doing compassion and he was doing medical ministry and helping minors try to get nonprofits started to help them and so forth, Wesley was incredible at partnering at different levels. He could easily slide from Roger doing something just to feed these hungry people, to get these people medical care. Or we’re in here discipling our bands inside the Anglican Fellowship, the Methodist movement under Anglicanism.

So he didn’t destroy or ignore boundaries and identities, but he wasn’t limited by them. And I think that’s the great lesson of church history is that God has given us a lane to run in, but we’re not the only car on the highway. And we benefit from moving in and out of each other’s lanes, sitting in each other’s feet. Like one of the things I loved when we did the pastoral ministry here that you and I did is I love you as a senior pastor brought a whole different perspective. You had an energy and a gifting that I don’t have. And I could fill the room with the right people and you would have an agenda for them. And then when we had Dave Horner there and he talked about their church was founded on prayer. They’re still known in this city. They’re a heartbeat of prayer in our city.

Goes back to their founding. Those kind of common aspirations. Jeremy spun out of our church and now has a ministry to the homeless and the poor. God is constantly doing Joel two, which was repeated by Paul, I mean by Peter and Acts two. God is pouring out his vision on pastors, on nonprofit leaders, on Christian businessmen and women. And he calls them to do things. And we can serve each other sending volunteers, doing money, giving them space in our building to do things that is not our ministry, but we can allow it to happen in our facility. I mean, we let the city do a program for poor kids in our Sunday school rooms all summer long at a very low cost. The city loves us for that. That doesn’t hurt us when we go to the school system and ask for a favor. This ability of seeing ourselves as a gift of God, even as a small church or a large church, medium church, we’re a gift to the city.

But do we understand that? Do we act like that? Is it in our DNA? And I know that mostly we’re not, we’re siloed. And one of the reasons I’m moving into missions ministry is I don’t believe most pastors are deep in their heart trying to be siloed. I think we were formed that way. I think over time we lost the movement of Christianity when we were more united. And I think God is calling us to rediscover it. So I don’t assume pastors are against collaborating. I think they don’t see it. They don’t know it. They may have a resistant culture for wrong reasons. All those are barriers. And the thing that Triangle Uniting, this is my tagline. We remove the barriers to gospel driven. Important there, gospel driven collaboration. And I have seven or eight of them and that we’re helping people navigate. And so I’ll give people my email if they want to learn more about that.

There are barriers

Jamie Mitchell:

That are

Doug Gamble:

All navigable.

Jamie Mitchell:

You know, Doug, my first forte into collaboration was in the mid 1980s with a group of pastors in our city united together to open our first pregnancy center all the way back then. Friends, being someone who studied churches, I can tell you every church has something unique to offer its community. You just got to find each other and learn to work together. When we come back, what are the roadblocks to collaborating? Doug will give us some insight. Don’t go anywhere. Stay with us here at Stand of the Gap today. Well, if you’re first joining us today, you might be wondering what we’re talking about. And when we use the word collaboration, that’s our topic today, collaborating in ministry. We’re considering how, like Jesus said in John 17, that we’re to love one another and be unified and work together for the sake of the gospel and to defeat the darkness so that we can make heaven crowded with a lot of people because we have worked together.

And we believe the testimony of churches and ministry working together is a powerful thing. Doug Gamble has been doing this for decades and there are many stories about the power of collaboration. Doug, as I’m sitting here, and I’m going to have you talk in a moment about roadblocks to collaboration, here are my five top collaborative efforts that I’ve done over the years. When I first was in ministry, our churches gathered together. We had six or seven churches do a Good Friday service together. We’ve done missionary collaboration where we support certain missionaries together and make it easier for a guy to get to the mission field. Youth groups doing retreats together. We had a group of churches to come together and adopt a school. And then also we’ve had churches gathered together in our town square and pray for first responders, police, firemen, and EMT people.

And Doug, those collaborative events and opportunities really drew people together, drew churches together. And I got to be honest, we became friends as pastors and ministry leaders because we were doing something positive for the community. And friends, that’s what we’re talking about today, to be collaborative. But Doug, we’ve got to talk about realistically some of the roadblocks when we’re attempting to do collaborative ministry. Over the years, what common things have you seen get in the way of churches and ministry working together?

Doug Gamble:

I think one of them is in our mind. I want to speak very supportive here as being a pastor myself, 45 years. We’re tasked. You’re like me, someone handed me the Bible and a bishop and elder board said, “Take authority. Protect the flock.” Now, the average church member doesn’t feel that. Pastors do. We’re a theological tradition. We have limitations of our facility. We have all the responsibilities of shepherding the flock and all that means at a material level, at a spiritual level, at a functional level. That is a burden, rightly so, that sits on the shoulders of pastors. So when you start asking me to share money, people, facility, calendar with others, my first thought is, wait a minute, can we do that? Should we do that? And our people are sometimes quicker to do it because they’re not worried about our identity boundaries. And those are real.

But what happens in our formation as pastors, we don’t go through a process of developing what I call a thoughtful scheme of who and where and how do we partner. I’ll give you an example. I had to develop here at Crossroads, I probably should have shared it with you. It’s called our partnership circles. And I got this from my Wesleyan background. The inner circle is our foundation partners. They get volunteers from us, money, access to our stage. These are our closest, highly gospel aligned people. Next out our ministry partners. They don’t need our money, but we work together like the youth collection. We have 14 youth pastors that work together like you’ve talked about. They don’t need our money, but we share in that and support it and promote it together. Then there are government and business partners. Again, they don’t need our money, but they need our facility.

We just hosted an event for marketplace leadership, global leadership summit. And then our community partners, people who are out there doing good. And like I think APN, one of the areas where churches are not working together is understanding how important local, state, and federal legislation is impacting the body of Christ for good or ill. And one church is not going to move the needle, but millions of Christians thoughtfully thinking, advocating at a local, state and federal level does move the needle in a powerful way. And so I think without a scheme that you’ve thought about and been able to explain to your deacon or elder board, even preach about it, so people feel like, okay, we’re still Baptists or Presbyterians, even though we did this united prayer effort downtown at the city hall or state capital or what have you. And without that, I think we feel a little insecure.

Are we diluting our boundaries and convictions? And we don’t want to do that, but we don’t have to do that to do outcomes. And I think that real, a term I helped my elders grasp a long time ago was outcome-based partnering. It’s a simple question. What would Jesus do? Our pastor, I remember him preaching when we really went official and created my role as city reaching. He said, “We want a city where how many people are fed, homeless people get home, sick people get medicine, wounded people get healing.” And he just went down a list of 17, 18 things. And the average person gets that. Now, not every church can contribute equally to all of those causes, maybe only a few. But the fact that we can, we all share the obligations of the great commission, the great compassion, the great commandment. So when we can show love and unity, that’s a corporate witness to the whole harvest field in our city.

Every church who’s part of that unifying effort shares that blessing. We get more collective impact when we’re all contributing to a pregnancy center or a food bank or something or another. And we can also minimize competition. I think the competitive spirit is a marketplace problem. It should not be in the church. We can show a more excellent way by deferring to one another, which is a common character value that the scripture teaches us. Well, we need to do that corporately. And the key to that is a confident pastor who knows their boundaries and knows where and how they can partner and convinces the elders and their people that this is our lane. We know what we’re doing when we’re here. We know what we’re doing here and we know what we’re doing here on Sunday morning. And once that is clear, it’s a lot easier to promote the causes because you’ve kind of done the mental gymnastics to give people assurance that I’m still a good Baptist, even thou I’m over here helping the Catholics on this food drive because hungry people don’t care if it came from a Catholic, a Baptist or a Presbyterian, they just need the food.

And I think once we’re free, that confidence comes out of clear thinking. And honestly, we don’t teach pastors and even leadership in churches how to think this through so they can be confident that they’re keeping their boundaries and their convictions, but they’re also demonstrating what God wants in terms of unity and collaboration.

Jamie Mitchell:

Doug, I think it’d be important time to mention this, especially for church members, church leaders. There’s sometimes that the church just has to be involved with doing good. And we may not get an opportunity at that event or that opportunity to share the gospel, to talk to people about Jesus, to make people know that we believe in the Bible, but that we just show up and we participate in some kind of good works activity. That’s an important way to open a door to greater involvement and greater influence, isn’t it?

Doug Gamble:

Yeah. And Jamie, you’re more of a scholar than me. And I don’t know if you’ve studied this, but I wouldn’t be surprised. If you look at the Book of Acts and especially the gospels, you’ll notice that Jesus went around doing good. It says that. He healed people. His teaching and calling people to discipleship and to baptism, that was not the first thing he did. He was showing the heart and the works of the Father. If you look at John 14. I mean, these works, the one another that we’re supposed to, the great compassion, when we enter into that, believe me, opportunities come to. One of our partners at the streets of gospel ministry, they give out food, but not money. But what they offer people is prayer. And what they found over time is they made that easier. You’d be surprised. Four out of 10 people ask for prayer.

And what happens, the more often they come, the more likely than from prayer they say, “Can we interview you and talk about your journey?” And what happens is it gives you the opportunity to engage a neighbor at a point of need and offer another option, which very often they will take up. And that leads into incorporating into the right fellowship and maybe connecting to a jobs ministry and getting a medical ministry. And so all of a sudden the body of Christ in different ways are touching this family and they go, “What is it about these Christians? They’re helping me with this medical alliance is helping me get care for my kids that I can’t afford because I don’t have insurance. They’re helping me with food. They’re praying for me. They’re offering me a place to go learn job skills so I can increase my income.” It’s not lost on people when the body of Christ is practical and yet gracious.

And God will move them in and around to the right fellowship. And so we have found everybody we’re touching through the money and volunteers we give don’t end up at Crossroads, but many do. And we just want the ones that God wants us. It’s a big deal to enfold people and shepherd them. We just want the ones God gives us. But being in the schools and the football team evangelizing and doing the things we do, it matters and it matters to our fellowship. And there are people walking into it every week because we have people and money flowing out into the community at a practical level that’s sustainable. And I think that’s the big thing. Unifying events are great, but we’re more interested in sustaining unifying collaborative activity week by week, month by month.

Jamie Mitchell:

And there’s something very powerful, Doug, when churches can come together, link arms, and maybe go into some places together that they wouldn’t be able to get into on their own, but also get into places where They’re not going to do a Bible study. They’re not going to get to preach. One of those illustrations was just a number of years ago during COVID, and you and I were around this, was that when the school shut down, there was still a need for lunches for the low income families within a lot of the school systems. And they had no vehicle to get that food to these kids who are now stuck at home. And they would come to school and have breakfast and have lunch. And those were maybe the only two good meals that they had a day. But it was the churches who collaborated together, hooked up with a ministry that had a relationship with the school system.

And for a period of time, churches and church members delivered food to low income families and to low income students. That’s the power of collaboration. Listen, friends, when attempting to do something great for God, there’s always hills to climb. There’s always a cost to pay. Yet the fruit will be worth the pain. And that means trying collaboration and getting along with other churches of ministry and doing things to make a difference and to get your name known. Good works lead to a good name and then ultimately to the good news. When we finish up, we’re going to hear about Doug’s ministry, Triangle United.

Well, this hour has moved fast and we come to an end of another Stand in the Gap today. Doug Gamble has been helping us look at the topic of collaborating in ministry, working together, finding people, maybe in churches of like-mindedness, but maybe even churches that may be a little different than you, a different flavor and the linking arms so that you can do ministry that will impact your city, your county, your region. It’s a tremendous blessing. It certainly creates a lot of energy and possibilities. And Doug, you’re leaving the pastoral role that you’ve been at for 40 years, but not really leaving the church. You’re going to stay there in Raleigh because you have a vision and it’s called Triangle Uniting. What is this venture? What are you trying to do? And what are you already starting to see come to fruition by launching this ministry?

Doug Gamble:

Yeah, thanks for asking. We are following a proven path that God has been raising up over the last 25 years. My mentor, Eric Swanson, who wrote the book To Reach a City, came out of the crew movement years ago and lived in Colorado and just said, “Boy, the body of Christ should work better together.” And that drove him to. He studied under Ray Bakke, who was a great collaborator in the city of Chicago and started the Bakke Graduate School. Anyway, I got pulled into an event in Modesto and he was there. I didn’t know him. We met. I remember him saying, Doug, every city needs somebody who wakes up every day with the passion to help the body of Christ get more united. That has stuck at my craw. And I kept thinking, not me. It’s presumptuous for me to have found something that at my age, I should be retiring and loving on grandkids, but I have run out of excuses like Moses.

So now I’m asking God to make me a Caleb and to put a stake. There’s a movement in Charlotte, there’s one in Winston-Salem, and the triangle is way overdue for someone to plant an organization who wants to honor all of our churches, but call them together where they can come together and help pastors work through this. I’d like to say as we wrap up, it’s important that the pastor get this thought through himself and then his leadership too, which may take a little longer, and then go public preps in a sermon series if they want to move the needle. To be careful, take your time. I’m not in a hurry. I’m playing a long game because you can’t rush this. You miss too many stop signs. And I think it’s important that when we get to collaborating, we keep at it. And so I would rather a church take two years to get there and then not repent and vacillate back and forth.

Thinking through yourself and then your leadership and then your people, you’ll find some of your people are already practicing Kingdom Living. They’re smart enough to be loyal to you and to a Bible study group and to a ministry they do once a month. And we just need to be able to encourage that with confidence and having it thought out, especially when we’re sharing our facility, sending local Mission Monday, pushing people to volunteer. That needs to be thought out as I mentioned earlier. So at Triangle Uniting, we’ve already launched three collaborations. One’s called a city collaboration, a task force. We’ve divined a certain geographic area of the county. We’re up to about 80 local leaders coming together. I don’t convene it. My role is not to run everything, but to find the people God’s given that Joel to vision and to then try to train them, help them find a good model.

I’m part of three national networks of this city reaching. Tim Keller’s known for movement day. Eric Swanson’s group is called the City Collective. There are others out there, good cities. I know almost all those City Advanced. So if people want to learn more, they can email dough@triangleuniting.org. Be glad to connect them to resources. And I definitely encourage them to go to visionsynergy.net. Go to the resource page. There’s a free book called Well Connected. And there’s this article I mentioned about a biblical basis for collaboration. Study through that. There’s some good sermon ideas. You could share that with your leadership, board, elders, whatever, and preach from it later. So there are resources out there. You’re not alone. You may be in a city where there’s a movement like this and you don’t know it. And if you let me know, I can try to help you find if there’s pastors already doing a small, nascent, getting started to unify in your city or around your state.

I’d love to connect you to like-minded people who know the journey. You’re not the first pastor to say, “Wow, we need to do better.” Most of us need to do better. So don’t be discouraged by that. Find like-minded people and mentors who can help you step by step become a church that’s indispensable to your city.

Jamie Mitchell:

Doug, I come to you and I say, “Doug, I’m a pastor of a church of 100, 150. I don’t really have any other staff members. I got a secretary. I got a great board of people. And I’ve listened to this program and I’m touched. I really believe I need to start collaborating.” What one or two or three first steps would you say to a pastor today as we kind of bring this program to a close? What one, two, three steps would you suggest that they could do today to start moving the needle and getting more collaborative?

Doug Gamble:

I would say just write down a commitment. Make this a conviction that’s going to take a while to eventuate, but make the conviction to start. Pray and ask for God to open you up. You may have already some guys or women in ministry there in town that you have a relationship with, or you may have to just be bold and go knock on the door of the local pregnancy center or talk to a pastor two miles away, but start somewhere. Don’t feel like you have to figure this all out. Start the journey. And it begins with relationships. Uniting work moves at the speed of trust and trust takes time. So the thing I tell people is be committed for the long haul because some of the best fruit. My fruit trees don’t bear fruit for three or four years, but I don’t cut them down after one year.

I keep nurturing, I keep feeding them, and then the fruit comes. My grapevines are the same way. Well, united collaborative work takes time and trust. So start building it, giving it, and don’t despise being small. We have some small fellowships doing extraordinary things. They’re uniquely positioned geographically. They have a willing heart. They open up their facilities. So don’t let size. This isn’t about size. It’s about faithfulness to what God’s given you to give to your city. And every size church can have sometimes an outsized impact because of their heart and their obedience. So remember the widow with two mites. Your little church may be more uniting in the city than a big one that thinks they’re their own little story. So honestly, megachurches aren’t the best uniter sometimes. I hate to say that, but it’s just true. I wish it weren’t true, but it often is.

So I encourage you to start somewhere. If you contact me, I promise to try to connect you to the networks that can make sense in your city. There is a national movement. We’re quiet. We’re mostly unknown, but we are making headways. Some are 10, 15, 20 years old. And I could point you to cities that are way down the road. And there’s probably one in your state. And I can get you places to log in to a Zoom call and discover, oh my goodness, there’s pastors all over the country trying to unite, work together. So I’d love to make you aware of that. Just send me doug@triangleuniting.org and I’d be happy to try to research and get you connected to something locally. And then go to Vision Synergy, read those documents, let this get down into your soul. Get convinced of the biblical necessity and urgency for us.

APN exists because we’re in serious times. We are not going to impact our culture being siloed. So at any level, political, pragmatic, compassion, get connected.

Jamie Mitchell:

Doug, I’m in this small rural community and I happened to have a funeral a couple of weeks ago. And I met the local funeral director. And I just realized he is probably the most networked person in that whole region. And I sat there for a half hour waiting for the funeral to start and talking with him. And I learned so much about the area, about the needs, about the people. That’s the kind of conversation that pastors need to have to really tap into what is happening where you live. Doug Gamble, I know that what you’ve shared today is not theory, but tried and tested. You’re bearing great dividends for the kingdom. And we will have to have you come back and share about what’s going to happen in your area of Raleigh. Friends, want to encourage you. I know this is another end of a stand in the gap, but we want to encourage you to take what you’ve learned today.

Get in the game of collaborating with ministry. Be a difference maker in your church and in your region. And to do that, you’re going to have to leave and lead with courage. Have a great day. God bless you.