Q3: How can churches collaborate less competitively?

I was speaking with a bishop recently for my day job, and they talked a lot about the role partnerships play in making ministry sustainable—now and in the future. I think that's probably true quite generally from a ministry leadership perspective, but it feels especially important to the future of faith formation.

I've written in the past about various kinds of "critical mass" problems in formation work. I think we always want to celebrate who is participating, rather than lamenting who isn't. But it's true that certain learning designs require a minimum number of folks and aren't always easy to adjust on the fly.

And on the socio-emotional side of things—which I always view as at least as important as more cognitive perspectives—it can be tough to rally participants when they're feeling isolated or even rejected due to turnout. (I remember this feeling really distinctly as a member of a very small youth group growing up.)

Collaboration between congregations offers a seemingly obvious and appealing way to solve the critical mass problem. But there's nothing obvious or easy about navigating partnerships.

Co-hosting offerings, sharing staff, teaming up for service projects: all of it gets complicated fast. Even when churches aren't reinventing the wheel for models that work, sharing is hard.

I'm no expert in this area, but I've had front-row seats to some really effective partnerships and some not-so-effective ones over the years. These posts are for questions, not answers, but I do have a few preliminary thoughts and hope to return to this theme often.

• Fit matters – Not every potential partnership is meant to be. Explore ethos, values, how each group's gifts and challenges complement each other, etc.
• State expectations – Better to be too detailed about the plan than not detailed enough. Building buy-in is easier when everyone understands how value is circulating in a collaboration.
• "Expect trespasses" – This one comes from Anna Olson's wonderful book Claiming Resurrection in the Dying Church. It's simply not realistic to think we can plan away conflict. But we can plan for how to navigate it.
• Interdependence isn't failure – I'm a touchy-feely person and thus biased on this point, but I think fear of failure and shame about decline are often at the heart of resistance to collaboration. Being church is hard, especially in the disaffiliative era. Heaven make thee free of feeling bad about needing each other.
• Fun first – Laughter and joy are wonderful antidotes to fear and shame. When we're having fun together, bearing one another's burdens gets a whole lot easier.

I really want to hear your stories of formation collaboration. Don't be shy!