A Good Question ...

What would happen if we don’t merge?

A lot of people have asked this, which is a fair question. I think understanding the answers to this question does help one gain a greater understanding of why your leadership believes it is in the best interest of both congregations to come together …

From the perspective of Grace, not merging would mean the following:

1. Call a pastor and move to Olivette
2. Go through all the growth struggles that Crossroads has gone through the past 4 years or so … including the need for additional staff (children’s ministry, music ministry, etc …) with budget constraints of a smaller congregation, increasingly complex back office situation (payroll, interns, more reporting, end of year reports more onerous, etc…), emerging structures and the corresponding growth pains as more and more needs arise, etc…
3. Would probably remain largely Asian-American (cf. Brian Burkey’s comments at CPF Town Hall on Caucasians coming to Grace and not staying because it is a mostly Asian congregation. Dan Song has the same testimony with the college ministry.)

From the perspective of Crossroads, not merging would mean the following …

1. Continued emergence of changing pastoral ministry model to match growth in congregation … i.e. more focused role of senior pastor to work with leadership, increasing role in pastoral care among asst/assoc pastor and elders, need for specialized ministry (i.e. children’s, music, etc…)
2. Would need to think about some other way to accommodate people since worship services remain largely full, SS space is 100% filled up (our last cycle had three adult groups meeting off campus, each cycle literally uses all of our space. Did you know we even have one of our kid’s SS class that meets on the stage of the Fellowship Hall!), we could not possibly accommodate more people for dinner than we did at our last meal ... Additionally higher volume of people puts greater stress on the physical plant as well … bottom line is that really our facility cannot accommodate any more people at one time … (incidentally this would have to be dealt with if we were ever to consider two services in Maplewood)
3. Would remain largely Caucasian dominated …


Bottom line is that both congregations are in for change … coming together means the following …

1. Combining resources helps put the best pastoral care model in place, particularly in getting the right people to address specific needs (focused resources on college ministry, kg ministry, ministry to marriages, etc…).
2. Grace will not need to reinvent the wheel on structures since Crossroads already has many of them in place …
3. Crossroads gets a little breathing space in Maplewood without “losing” valuable resources that might be lost in a traditional church plant model.
4. Olivette becomes an instantly integrated and multiethnic worship site through the hopefully 30-40 Maplewoodians moving over to worship there plus another 20 or so Caucasians who we anticipate to be interested in ministry in Olivette, the entire Crossroads ministry becomes much more multi-ethnic particularly on the leadership level (session, ministry teams, etc…)