Frequently Asked Questions

The purpose of The Better Together Project is to help churches build unity across difference for the sake of mission. The Project is networking congregations to establish learning communities in which to grow the skills, build the relationships, habituate the practices, and cultivate the vision needed to navigate differences in ways that strengthen the unity of the church, its witness to the gospel, and its mission to the world.

The increasing polarization in our American context has influenced and amplified the divisions, disorientation, and disunity of the church. The current expectation and acceptance of open antagonism and unyielding suspicion represents one of the most pressing cultural shifts affecting the church. We lament how this polarization is increasingly mirrored in the church’s wrestlings with matters of belief and belonging, leading to the disorientation of its mission and the fracturing of its unity. The Better Together Project provides its church cohorts a guided path to practical unity and partnered mission, with ample space made for rest and healing along the way.

Participation in The Better Together Project is open to Christian congregations from diverse traditions and denominations. While the Project was developed by a group addressing the challenges of division and polarity facing the Christian Reformed Church in North America, participation is not limited to churches from this denomination. To best accomplish the purpose of the Project (building unity across difference for the sake of mission), networking churches into hubs based on regional proximity is preferable to hubs based on denominational affiliation.

A participating church will be energized, equipped, and mobilized for a local mission initiative sustained by the shared vision and resources of the local churches partnering through The Better Together Project.

A church that joins the Project will invest in a principal leader (pastor, staff member, or ministry leader) who will be guided in strengthening relationships with other local church leaders, equipped to build unity while navigating differences, and supported in realizing the shared goal of working together to serve the community.

The Project will enable a church to train a team of up to ten congregants (including the principal leader) in the vital discipleship practices needed to see and treat one another as image bearers of God reconciled to one another in Christ.

Each participating congregation provides an annual minimum of $2,000 (totaling $6,000 over the three-year term of The Better Together Project). The trainings, coaching, curriculum, and annual retreats provided for each church costs about $30,000 over the course of the Project, but is deeply discounted because of the generous support of the Lilly Endowment’s Thriving Congregations Initiative. If possible, churches are invited to pay up to $5,000 annually in order to provide scholarship support for congregations with limited funds.

The Better Together Project is designed as a two-and-a-half year program. The Project will support seven to eight hubs, each hub made up of seven churches, in locations across the United States, and will launch the hubs in two phases. The first hub cohort will begin in Fall 2024, and the second will begin in Winter 2025.

The principal leader from each church will meet monthly with the other leaders in their hub. These leader cohorts will attend three annual retreats with other leader cohorts, and participate in two training workshops with their church team.