Wow! Have I been delinquent on my blogging! We’ve been up to our ears in vulnerable churches . . . trying to recover properties stolen by unscrupulous leaders, re-establishing corporate identities lost through carelessness, stopping a hostile takeover of facilities by a group that “only wanted to help.” The good news, for our sanity at least, is that we’ve also been helping some of our healthy congregations discover new goals and strategies to become even healthier.
But back to the vulnerable. One of the characteristics of those vulnerable groups we’ve been helping lately is that they become isolated . . . they become an island unto themselves . . . they become their own measure of health . . . and they eventually find leaders that want to keep them that way. Over time, they become closed in terms of relationships with other churches, input from sources outside themselves and information that could expand their faith and improve the implementation of that faith. In short, they become a closed system, the extreme expression of independence. It seems with vulnerable churches, the unhealthier they grow, the more independent, and closed, they become.
The antidote? Growing congregations and their leaders intentionally develop healthy relationships with other congregations and leaders that sustain Christian fellowship, mutual growth and a shared accountability. To put it another way, we value interdependence over independence realizing that in interdependence we have a God-given compass to help us stay on course. It’s the value of association.
The principle here is pretty straight forward: healthy congregations and leaders intentionally cultivate relationships with other healthy congregations and leaders. Isolation is not the healthy church’s friend . . . interdependence is. | 
