We are growing! We praise God for the way he is blessing our church family in this season. We are celebrating baptisms, dedicating new babies, discipling kids and youth, and welcoming a diverse group of new members and attenders. The life change and community growth makes it imperative that we consider ways to acquire a permanent family home that enables us to better disciple the next generation, equip our adults, and better serve the tangible needs in our city. This merger has the potential to seek these kingdom-minded goals while helping a mission-minded church who has suffered in recent years.

Church mergers have become a relevant option for younger churches (like Phoenix Bible Church) to join with aging churches, combine resources, and to set a course to minister together. With this in mind, our leaders and staff have discussed this option as a possible next step to finding a permanent church home for quite a while. While strengthening our PBC community, we’ve built a healthy network with ministry leaders across the Valley. Through those connections, we became aware of Bethany Bible Church’s senior pastor’s resignation in January and reached out to their elders to offer our help with preaching, prayer, wisdom, etc. These conversations, between two like-minded churches, naturally evolved into deeper discussions of a potential church merger.

For Phoenix Bible Church, this merger has to potential to form us into one multigenerational church. We would be able to better empower people to connect in community, meet mentors who desire to make disciples, and to increase our gospel-impact in our city and around the world. This merger also offers us the opportunity to secure a facility that can be a permanent Kingdom Outpost in the center of Phoenix. These facilities would provide dedicated space for Kids Ministry, Youth Ministry, studies, collaboration, creativity (and more!). We would truly have a homebase from which to carry out weekly ministry.

Pray for the leaders of each church, that God would be wisdom and unity in the final decision. Pray for both congregations; this is not the merging of two companies, but the combining of two communities into one.