Why I Stopped Competing With the Church Across Town

I know the exact moment it started. Another church opened about two miles from ours, and within six months they were running twice our attendance. They had better production, a younger vibe, and seemingly endless energy. And I noticed, with a mixture of shame and defensiveness, that some of our people were leaving to attend there.

I told myself it was theological concern. I told myself it was leadership discernment. But if I am being honest — and this article is an attempt at honesty — it was competition. Plain, old-fashioned, ego-driven competition dressed up in ministry language.

The Lie Underneath Competition

Ministry competition rests on a foundational lie: that there is a fixed amount of Kingdom work to be done in a given geography, and that other churches taking a piece of it means less for you. This is scarcity thinking applied to the gospel, and it is profoundly wrong.

The harvest field is not shrinking. In most cities in America, the vast majority of people are not attending any church. The competition is not between churches — it is between the Kingdom and the forces of brokenness, addiction, isolation, and despair that are quietly devastating families and neighborhoods. We are not fighting each other. We should be fighting alongside each other.

"We don't need smaller tribes — we need a bigger tent for the gospel." — PCN Vision

What I Discovered When I Stopped

The turning point came when I forced myself to walk across town and meet the pastor of the church I'd been quietly resenting. I expected awkwardness, or worse, the kind of hollow friendliness that both people perform when they don't actually trust each other.

What I found was a man who was tired, uncertain, and carrying more than people knew. Not so different from me. We had lunch. We talked honestly. He had no idea I had been nursing competitive feelings toward him. He was just trying to be faithful.

Over the following year, our churches began finding ways to collaborate. A joint outreach event. Shared resources for a community care initiative. A combined Christmas service that neither church could have pulled off alone. And something surprising happened in me: the competitive anxiety that had been quietly draining my energy for months simply lifted. I had more creativity, more joy, and more vision for our own church than I had felt in years.

Practical Steps Away From Competition

If you recognize competition in yourself — and most pastors who are honest do — here are a few practical steps. First, have lunch with the pastor you're most tempted to compete with. Humanize them. Learn their story. Second, celebrate publicly when churches in your community do something well, even if they're not your church. It costs you nothing and retrains your instincts.

Third, find one tangible way to collaborate. It doesn't need to be dramatic — a shared service project, a referral conversation, a resource passed along. The point is to build the relational infrastructure that makes genuine partnership possible over time.

The city you live in needs every faithful church it has. None of you is dispensable. None of you is the competition.