Our Vision
Our vision is for everyone in DFW to be flourishing holistically - physically, emotionally, relationally, vocationally, financially, and spiritually.
Our Mission
Our mission is to help individuals and organizations care for their people and communities.
Our Strategy
We're building a relational infrastructure of leaders who are called to inform, connect, and equip others to care for their people and communities.
Our Story: The Church Perspective
For years, God has been preparing the soil of Dallas for the growth of an effective, collaborative, church-based city movement. We have a long-standing reputation for strong Bible teaching. Prayer warriors have poured out their hearts to God for revival. In recent years, churches from all denominations and races have gathered for worship and prayer.
​
Suddenly, God placed a question on the hearts of a few influential churches in the metroplex: what would it look like if we worked together in our communities?
​
Over the next year, plans were laid for a catalytic event that would mobilize 50+ churches and just under 20,000 volunteers on May 1-2, 2010. Houses were repaired. Neighborhoods were cleaned up. Homeless were touched. Under-resourced children were fed. Awareness of needs was raised. And relationships were started.
​
Within the next few months, this growing group of churches had birthed a beautiful vision for the city – and the Church of the city – that included leadership buy-in; changed hearts; a more glorifying representation of Christ to the world by His bride; and thriving, empowered communities. Over the next decade, that initial group of 12 churches grew into a network of networks engaging 600+ churches diverse in terms of denomination, race, socio-economic level, and location.
In John 17:23, Jesus prays that we will experience such perfect unity that the world will know who Jesus is and that God loves them. Paul uses the word synergos over a dozen times in his letters. The Church is beginning to believe in synergy: that we really can do more together than we can apart. We’re beginning to see that the idea of unity should apply to more than just our individual congregations. And that the different parts of the body that are meant to work together may actually be found across different denominations and races. God has revealed a vision for the future of our city and a plan for how He wants to accomplish it.
Unite is unapologetically a Christian organization, but we're delighted to serve the whole city. One of our favorite aspects of our work is being a bridge between the Church and the city.
Our Tools
It didn't take long to see a common theme of churches serving their local public elementary schools, so we pulled together a comprehensive list of every church-school partnership we could find across DFW. Around year two, we had begun to turn outward to the "city" to figure out where their other unmet needs and the calling of the Church intersected. Not only did we discover a lot of collaboration already going on around various challenges, we instantly began to add amazing nonprofits to the network by the dozens.
Because Rebecca had always felt unmistakably called to such are large area (first the Dallas side now all of DFW), we've always been in pursuit of the right digital solutions. In the fall of 2016, we implemented our first major tool, HelpFinder. Today we have a whole "tech stack" which enables organizations and individuals to get help, give help, and navigate the vast network of collaborators. Around that time, we discovered COPE (the Cost of Poverty Experience). These are our two most well-known tools having reached over 100,000 people.
​
​
​
Almost from the start, we've had a 3-pronged structure of Region, Issue, and Sector Champions. In 2020, we realized we needed to add a county layer to our Region Champion structure. Then at the end of 2021, we decided to add a "community" layer which we would define by using public school attendance zone boundaries to ensure every household in DFW was covered. We call this our Community Impact Model (learn more). This is providing a relational infrastructure that the citywide tools were meant to serve.
​
​
​
​
Possibly more importantly than the tools, this relational infrastructure is meant to carry a culture. We're looking for leaders who believe in the concept of calling, genuinely want to love others, value diversity, and have an undying commitment to unity. The Unite staff strives to foster this culture which the County Champions then pass along to their City Champions and so on.
​
Our Structure
Our Values & Culture