Back in 2007, when the Rev. John Wilkinson and the Rev. Judy Lee Hay met regularly for coffee at the South Wedge Diner in Rochester, New York, they often talked about the plight of a growing number of the city's churches from their denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Wilkinson, the pastor of Third Presbyterian Church, and Hay, then the pastor of Calvary St. Andrew's Presbyterian Parish, lamented the dwindling membership and financial decline at so many of Rochester's PCUSA churches. Their own congregations were holding steady, but others weren't doing so well. Two had already closed. Two others were barely holding on. Five were without pastors.

They knew that the decline they had been witnessing wasn't unique to Rochester -- or to the PCUSA. It had been happening across the nation and throughout mainline Protestant churches for decades.

Both graduates of McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and both trained in community organizing, Wilkinson and Hay knew the importance of relationship building for any organization. They wondered: What would happen if Rochester's PCUSA congregations moved toward an uncertain future together, instead of separately and alone?

Yes, they were all part of the same denomination, but as with most denominations, individual congregations typically worked in isolation, operating as though they were independent "franchises."