Church Plant or Church Splinter?

I feel the need to restate my love for church planters and church planting in general. It is that love that causes me to look more deeply into the practice of church planting as we currently do it in America. I am not so concerned with different church planting models (though there do seem to be some that work better than others) as I am with spiritual and strategic issues. My question is simply this:

Can we really call all of these new works "church plants" if the bodies that are created do not connect to each other and all of the previous works in their community and city? It seems that church planters will often join together while they are training or preparing to launch. But, once they have launched they get consumed with their own work and we successfully create yet another splinter in the Body.

I struggle with seeing four to five churches within 10-15 miles of each other trying to reach the same demographic and psychographic group. It might be a workable strategy if these churches actually worked together. I have not witnessed that very often, though, and I believe it is symptomatic of a large problem. That problem is a diseased church. Try as we might we are not ridding ourselves of the "old" disease simply by creating "new" works.

So let me ask my question another way (please feel free to respond), "What distinguishes a church plant from a church splinter?"