To Split or Not to Split

My church recently has gone through some turmoil that could ultimately destroy the fabric of this gathering of believers.  There is really a potential for a church split that would end up being the end of our little community of faith.  The church is not very large, but it is a comfortable community of believers that made fellowship fun and the worship was always energetic and lively. 

Some people might think that a church split is no big deal.  They especially think this way if the church is ‘large enough’.  After all, if you split a church with a thousand members, you get two churches with five hundred members each, right?  Wrong.  Even if the church splits evenly, there are probably one third of the people in the congregation that will see all the in-fighting and decide that they no longer want any part of ‘church’, or any organized religion, and stop attending any religious services at all out of disappointment and discouragement.  And this doesn’t include the live of the children involved.  The spiritual fallout has the potential to be devastating, to say the least.   

Like most divorces, the individuals in the church family are forced to decide which side they’re on.  And therein lays a big part of the problem.  Just as divorce was never a part of God’s plan (see Malachi 2:16 or Matthew 19:18), neither is a church split part of God’s overall plan.  When we as a church are forced to ‘take sides’ in a church squabble, we always lose when we think this group is right and that group is wrong.  However, when this happens, I really think God weeps over us and considers us lost sheep without a real shepherd. 

Jesus did not stretch out His arms on the cross at Calvary to die in order to make a social club for us to gather together every week and have a good time.  He died to provide a haven from the storms of life that invariably affect us all.  The church is several things at once.

The church is a hospital for weary and wounded people to find healing for the wounds that this world has inflicted on them.  I remember when I came back to the church after being away for so long; I found a group of people that didn’t care where I’d been or what I’d done.  They were just happy to see me there and they gave me the love and acceptance I was dying to receive.  I found strength for the journey that God had intended for me and spiritual nourishment to make me strong. 

The church is also a boot camp of sorts for God’s army, training us up in the ways of spiritual warfare that will inevitable come into all of our lives.  God gives us the required skill set necessary to survive in a hostile world and to bring as many people as we can into the fold where they too can find the “peace of God, which transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) as they come into a living relationship with their Creator.

The question about whose side God is on always comes into play.  It’s like the political cartoon about God in politics where one candidate is screaming, “The Lord is MY shepherd, I shall not be in want” and the other candidate is yelling back at him, “Thy word is a lamp unto MY feet and a light unto MY path!”  If the consequences of such thinking weren’t so disastrous and long lasting, it would be laughable.

Someone once said “If you ask the wrong question, you’ll get the wrong answer.”  The correct question is not “whose side is God on?” but “who is on God’s side?”  After all, the church does belong to God.  It is His church, is it not?  And if it’s His church, doesn’t He has some say in how it’s run?

The second person of the trinity, Jesus Christ, prayed in John 17 was for the church, that it might find unity.  And not just any sort of unity, but complete unity.  Do you get that?  When we are in complete unity, the enemy has no recourse against us.  Why do you think that Proverbs 6:16-19 says, “There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him:… and (the seventh) a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.”  God knows that when the church is united, they are essentially unbeatable by any enemy.  “A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”  (Ecclesiastes 4:12)

Think about that.  “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”  (John 17:22-23) Again, “I in them and you in me…”  There’s your three strand cord. 

Do you realize how powerful this statement is?  “…that they may be one as we are one…”  If you could only remotely comprehend how much Jesus and God the Father are one, then you might have an idea how much Jesus wanted, no, longed for, the church to be united from the ground up.  If anything, this is the testimony that we as the church give to a world that is not only antagonistic, but actually acrimonious towards us in the body.  You will notice that this unity has nothing to do with church polity, doctrine or statements of faith. 

Jesus said that this was the defining issue for the body, that we might have unity and be one.  “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35)  To reach a lost and dying world, we must be the real thing to real people because people can smell a fake a mile away.  They know what insincerity feels like because they deal with it all day long in the world we live in.

The entire world is dying to see someone who is sincere in their faith and willing to live that out in day-to-day life.  The writer of the Book of James said, “You have faith; I have deeds. Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.”  (James 2:18)  Someone wiser than myself once said, “Evangelize at all times; and if necessary, use words.”