Genesis 11: 1-9
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” 5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” 8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Let me start by the use of two questions.
Do I believe that God likes church splits? No, absolutely not!
Do I believe that God can bring glory to Himself out of a church split? Absolutely Yes!
When I think of church splits, I think of the tower His people were building in Genesis and how God confused the language so they would spread throughout the world. The people had grown comfortable and had no desire to look any further. Lets build a tower to God and make a name for ourselves.
How is this like a church split? I will share a personal experience. As a young Christian, I was in a church that had great growth and the people there had a hard decision to make. Do we build a bigger place or do we stay where we are and stop growing. To make a long story short,one Sunday morning there was a resignation of the pastor from the pulpit. There had been a lot of talk among the members and things had become really heated and this pastor was given an opportunity to move to another church with new opportunities. By the way, this pastor is doing great work for the Kingdom of God today and he has been since the time of his resignation from this church.
I will never forget that Sunday morning, there were people on both sides of the isle who were calling each other names and acting like it was a bar fight. Being a young Christian, I had never seen anything like this in my life, I was confused. I loved all of the people and I wanted things to remain as they were. I honestly didn’t know enough to choose a side and join the fight, I was just heart broken. Anyway, over the next several days I prayed and struggled with the questions, do I stay here or do I go with the group that is leaving? I know that the Lord spoke to my spirit and said don’t go either place but go and find a solid place and grow. I didn’t listen, I went with the group that left, about 100 of us. In a short period of time this fellowship split also. Guess God was right after all.
After that I did go to a place where I didn’t know anyone and it was a solid place and I did grow. It was out of this new place where I started to teach Sunday School and also to lead the youth. During that time I asked God over and over, how could you bring glory out of a church split? As a matter of fact I asked that question for several years and then it dawned on me. As a group of people at the first church,we had grown to the point we had some decisions to make and some were absolute,they weren’t interested in enlarging the church, they made this quite clear. All of us wanted to stay there and be the church but it wasn’t going to work because we couldn’t reach all of the people we needed to reach for Christ. So in the end we split and it was a real splintering, people went to lots of different churches and continued on their journey with Christ.
Then one day it dawned on me, counting myself,there were close to a dozen people who came out of that church split that God had called to preach. Some were pastoring churches and today many of us are still pastoring churches. We are spread hundreds of miles apart. Some are in different states.Hundreds of thousands of lives have been touched for Christ and many have been changed. All because we split. If the split had not happened we would have been content to stay right there and be all that we could be without growing but God used a split to bring glory to His name. Now remember, I didn’t say God caused the split. No, man did that. Man decided we liked it the way it was, we had become comfortable, we wanted to stay in that moment because there were so many good memories and God had used us in a mighty way already.
God didn’t cause it but He certainly used it. It is never a good thing when a church splits but God will bring glory out of the broken pieces and the brokenness of the people who truly want to follow Him. Sometimes we forget that God doesn’t change but situations do. Sometimes we get caught up in how good things are and we don’t want to lose the comfort of the known for the dis-comfort of the unknown. It is my prayer that as a church, God’s church, we will always seek to follow God and win lost people. The church exists for the lost people of this world, its not a place where we are supposed to get attached to buildings and even people so much that we can’t hear God’s voice when it’s time to do something different, something new.
Do I believe that God likes church splits? No, absolutely not!
This is a true story and one that breaks my heart every time I think about it. At the same time I rejoice in the God who makes right the messes we often cause as humans.
Ronnie