Church Splits

We are having an explosion of churches, some with very strange names. We should expect that to be a sign than a revival is happening but that is not the reality. No new people are joining the church of Christ. We are just having a shifting of members from a church to the other. The sad fact is that even evangelism is not aimed at the unreached, but at members of ‘inferior’ churches. Why do I say this? I have participated in some thrusts and am also involved with leaders from many churches in my ministry even at the strategy level. Even the evangelistic message itself  is alien to people who have never been in church.

With all the outreach we are being asked to support and are receiving ‘flowery’ reports about, is it a surprise that Kenya is not over-evangelized? Is it not a surprise that the moral situation is not improving after all the ‘decisions of salvation’ we continue to receive after such thrusts? Why is it that we still have unreached people groups in Kenya yet we enjoy the pleasure of having probably the greatest concentration of evangelists and evangelistic efforts anywhere? Why does Nairobi have some totally unreached communities yet it hosts 95% of all the foreign missionaries in Africa according to some report findings?

One reason I will pose is the unstable situation in the church. I will talk about the Kenyan situation because it is the one I know best about as I have been part of it since childhood. I have also been a minister in the same since Christ called me close to thirty years ago.

But I will address one aspect in the same as I believe it will address many other problems in the church. This is the proliferation of churches; many of them being break out groups of other churches. Some are clones of televangelists and popular preachers’ churches. I will not touch of some that even practice witchcraft and other abominations to gain giving members and even satellite supporters.

What causes church splits?

1.      Immaturity – this can be caused by the leader who split the church or whose church was split. Many churches have a closed method of raising leaders. They expect you to be raised only to a certain level, which level should not reach the leader or even dream to challenge him. Growing will thus be limited to only what the boss can accommodate. When a leader being thus grown exhibits greater potential than expected, the boss will be under severe threat. He might simply kick the guy aside. On the other side the guy being raised might resent the ceiling being imposed over his ambition and simply break out of it.

2.      Worldliness – many ministers do not really know to differentiate the spiritual and the worldly. It is similar to what God said to the priests in Ezekiel 22: 26. There is therefore no clear distinction between what God expects of them and what the world expects. With such a value system, it becomes difficult to know the difference between self interest and God’s purpose. With such a value system, one will submit to a leader as long as it serves his interest. He will not stay a day longer once he sees greener pastures. That might be grabbing members of the congregation who also think like you do and will have no problem following you. Others will even eject the leader so that they will take over the ‘empire’

3.      Greed – this might be easily confused with ambition. But this person looks for his interests when taking spiritual positions. He will therefore not be averse to scheming to grab from anyone who holds any position or potential to fill his ‘stomach’

4.      Envy – this has a very destructive spirit. In my book ‘Envy, the Destroyer’s Blank Cheque’, I examined envy from many angles. One is that envy is actually witchcraft as it activates the demonic to destroy someone who holds what you cannot have. This person will use even demonic avenues to destroy. This might involve but is not limited to strife and the push for church splits to destroy what has potential to decimate the devil’s agenda on earth.

5.      Lack of Discipleship/ Mentoring – I think this is the main reason for most splits. The church leadership looks for leaders without thinking to raise them. It can be compared to a fertile couple adopting grown children for fear of childbirth and the initial investment in a ‘helpless’ babe. Yet that is what Jesus commanded in Matthew 28: 18 – 20. We will be always in control of our children however high they fly because we made the vital connection from carrying them in the womb, going through the challenges of a pregnancy and its complications, the traumatic childbirth and the season the child is wholly dependent on the parents. A shortcut to leadership development therefore will not be able to produce leaders with an attachment to your structure as they were poached elsewhere. Discipleship will get a person to understand their position in Christ and how it relates to their whole Christian life. Mentoring will show how it is done by allowing him to watch a flesh and blood type doing it. It will expose him to leadership by handing him responsibility after another consistent to his level of growth. It will also allow him to see himself growing beyond his mentor and structure. It will therefore ingrain in him the fact that he will most likely minister in a structure other than the one he has grown in.

6.      Fear – this comes from lacking the vital connection with the King of kings through discipleship and a vibrant devotional life. I will therefore be looking to kill any threats to my leadership. This protective leadership style will of course dichotomize all my contacts simply to those either for or against me. Loyalty becomes premium as I can never be sure who to trust. I will therefore protect myself with people who can kill for me or have no capacity to pose any threat. I will fight anybody who attempts to raise his head, however little that attempt is. No one is safe around me because, well, you can never be sure. Like Herod of old, I will kill even my own children and wife should they exhibit something close to ambition.

7.      Spiritual Success – some people exhibit a great degree of spiritual ‘success’ very quickly. Giving such a leadership position might hand you an explosive in your hands. This will happen especially if you will overlook discipleship/ mentoring. Someone like that will simply feel too big for the structure and of course seek to start his. This is the novice Paul talked when he wrote Timothy and Titus.

8.      Personality Cults – some people build churches in their name, or it evolves in that direction. Though it might be called church, it actually is someone’s kingdom, his or his family’s property. Any spiritual person in that structure will not only be a threat, he will actually be the enemy. Though they may have brought him for his usefulness to their structure, his spirituality becomes a liability once his usefulness has ‘expired’. He has thus to be ejected at all costs. The sad part is that the congregation does not know that what they think is Christ’s church is actually family or personal property. Such will not feel guilty if they ruined such a person’s reputation through slander, something I have seen a number of times.

9.      Unbridled Ambition – this is also tied to lack of discipleship. Such a person develops ambition that has no basis in scripture. That coupled with some success can lead him to imagine that he must start his own church because others are not ‘spiritual’ enough to serve in or even fellowship with. Of course you will agree that this will very easily lead to cultism. You will find that many of them do not know or even value scripture.

10.  Syncretism – many people have mixed Christianity and their traditions/ culture. Sadly, much of what we in Africa call Christian is European culture. We are therefore reproducing what was brought to us. You will therefore see a church being run on cultural lines and structures. Its leadership is therefore not spiritual in the least, unless that spirituality is demonic. A person in that structure who receives a revelation of what the Bible says will find it extremely difficult to blend with the rest due to that revelation. They will also be resented by the same. That is what happened to Luther, Wesley, Booth and many others. Again I will say lack of discipleship is the main culprit.

11.  Worldly Value Systems – the church is a spiritual organism. It therefore has spiritual values to be pursued. But many times some of the leaders are chosen not for their spirituality but their connections, charisma, ingenuity or wealth, which are all worldly values. Such a person has no spiritual compass and may not even think he needs it. Again conflict is inevitable when a spiritual person is in that structure.

12.  Pride – this does not need much explanation. But suffice it when I say it is when human nature is given full rein in an individual or structure. Pride hates competition or control other than one’s control of others. Even God’s control is resented, though carefully concealed sometimes. I will hasten to add that sometimes the greatest indicator of pride is the display of humility especially to confront ‘pride’ in others. Of course the Bible talks about false humility.

What are we supposed to do with this information? Is this an issue Christ expects us to deal with? Does our spirituality let us fly past church splits? Or is it that we are too spiritual to even dwell on such purely worldly issues?

Are church splits a concern to the saints? Are they a prayer item in prayer meetings? Are they a burden to church leaders? Do we lose sleep over them?

This is just to challenge each of us to look at church splits the way God looks at them. It is to guide us to think of a strategy to reverse that poisonous trend. This is because as we know ‘he who lives by the sword will die by the sword’, meaning a beneficially of church splits will eventually lose from the same. The pain we cause by breaking apart congregations is the same we will experience when our congregation will be split by people we have mentored. God is not mocked as the scriptures teach.

Yet I feel the best we can do is to start discipleship and mentoring in such a way that we are not only excited to see people growing under us but that we will be excited to even hand over our positions willingly to them.

Lastly we need to be prayerfully careful before handing over positions of leadership. Let us follow scripture as we look for our leaders. Just because someone is on fire is no guarantee that he will make a good leader. Leaders are grown. Zeal may be good to guide you to the person to disciple more intensely; otherwise you may release the novice Paul talked about. Plus a number of people with excess zeal do not have teachable spirits or malleable hearts.

If Jesus took three years to disciple the twelve and his was a 24/7 kind of discipleship, what makes you think that you can raise leaders from picking them wherever and entrust them with the ministry Christ has entrusted to you?