The Coming Church Split (It's Not What You Think)

Is there a split in the future church ahead?

Unfortunately, I think the answer is yes.

It’s not your typical (and usually awful) church split about doctrine, polity, personality or the color of the carpet. It’s bigger than that, and for the most part, you won’t even realize it’s happening until you look back a few years from now and see what took place.

If you look a little more carefully right now, you can see that as the post-pandemic world takes shape, there’s an emerging divide between churches that are well-positioned for the future and churches that aren’t.

Essentially, the split is between churches that will be effective in accomplishing their mission and churches that won’t be.

We’ve seen a similar split over the last five decades between churches the drifted from historic Christianity orthodoxy and churches that didn’t. Between churches that embraced change and churches that didn’t. And we saw it in churches that understood the culture and those who were oblivious to it. And pre-pandemic, that split left approximately 15% of churches growing and 85% of churches plateaued or declining.

The coming split is a split between the kinds of churches that will thrive in the future and the kinds of churches that won’t.

The criteria between effective and ineffective churches continue to morph and accelerate as the world re-opens in at least four key areas.

The question, of course, which best describes your church?

Here are four emerging divides that are developing before our eyes. Read More