Division in The Church, Vertical and Horizontal

I have been in the church for over sixty years. I have seen church divisions from near and afar, in the church I attend and in other churches. They are never pretty sights. I have helped pull things back together after them. At times I have been sidelined by the leadership when things were going well like Boyington who I will mention later, till the problem hit, then I am desired to help clean up the mess. I will be frank. I never want to see one of these again. But most of the divisions I studied up till a few years ago were vertical splits where a portion of the congregation split off from the rest. The fracture was vertical. And I really never looked at any other possibility.

To set the stage, let’s look at the anatomy of a church split. Luther’s split with the Catholic Church was vertical. The split between the Greek and Eastern Orthodox was vertical. Organizations are pyramids with a leader on the top and the rank and file on the bottom. Think of a vertical split as a portion of the pyramid split off and moved away. The size of the fragment can be small or large. The tip of the new pyramid can be low or high but the higher it is, the larger the segment that moves away. With a vertical split there is some leader that takes the people away. This can be a formal or informal leader. A good pastor recognizes the existence of the informal leaders in the church, those without titles who because of their character and leadership ability are looked up to by others. He utilizes them just as he does formal leaders. If he does not he can have serious problems. A split can be lead by formal or informal leadership and informal leadership has less vested interest in the status quo.

But what happens when the spilt is horizontal. Up till now I have not looked at it in this light and hadn’t thought of it until it was blasted at me. I have actually seen at least a half dozen of these over the years and only now am seeing what happens. I started seeing this while in church several weeks ago. It was prompted by something someone did that I mentally said, “This could cause a split.” Then I realized it would not fit the paradigm of the usual split I understood.