Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile (a keynote speaker at this year’s Peacemaker Conference) has been re-posting a classic (and excellent!) series of articles on preventing church splits. It’s a five part series:  Part 1,  Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 are all available. 

To give you a sense of where he’s going, here’s how he began the series:

I have a new and growing conviction. It’s occupying a lot of my thoughts these days… good thoughts, I think. I don’t know why it hasn’t always been a conviction, at least not quite in this way. But, nonetheless, I am convinced that one of my fundamental objectives as a pastor is to prevent church splits from happening.

I don’t mean that it’s my responsibility to make sure no one leaves, or to settle every dispute in a way that preserves unity at all costs. No, there’ll be times when a “split” will humanly speaking be inevitable, and I trust that the Lord has good purposes in causing or allowing them to happen.

What I mean is this: I have some basic responsibilities as a pastor. I must teach and preach God’s Word; I must pray; I must be an example; and, I must carry on a visitation ministry. That’s basically what I think a pastor is to do (admittedly a bit oversimplified). But I am increasingly convinced that I am to do those things with a particular perspective. I’m to do those things with an eye toward the developing and continuing unity of the church. Said negatively, I’m to work in such a way as to prevent the splintering of Christ’s local body in my charge.

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