Church Split - it will happen again!

I had a few emails correspondence with a former church member who came back to visit us during Sunday worship service. After separating from us for almost 2 decades to start a new church by a former elder, many of those who joined this elder in forming a new church have now left him, accusing him of spiritual malpractice. This visitor intends to write a book or journal to expose what the elder did - taking away about more than three hundred thousand of dollars of offering given by the English Service worshippers. It seem to me that he is doing this out of vengence, bitterness but credit it to "doing good for the future generation" by informing them of spiritual malpractice.

I learn a few lessons here. Why did they (mostly teenagers & young adults) choose to follow the elder while the rest of us (most married couples with children and late-twenty working adults) decided to remain in this church. Didn't it occur to them that there was something amiss. The elder encouraged them by saying that they were planting new churches. But, the split was not amicably. There were strife and war of words when the split took place. Many things happened to them, according to this visitor. They were cursed, because their church was in Onan Road. Onan was a son of Judah (Gen 38) killed by God. He spiritualised the whole episode that his church is cursed with the "Onan curse" (whatever that is) and many of their members left. He also claimed that the Elder told "dirty jokes" and cursed some of the members during his sermons. The lesson learnt here is that when they followed the leader who split the church acrimoniously, the same situation of church split will happen in the future also. And so, it happened to them.

The seond lesson is that we should not take vengence in our hand. If it is spiritual malpractice, God will punish him Himself. Who are we to judge the action of others. I disagree with this visitor on the way he is doing but he is adamant in continuing with his book. I have written to him, telling him to sort out the issue personally as according to what the Bible say, "If a brother sin against you, go and tell him alone (Mt 18:15)". It would be interesting to see how the Elder react to his book.

Mark