Why Are There So Many Churches?

Al Felder
1 day ago
4 min read

By Al Felder

“Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18)

Jesus said He would build His church—singular, not plural. That one detail is foundational. If Christ promised one church, why do we see so many different churches today, with different names, doctrines, structures, and practices?

That question matters because it goes to the heart of authority: Are we following God’s original design, or are we following religious systems built over time by human decisions?

Start with what Scripture says about “church”

The word “church” (Greek: ekklesia) means “the called out.” In the New Testament, it is used in two key senses:

Universal sense: all the saved who belong to Christ.
Local sense: a congregation of believers in a particular place (for example, the church at Corinth).

This distinction helps us avoid confusion. The church is, universally, a spiritual family—the brotherhood of all who are in Christ. Locally, Christians organize into congregations for worship, mutual accountability, and carrying out God’s work together.

God gave no structure larger than the local congregation

In the New Testament pattern, Christ alone is Head of the church. There is no earthly headquarters over all congregations, no universal human ruler, and no hierarchy that governs every local body.

Each local congregation is autonomous (self-governing) under Christ. Qualified elders oversee the flock among them. Their authority is real, but local—never worldwide, never denominational.

That pattern is simple and wise:

Christ as the only Head
Scripture as the only authority
Local congregations overseen by local elders

When churches stay in that pattern, they remain anchored to God’s design.

“Bind and loose” means heaven sets the terms

Jesus’ teaching about binding and loosing is often misunderstood. He was not giving men the right to invent doctrine and expect heaven to approve it afterward. The force of His words is that what is bound or loosed on earth is what has already been determined in heaven.

In other words, the church does not create truth—it receives and obeys revealed truth.

That means every practice, teaching, and organizational decision must be measured by God’s word, not tradition, popularity, or institutional pressure.

Compare today’s religious landscape with the beginning

In Acts 2, we see the beginning clearly:

The gospel was preached in Jerusalem.
People heard, believed, repented, and were baptized.
The Lord added the saved.

That beginning is not blurry. It is precise. The Lord added people to the same body of saved believers—what Scripture elsewhere calls the one body.

But today’s religious world is fragmented into thousands of groups with differing doctrines, names, creeds, and structures. Many of these systems are larger than a local congregation but smaller than the universal body Christ described. That is not the New Testament model.

So the answer to “Why are there so many churches?” is not that Jesus built many. He did not.

Where did the division come from?

Division came through departure from the divine pattern.

Even in the first century, Scripture warned of false teachers and internal corruption. Over time, leadership structures shifted away from local eldership toward centralized control. Later reform movements protested corruption, but many retained unscriptural organizational assumptions and produced additional bodies rather than restoring the original pattern in full.

The result was not the restoration of unity, but the multiplication of religious systems.

Denominations and the problem of multiple standards

A denomination is a named segment with its own identity markers—often including doctrinal documents beyond Scripture that define membership and practice.

The practical effect is this: what makes a person a member in one group often does not make them a member in another. That reality conflicts with the New Testament call for unity in truth and with Jesus’ prayer that His followers be one.

Biblical unity is not unity at the expense of doctrine. It is unity through shared submission to God’s revealed word.

The only path forward: restoration, not reinvention

If the problem is departure from God’s original design, the cure is not a better human system. It is restoration.

Restoration means:

The Bible as the sole authority
The gospel is the one message of salvation
Christ as the only Head
One body, as taught in Scripture
Local congregations ordered by the New Testament pattern

Jesus used seed language in His teaching. Seed reproduces after its kind. If we plant human tradition, we get human religion. If we plant the word of God, we get what God designed.

The invitation remains the same

If you want to be part of the same body described at the beginning, the call is still the same:

Hear the gospel
Believe in Christ
Repent of sin
Confess Christ
Be baptized into Christ for the remission of sins

When that happens, the Lord adds the saved. The church belongs to Him because He purchased it with His blood.

Practicing what is taught

Test everything by Scripture. Don’t assume old traditions are automatically biblical.
Value unity in truth. Unity without doctrine is not the unity Jesus prayed for.
Reject man-made hierarchy. Honor Christ’s headship and the local pattern He gave.
Pursue restoration. Don’t settle for reforming error when Scripture calls for returning to the beginning.