The City on the Hill Has 47,000 Towns — And the World Took Notes

Jane Isley
4 hours ago
4 min read

As a Christian with brains and eyeballs, I can distinctly see we have many issues in our churches today, emphasis on that word “many.”

According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, there are currently approximately 47,000 Christian denominations worldwide. Not congregations, denominations. Distinct, named, organized expressions of Christianity, each with its own doctrine, definitions, and rules.

By 2050, that number is projected to be 64,000.

Young girl with long hair looks thoughtfully at camera while drawing with a pencil in a notebook. Light background with soft patterns.

How Did We Get Here?

That answer is the same impulse driving our culture right now. Someone disagreed with a definition, someone needed a new label, someone decided their interpretation was different enough to warrant a split, a new name, a statement of faith, and a new doctrine.

And then someone split from that. And then someone split from that.

On and on, year after year, until we have tens of thousands of variations of Christianity, each convinced it has the clearest handle on truth, and many of them can’t sit in the same room with each other.

Paul Saw This Coming

Paul was addressing this in the first century. Romans 14:1: “Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters.”

The whole chapter is Paul telling believers who were dividing over differences, judging each other, separating over disputable matters, making secondary things primary, to stop it. They were already doing this before the ink was dry on the New Testament, and Paul was calling it out.

Romans 14:19: “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.”

We have had the best instruction manual for this for 2,000 years, and still ended up with 47,000 denominations anyway.

To Be Clear

This is not a call to accept everything; there is a fine line here that needs to be addressed, Romans 14 is not a blank check. Peace is the ultimate goal, not constant in fighting, but also not at the cost of Biblical truth.

Not all denominations and churches teach sound doctrine. Way too many teach things that are flat-out contradictions of Scripture, and you are not required to accept and make peace with false teaching just to avoid conflict.

Paul made this plain in Galatians 1:8: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!”

That is not a gentle verse people.

That is Paul being absolutely immovable on the line between truth and error. And 2 Timothy 4:3–4 reads like it was written in today's news: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”

So yes, pursue peace with other believers where you genuinely can because Romans 14:19 still stands. But you must stand firm on Scripture first; there are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. If peace is possible without compromising Biblical truth, chase it; it can happen. You can disagree on things and still be friends.

What you cannot do is reshape your beliefs to fit a denomination’s or anyone’s preferences and call that faith. Pray over the state of the church. Seriously and genuinely, open your Bible and read it for yourself, and test everything against Scripture.

Society Was Watching The Whole Time

This is the part that should make us uncomfortable. We are supposed to be salt and light.

Jesus said it in Matthew 5:13–14: “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.”

Probably wondering what that means? I’ll tell you, it means that a person’s true character and faith are impossible to hide and are always on display to the world.

When the “Church” fractures, argues, splits, labels, divides, and builds walls between believers, guess who sees that? The entire world. Just as much as society likes to blame religion for its issues and bring up past abuses done in the name of religion, it also learns from it.

They watched churches do this for centuries. Churches have been publicly splitting, feuding, and multiplying divisions since the beginning, and the world was watching every single moment of it like a child watching a parent slowly fall apart. Children do what they see modeled, they absorb it, normalize it, and eventually repeat it.

We handed them the blueprint. We demonstrated for generations that when you disagree with someone’s definitions, you separate, create a new label, and build a new slogan.

We showed the world that identity is built around which group’s doctrine you align with. We modeled that splitting is always an option when unity gets hard. And now we are shocked that society does the same thing.

A hillside village at dusk, homes aglow with lights. A partly cloudy sky with sunset hues enhances the tranquil, cozy atmosphere.

We were supposed to be the city on the hill.

A light, a beacon, God’s physical examples on Earth of His love, mercy, kindness, gentleness, and forgiveness, and a beautiful, glowing lamp for this world. Instead, the hill has 47,000 different towns on it, most of them barely speaking to each other, and the world looked at that and took notes.

It is on us, the remaining faithful, to pick up the cross daily and stand apart from the world, to stop chasing labels and simply start following Jesus.

Read your Bible. Follow Jesus. You don’t need anything else attached to that.