By Meg Rooney & Aaron Weaver
DECATUR, Ga. — As churches emerge from the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic into a landscape of declining attendance, generational divides and deep cultural polarization, many congregations are feeling fractured.
Rev. Dr. Andy Hale has a hopeful message for this moment: those fractures do not have to be fatal. In his forthcoming book, Mending the Fracturing Church: How to Navigate Conflict and Build Trust for Thriving Communities, Hale offers a practical path for congregations to navigate conflict and rebuild trust. The book, drawing on Hale’s background in organizational psychology and ministry, is set for release on December 11 and is now available for pre-order.
Hale currently serves as the Associate Executive Coordinator of CBF North Carolina and is the host of the award-winning CBF Conversations podcast. He has spent over 25 years in congregational ministry in roles ranging from pastor to church starter to consultant. Hale also earned a Doctor of Leadership in Global Perspective, focusing on organizational psychology, from George Fox University. That doctoral research became the springboard for his new book on church conflict. The project began as Hale’s dissertation examining why church relationships break down.
“I’ve always been interested in psychology and sociology and how we work and how we function together,” Hale said.
Mending the Fracturing Church grew out of questions he explored academically: “What are the most common relational obstacles within a congregation? What causes us to have conflict with each other, not trust each other? What causes frustration and decline? Why are we so polarized right now?”
Hale’s findings convinced him the book needed to reach beyond academia.
“I didn’t want to write something that was just for pastors or just from an academic perspective,” he explained. “I wanted to write something for the common person in the pew and for everybody.”
At the heart of Mending the Fracturing Church is an emphasis on healing the deeper issues beneath surface disagreements. Hale contends that congregational conflicts are often rooted in emotional pain rather than theological differences.
“Church conflict hurts because we are wired to experience exclusion as pain,” he noted, suggesting that debates over beliefs often mask broken trust and a loss of belonging. Rather than see a divided church as a doomed church, Hale views fracturing as an opportunity.
“Accept the reality that the church is fractured, but that the fracturing is not inevitably the end,” he said. “Fracturing is an opportunity for us to better understand each other, be more Christ-centered which leads to a more holistic opportunity for thriving for the church.”
Hale also addresses the post-pandemic challenges of polarization and rebuilding community. Within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship—a network that values a “big tent” of diverse Baptist voices—these insights carry particular resonance.
“We’re in a day and age in which it’s easy to say that being a big tent or purple denomination can’t happen because we’re being forced into a false choice of picking sides,” Hale said. “I think the church at its best is a heterogeneous community of people who have different perspectives and it is in that diversity that we make each other better.”
Yet too often, he observes, people act as though “there’s a right side, there’s a wrong side—one way of doing things, one way of believing things.”
Several chapters of the book examine “our capacity for othering and our capacity around rightness and our capacity around political polarization,” inviting readers to step back and recognize how external forces “are thriving financially off our division,” Hale explained.
Instead, he calls congregations to “step outside of that in order to have healthier relationships, have healthier diversity in our life, because the church should be that to itself and to the world.” Throughout Mending the Fracturing Church, Hale blends social science and Scripture to help churches understand what’s really happening in moments of tension. He brings insights from cognitive psychology into conversation with faith.
“I totally nerd out on cognitive psychology and social psychology studies,” Hale admitted with a laugh. “But I realized that when you read those things unless you have that background, it just makes no sense whatsoever. So I wanted to take that research and look at it through a theological lens and a practical lens so that we all can better understand how we function and how we relate to one another, and how easy it is for us to fall into our echo chambers of our biases or tribalizing around certain ideas.”
His goal, he said, was to make the science accessible: “Let’s make this stuff as practical as possible and see just how much the Bible supports how our brains function, how our physiology works in connection to what we’re thinking and what we do.”
Each chapter of the book blends theological reflection, psychological insight and real congregational stories, offering practical tools that church leaders and members can use together. True to Hale’s intention, the book is designed for whole congregations rather than only clergy, equipping all members with skills like emotional intelligence, self-awareness and healthy communication.
Writing this book has only amplified Hale’s hope for the church.
“I talk in the opening about just how much I do love the church,” he shared, reflecting on his journey. Early in his life, Hale admits, he was hesitant to enter ministry because he saw the church as a “broken institution.” But researching and formulating Mending the Fracturing Church “reaffirmed my love for the church—its functionality in the world, its purposefulness in our faith development, and the messiness of it all,” he said.
Far from being discouraged by the church’s current struggles, Hale expresses optimism: “I have hope for the church for the future.” In fact, he has spent the last two years “beta testing” the book’s insights through sermons and workshops, watching people connect with these ideas in practice.
Hale doesn’t plan to stop with this book. When asked what’s next, he noted that he initially drafted 30 chapters and had to cut the manuscript in half—meaning there is plenty more to explore.
“I just love this stuff and I think it’s so practical in this day and age,” he said. “Equipping our congregations to think deeply about these things while thinking theologically and biblically is endless.” In his role with CBF North Carolina, Hale will continue working directly with churches, facilitating congregational conversations and cultivating leadership development opportunities.
“I want to see congregations come to a place of thriving in a new way that we didn’t expect before,” he said, “and any part I can play in helping facilitate that, I’d love to do it.”
Mending the Fracturing Church is published by Bloomsbury and will be released on January 22, 2026. It is available for pre-order now through Bloomsbury, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Pre-orders via Bloomsbury’s website are eligible for a 20% discount using the promo code GLR BD8 at checkout.