Was the Split "Godly Division"?

When the Restored Church Worldwide (RCW) broke away from the International Christian Church (ICC) in October 2024, it gave the separation a name: "godly division." Its open letter to the ICC said, "This separation is called 'godly division,' a concept we teach in our Church Study."

The phrase carries a lot of weight. It means the split wasn't just a disagreement between leaders. It was God's will, and those who followed were being faithful. For many people, it was also the reason given for ending friendships and family relationships with those who stayed.

So it's worth looking closely at the passages behind it. This article isn't about who was right about the ICC's leaders. It's about whether the Bible teaches what godly division says it teaches.

Where we agree

It's fair to start with what the RCW gets right, because it matters.

• The Bible is the final authority, not leaders. The RCW has said this clearly, and it's true.
• God's household is bigger than any one church. The RCW teaches that it is not the only church with saved people in it. Its own public Bible study says the dispute with the ICC "is about proclamation and leadership, not salvation." That is worth holding on to, because many who have left the RCW say they heard something very different about themselves: that they were "fall aways," that they were bitter, that they only left because they were hurt, even that they were cursed. If the RCW truly believes God's household includes those in the ICC, the ICOC, the wider churches of Christ and beyond, the way it speaks about people who leave should match what it claims.
• Leaders should be accountable. A church where no one can question the leader is in danger.

Hold on to those three points. They are the best tools for testing everything that follows.

What is taught

Godly division, as it is usually taught, goes something like this:

1. Leaders are to watch their life and doctrine closely (1 Timothy 4:16).
2. When leaders drift in either one and refuse to listen to messenger after messenger, a point of "no remedy" is reached, as with Judah before the exile (2 Chronicles 36:15-16).
3. Jesus said he came to bring division, even within families (Luke 12:51-53).
4. Salt that loses its saltiness is thrown out (Luke 14:34-35). So faithful disciples must separate, even if it costs them their closest relationships, and "shake the dust off their feet."
5. God himself split the kingdom of Israel because of corrupt leadership, and gave ten tribes to Jeroboam (1 Kings 11-12).

There's one more thing worth knowing. RCW leader Mike Patterson has acknowledged that the New Testament has no example of a church splitting this way. His answer, in "Is It Biblical to Start a New Church?", was that the church may "speak where the Bible is silent."

The passages in context

"Watch your life and doctrine" is a mirror

Paul writes 1 Timothy 4:16 to Timothy about Timothy: "Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers." It's a charge to examine yourself first. It isn't a verse about when to break from a church at all, in either direction. It doesn't require anyone to stay in an unhealthy church, and it doesn't give anyone the authority to declare another church beyond repair. Jesus warned about focusing on the speck in someone else's eye (Matthew 7:3-5), and Paul told the Corinthians, "Examine yourselves" (2 Corinthians 13:5).

"No remedy" was God's verdict, not ours

Read 2 Chronicles 36:15-16 slowly. "The LORD... sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people." The people mocked his prophets "until the wrath of the LORD rose against his people, until there was no remedy."

Notice four things.

• God made the call. The messengers were his prophets, speaking his word. The verdict was his.
• It took centuries. From the kingdom's split to the exile was roughly 350 years of warnings.
• No one holds that role today. "Long ago... God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (Hebrews 1:1-2). A leader who declares "no remedy" over another church is speaking like a prophet without a prophet's authority.
• The remnant went into exile. In Chronicles, the faithful remnant didn't break away and start a better nation. They were carried to Babylon under judgment (36:20), and God told them to "seek the welfare of the city" where he sent them (Jeremiah 29:7).

Even in the New Testament church at Thyatira, where a false prophetess was leading people astray, Jesus named the sin, warned of judgment, and said, "I gave her time to repent" (Revelation 2:20-21). He addressed it, he set the timing, and the judgment was his.

Jesus' division is over Jesus himself

In Luke 12:51-53, Jesus says he came to bring division: father against son, mother against daughter. The division is between those who follow him and those who don't (see also Matthew 10:34-37).

The ICC and the RCW share the same Jesus, the same baptism and, by the RCW's own account, the same doctrine. If the dispute "is about proclamation and leadership, not salvation," then Luke 12 doesn't describe it. Applying it to fellow Christians places brothers and sisters on the other side of Jesus. That's how a passage about the gospel became a reason to stop speaking to family members.

The New Testament says something very different about believers who disagree. "If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all" (Romans 12:18). "Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?" (Romans 14:4).

Salt and dust are about unbelief

Luke 14:34-35 ends a passage about the cost of following Jesus (14:25-33). Salt that loses its taste is a disciple who won't pay that cost. "It is thrown out" describes God's judgment. It gives no one permission to declare a church worthless.

"Shake the dust off your feet" comes from Luke 9:5 and 10:10-11. Jesus told his disciples to do it when a town rejected the gospel. Using it for Christians who believe the same gospel treats them as people who rejected Jesus. That contradicts the RCW's own teaching that ICC members are saved.

Read how Jeroboam's story ends

The comparison to Israel's divided kingdom is the most detailed part of the teaching, and it's the passage that most clearly works against it.

• The text calls it rebellion. Jeroboam "lifted up his hand against the king" (1 Kings 11:26). Scripture records it. It never praises it.
• The split was God's judgment, announced by a prophet. Ahijah tore his robe at God's command, and God gave the reason: Solomon's idolatry (11:31-33). God said of the split, "this thing is from me" (12:24). It was a punishment on the whole nation. No one today has an Ahijah to declare one.
• The promise was conditional. God promised Jeroboam a lasting house "if you will listen to all that I command you" (11:38).
• Then read 1 Kings 12:25-33. Jeroboam worried, "If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the LORD at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord." So he made two golden calves, built his own shrines, appointed his own priests and set up a feast "in the month that he had devised from his own heart." The text says, "this thing became a sin" (12:30).
• "The sins of Jeroboam" became a byword. For the rest of Kings, ruler after ruler is judged for walking in "the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin" (for example 1 Kings 15:30). The northern kingdom fell in 722 BC, and Scripture's verdict is plain: "Jeroboam drove Israel from following the LORD and made them commit great sin" (2 Kings 17:21).

If you've been taught the Jeroboam comparison, read chapter 12 to the end. Then ask what the leader of the breakaway kingdom did first, and why.

The New Testament's answer to drifting churches

Patterson is right that the New Testament has no example of a church split. But it has plenty of churches in trouble, and it shows what God's people did about them.

Corinth had factions lining up behind leaders (1 Corinthians 1:10-13), a case of incest the church was proud of (5:1-2), lawsuits between members (6:1-8), drunkenness at the Lord's Supper (11:20-22), and members saying "there is no resurrection of the dead" (15:12). That's drift in both life and doctrine. Paul wrote, sent Timothy, visited and wrote again. He never told the faithful to leave and start over. Patterson himself made this point: Paul fixed Corinth by sending Timothy, not by planting a new church.

Jerusalem faced a dispute over salvation itself: whether Gentiles had to be circumcised (Acts 15). That's a far bigger question than growth rates or leadership style. The apostles and elders settled it together, "with the whole church" (15:22). When Paul and Barnabas later had a "sharp disagreement" (15:39), they went separate ways in ministry without trying to destroy each other's character with half-truths or slander, and Paul later called Mark "very useful to me" (2 Timothy 4:11). When Paul confronted Peter "to his face" (Galatians 2:11), they stayed in fellowship.

The churches of Revelation included Thyatira, which Jesus rebuked for tolerating a false prophetess who was leading his people astray (Revelation 2:20), and Sardis, which he called "dead." Jesus did not excuse their sin. He confronted it, called for repentance and warned of judgment. He told the faithful to "hold fast what you have until I come" (Revelation 2:25), noted the few in Sardis "who have not soiled their garments" (3:4), and kept the authority to remove a church's lampstand for himself (2:5).

That point is about who has the authority to pronounce judgment on a church. It is not a command to stay put in an unhealthy one. A believer who decides, for the sake of their conscience and spiritual health, that they can no longer stay where sin is protected is doing something very different from a leader who declares another church dead. (For more on that, read When Is It Right to Leave a Church?.)

A word on 1 Corinthians 11:19

Godly division is sometimes defended with 1 Corinthians 11:19: "there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized." Read verse 17 first: "I do not commend you." Paul is rebuking the Corinthians for dividing at the Lord's Supper, where the rich ate and the poor went hungry (11:21-22). He isn't approving of divisions. He's saying their divisions expose who is behaving well and who isn't.

A word on 1 Corinthians 5

1 Corinthians 5:6-7 ("a little leaven leavens the whole lump") is also offered as warrant for separating from a corrupted church. But in that chapter, the church gathers together under the apostle's instruction and removes one unrepentant member: "Purge the evil person from among you" (5:13). It's church discipline of an individual. It isn't a group of members leaving to start a new church. Read that way, the passage would have told Corinth's faithful to leave Corinth, which is the opposite of what Paul did.

The test the RCW set for itself

In August 2025, the RCW's council wrote that if RCW leaders "shrink back" and refuse to repent, members are "biblically mandated to obey God rather than man and to practice 'godly division.'"

By the RCW's own rule, any member who concludes that RCW leadership isn't listening may leave, and that member should be seen as faithful, not divisive.

So here's an honest test. Has that ever happened? When someone in the RCW has raised concerns about its leaders and then left, were they honored for practicing godly division? Or were they called bitter, weak or divisive?

If the rule only works in one direction, it isn't a biblical principle. It's a tool.

What this means

None of this means it's wrong to leave a church. People leave churches for good reasons, and leaving an unhealthy one is often the right thing to do. Setting boundaries is not a sin. Leaving one group, one organization or one local church does not mean leaving the Kingdom of God (see What If the Kingdom Is Not the Church?). If we truly believe in the universal church, the whole body of Christ, then those who leave are still part of it.

The problem with godly division is narrower and more serious. It takes judgments that belong to God alone and hands them to leaders who want to break away and start over. It takes passages about unbelief and applies them to fellow Christians. And it gives every future group the same tool to use on the one before it.

If you are wondering whether it's right for you to leave, that is a different question, and an important one. We look at it in its own article: When Is It Right to Leave a Church?

Where does this leave us?

We started with a question: was the split "godly division"? Read in their full context, the passages used to explain it don't fit what happened. That leaves a harder question. If the reason wasn't biblical, what was it?

We can't answer that for you. But these are fair questions to ask:

• If only God can declare something beyond remedy, what does it say about leaders who claimed that authority for themselves?
• Were you told about the split while it was being planned, or only once it was done? If it was godly, why wasn't it done in the open?
• How much of the decision rested on Scripture, and how much on loyalty, power, influence and who would lead?

Leaving an unhealthy church can be the right decision. But judged by the very passages used to defend it, the 2024 split looks less like a biblical decision and more like a decision that was made first and supported with verses afterward.

So examine it. Read the passages for yourself. If your conscience is troubled, don't push it down. Listen to what the Holy Spirit is showing you through Scripture. Asking these questions, or even leaving a group, does not mean walking away from God. Paul's charge to Timothy is the one we started with, and it applies to every one of us: "Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this" (1 Timothy 4:16). That is how we hold on to the end.

The unity Jesus prayed for was "that they may all be one" (John 17:21). Paul told us how to keep it: "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Ephesians 4:2-3).

For more on what the ICC and the RCW still share, read the companion article: A New Name on the Same Foundation.

Common questions

What is "godly division"? It is the teaching the RCW used to explain its 2024 break from the ICC: when leaders refuse correction and a point of "no remedy" is reached, faithful disciples must separate, even at the cost of close relationships. It draws on 2 Chronicles 36, Luke 12, Luke 14 and the division of Israel under Jeroboam.

Does the Bible support splitting from a church? The New Testament has no example of a church split, and RCW leader Mike Patterson has acknowledged this. Churches in serious trouble, like Corinth, were corrected through letters, visits and repentance, not by the faithful leaving to start over.

Who has the authority to say a church is beyond remedy? In Scripture, only God. The "no remedy" verdict in 2 Chronicles 36 was his, delivered through his prophets after centuries of warnings, and in Revelation Jesus kept the authority to remove a church's lampstand for himself (Revelation 2:5).

Does Luke 12:51-53 apply to the ICC and RCW split? No. The division Jesus describes is between those who follow him and those who don't. The ICC and RCW share the same Jesus, and by the RCW's own account the dispute "is about proclamation and leadership, not salvation."

Is it wrong to leave a church? No. Leaving an unhealthy church can be the right decision, and setting boundaries is not a sin. What Scripture gives no one is the authority to declare other Christians beyond repair.