The Sermon on the Splinter: Preach Unity, Practice Divorce

Doug Winnail has written another letter to the faithful on how they all need to learn to work together, living in harmony, and be perfectly joined together.

The Importance of Working Together: Jesus referred to His disciples as His friends and encouraged them to “love one another (John 15:12–17). The Apostle Paul called those who assisted him in his ministry “my fellow workers” (Romans 16:3). Working together smoothly is a skill that we can learn, and the Bible gives us important guidelines. We are instructed to be “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” and not let contentions divide us (1 Corinthians 1:10–13). We are to be humble; live in harmony; be patient; avoid being haughty, conceited, or ambitious; and be willing to yield (Romans 12:16–18; James 3:14–18). Proverbs 13:10 reminds us that pride is a major cause of contention, and Galatians 5:16–26 teaches us that using God’s Spirit is a key to eliminating dissension and promoting peace, cooperation, and friendship. Are you developing these skills?

Have a profitable Sabbath,

Douglas S. Winnail”

Beautiful words. Truly inspiring. Now let’s examine how the Living Church of God and every other Church of God splinter actually lives them.

While Winnail lectures the rank-and-file about developing the skills of humility, harmony, yielding, and eliminating dissension, the leadership of LCG and its fellow alphabet groups (UCG, PCG, COGWA, and the rest of the post-WCG wreckage) have spent the last thirty years proving they have zero interest in any of it. They split, they accused, they disfellowshiped, they competed for members and tithes, and they built separate little empires. Then they turn around and tell the people in the pews to “love one another” and “be perfectly joined together in the same mind.”

Apparently, the “fellow workers” verse only applies inside one organization at a time. Cross the invisible line into another COG group, and suddenly the same Bible that demands unity becomes a weapon for calling the other side Laodicean, rebellious, or compromised. Pride is supposedly the big problem—except when it’s the pride of the men at the top who refuse to yield an inch of control or admit that maybe their particular split wasn’t God’s idea after all.

Members are constantly reminded to be patient, humble, and willing to yield. The leadership? Not so much. They will happily quote Paul calling people “fellow workers” while treating every other COG as competition rather than co-laborers. The same men who demand that members stop being “haughty, conceited, or ambitious” have spent decades protecting their own positions, their own magazines, their own feast sites, and their own authority structures. Cooperation? Only if it doesn’t threaten anyone’s paycheck or title.

The real message behind Winnail’s article is not actually about unity at all. It is about keeping the members focused on fixing themselves while the leadership continues the very behaviors the article condemns. The splits happened because of pride, contentions, and unwillingness to yield at the highest levels—yet the solution offered is always the same: the people in the seats need to try harder to get along. The men running the organizations never seem to be the ones who need to develop those skills.

If LCG and the other groups were serious about the verses they love to quote, we would see actual attempts at reconciliation instead of endless doctrinal one-upmanship and quiet competition for the same shrinking pool of members. We would see joint efforts, shared resources, and leaders willing to swallow their pride for the sake of the “one body” they claim to represent. Instead, we get thirty years of parallel universes, each claiming to be the faithful remnant while refusing to sit at the same table with the other remnants.

This is not unity. This is managed division dressed up in Sabbath-keeping language. The leadership gets to keep their separate thrones, their separate authority, and their separate income streams, while the members get the weekly guilt trip about not loving one another enough. The hypocrisy is not subtle—it is the entire operating model.

Until the men at the top of these groups are willing to practice the humility, yielding, and cooperation they demand from everyone else, articles like Winnail’s will remain nothing more than pious-sounding reminders that the real rules only apply downward. The Bible they cite calls for one mind and one body. What the Church of God movement has delivered is a dozen separate bodies, each convinced it alone has the mind of God. That is not a failure of the members. That is a failure of leadership that has never been willing to take its own medicine.