A Layman's Log: November 2013

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Thirteen Characteristics of the CGGC Brand (in 2013)

Gang,

Recently I have been referring to my "Thirteen Characteristics of the CGGC Brand," a list I compiled and revised when I was participating on walt's forum. I was inspired to create this list some time ago by a comment on Ed Rosenberry's eNews that his leadership team would soon be dealing with the issue of the CGGC Brand.

Since then, I have tweaked my definition of the CGGC brand as my understanding of the identity of the CGGC has continued to evolve.

For the purpose of enhancing dialog, I've decided to place the list on this blog.

Here is my description of all that is essential in understanding characteristics of the CGGC:

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1. Decline. In the first sixty years or so of its history the Church of God began from scratch and grew to approximately 800 active congregations. From that peak, the CGGC has declined to far less than half that number, losing a total of 60 congregations between 2001 and 2010 alone!

2. Institutionalized "Churchianity," not Christianity. With increasing fervor, the CGGC focuses on an institutionalized, parish priest-oriented understanding of what church is with local parishes or flocks, led by clergymen, with an ecclesiastical elite ruling over all. The CGGC now only pays lip service to what Jesus commands of His disciples. The CGGC today renews churches, makes transformational churches, adopts churches and plants churches yet only goes into the world to make disciples after all the headquarters and local parish work is thoroughly finished, therefore, never.

3. Traditionalism. What the CGGC does is, no longer, rooted in love for, nor obedience to, Bible truth. These days, CGGC practice derives from the way of thinking that led to the rise of the church as an institution in the Middle Ages. The CGGC's founder, John Winebrenner, who saw even the Protestant Reformation as a failure, wouldn't recognize what has become of the movement he began.

4. Faddism. The CGGC shifts direction according to what is fashionable among other religious denominations. Hence, today, the people with offices in headquarters buildings fret over the CGGC 'brand.' Most recently, with other trend-driven denominations, the CGGC has sought to embrace the 'transformational church' fad. Currently fads such as this, not biblical truth, drive CGGC change.

5. Human Relationship over God's Truth. The CGGC has serious issues with truth primarily because it values, to the extreme, human relationships rooted in tolerance of others but not hunger and thirst for righteousness. The CGGC no longer holds, as the most important relationship, love for the Lord, which Jesus called the greatest commandment. The CGGC no longer takes firm stands on any biblical truth, as the recently adopted revision of We Believe makes clear.

6. A Middle Ages Approach to Leadership. Perhaps the most harmful achievement of CGGC elites is the creation of a 'laity.' In its early years, the Church of God had significantly attained the priesthood of all believers. Recently, however, CGGC higher ups have transformed the typical participant in a CGGC congregation into a mere consumer of religious products and services supplied by the parish clergy and their higher ups.

7. Strong Central Planning Coupled with Lower Level Clergy and Congregational Rebellion. It is not enough to suggest that the CGGC is becoming clergy and higher up dominated. (See item 6) Even in the expanding CGGC clergy world, there are extremes in power from the bottom of the clergy pyramid to its peak. Higher ups in denominational headquarters and in regional offices act from a sense of power that no Roman Catholic Pope would dream of. However, in response, many pastors outside of the good-old-boy leadership network, and most local CGGC congregations, ignore and sometimes defy (always without consequence), the authority of the leaders located in the denomination's central planning offices. (See also, item 13.)

8. Cynicism. As much as our higher up are shepherds seeking peace, calm and quiet among the pastors and congregations of the CGGC, there is a stifling atmosphere of cynicism among our pastors and congregations toward those in CGGC seats of power. (See item 7.) There is also cynicism flowing from leadership down into the body. This cynicism flows in every direction: From the top down, from the bottom up and horizontally among factions in the body.

9. A Rodney King: "Can-We-All-Just Get-Along?" Doctrine of the Church. The CGGC in the Era of Shepherd Domination--that emerged in the first third of the twentieth century--is concerned with engendering and maintaining a sense of peace and quiet in the flock so much so that radical obedience to Jesus is no longer part of its identity and 'speaking the truth in love' never happens. The effort has been failing for generations. (See items 7 and 8.)

10. To Talk is to Walk-ism. According to the New Testament, a follower of Jesus is one who possesses a faith that organically produces acts of obedience to God's will. (Matthew 7:21-23, 24-26, 25:1-46; John 14:15; 2 Cor. 5:10; Eph. 2:8-10; Jas. 2:12-26; Rev. 2-3). However, CGGC faith is disconnected from action. It is possible to talk CGGC talk without walking it. Hence, for example, the GC Mission and Vision Statements that are not lived out--and virtually no one notices.

11. Cheap Grace. The CGGC calls people to easy-beliefism. Jesus said that anyone who doesn't hate his father and mother isn't worthy of Him. There was a time, in its founding generation, that the Church of God called sinners to a radically changed way of life. Dietrich Bonheoffer (who coined the phrase, cheap grace) could have been viewing today's CGGC when he wrote: "...cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ."

12. False, Flock-focused Righteousness. One need only read the first part of the Sermon of the Mount to understand that right living, as radically defined by Jesus, is key to discipleship. In the CGGC, however, righteousness is defined as a local parish, or flock, achieving consistent growth in parish/flock-oriented activities such as 'worship service' attendance not, as Jesus taught, disciples serving each other and caring for the least of the brothers and sisters of Jesus and going to all nations making disciples.

13. Incoherence. There is illogic and outright contradiction among the things the CGGC claims to be true about itself. There is also lack of consistency between what it says and what it does.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Dialog on Ed's Role in Who's to Blame, TC, MLI, Theological Conflict over the Doctrine of the Church, Reggie McNeal, Alan Hirsch, etc.

Bill, Let me begin with the first question: I'm confused, wasn't the conference working with Reggie McNeal sometime ago? We are still paying BIG bucks to him as resource person for MLI--as far as I know. Did we ever leave him and begin with Alan Hirsch? Well, I think the seminary is doing something with Hirsch in their church planting program. BTW, Reggie and Hirsch deeply admire each other and recommend each other's works, as far as I know. and now we are on to Transformational Church. Which is significantly a Rainer/Geiger thing. When I was doing MLI, Reggie expressed revulsion to me personally over their book, Simple Church, which is hyper old-school.

If this is true, I would think the leaders would take a hard look at how this affects the body. As an example. we simply don't know exactly what we are supposed to do. The 13th of my Thirteen Characteristics of the CGGC brand is:

13. Incoherence. The truth for which we have abundant evidence is that there is illogic and outright contradiction among the things we claim to be true about us and there certainly is lack of consistency between what we say about ourselves and what we do.

So, bingo, my friend. You have hit the nail on the head.

Add to this the fact that you want us to repent? Well, of course, as you've pointed out in the past, they don't want to repent themselves AND, it is their instinct, as shepherds, to soothe, in others, what Paul calls the "godly sorrow" that "produces repentance which leads to salvation." So, if some CGGCers were on the path to repentance, our leaders would try to stop it from happening.

Second question: Sometime ago you were strongly missional "whatever that means"? Now you are strictly prophetic. If you have taken a journey to find your true calling shouldn't you, too, be more patient with the body as we are trying to discover your passion for the C.G.G.C. ? Good question. I am still missional.

What I have problems with is when, in a shepherd-mafia world, a word becomes central to a fad, that word soon loses its meaning and, in the end, has no distinct meaning at all. Clearly, that has happened with the word missional--ESPECIALLY in the CGGC. We are pouring huge amounts of money into MLI yet now beating the drum for TC, which spits in the face of a missional theology of the church.

As far as my lack of patience is concerned, I could write a book. But, I can't see a single patient call for repentance in the Word. If you can show me one, I will reconsider.

Sometimes you remind me of Christian Swartz who wrote the manual on NCD. It was so scholarly guys like me couldn't understand it. Jack Selcher did a wonderful job on rewriting the information so the ants could digest it and use it as an aid for ministry.

You just placed a post from a contributor who wants to dismantle the C.G.G.C. for a year and apparently start over. Whoa! Dismantle the CGGC? You are the last person I would have expected to equate the inner-most core of Executive Directors and Directors in the CGGC with the CGGC itself! Wassup with that!?

And, I think you misunderstand the purpose of that proposal. That person wants to elevate the individual CGGC congregations--to the point that the theology of the proposal may be more congregational than presbyterial.

If the contributor wants the leaders to go with out a paycheck I would suggest we all go without one. Well, because I don't receive a paycheck for what I do at Faith, I'm, of course, all for that.

Also, understand that I enter posts and proposals sent to me because I consider them worthwhile, not because I necessarily endorse them. I have said that this proposal, in my opinion, reflects New Testament practice far better than TC does. Do you disagree? But, I'm not recommending adopting it out of whole cloth. Unfortunately I'm too carnal, so I will quit and get a job working for __ __ __________ where I get paid for what I do. As I myself have gotten another job.

You are not at all alone in your thinking. I have two books, one by Craig Groeschell called "The Christian Atheist" another by David Platt called "Follow Me" and a article in Touch Stone Magazine which is a Catholic publication and all say the same thing you are saying.

The article in TouchStone is a scholarly article telling us how we got here. Without a doubt you are spot on. The problem is, you allow the body to put all the blame on Ed. He is simply like me and the rest of us. YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THIS. As long as you preach to Ed, you are letting us, me off the hook. MY failures can be blamed on Ed because I can say "He never told me? I don't know anyone personally who puts the blame only on Ed. Even I don't do that. But, Ed, with his resistance to repentance and his relentless pursuit of old ways, is the key to CGGC change.

I do think that Wayne Boyer laid the groundwork for moving toward what McNeal and Hirsch and Platt and Francis Chan advocate and Ed has undone what Wayne was beginning to empower.

But, is Ed to blame? How about the whole GC staff and the ERC staff, who lead with very much the same church-focused theology? How about the GC Ad Council? How about the GC delegates who voted for We Believe and the new credentials document. Ed bears blame, no doubt. But, he hasn't put a gun to one person's head--as far as I know.

What I do think, as I said, is that Ed's the key to repentance and to turning from old ways. (We won't repent during his tenure as E.D. unless he repents first.)

Your work is good, your focus is too narrow.

In conclusion The Church is alive and well! As Steve Brown would say, "You think about this"? Bill I love you to life,

As you may know, I read Revelation 2 and 3 regularly. When I see comparisons to today's church, I don't see "The church is alive and well." (I do know that the Lord of the Church is alive and well.) The Lord repeatedly gives me these words specifically for the CGGC and, in a more general way, for most of Western Christianity:

"You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent." (Rev. 3:17-19)

We must repent.

Friday, November 15, 2013

THREAD 2: An Innovative, Constructive, Positive, Specific and Practical Apostolic Proposal--One Plan for Repentance

Gang,

I mentioned that I am engaged in two private conversations in response to my blog entry on the liberal Democrat model that CGGC leadership has adopted. I call them THREADS 1 and 2. To avoid chaos, I'm going to enter the conversation of THREAD 2 as a separate blog.

As you will see, THREAD 2 presents a specific, 8 point, proposal regarding how our body might correct the abuses coming from the unbiblical and highly secular leadership model General Conference staff has adopted. Note, in this proposal, actual reference to biblical truth, something absent from communication from leadership.

As I sometimes say, there are people who see what's going on in the CGGC who feel more passionately and speak more strongly than even I would. I am not alone. Indeed, I am not even the most passionate or outspoken. AND, as you will see, the truth is that there are others who are more radical in rejecting what goes on in Findlay than am I. THREAD 2 comes from one of those people.

What follows is an an email I received. Below it I will include a preliminary response to that email.

I invite public (on the blog) or private (by email) conversation centered on this proposal.

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Here's what I was thinking as I read your blog which, by the way, was spot on, as usual. Let me set forth an acid test that I think will determine whether there is a biblically mandated need for the CGGC to have a separate level of "elite spiritual leadership" beyond the local church level. Here is that test:

Have all the full-time executive directors, assistant directors, leaders, and paid staff at both the denominational and regional level take a one-year unpaid leave of absence from their positions (this will be hard, but the Lord does challenge us to make sacrifices for the glory of His name and the building up of His church). It may also help those displaced from their church-supported paid positions to have to wake up each day and labor in the world among the unbelievers (1 Peter 2:11-12), using their talents and skills to find and hold onto a job (hopefully with some kind of health benefit package that's remotely affordable...), much like all the members of the flock must do on a daily basis.

Have a new approach to spiritual leadership integrated into the life and fabric of the churches based on the APEST model.

Have local congregations identify and set apart those who are gifted and called to serve as apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherd-teachers in the churches in their particular geographic area.

Have all decision-making authority returned to the local churches throughout the denomination.

Have all the money that would have been spent on staff salaries, benefits, and expenses invested in feeding and clothing the poor, supporting our apostles and evangelists, and providing for those in financial need at the local church level.

Have no new church-growth, church-health, or church-anything initiatives emanate from Findlay or any regional office throughout the denomination for the next 12 months.

Have the local churches (members and elders and deacons) assume full-responsibility for the spiritual life and ministry of that church.

Have an assessment done at the end of the 12-month period to determine if the churches are spiritually stronger or weaker as a result of not having full-time, paid executive directors, assistants, and staff dictating to all the local churches what should, or should not, be done to further the cause of Christ in the world. Bottom line: Will the congregations be better off, or worse off, as a result of not having the spiritual elite macro- and micro- managing the Body of Christ???? Would the hierarchical-based denominational leadership structures even be missed????

I think that at the end of 12 months we would see a fulfillment of that classic adage: sometimes less is more. Perhaps the time has really come in the CGGC to stop talking about how good Reggie's recommendations are (The Present Future- 6 Tough Questions For The Church), and to begin a concerted effort to put them into practice ("Now that you know these things, you will be blessed IF YOU DO THEM" --John 13:17).

Just one person's thoughts...

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(My reply:)

My friend,

Thanks for the careful reading of what I wrote and for the investment of time and passion in formulating this response.

As you know, I think of you as being gifted with the calling to be an apostle. In my opinion, what you have sent me is fruit of that calling. It is innovative, constructive, positive, specific and practical. Those five fruit, are, in my opinion, among the fruit of an apostle walking in the Holy Spirit and in his/her calling. At this point, no other apostles connected to the CGGC are producing that fruit.

Apart from commenting on the specifics of your proposal, I will, first, offer this observation: The very nature of your response is fruit of the difference between you and all of the other apostles contributing to the CGGC today. It is fruit of how they need to repent. What other CGGC apostles are doing is fruit of a foolish submission to the values of the CGGC's human shepherd-dominated leadership and not to the Lord. The CGGC's leadership is moving to strengthen the CGGC as an institution and to enhance its top-heavy leadership hierarchy. What those apostles are doing is not intentionally attuned to the truth of the Word--at least, they never mention the Word's teachings as authority for what they do.

Thank you for adding this proposal to the conversation. What the body does with it, is between it and the Lord.

I will enter it on the blog as a separate blog entry to highlight its importance.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

A Classic Democrat Party Liberal Leadership Model

Consider this:

A people with a history and a vision which value equality and respect for all--even, ESPECIALLY, for those people who might, by others' standards, be viewed as powerless and common. That people's history and their vision demand that interaction among the people be rooted in equality and be driven by respect for all because all of them are equal in the eyes of God.

Now, however, the vision of the founders is threatened by an increasingly authoritarian and powerful elite located in its capital city. This powerful elite has become far more authoritarian than it was originally intended to be. It is a power base which is now seeking to strengthen, more than ever, its control over the actions of the people.

The claim for increased centralized authority comes through the introduction of yet another PROGRAM, a program which no one asked for nor is it wanted by most of the people!

This new program was specifically designed to address the issue of health. It was devised, in secret, by the powerful elite, which is convinced--more than ever--that it alone knows what's best for their unwarshed masses.

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This is not a description of Obama Care.

It is a description of the latest CGGC church health denominational program devised in Findlay by a small group of CGGC elites who determined that the time has come for another centrally planned CGGC program.

The creators of the program sought absolutely no input nor did they provide any opportunity for feedback from outside the leadership core--either from the "laity" or even non-elite clergy--before they launched the program as a finished product.

If Americans know the Affordable Care Act as Obama Care, it is, then, appropriate to call this latest Findlay-based, church health boondoggle, i.e., Transformational Church, Rosenberry Care.

The vision the founders of the Church of God embraced for our movement has been stolen to the degree that none of that vision now remains among the powerful.

While John Winebrenner's Church of God once maintained that every believer is a priest; while the movement once operated as a radical democracy in which it was assumed that all of its members were merely sinners saved by faith in Jesus Christ; while the Church of God once embraced the belief in spiritual equality among all of saints, the CGGC no longer practices those core beliefs--especially not in Findlay.

The CGGC now possesses an ever-increasingly steep leadership hierarchy in which those who reside in the highest positions of power function as privileged elites without regard for the gifts and wisdom the Holy Spirit provides to those outside of their small circle.

The elite do this with an unabashed sense of entitlement.

They seem to feel no shame.

They offer no apology.

They sit, contentedly, in their offices and gather in their committee rooms. From their lofty perches, they devise programs, convinced that they know better and that they can determine what is best for the rest.

Dangerously, however, unlike the US President and his cabinet and members of the US House of Representatives and Senate, the CGGC elite never stand before the unwarshed to face reelection.

And, based on the recent role out of Transformational Church as a done deal, they have no interest in the cares and the opinions of the unwarshed.

In truth, CGGC elites are in a position to dictate. And, dictate is what they have recently done in announcing our own Obama Care--Transformational Church, i.e., Rosenberry Care--as a finished product.

Their message?

"You can take it or leave it but you can't stop us from doing it."

The truth is that, no matter what the political convictions of the individual members of the CGGC's shepherd-dominated leadership culture may be, when our shepherd mafia is permitted to function unchecked by the Holy Spirit-created 'checks and balances' of the rest of the Body of Christ in the CGGC, it always leads in the way American liberal Democrats do when the Democrats have a stranglehold on political power in Washington.

Think of the numerous programs FDR and the Democrats created in the 30s when there was no effective opposition. Think of LBJ's War on Poverty, passed after his landslide in 1964. And, of course, consider the manner is which the current President was able to foist Obama Care on the American populace over the strenuous objections of tens of millions.

Now, look at the latest CGGC news.

It seems that shepherds feel obligated to lead as liberals in the American Democrat party govern. When they feel the whim, the shepherds inevitably create new programs which make themselves--and not Jesus, not His entire Body--central to what the CGGC does.

With the creation of Transformational Church they prove again that they mimic liberal American Democrats and that they don't submit to the authority of Jesus or of God's Word.

Jesus never devised a program. There is nary one program in the Book of Acts. But FDR, LBJ and Barack Obama produced central-planning programs as naturally as they breathe--as does the CGGC's shepherd-dominated leadership.

How John Winebrenner and his brothers and sisters who founded the Church of God with a radical New Testament vision must be spinning in their graves!

Just where in the New Testament is the authority for elites to create programs for the consumption of others in Christ's Body?

Where did our elites even attempt to provide a biblical basis for what they've done?

No one I know of in the CGGC was asking for another program. In fact, many CGGC people I know have a terminal case of program poisoning.

Some of us--perhaps many of us, perhaps even most of us--reject the very notion of elites foisting any program on the body.

Many resent the fact that the people in our seats of power now seem to be patting themselves on their backs for devising this clever new church health program, supposing that they've done the rest of us a favor.

Ask yourself: Have any of the programs devised by our elites in the past ever achieved their goals?

We should reject Rosenberry Care. There is no authority for it in "the New Testament plan."

We should also, finally and forcefully, reject the leadership culture, as well as the leaders, who think they are helping us by producing the denominational program, Transformational Church.

We must turn from their sin.

We must turn from them.

We must turn to the Word of God.

We must repent!