"Rhetoricalism:" The Root of Many CGGC Sins

One of my favorite preachers is the ERC's E. D., Kevin Richardson.  Kevin's preaching, at least his preaching that I hear, is missional and radical--even apostolic.  Sadly, I normally have the opportunity to hear Kevin preach only once each year--as a part of ERC Conference sessions.

Every year I've heard Kevin speak, the same two-part phenomenon has taken place: 

1. Kevin describes, from the Word, radical truths about the way a disciple of Jesus Christ should live--and His Body should function.  (Each of these truths, incidentally, have, at the time, aligned with my own struggle for obedience.)
2. Everyone I know who hears him preach these vibrant messages seems to agree with Kevin and to be inspired to think as he thinks.  Yet, from year to year, no one I encounter produces fruit of being changed from living tradition-bound ways due to Kevin's radical preaching.

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I am a past participant in the CGGC's Missional Leadership Initiative, which operates on a two year cycle and is resourced by the missional guru, Reggie McNeal.

During the last part of the very last session my MLI group met with McNeal, Reggie cautioned us: "Don't let your commitment to mission be merely rhetorical."

He implied that it is possible for evangelicals, especially, to allow themselves to be convinced that by believing in being missional that they are actually being missional.  It is possible for people to go one step further and to argue and to debate for a missional theology and yet, without reservation, continue to behave in a non-missional way.

I have no idea why Reggie chose to say that to a CGGC MLI group. 

I don't know if he had picked up on the fact that it is characteristic of the CGGC for its pastors and 'lay' leaders to fall prey to the temptation to think that to believe something--and even to argue in favor of it--is the equivalent of living out that belief.  Perhaps Reggie says that to everyone in every, as he would call it, tribe.  But, the fact is that, in the CGGC, rhetoricalism reigns.  We really do bear fruit of holding the conviction that to think a thought is to live it out.

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This explains what happens when Kevin preaches his powerful, pointed sermons to ERC Conference delegates.  In the CGGC ERC, at least, many people seem to be convinced that to hear a powerful sermon on radical discipleship, to agree with it--and perhaps even to steal that sermon--is to live in obedience to Jesus.

However, the Word of God contains the exact opposite teaching: 

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."  (Mt 7:24-27)

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments."  (John 14:15)

"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." (James 1:22)

The practice of rhetoricalism is the root of many of my characteristics of the CGGC brand.  Among them:

Traditionalism (set beside our radically outward-focused statements of faith and mission and vision.)

Faddism, which allows us to jump willynilly from one grand new strategy or program to another, even if the new one contradicts the previous one and/or what we say we believe or to embrace as our mission.

A Middle Ages View of Leadership under the authority of the new WE BELIEVE and MISSION STATEMENT which proclaim that the Bible is our "only" "rule." 

Cynicism: The natural result, in the CGGC body, of the frequent, abrupt and often contradictory, changes in direction conceived of by leadership.

To Talk is to Walk-ism, the characteristic most closely derived from rhetoricalism.  The one which takes the thinking that is the root of rhetoricalism and gives audible and written words to it.

Cheap Grace, which Bonhoeffer demonstrated is not grace at all but which has been the way of the CGGC for decades and which the CGGC avoids in thought, yet practices in action.

False, Flock-Based Righteousness which has no place in the Gospel Jesus lived and preached

and

Incoherence, my poorly chosen used to describe the fact that there is considerable contradiction among the things the CGGC says and does.  

By any standard, the CGGC is in a long cycle of decline.  Clearly, a root cause for that decline is this dangerous reality decried in the Word from Genesis to Revelation: We have allowed ourselves to think that thinking is living.  On the Day, it will not be.

We must repent.