With that in mind, then, you may consider the leadership of the ERC to have been prescient because it had, during Conference sessions just two weeks earlier, suggested that ERC churches include language in their official documents declaring that the "___________________ Church of God" only performs weddings between one man and one woman.
Three thoughts:
1. As always, ERC (and the entire CGGC) leadership seeks an institutional remedy to a spiritual problem in the culture.
What difference is it going to make on the Day that the Son of Man appears in His glory, along with the angels, and sits on His glorious throne and separates the people of the world as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats that the ____________________ Church of God has language in its legal documents protecting itself, on an institutional level, from the need to allow a same sex wedding on its premises?
The issue the church faces is one of righteousness and sin, not of institutional insulation.
2. Consider the exponential rate at which institutional (especially Evangelical) Christianity is being insulated from mainstream American culture.
At this moment, history is changing in a way that it does only once in every thousand years or more. What the Roman Emperor Constantine began to put in place 1,700 years ago is finally and suddenly collapsing--as we read the daily headlines.
To me, though, what is truly timely in all of this, is not the sudden acceptance of same sex marriage.
Even more significant is the recent Time Magazine cover which identifies the struggle for transgender equality as the next Civil Rights movement saying, "Nearly a year after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, another social movement is poised to challenge deeply held cultural beliefs" and identifying that movement as the struggle for transgender acceptance.
To me, though, what is truly timely in all of this, is not the sudden acceptance of same sex marriage.
Even more significant is the recent Time Magazine cover which identifies the struggle for transgender equality as the next Civil Rights movement saying, "Nearly a year after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, another social movement is poised to challenge deeply held cultural beliefs" and identifying that movement as the struggle for transgender acceptance.
The institutional Evangelical American church is now on the defensive--as the ERC's move to protect its churches makes clear.
Institutional Evangelical Christianity is, suddenly, the dinosaur on the American landscape. The world in which it was fit to exist has evaporated away more rapidly than we could have dreamed--and the rate of change is quickening.
Institutional Evangelical Christianity is, suddenly, the dinosaur on the American landscape. The world in which it was fit to exist has evaporated away more rapidly than we could have dreamed--and the rate of change is quickening.
Think for a moment: Because the CGGC has become thoroughly institutionized, what defensive, institutional remedy will CGGC leadership now concoct to preserve the sanctity of, for example, its churches' bathrooms in anticipation of the day that a person who is biologically a man sues the XYZ Church of God because it discriminates against his spiritual need to use the women's potty?
What bylaw might it suggest to preserve the purity of its nurseries and children's Sunday School class rooms when a transvestite sues in court to serve there?
And, what unrighteous, yet culturally-accepted, movement will come after this one? And, how quickly will that movement gain momentum?
What bylaw might it suggest to preserve the purity of its nurseries and children's Sunday School class rooms when a transvestite sues in court to serve there?
And, what unrighteous, yet culturally-accepted, movement will come after this one? And, how quickly will that movement gain momentum?
Can anyone else see how quickly the institutional American church is becoming a laughingstock in mainstream American culture?
The truth to which the institutional Evangelical church must adapt is that institutional Christianity has, from the days of Constantine, required the existence of a culture that looks to it as the institution which upholds its moral values.
The relationship between church and culture that makes institutional Evangelical Christianity viable is broken and it is not likely to be repaired.
The church as an institution is no longer viable in the United States.
Suddenly, institutional Christianity is the Edsel.
The truth to which the institutional Evangelical church must adapt is that institutional Christianity has, from the days of Constantine, required the existence of a culture that looks to it as the institution which upholds its moral values.
The relationship between church and culture that makes institutional Evangelical Christianity viable is broken and it is not likely to be repaired.
The church as an institution is no longer viable in the United States.
Suddenly, institutional Christianity is the Edsel.
3. American Christians need, immediately, to refashion their understanding of what kind of person is spiritually fit to provide them what they call leadership.
It may already be too late for this to make a difference for Evangelical denominational Christianity in America.
In the CGGC, specifically, we need to take stock of the fact that the people who lead us are not taking us into the future. They produce fruit of wanting to take the CGGC back into the Middle Ages.
Right now the eNews articles are about how Ed spent his EASTERTIDE.
Eastertide?
Eastertide!
The second to last edition of The Church Advocate strongly recommended the celebration of Lent--which was all the rage in Middle Ages Catholicism a thousand years ago--in the CGGC.
In the ERC, we were recently favored by articles written by the Executive Director and his wife on the spiritual value and importance of the observance of Holy Week.
Those who sit in CGGC staff offices are promoting a Medieval version of the church at the very moment when the culture is saying that the intimate connection between culture and Christianity that gave birth to Medieval Christianity is precisely what it neither wants nor needs! Oh, how John Winebrenner would have cringed!
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In the CGGC, specifically, we need to take stock of the fact that the people who lead us are not taking us into the future. They produce fruit of wanting to take the CGGC back into the Middle Ages.
Right now the eNews articles are about how Ed spent his EASTERTIDE.
Eastertide?
Eastertide!
The second to last edition of The Church Advocate strongly recommended the celebration of Lent--which was all the rage in Middle Ages Catholicism a thousand years ago--in the CGGC.
In the ERC, we were recently favored by articles written by the Executive Director and his wife on the spiritual value and importance of the observance of Holy Week.
Those who sit in CGGC staff offices are promoting a Medieval version of the church at the very moment when the culture is saying that the intimate connection between culture and Christianity that gave birth to Medieval Christianity is precisely what it neither wants nor needs! Oh, how John Winebrenner would have cringed!
-------------------------------
Please understand: I like all of the guys who sit at the top of all the CGGC pyramids.
I know them and consider them all to be perfectly sincere and entirely well-intentioned. I accept the reality that most, if not all of them, genuinely believe that the best future for the CGGC is one in which we all think about how we spent Eastertide and that we all entered Eastertide after a sincere celebration of Lent and a pious observation of Holy Week--i.e., that we do all what the best Christians did in the year A.D. 800.
But, times have changed.
Times are changing more rapidly with each passing decade.
And the world in which the Son of God became flesh and lived is not calling for the witness of the church that existed a thousand or more years ago.
We need to change what's at the top of our pyramid--if we are to have any future.
It seems to me that there are six ways people have changed CGGC leadership or could change it if they wished to:
ReplyDelete1. Leave the CGGC. During my decades in the CGGC, THOUSANDS have done this. We are in decline not only because congregations are failing to reach new people. Our decline is also a function of the reality that many have become fed up with the direction leaders have chosen and they simply either left the Body of Christ entirely or they left the CGGC.
2. Become cynical about CGGC leadership. Second to the choice to leave, this is the second most commonly chosen option. Hundreds simply roll their eyes with each leadership initiative. They are "anti-conference pastors" or part of "anti-conference congregations." They hold themselves apart from the rest of the CGGC body. Often, they regard themselves as being above the CGGCers who follow leadership.
3. Call for change in leadership. Considering the track record of CGGC leaders, it is not surprising that may either simply complain or gossip about what "they" should be doing or actually offer constructive criticism. Sadly, those who complain or who gossip seem to be the majority of those who call for change.
4. Live Change. This is the option I have chosen. Certainly I am very verbal about some of what I think leaders do that is misguided or even theologically corrupt. But, I and some others, walk our talk both by not doing what we believe is wrong and also by living an alternate CGGC lifestyle.
People who call for change often become cynical. People who live change either remain constant or they leave the CGGC. The CGGC suffers from the loss of many very good people who have shaken the CGGC dust from their feet.
5. The leaders actually repent. So far, this remains only a theoretical possibility. What we continue to hear from leaders is that all is well.
6. The leaders resign either by choice or under pressure. This, again, is only a theoretical possibility. So far, leaders seem too content with what they are accomplishing and the discontented in the CGGC are too happy either to leave, to join the cynical or to merely talk change.
By, the world has passed the CGGC by. We need to do something.
Partial quotes from two below-the-radar replies to this thread are included below:
ReplyDeleteFirst:
Bill, I read your last article and have found it to be your best post to date. in the past you’ve stated the purpose for writing (repentance) no with clarity you have stated why.
I feel most churches want to be renewed but not with what happened 75 years ago.
Next:
bill,
again i see a tirade against a problem to which you present no answer, only criticism. you suggest changing leadership, and yet provide so little in the way of your own. neither Christ, nor john, nor peter, nor paul preached a turning from sin without also preaching what, and often how, to turn to.
i love you as a brother, but until you can be part of the solution and not just point out the problems, please stop sending me your writings.
It's hard to believe that these people read exactly the same words.
Kierkegaard is renowned for his assertion that "subjectivity is truth." Clearly, he had a point.
No doubt, these two people speak for many others on both sides of this disagreement.
The gift of prophecy, which no one else in the CGGC practices, will always have this effect--whether it is the fruit of a true or a false prophet. In my response to the second email I said,
"In my blog, I wrote what I believed the Lord wanted me to write. If you think I am a false prophet, obey what the Word commands of you for my sake and the church's."
As I've done many times in the past, I extend this invitation to all who think I am not the Lord's prophet.
Further conversation on the Same Sex Marriage thread appears below. (please excuse an problems with formatting)
ReplyDeleteFrom an email to me:
Bill I’m reading and TRYING to understand a book I have entitled “Making Gay Okay” by Robert R. Reilly from Ignatius press. It may have catholic over pinning's but is not written from a religious perspective. The key is, I’m trying to understand. The more I do understand I realize I’m not the one who is wrong,
so I don’t need to change, nor will I change. Of all the things I read two catholic journals help me the most when it comes to social ills. That as far as I go with catholic teaching.
I would think with all those who have a Dr. degree in the conference there would be more Theological treatises coming out. Our general response to the social ills of today are very superfluous.
In another matter the person who accused you of asking us to turn and repent but never telling us where to turn is basically sleepwalking. In scripture repenting always means turning from wrong to right. How tuff is that?
Repenting is tuff because over time we rationalize that what we do is right and become angry with those who don’t agree. Rationalizing will kill us in time. Example: we have cancer but we rationalize it’s just an ach or pain although in our hearts we know the problem is serious. You get the point!
My reply:
My Friend,
This is good stuff.
I can see the possibility of a new sort of communication between Catholics and, um, "Evangelicals" but there will have to be some repentance from both parties.
In its most pure definition, an evangelical today is someone who identifies with the theology of the Reformation. While Winebrenner called for 'another great Reformation,' thus declaring the first one to have failed, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (as I understand him) declared that Luther got it right. Bonhoeffer claimed that he was being true to Luther in his opposition to the Nazis and, more importantly, his denunciation of cheap grace and promotion of costly grace.
What Bonhoeffer saw in the Reformation and what you find in Catholic journals gives me a small measure of hope.
However, as far as we are concerned in the CGGC, one of two things will need to happen for us to have a relevant outreach to our culture:
1. Either our "cheap gracer(s)" in Findlay will repent, or
2. The CGGC body will have to toss him/them out or go another direction is setting up the next regime (if there is still time then).
For now, keep reading what you are reading--and, of course, put it into action. What you find may be key to a tweaking of institutionalized Christianity that could create some relevance for it in a not-too-distant-future time.
Also, the person who responded to me negatively, I believe, has a faulty understanding of what prophets are gifted to be and do in the Kingdom of God. We are having trouble connecting through email in conversation about that issue but I'm hopeful that we can reach a common understanding. He has a good and sincere heart and wants to pursue Kingdom goals, though, I believe, he has soured on the CGGC.
Blessings.