Thoughts about the ERC 2016 Yay God Sessions Beforehand

1.  The Conference took taken me off of its email list some time ago, which, in itself is interesting.  In the months since I have no longer received the email Newsletter or its Healthy Church Update, I have come to realize that there is an advantage in this to me.  Because of the greater metaphorical distance between the Conference and me, I find that I am better able to know the Conference by the fruit it produces--at least, the fruit I can see and smell and touch and taste. 

It has been nearly impossible for me even to get a link to the 2016 Yay God Journal but, in the end, recently, I did get a look at it.  That Journal provides fruit for all to inspect and, as Jesus says, to judge.

Having looked it over, my heart bleeds.

2.  Again this year, as almost every year, the ERC is working to perfect its Constitution.  This year, the mountaintoppers are suggesting several tweaks.  So much energy, so much passion devoted to getting the Constitution just right.  We are farther along than ever in pursuit of our passion to perfectly institutionalize our body. 

There is an incredible irony in this.  When John Winebrenner introduced his 27 point list of the faith and practice of the Church of God in 1844, he said,

The Church of God has no authoritative constitution...but the Bible. The Bible she believes to be the only creed, discipline, church standard, the test-book, which God ever intended his church to have.

How could it hurt us, really, to throw out the Constitution, de-incorporate and simply trust God's Word?

When do you suppose was the last time the ERC devoted energy and passion to getting our handling of the Bible correctly?  Well, He knows us by our fruit.

Very seriously: It seems to me that, at the level of the ERC mountaintop, the Conference has become everything that Winebrenner's opponents in the Harrisburg German Reformed Church in the 1820s wanted the church to be.

3.  As I've noted in the past, this is the Conference in which my fortieth anniversary in ministry is to be celebrated.  It, of course, isn't being celebrated, even acknowledged.

It strikes me that, in its handling of the touchy issue of how to acknowledge my years in the Conference, the ERC is producing fruit that is worth noting and, indeed, judging.

The ERC does a horrible job in dealing with truth, and by that I do not mean biblical truth (though that, too, is a problem).

When the ERC is confronted with a reality that is difficult, one of its strategies is to pretend away that reality.  That's what it has been done in the case of the fortieth anniversary of my ministry.  It's just pretending that my forty years of ministry didn't happen.  This is an extremely dysfunctional way of behaving.

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Because I have a full-time job, I will miss Conference again this year.  Again, my emotions over that fact are mixed.  One prominent emotion is sadness.  To all of my friends whom I only spoke face to face at Conference, I will miss you.

I do plan to attend next year's Yay God session, as a delegate, even if it is as a lay delegate.