Spiritual Gifts
35,000 by 2000
Natural Church Development
The Externally Focused Church
Missional Leadership Initiative
Hear the Call
Just an off-the-top-of-my-head, certainly incomplete, list of ideas embraced by CGGC leadership in recent decades.
And...they all came to nothing.
And...here we go again.
The CGGC is in a free-fall decline and has been for all of the time these ideas were being adopted.
Our body has a track record of jumping on bandwagons. More accurately, of jumping from bandwagon to bandwagon.
And the decline not only continues. It accelerates.
Two of my characteristics of the CGGC Brand are inseparably connected. They speak to a gross dysfunction in the way our body behaves.
Leadership embraces legitimate concepts and presents them as the answer to all of the body's woes. And, most of the people in the body--having seen this before MANY TIMES--roll their eyes, mutter the here we go again thing, ignore what is currently rolling down from the mountaintop and, really, become angry about the faddish bagonwagonism that, it seems, will never end. This is cynicism. And, it is every bit as much a sin as leadership's faddism. And it is as much a part of the core of our identity as the faddism.
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To the point: leadership is now calling the body to make disciples. To make disciples is, unquestionably essential to a life of obedience to the lordship of Jesus.
But the body knows that nearly every past fad embraced by church leadership has been biblical and essential. And, the body believes, with a ton of evidence to support the belief, that it's extremely likely that in six months to a year leadership will not be encouraging disciple making but will have already hopped on to another bandwagon.
So...we won't get serious about making disciples.
And, our decline will continue to accelerate.
We must repent of this futile, failed and dysfunctional cycle.
Bill, you should know that there are many of us including many of my students at WTS who are serious about making disciples, are doing it and are teaching their people to do so. STEVE DUNN
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteI am glad to hear that you and many of your students at the seminary are committed to making disciples.
However, from out here in the wilderness at least I can't see that "many" in the CGGC are serious about making disciples.
From what I'm seeing, in most of the CGGC, pastors are still providing religious products and services for the laity to consume.
In the past, there were always some engaged the effort to move the body forward with the trends I listed in my post. And, as I recall, you have always been among them. Still, in the end, the body chose to wallow in its failing tradition.
I hope that, this time around you and others AND I, succeed in calling forth a remnant. But, the Word and church history show me that that won't happen without the godly sorrow over past ways and an intentional act of repentance.
Otherwise, Faddism/Cynicism will prevail.
Again.
One other comment, Steve:
ReplyDeleteWhile I am happy to hear that you and many of your students are serious about making disciples, knowing the history of the CGGC for the past 80 years or so, before I am comforted about the reality of what you are doing, I will need to know what you and the others think a disciple is.
After all, the entire 35,000 by 2000 program proved to be a fruitless fiasco and its theme was, "More and Better Disciples."
And, the CGGC has had a Mission Statement since 2010 stating that "...we commit ourselves to make more and better disciples..."
And, we continue to be in free fall while the idea of disciple making has been in our minds for more than 20 years.
It seems to me that, unless you and many of your students a shamed and embarrassed, overwhelmed with what Paul calls "godly grief," over our body's record as far as discipleship is concerned, you don't have a Jesus-focused definition of disciple making in mind.
Our body needs to begin this journey with a discussion of truth--and more importantly-- of ERROR.