Church-Oriented, Inwardly-Focused

To the degree I am able, I keep my eyes open to note what's taking place in the CGGC world.

I recall the hopeful days when, empowered by Wayne Boyer and facilitated by Brian Miller's blog, a small, passionate core of CGGC people shared visionary dreams among each other.

In those days, we encouraged one another and spurred one another on to love and good works and we challenged and chastised the CGGC establishment for promoting a church, not Kingdom orientation and an inward, not outward focus.

So, where are we ten years later?

As I look around me, here's what I see: CGGC churches focusing, more than ever, on creating an extravagant Christmas Eve show to satisfy the congregation and to draw people into the church building.

My friends, we are backtracking and, don't lose the connection, we are declining.

For a moment I considered putting on Facebook, this note about our work here at Faith:

FAITH COMMUNITY:
No Christmas Eve Service,
No Christmas Day Service.
Serving the least of these 24/7/365.

I didn't enter it because, in the end, I concluded that Facebook wasn't the proper venu for that message.

But, I think the message has value. So, I'm putting it here.

The CGGC decline continues as its churchism and inwardism expands, as far as I can tell, exponentially.

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I just read Lance's eNews. It assumes we will all be engrossed in the special church building-located shows of the Christmas season while, at the same time, Lance reminds us of the incarnation and the fact that we also are sent out.

The focus on the show in the building and the message that we are sent into the world don't fit together.

I wish, rather than taking the extravaganzas as a given, that Lance would have taken a firm but loving shot at them.

The CGGC needs to trash those extravaganzas and be in the world.

Here at Faith, we have no shows for Christmas Eve or Christmas day. We are among the least of these, and serving them, all the time.