Paradigm Change

In the catalog of fads embraced by the CGGC in the last generation please remember Paradigm Change.

Paradigm change is a bandwagon mountaintoppers jumped on during the failed, no disastrous, MORE AND BETTER DISCIPLES: 35,000 in Worship by 2000 campaign.

The truth is, however, that that campaign was not really paradigm change. It was really nothing more than a desperate attempt to tweak Shepherd Mafia flockism. And, it failed.

As far as I can tell, for the last 80 years, the CGGC has been mired in Shepherd Mafia flockism which vests so-called leadership in the parish priest and an increasingly large and authoritative institutional hierarchy.

And, that entire period has been a time of spiritual and, in time, numerical decline.

Let me be clear about something I have said on this blog many times, which few CGGCers, if any, seem to believe:

I love the people who are on the top of the CGGC mountain. 

While it's true that I regularly point out the continuing decline of the CGGC and place blame for it on the mountaintoppers, I do love all of the mountaintoppers I know personally and am anxious to find a reason to enthusiastically support them.

I am convinced that they need to throw out the failed paradigm and do it no matter what the cost may be to each of them personally.

It is the paradigm that is killing the CGGC. Our real problem is a values problem.  We need to repent of the values upon which Shepherd Mafia leadership is built.

We need to turn to Jesus and to build the CGGC part of His church on the foundation He created.

As I used to say on Brian Miller's blog, our problem is not micro. Part of this means that the problem is not with Lance and his staff and with the Regional E. Ds. and, if they have one, their staf. As I've been saying for years, ours is a macro problem. It is with the system, the structure.

It's true that the members of the hierarchies may lose their jobs if we turn to Jesus' values.  But, I call on all of those people to be willing to decrease so that Jesus and His Kingdom and His church may increase.

On the level of values, we must repent.