Finally there is a new chapter in the continuing saga of the ERC's tenuous relationship with the people of Faith Community.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog here, the guy who holds the FCC check book recently wrote out a check to the ERC to assist in paying for insurance for ERC pastors' widows.
That act has become a part of the ERC/Faith Community story.
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After, according to rumors/gossip and other informal communication, the ERC removed my ministerial credentials, the Conference's Commission on Church Renewal asked George Jenson to email me to request, from me, the names of leaders within the congregation so there could be a conversation between the people of Faith and the Commission about the future relationship between Faith and the Conference.
The premise of that request was that my credentials had been removed.
In my response to George, I noted that I had not received word from anyone who has authority that action had been taken regarding my credentials.
I wrote to George that I would honor the Commission's request only when the status of my credentials was properly addressed.
As I've noted in previous reports to my Commission, no one from the Conference had discussed the recall of my credentials by that late point. To this date, no one has.
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So, the guy who holds the FCC check book (I'll call him Drew), sent a check to the ERC to assist in paying for insurance for ERC pastor's widows.
Apparently, the ERC Administrative Council took advantage of the information on the check to contact the people of Faith by going over my head and sending a letter directly to Drew.
The letter, written by Dave Williams, says that the Commission on Church Renewal has recommended to the Administrative Council that the Conference sever ties with Faith Community as a member congregation of the ERC.
Dave's next sentence in the letter is crucial. He says,
"We have contacted Bill Sloat to secure contact information of leaders within the congregation, but he refused to supply it."
(Dave goes on to say that the Ad Council decided to delay action pending communication from Drew or someone else from Faith. But if they hear nothing from Drew or someone else prior to the next Ad Council meeting, the Council will sever its relationship with Faith.)
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As I noted in an email I sent to Dave, he has born false witness against me in his letter.
I most certainly didn't refuse the request.
Dave's misrepresentation about me, TO THE PEOPLE WITH WHOM I LIVE OUT MY FAITH, is a very serious matter.
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For the moment, I will repeat an observation I have made a few times in the past:
Shepherd dominated leadership cultures, have serious problems with truth in two ways.
First, they are quick to disregard doctrinal truth when relationship problems appear.
Second, they have difficulty telling factual truth, as Dave demonstrates in his letter to Drew.
It was, well, a lie for Dave to claim that I refused to supply the information requested by the Commission. The truth is that I expressed that the concern that the issue of the status of my credentials should be addressed before the future of the relationship between Faith and the Conference be addressed.
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In my note to Dave, I pointed out that the Commission was suggesting the bizarre circumstance in which members of the Conference would share details relating to the status of my credentials in a face to face meeting with third parties before having that face to face meeting with me!
Does this amaze anyone other than me?
I asked Dave where he finds the biblical wisdom and obedience in that.
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If God is willing, I'll share more details and reflections at a later time.
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Please understand my reason for writing these posts. It has been the practice of the ERC to do all of these things in secret, under the cover of darkness. I am seeking to bring these events into the light.
Just a quick addendum to the beginning of this episode:
ReplyDeleteDrew did send a check to the ERC to assist in paying for insurance for ERC pastor's widows and the Ad Council responded by having Dave Williams send Drew a letter accusing me of refusing to supply information to the Commission on leaders at Faith...
...and informing Drew that it has provisionally decided to sever ties with our people at Faith.
BUT THE CONFERENCE DID KEEP THE MONEY.
Both Drew and I LOL-ed over that.
On the giving of the money to pay for insurance for ERC pastor's widows:
ReplyDeleteI actually fought long and hard and bitterly for Faith to give that offering. And I used up a lot of good will in the community here in order to get that check written.
One of the principles upon which our community is based, based on James 1, is that "religion that God our Father accepts" values giving to orphans and widows in their distress.
We believe that. And, we do it.
The issue with this offering is that only I felt strongly about giving to widows in an ERC context. And, as I say, I had to fight hard to get the whole gang here to agree to give it.
When they did, it was reluctantly.
And, now, with all of the brouhaha attached to the Dave Williams letter? It makes our people, if I read the sentiment correctly, more frustrated than ever with people who lead the institutionized church, or the CGGC version of the institutionized church anyway.
When George Jenson and I began our correspondence over the issue of a meeting between our people and the Commission, I wrote to George that, when a meeting takes place between the people of Faith and the Commission, the Commission will find that I am the best friend the Conference has here.
These days,that's more true than ever, though it seems that the Conference doesn't want the people of Faith as friends. Or, maybe if it's true that I am their best friend here, they have decided they don't need friends like me.
TO TALK IS TO WALK-ISM in the Action of the Commission on Church Renewal
ReplyDeleteThe CGGC Brand characteristic that talk is defined as action serves as the foundation of what the Commission on Church Renewal has done in this story and, quite honestly, my opposition to this sin is one of the materials that creates the foundation of my response to it.
This is how that works out:
When George Jenson initially contacted me to request the names of leaders within the congregation at Faith, he explained in a way that was transparent and unabashed that the Commission had had a careful discussion about what to do with Faith since, as he claimed, my credentials had been removed.
He explained that they considered what our POLITY demands.
They concluded that our POLITY demands that a congregation must have a credentialed pastor.
And, based on our polity alone, the Commission tookthe action it took.
But, what should the CGGC members of the Commission be using as their only rule of faith and practice?
CGGC/ERC polity?
No...
Since the days of John Winebrenner, our body has claimed the Bible as our only rule of faith and practice.
From the first email George sent to me through the letter sent to Drew by Dave Williams, there has not been one reference to the authority of the Word as the basis of what the Commission/Conference has done.
Should every congregation have a pastor? That's fine in CGGC polity.
But, show that to me in the teachings of Jesus.
Who was the pastor of the Corinthian church when Paul wrote to it or the Roman church or any of the churches the churches Paul wrote to?
The actions of the leaders of the ERC in this matter are built on a sand that is the unbiblical and purely institutionalized and humanly constructed polity of the ERC, not on the rock that Jesus mentions in Matthew 7.
That polity defies the authority of the Word which we hold up as our only rule of faith and practice.
Is it any wonder that the Lord of all power and grace and mercy and authority and love and blessing is not blessing the ERC? The CGGC?
We must repent!
For clarification of the facts: It is not the case that the Commission on Church Renewal concluded that "our POLITY demands that a congregation must have a credentialed pastor" in the way you stated above. We recognize that some of our churches go periods of time without an appointed pastor (credentialed). We also recognize that some of our churches have pastors with non-Churches of God credentials (and such situations have been sanctioned by the Conference). In my first correspondence with you on behalf of the Commission dated July 14, 2016, I stated, "Our goal is to address the situation that we as a Commission and Conference have been charged to remedy to remain faithful to our polity—we cannot have a leader whose credentials were removed overseeing one of our congregations." The issue is that we have a pastor (you) at Faith whose credentials were removed. Why do we believe this is against polity? Because by removing a given pastor's credentials, the Conference makes a pronouncement that the given pastor should NOT be serving in any of our churches (unless or until credentials are restored). That is the matter we as a Commission addressed. It is a matter totally different from the one you imply in your blog--your perception that the Commission concluded that a congregation must have a credentialed pastor. The actual matter addresses a situation where a church has a pastor serving it and a determination has been made that that pastor is no longer allowed to serve as such.
ReplyDelete-George C. Jensen
Thanks for the correction, George. I acknowledge truth in what you say.
ReplyDeleteBut, I will add that I resigned as the pastor of Faith several years ago and that, since then, the community here has been operating happily and pursuing the CGGC Mission and Vision Statements and abiding by and upholding the doctrinal statement and Statement of Faith of the CGGC since then.
The Conference's alleged action on my credentials notwithstanding, nothing has happened to impact the ministry of Faith or to lessen or increase our commitment to the CGGC and is mission or vision or doctrine. Based on my experience, we here at Faith are guided by CGGC mission, vision and doctrine far more faithfully than nearly every other congregation in the body.
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The point that I made, though, is that, in the CGGC, we are bound to submit to the authority of the Bible as our only rule of faith and practice and that, at no point has the Commission nor the Ad Council, through Dave, turned to the Word as authority for what it is doing.
While we, at Faith, wear ourselves out seeking to obey the Word as our only rule for what we believe and do, the only authority the ERC gives us is itself.
Very honestly, when I test the Conference's actions against the life and teaching of Jesus and of His early followers, I am unimpressed.
I would suggest that, if the Conference cares about us, that you speak our language, citing chapter and verse, as Winebrenner did.
Having said all of this, I thank you profoundly for entering into conversation with me. I suspect that others at the Conference level will wish you hadn't. You are a CGGC person of unusual courage. Your action blesses me more than you will ever know.
Where the Money Came from
ReplyDeleteI have become privy to some of the rumory, gossipy, ungracious comments made about me in the past, so forgive me for being a little proactively sensitive (paranoid) about the question of how Faith came to have money to make the offering.
From its beginnings, Faith was always diligent in paying its Conference tithe. Even during the time that the congregation was a traditional seeker sensitive, institutional church and was struggling financially it always saw its tithe to the Conference as its first financial obligation. It always paid up.
However, we haven't paid a tithe for several years now, BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE ANY INCOME.
We don't take an offering. There is no money coming in and, as the song says,"Nothin from nothin leaves nothin."
We had a decent sized piece of change left when we shut down operations as an institutional body and have used it, coin by coin, in two ways: To do what Jesus highlights in the Sheep and Goats teaching and to practice the religion that James says God our Father accepts as pure and faultless, as is the case with this offering.
We took this offering out of what little we still have left.
Evelyn and I talked about simply paying the offering out of our own funds, but, in the end, the rest of the body participated.
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If you are interested, we believe that Jesus teaches that tithing is a righteous act and I imagine that many of us practice that belief but we no longer funnel our giving through the church.
Jesus certainly never got close to teaching tithing to the local church, so we don't practice it.
As is typical, we do our best to live the righteousness Jesus and His first disciples taught and practiced.
And, that includes tithing but doesn't involve giving to or through the local church.
Before long, there will be nothing left in the church's funds. After that, we may do something like what Paul recommended in 1 Corinthians and set aside money together for a special purpose.
Anyway...
Bottom line: For the people who may have suspected that we're not tithing, the ain't nuthin to tithe.
Something Smells Bad in the Commission's Explanation
ReplyDeleteI truly appreciate George Jenson's clarification of the reasoning behind the decision of the Commission on Church Renewal to begin the process which has resulted in the provisional decision of the ERC Administrative Council to sever ties with our people here at Faith.
George is a person of integrity. His account of the content of his email to me last July is accurate--to the point that it reveals the action of the Commission to be flawed from the beginning.
As I said in my response to George, I resigned as the pastor of Faith many years ago.
What I didn't note in my response to George, is that the Conference removed my name from the roster of the pastors of churches in the ERC Conference docket and in the ERC Directory.
The point being that the Commission on Church Renewal can't claim ignorance of my status at Faith.
Dave Williams, who sent the letter to Drew, is the ERC Director of Congregational Care, and is the ERC staff person who works with the Conference's Commission on Church and Pastor. He, of all the people in the Conference, would have known that I had not been Faith's pastor for years.
So, when George says, on behalf of the Commission, "...we cannot have a leader whose credentials were removed overseeing one of our congregations," George is not dealing in fact.
I was not the pastor of Faith. I HAD NOT BEEN THE PASTOR OF FAITH FOR A LONG TIME.
And, I was not overseeing the ministry at Faith. I had not served in that capacity for years.
And, if for some reason, those facts were unknown to anyone else on the Commission, they were well known to Dave Williams, who works with the Commission on Church and Pastor.
I can guess at what the truth might be behind the actions of the Commission and ERC staff in initiating the process that is leading, apparently, to the decision of the Conference to sever ties with our people here at Faith. But, that would only be a guess.
Obviously, the truth is not contained in the story that the Commission is telling through George.
That story doesn't align with the facts, from the very beginning of the story.
As I said at the beginning of this comment, I know George to be a person of integrity. I have known him for nearly 25 years and I have never doubted his honesty. While I am a bit confused, I still trust George's integrity.
The truth is, though, something in the Commission's story stinks. It is not true.
A question I'm asking here is, does the truth matter at all in the ERC?
More ruminations about whether truth matters in the ERC:
ReplyDeleteIt is striking to me that the Commission on Church Renewal would be as sloppy as it is in telling its side of the story of the action it is taking in regard to Faith.
It's saying that it felt the need to do something as far as Faith is concerned because, it claims, the credentials of its pastor (me) had been revoked and they couldn't have a leader whose credentials were removed overseeing one of their congregations.
As I've noted, I was neither the headers of Faith nor had I been "overseeing" it for several years.
The truth is that Faith has never had a leader whose credentials were removed.
So, the Commission's explanation of the reason for its action is one reason to question the importance of truth in the ERC.
A second reason is that, at Faith, we are in full agreement with the CGGC's position on the authority of the Bible and we fully embrace the CGGC's Mission and Vision Statements.
We are completely on board with the body on these issues of fundamental importance. And, more to the point, we conduct ourselves very intentionally according to those principles.
In truth, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever questioned me or us as far as any issue of truth is concerned. Honestly, I'd love to see them try.
Yet, the Commission on Church Renewal has done what it has done and the Ad Council has taken its action to sever ties with our people, even though we are perfectly submissive to the Conference on every point of truth.
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I have to ask, therefore, if truth matters for anything at all in the ERC. And, I also have to ask, what is so much more important than truth, that it matters more than truth in Faith's relationship with the Conference.