I may be the one and only person, in 2017, who is an avid, careful and enthusiastic reader of The CHURCH ADVOCATE .
The latest issue arrived here a few days ago and I have been reading it avidly, carefully and enthusiastically. Its focus is on younger people than attend the typical CGGC Sunday morning show and how to get them into CGGC churches.
There's a nice article on Tommy and Joanna Kopp and their journey to become involved in missions. (Joanna was in my "cohort" in the first round of MLI. She's a gem.)
The centerpiece article, though, is by Don Dennison, entitled, Reaching a Generation That Will Not Wait.
In the article, Dennison notes the difficulty CGGC churches have in maintaining teens and young adults and integrating them into the ministry of the church and he notes that Latin American churches affiliated with the CGGC are extremely successful in attracting and involving and incorporating teens and young adults in ministry.
He gives examples and then describes a "bedrock principle" of these ministries:
Make the church appealing to the younger generation so they want to be a part of it.
Dennison then suggests that embracing that principle leads to a "practice:"
Engage youth and young adults in meaningful ministries as soon as possible.
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This is truly an excellent article and, clearly, what Dennison says can work and does work.
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I'll predict, however, that, in a year and two and five years, what the article advocates will not be transforming CGGC ministry.
Is that a prophecy or do we ALL immediately know it? I suspect that it might be prophetic because I even think in terms of the future.
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There are a number of obvious reasons, to me, that Dennison's wisdom will be wasted on a spiritually dead denomination.
One has to do with a problem with the article itself:
Dennison, not being a prophet, doesn't call for repentance.
He shows what might be and, even, can be but, as John the Baptist, or Elijah or Isaiah or even Jesus would have done, he doesn't attack the faithlessness and traditionalism that drives the ministries of people and churches whom the Lord of all power and grace and mercy and authority and love and blessing is not blessing.
Jesus invited only people who are weary and burdened to come to Him. With the same understanding of how change happens among God's people, Paul says that godly sorrow produces a repentance that leads to salvation.
The evidence of generations in the CGGC is that people are not going to change with this sort of suggestion of a tweak of what they are doing.
They will not change, according to the Word, until they begin to despise what they have been doing and feel sorrow over it to the point that the thought of continuing in old, failed ways is offensive to them.
And, and this is the greatest stumbling block in a shepherd dominated body like the CGGC:
The people who practiced the old and failed ways are going to have to be called to account for their failure and, if they don't repent of their ways, disciplined harshly. If they don't repent, their names will need to be reviled because they led people away from the Lord's blessing.
Doing this will be the most difficult thing for temperate and tolerant CGGC people to do. It will absolutely demand a love for the Lord with all of their heart and soul and strength.
I'm not certain that CGGC people these days possess that love.
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Another reason that this wisdom will be wasted is that the sort of change Dennison advocates normally has been thwarted by CGGC change's arch enemy:
DENOMINATIONAL BUREAUCRATS.
In my days in the CGGC, I've seen a similar story played out many times.
A pastor is inspired by ideas exactly like the genuine wisdom in the Dennison article and begins to practice them.
The change in practice makes one or two church people who pay the bills unhappy.
Tension rises to the point that, if it happens here in the ERC, the Commission on Church and Pastor is called to deal with the conflict.
To my knowledge, without exception, the Conference bureaucrats on the Commission ALWAYS take the side of the congregational members who pay the bills. The offending pastor is either forced to back down or is fired.
Most of those pastors leave the CGGC and agents of change are whacked by the bureaucrats and their bureaucracy, never to ripple the waters of CGGC dysfunction and sin again.
The bureaucrats ALWAYS, as far as I know, oppose the very sort of change that CGGC leadership advocates, and could aid in transformation.
And, I see nothing coming from ERC mountaintoppers, at least, to suggest that they are willing to turn from their dysfunctional, change-killing ways.
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I love Dennison's article.
But, I know that, without repentance, his wisdom will be wasted. And, I see no reason to think repentance is at hand.
As another CGGC person has pointed out here on this blog, CGGC hearts are hard.
They resist changing their ways in a manner that could have taught lessons to Pharaoh when Moses was dealing with him.
We must repent.
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