I posted my Oozing Innovation blog three days ago, apparently, to great interest.
According to Google stats, readership of that post is already well more than two times the readership of a typical post on this blog and, already, approaching Top Ten status in readership here for all time! Over the years, I've put nearly 600 posts on this blog, under both blog names.
I'm not certain why the post has drawn so much attention. If you want to comment on why, on or off the blog, please do.
----------------
When I entered that post, I planned to develop the topic with later posts because there is certainly more to say.
Here's where the putrefying denominational rubber meets the Kingdom road:
More than anywhere else in the CGGC, the ERC has been dominated by a Shepherd Mafia.
That domination extends many decades into the past.
----------------
To simplify, and only as far as this issue is concerned:
Under the tyranny of the ERC Shepherd Mafia, only two types of people thrive:
1. People gifted by the Lord with the spiritual gift of being a shepherd,
2. People with other APEST gifts who subjugate their spiritual identity to institutional values and ways in order to advance in the system.
What happens to non-shepherd ERC APESTs who remain true to the Spirit and do not sacrifice their true spiritual self?
Three things:
1. They remain in the Conference yet function on the fringes of institutional power and influence and make no meaningful contribution to the cause of the Kingdom, or even to the institutional church.
2. They leave the ERC in frustration and take their spiritual giftedness elsewhere.
3. They remain in the Conference and become assertive, or even aggressive, in challenging the many dysfunctions of the Conference and if they don't desist, are, metaphorically, whacked by the institution's Mafia Dons.
----------------
As a result, the ERC of the CGGC, has been declining spiritually and numerically for decades.
At the same time that it has been declining, the Shepherd Mafia has increased the number of staff positions and the number of Commissions in the institution.
It has diminished the role of credentialed and noncredentialed Conference members who are not in the hierarchy.
Beyond the hierarchy, it has centered congregational leadership in the Medieval role of the Pastor-as-parish-priest--who is a provider of religious products and services to be consumed by the laity.
In the past, for example in the first generation of the Church of God, when it was a spiritually empowered and growing movement, in Winebrenner's day, the so-called Priesthood of all believers thrived! It was the Universal Priesthood, not an institutional hierarchy, that dominated.
And the movement thrived spiritually and grew numerically.
One result of decades of domination by the Shepherd Mafia in the ERC is that the universal priesthood is now stone-cold-dead, and there is numerical decline and spiritual decay.
And, a larger-than-ever institutional hierarchy that had been unable to reverse the decay and decline of decades...
...which, of course, it produced in the first place.
---------------
So, now, unable to ignore the reality that its earthly kingdom, its Tower of Babel, is about to collapse, the bureaucrats of the ERC have reached into their old bag of failed tricks and pulled out what?
ANOTHER STRATEGIC PLAN?
This one is different, though, because this one won't merely be words on paper.
"This one, trust us, we will really do. We mean it this time. Really, we do! You can trust us."
----------------
Among the many reasons that this new strategic plan will fail...
...is that there is no one remaining in the Conference to lead dramatic change.
Every non-shepherd APEST whom the Lord has given to the ERC, in recent years, has either left the Conference in frustration, rusted out, abandoned his/her APEST calling to please the Shepherd Mafia or has been whacked by the Shepherd Mafia.
To the best of my knowledge, there is no one remaining in the Conference to lead the change its panicking Mafia Dons now agree must take place.
--------------
As I said in the previous post, there may have been some apostle-giftedness/calling in Dr. Richardson. If there was, apostle cannot be his primary gifting.
He gave up the fruit of apostleship, if he had any, far too quickly and easily to be the Apostle to the ERC today.
Tell me, then, who, left in the ERC has the spiritual gifting to lead the change?
----------------
As I've said, I believe that the cause is not lost.
With God all things are possible.
But, I'll say prophetically, no one from within the ERC institution is God's person for this task.
-----------------
We must repent.
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Sunday, May 28, 2017
Oozing Innovation in the ERC/CGGC
As I start typing this, my sense is that it might get personal. If it does, it's simply because, in this matter, a person or people are involved. This is not merely theoretical, theological or philosophical.
One very important theme in the New Testament Gospels, has Jesus calling men and preparing them and, ultimately, sending them, into the world to advance the Kingdom as APOSTLES.
To focus on what Jesus taught and did, consider the fact that the word church is absent from three of the four Gospels and is mentioned peripherally in only two passages in the fourth. Consider the fact that no teaching in the Gospels focuses on the church.
The word pastor doesn't appear any place in the Gospels. In fact, the word is entirely absent from the New Testament with the definition normally attached to it today, that is, as a man or woman who serves a church as a member of the clergy or as a parish priest.
The concepts of church and of pastoral leadership are nowhere to be found in the life, teaching and ministry of Jesus.
What is found is nearly endless teaching about the Kingdom of God and the lifestyle that is demanded of a subject of the God's Kingdom.
What is found in the New Testament, is Jesus passing His authority on to Sent Ones, in Greek, apostoloi, in English, apostles.
Beyond the Gospels, the New Testament details the expansion of the Kingdom in its first generation in an untitled book which has always been called, aptly, The Acts of the Apostles.
Beyond that, in the letters of Paul, in the one to the Ephesians, where some translations slip in the word pastor, Paul says that the household of God has, as its foundation, the apostles and the prophets with Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone.
----------------
So, now, in 2017, the ERC of the CGGC finds itself in a state of decay so catastrophic that it has created a Strategic Plan that it announces that it is actually going to attempt to carry out so that it is, for the first time ever, not merely "words on paper."
Reports I've received from ERC sessions say that the plan calls for there to be one key person leading the implementation of the Strategic Plan.
All of the reports I've received have suggested that Dr. Richardson, as I'm hearing it, wants to be that person.
Taking for granted that there's no indication that the Lord has blessed human plans to change, particularly those drawn up by institutional bureaucrats, two questions come to me.
One is, what sort of person would be spiritually equipped to lead the reversal of fortunes about which ERC bureaucrats dream?
And...
Is Dr. Richardson a person with that spiritual gifting?
In answer to the first question, if there was any intentionality in the ministry of Jesus, any wisdom in the way the first disciples functioned in the Spirit and any truth in Paul's assertion that God's household has, as its foundation, apostles and prophets, the person best equipped to lead the reversal of fortunes in the ERC absolutely must be a person gifted to be an apostle.
In answer to the second question, and to answer the question with a question, is Dr. Richardson some who produces fruit of being called to be an apostle?
----------------
Some may know and remember that I was an outspoken and determined supporter of Dr. R. when the current ERC E. D. was elected.
I supported him as feverishly as I did because, at the time, I believed I saw apostolic giftedness in him.
As the title of this post suggests, one trait of apostleship is being innovative.
Apostles see the future the Lord has for His people and they possess a passion to join with the Spirit in making that vision reality.
In spite of how Dr. Richardson has conducted himself as ERC Executive Director in recent years, as a devotee of old and traditional ways, while I never, for a moment, thought Kevin oozed innovation, I saw, in him, an interest in what the Spirit wanted for the Kingdom's future and certainly, no fear of new ways. His comfort about the future encouraged me.
Two truths I knew about Kevin allowed me to hope he was apostolic.
One is that, at the time, he was aware of and unafraid of the potential to be found in the Emerging Church.
The Emerging Church scared the bejeebers out of nearly all church traditionalists but, as far as I could tell, it didn't scare Kevin. Among ERC people who might have become Executive Director, that comfort about the future was nonexistent apart from Kevin.
Courage in the face of change, and openness to change are rare in the CGGC and I saw openness, if not courage in Kevin.
The second truth about Kevin that allowed me to hope he was apostolic is that he talked to and, even, listened to, me at the time.
Now, understand. I know I'm a nobody. However, for more than a decade, I have been the most insanely radical voice for the tearing to pieces of the old, lost and fallen ways of CGGC elites.
At that time, Kevin met with me regularly and openly.
Talk about courage!
So, what happened?
Where did Kevin's ability to look into the future with openness and without fear go? In recent years he has been the incarnation of old, traditional CGGC ways.
Who is Kevin?
And, how strong is he about any conviction?
Is Dr. Richardson able to be the apostle, the courageous man of the future the ERC presumes it needs now?
Bringing Jesus back into it: Jesus said that it is by their fruit people are known.
What's Kevin's fruit?
What does he actually do? What do his actions reveal about who he is and what he believes?
Does he do church and pastor or Kingdom and apostle?
Is that the stuff of the Lord's future?
One very important theme in the New Testament Gospels, has Jesus calling men and preparing them and, ultimately, sending them, into the world to advance the Kingdom as APOSTLES.
To focus on what Jesus taught and did, consider the fact that the word church is absent from three of the four Gospels and is mentioned peripherally in only two passages in the fourth. Consider the fact that no teaching in the Gospels focuses on the church.
The word pastor doesn't appear any place in the Gospels. In fact, the word is entirely absent from the New Testament with the definition normally attached to it today, that is, as a man or woman who serves a church as a member of the clergy or as a parish priest.
The concepts of church and of pastoral leadership are nowhere to be found in the life, teaching and ministry of Jesus.
What is found is nearly endless teaching about the Kingdom of God and the lifestyle that is demanded of a subject of the God's Kingdom.
What is found in the New Testament, is Jesus passing His authority on to Sent Ones, in Greek, apostoloi, in English, apostles.
Beyond the Gospels, the New Testament details the expansion of the Kingdom in its first generation in an untitled book which has always been called, aptly, The Acts of the Apostles.
Beyond that, in the letters of Paul, in the one to the Ephesians, where some translations slip in the word pastor, Paul says that the household of God has, as its foundation, the apostles and the prophets with Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone.
----------------
So, now, in 2017, the ERC of the CGGC finds itself in a state of decay so catastrophic that it has created a Strategic Plan that it announces that it is actually going to attempt to carry out so that it is, for the first time ever, not merely "words on paper."
Reports I've received from ERC sessions say that the plan calls for there to be one key person leading the implementation of the Strategic Plan.
All of the reports I've received have suggested that Dr. Richardson, as I'm hearing it, wants to be that person.
Taking for granted that there's no indication that the Lord has blessed human plans to change, particularly those drawn up by institutional bureaucrats, two questions come to me.
One is, what sort of person would be spiritually equipped to lead the reversal of fortunes about which ERC bureaucrats dream?
And...
Is Dr. Richardson a person with that spiritual gifting?
In answer to the first question, if there was any intentionality in the ministry of Jesus, any wisdom in the way the first disciples functioned in the Spirit and any truth in Paul's assertion that God's household has, as its foundation, apostles and prophets, the person best equipped to lead the reversal of fortunes in the ERC absolutely must be a person gifted to be an apostle.
In answer to the second question, and to answer the question with a question, is Dr. Richardson some who produces fruit of being called to be an apostle?
----------------
Some may know and remember that I was an outspoken and determined supporter of Dr. R. when the current ERC E. D. was elected.
I supported him as feverishly as I did because, at the time, I believed I saw apostolic giftedness in him.
As the title of this post suggests, one trait of apostleship is being innovative.
Apostles see the future the Lord has for His people and they possess a passion to join with the Spirit in making that vision reality.
In spite of how Dr. Richardson has conducted himself as ERC Executive Director in recent years, as a devotee of old and traditional ways, while I never, for a moment, thought Kevin oozed innovation, I saw, in him, an interest in what the Spirit wanted for the Kingdom's future and certainly, no fear of new ways. His comfort about the future encouraged me.
Two truths I knew about Kevin allowed me to hope he was apostolic.
One is that, at the time, he was aware of and unafraid of the potential to be found in the Emerging Church.
The Emerging Church scared the bejeebers out of nearly all church traditionalists but, as far as I could tell, it didn't scare Kevin. Among ERC people who might have become Executive Director, that comfort about the future was nonexistent apart from Kevin.
Courage in the face of change, and openness to change are rare in the CGGC and I saw openness, if not courage in Kevin.
The second truth about Kevin that allowed me to hope he was apostolic is that he talked to and, even, listened to, me at the time.
Now, understand. I know I'm a nobody. However, for more than a decade, I have been the most insanely radical voice for the tearing to pieces of the old, lost and fallen ways of CGGC elites.
At that time, Kevin met with me regularly and openly.
Talk about courage!
So, what happened?
Where did Kevin's ability to look into the future with openness and without fear go? In recent years he has been the incarnation of old, traditional CGGC ways.
Who is Kevin?
And, how strong is he about any conviction?
Is Dr. Richardson able to be the apostle, the courageous man of the future the ERC presumes it needs now?
Bringing Jesus back into it: Jesus said that it is by their fruit people are known.
What's Kevin's fruit?
What does he actually do? What do his actions reveal about who he is and what he believes?
Does he do church and pastor or Kingdom and apostle?
Is that the stuff of the Lord's future?
Friday, May 26, 2017
The CGGC Brand: Traditionalism
I've been having, well, an intellectually stimulating time evaluating the state of the CGGC Brand in 2017 after allowing my 2015 assessment to remain for two years.
I've read and re-read the 2015 assessment during the past few weeks, trying to recall the thought process that led to the creation of each item.
I'm coming to a big-picture conclusion that may, I say may, lead me to do more than merely adjust the number and content of the characteristics of the brand.
I'm beginning to conclude that something significant has taken place in the CGGC in the last decade or so.
I'm letting that idea percolate for the moment.
----------------
One small project I'm undertaking is to attempt to figure out how the characteristics of the CGGC brand account for my defrocking and the decision of ERC mountaintoppers to expell Faith from the Conference even though I embrace CGGC doctrine and Faith PRACTICES the CGGC Mission Statement.
Because those acts hit so close to home, that may be difficult for me to accomplish on my own.
----------------
To my surprise, the one characteristic of the sixteen that impacts me most initially is Traditionalism.
That characteristic describes how devastatingly the essence of the CGGC has changed from its first moments when it was the Church of God living out the passion of John Winebrenner.
Apparently few in the CGGC today know this but John Winebrenner and his brothers and sisters who launched the Church of God movement in 1830 actually viewed Protestantism as a failure.
They saw themselves as something other than Protestants. From their first moments, they were calling for, and saw themselves working toward, what Winebrenner called, "another great Reformation."
In 2009, General Conference mountaintoppers resurrected, yet rearranged, the wording of Winebrenner's initial Church of God vision, making the focus about the church, not Winebrenner's passion for converting sinners and discipling Jesus followers...
...and, in the process, really, re-defined the CGGC as being a traditional Protestant denomination.
In doing so, those mountaintoppers robbed
the Church of God movement of its past...
...of its radicalism and of its uncompromising commitment to the authority of the Word and its Lord.
And, refashioned it as a benign and mellow Protestant body, following a benign and mellow Protestant tradition.
The question I can't answer is: Why?
No doubt, the founders of the movement are rolling over in their graves!
----------------
Bottom line: The CGGC's understanding of who and what it was in the first years of the 2000s is built on its lie to itself about itself.
The truth is that the CGGC has become precisely what revolted Winebrenner and the people of our first generation and caused them to come together in the Church of God movement!
We'd be better served to accept the truth about who we used to be and to tell the truth about what we have become rather than attempt to justify our current dysfunction and decline by suggesting that this is what we've always been.
----------------
Is it a mystery to anyone that the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing is not blessing the CGGC of today, though He blessed who and what we once were.
---------------
We must repent.
I've read and re-read the 2015 assessment during the past few weeks, trying to recall the thought process that led to the creation of each item.
I'm coming to a big-picture conclusion that may, I say may, lead me to do more than merely adjust the number and content of the characteristics of the brand.
I'm beginning to conclude that something significant has taken place in the CGGC in the last decade or so.
I'm letting that idea percolate for the moment.
----------------
One small project I'm undertaking is to attempt to figure out how the characteristics of the CGGC brand account for my defrocking and the decision of ERC mountaintoppers to expell Faith from the Conference even though I embrace CGGC doctrine and Faith PRACTICES the CGGC Mission Statement.
Because those acts hit so close to home, that may be difficult for me to accomplish on my own.
----------------
To my surprise, the one characteristic of the sixteen that impacts me most initially is Traditionalism.
That characteristic describes how devastatingly the essence of the CGGC has changed from its first moments when it was the Church of God living out the passion of John Winebrenner.
Apparently few in the CGGC today know this but John Winebrenner and his brothers and sisters who launched the Church of God movement in 1830 actually viewed Protestantism as a failure.
They saw themselves as something other than Protestants. From their first moments, they were calling for, and saw themselves working toward, what Winebrenner called, "another great Reformation."
In 2009, General Conference mountaintoppers resurrected, yet rearranged, the wording of Winebrenner's initial Church of God vision, making the focus about the church, not Winebrenner's passion for converting sinners and discipling Jesus followers...
...and, in the process, really, re-defined the CGGC as being a traditional Protestant denomination.
In doing so, those mountaintoppers robbed
the Church of God movement of its past...
...of its radicalism and of its uncompromising commitment to the authority of the Word and its Lord.
And, refashioned it as a benign and mellow Protestant body, following a benign and mellow Protestant tradition.
The question I can't answer is: Why?
No doubt, the founders of the movement are rolling over in their graves!
----------------
Bottom line: The CGGC's understanding of who and what it was in the first years of the 2000s is built on its lie to itself about itself.
The truth is that the CGGC has become precisely what revolted Winebrenner and the people of our first generation and caused them to come together in the Church of God movement!
We'd be better served to accept the truth about who we used to be and to tell the truth about what we have become rather than attempt to justify our current dysfunction and decline by suggesting that this is what we've always been.
----------------
Is it a mystery to anyone that the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing is not blessing the CGGC of today, though He blessed who and what we once were.
---------------
We must repent.
Mom Fell in the Middle of the Night
Yesterday was a doozy.
I called mom and dad Thursday morning a little after 9:00 to say hi and to check in with them.
We normally visit them late in the morning on Thursdays and we wanted to know if they needed anything for their apartment.
Mom thought that we knew that she'd had a problem during the night. I'm not certain why she thought that. She has Stage 3 or Stage 4 Alzheimer's and she's not always clear minded.
Anyway, piecing things together, she got up to visit the biffy and lost her balance when she stood up to go back to bed and fell back and hit her head on the side of the tub.
She has osteoporosis and already has two cracked vertebrae.
The home called her doctor who wanted her to see one of his CNPs who, in turn, ordered Xrays. We're expecting those results today.
Dad's dementia has progressed well into Stage 6. We had to remind him several times each hour yesterday that mom had hurt her back.
He is absolutely dependant on mom. He is entirely incapable of being on his own for even a moment.
They may now require more attention than the Personal Care unit of the home can provide.
I called mom and dad Thursday morning a little after 9:00 to say hi and to check in with them.
We normally visit them late in the morning on Thursdays and we wanted to know if they needed anything for their apartment.
Mom thought that we knew that she'd had a problem during the night. I'm not certain why she thought that. She has Stage 3 or Stage 4 Alzheimer's and she's not always clear minded.
Anyway, piecing things together, she got up to visit the biffy and lost her balance when she stood up to go back to bed and fell back and hit her head on the side of the tub.
She has osteoporosis and already has two cracked vertebrae.
The home called her doctor who wanted her to see one of his CNPs who, in turn, ordered Xrays. We're expecting those results today.
Dad's dementia has progressed well into Stage 6. We had to remind him several times each hour yesterday that mom had hurt her back.
He is absolutely dependant on mom. He is entirely incapable of being on his own for even a moment.
They may now require more attention than the Personal Care unit of the home can provide.
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Living...and Obeying Jesus Among the Least of These
A key truth Jesus taught about the Day (from Matthew 25:40) is "...whatever you did for one of the least of these...you did for me."
That teaching has become more and more important to us in recent years.
As we have distanced ourselves from institutionalized Christianity, we have moved further and further into the universe of the least of these.
Trust me: The universe of the least of these is an immense and diverse place with nice and not so nice people in it.
----------------
As I've mentioned here a few times, Evie and I accept the reality that Jesus endorsed tithing, that is, the practice of donating one tenth of one's income.
We don't see any reason to believe, however, that Jesus intended the tithe to be given to the organized church as it exists as an institution today.
Our gathering doesn't have a budget. It doesn't take an offering. Evie and I don't contribute to the work of any religious institution. We give to advance the cause of the Kingdom of God, and we struggle to do it to the best of our understanding.
So, even though Evie took social security early and has a part-time job and I work in a grocery store and our income is a fraction of what it was when Evie worked full-time and I was a full-time parish priest in the institutional church...
...ten percent of our income is a decent amount of money if none of it is diverted to the religious institution.
----------------
Imagine living in the world as a tither and feeling empowered by the gospel to contribute ten percent of your family's income directly to the needs of the people you meet!
----------------
The truth?
There are so many people who have health problems not covered by insurance or government programs, so many people who are unemployed or underemployed who live frugally and can't pay bills for life's legitimate necessities.
There are, anyway, when you live in the world.
-----------------
One of the values that our community at Faith is built on that is missing from the institutional church is that Ephesians 2:10 describes a key element of the life of a disciple of Jesus:
"...we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God created in advance for us to do."
Living among the least of these, it is absolutely necessary to pray, "Lord, as I live here, among my friends and colleagues and acquaintances, show me the good works you have prepared in advance for us (me) to do."
There's so much going on around us, so much more than our resources can touch, we can't even begin to touch the need.
These days, I am feeling the pinch of the need of the least of these who are right in front of my nose. There are so many people who need to receive grace and others who could receive mercy.
And having wisdom for this moment is beyond me.
That teaching has become more and more important to us in recent years.
As we have distanced ourselves from institutionalized Christianity, we have moved further and further into the universe of the least of these.
Trust me: The universe of the least of these is an immense and diverse place with nice and not so nice people in it.
----------------
As I've mentioned here a few times, Evie and I accept the reality that Jesus endorsed tithing, that is, the practice of donating one tenth of one's income.
We don't see any reason to believe, however, that Jesus intended the tithe to be given to the organized church as it exists as an institution today.
Our gathering doesn't have a budget. It doesn't take an offering. Evie and I don't contribute to the work of any religious institution. We give to advance the cause of the Kingdom of God, and we struggle to do it to the best of our understanding.
So, even though Evie took social security early and has a part-time job and I work in a grocery store and our income is a fraction of what it was when Evie worked full-time and I was a full-time parish priest in the institutional church...
...ten percent of our income is a decent amount of money if none of it is diverted to the religious institution.
----------------
Imagine living in the world as a tither and feeling empowered by the gospel to contribute ten percent of your family's income directly to the needs of the people you meet!
----------------
The truth?
There are so many people who have health problems not covered by insurance or government programs, so many people who are unemployed or underemployed who live frugally and can't pay bills for life's legitimate necessities.
There are, anyway, when you live in the world.
-----------------
One of the values that our community at Faith is built on that is missing from the institutional church is that Ephesians 2:10 describes a key element of the life of a disciple of Jesus:
"...we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God created in advance for us to do."
Living among the least of these, it is absolutely necessary to pray, "Lord, as I live here, among my friends and colleagues and acquaintances, show me the good works you have prepared in advance for us (me) to do."
There's so much going on around us, so much more than our resources can touch, we can't even begin to touch the need.
These days, I am feeling the pinch of the need of the least of these who are right in front of my nose. There are so many people who need to receive grace and others who could receive mercy.
And having wisdom for this moment is beyond me.
The CGGC's Core Problem. Why no Strategic Plan will Fix it. Scattered Thoughts.
Here's the central truth defining the demise of the CGGC:
The Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing is not blessing is not blessing the CGGC.
In the wake of this decades long decay, the ERC mountaintoppers have developed yet another Strategic Plan.
It will fail.
---------------
For many people, the most beloved of all Old Testament verses is Jeremiah 29:11 in which the Lord says, "I know the plans I have for you..."
Yet,...
...ERC mountaintoppers are saying, AGAIN:
"No Lord, forget that. We've got this covered. Forget your plans. Forget YOUR will. Do we have such a plan for you?!"
----------------
Another beloved Old Testament verse has the Lord commanding, "Be still and know that I am God."
Yet, like a room full of four year old boys near the end of a too-long Sunday School lesson, ERC mountaintoppers can't wait and won't be still.
They don't trust in the Lord. Instead, they lean on their own understanding.
They insist on making their own ways.
And, as history has proved, their ways are futile.
If there is any future for the CGGC, it will be when its leaders stop.
Enough with their planning, enough with their programs, enough with their strategies and their ways.
----------------
My academic training is in the history of revivalism.
I realized a long time ago, that what I was really studying was the history of paradigm change.
For years, I been aware of the fact that, as Hebrews 13:8 says, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever and, yet, life in the Spirit in always dynamic and vital, fresh and new.
---------------
I've been reflecting on my last version of the Characteristics of the CGGC Brand, from 2015, and I'm noting change in some ways.
However, one CGGC trait that remains and, perhaps, has hardened, is Traditionalism.
In reading over the explanation on the Characteristic, I recalled that, from the beginning of the Church of God movement, John Winebrenner judged the Protestant Reformation to have failed.
In forming the Church of God, Winebrenner, and all of his brothers and sisters were calling for, and working for, "another great Reformation."
Yet, today's CGGC identifies itself with a definition of Christian community rooted, not so much in the Reformation of the 16th century, but with the congregational parish priest-focused leadership model rooted in the Middle Ages.
----------------
What today's ERC mountaintoppers do when they create these plans is to attempt to blend Middle Ages ideas of Christian community with concepts of leadership from the Life Coach Fad and look to the future without turning to the Word or walking in the Spirit.
And so, THEY tell the Lord what THEIR plans are and what THEY hope He will bless.
Leaders of institutional religion have been doing that since Old Testament High Priests and kings were ignoring, even persecuting the likes of Elijah Isaiah and Jeremiah.
----------------
Since the days of the Old Testament, religious people walking outside of God's will and blessing have taken their (strategic) plans to the Lord. He never blesses human plans.
The Lord's word through Jeremiah tells the truth.
It's God's plan, alone, that matters. It's His will we should be seeking.
Don't be on the wrong side of this one.
---------------
"Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven but only he who does the will of my father..." -- Jesus
The Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing is not blessing is not blessing the CGGC.
In the wake of this decades long decay, the ERC mountaintoppers have developed yet another Strategic Plan.
It will fail.
---------------
For many people, the most beloved of all Old Testament verses is Jeremiah 29:11 in which the Lord says, "I know the plans I have for you..."
Yet,...
...ERC mountaintoppers are saying, AGAIN:
"No Lord, forget that. We've got this covered. Forget your plans. Forget YOUR will. Do we have such a plan for you?!"
----------------
Another beloved Old Testament verse has the Lord commanding, "Be still and know that I am God."
Yet, like a room full of four year old boys near the end of a too-long Sunday School lesson, ERC mountaintoppers can't wait and won't be still.
They don't trust in the Lord. Instead, they lean on their own understanding.
They insist on making their own ways.
And, as history has proved, their ways are futile.
If there is any future for the CGGC, it will be when its leaders stop.
Enough with their planning, enough with their programs, enough with their strategies and their ways.
----------------
My academic training is in the history of revivalism.
I realized a long time ago, that what I was really studying was the history of paradigm change.
For years, I been aware of the fact that, as Hebrews 13:8 says, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever and, yet, life in the Spirit in always dynamic and vital, fresh and new.
---------------
I've been reflecting on my last version of the Characteristics of the CGGC Brand, from 2015, and I'm noting change in some ways.
However, one CGGC trait that remains and, perhaps, has hardened, is Traditionalism.
In reading over the explanation on the Characteristic, I recalled that, from the beginning of the Church of God movement, John Winebrenner judged the Protestant Reformation to have failed.
In forming the Church of God, Winebrenner, and all of his brothers and sisters were calling for, and working for, "another great Reformation."
Yet, today's CGGC identifies itself with a definition of Christian community rooted, not so much in the Reformation of the 16th century, but with the congregational parish priest-focused leadership model rooted in the Middle Ages.
----------------
What today's ERC mountaintoppers do when they create these plans is to attempt to blend Middle Ages ideas of Christian community with concepts of leadership from the Life Coach Fad and look to the future without turning to the Word or walking in the Spirit.
And so, THEY tell the Lord what THEIR plans are and what THEY hope He will bless.
Leaders of institutional religion have been doing that since Old Testament High Priests and kings were ignoring, even persecuting the likes of Elijah Isaiah and Jeremiah.
----------------
Since the days of the Old Testament, religious people walking outside of God's will and blessing have taken their (strategic) plans to the Lord. He never blesses human plans.
The Lord's word through Jeremiah tells the truth.
It's God's plan, alone, that matters. It's His will we should be seeking.
Don't be on the wrong side of this one.
---------------
"Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven but only he who does the will of my father..." -- Jesus
Friday, May 19, 2017
Revisiting the "Characterisics of the CGGC Brand"
It's been nearly two years since I last revised my list of the characteristics of the CGGC brand.
I published this revision at the time Lance was moving into the corner office in CGGC headquarters building in Findlay.
At the time, I updated it to reflect my take on the state of the CGGC at the end of the Rosenberry era. It's my snapshot from that time.
The list appears here unedited, as I published it in the summer of 2015.
My guess is that, of all the posts I've entered here, my series on the CGGC brand is the most influential. It is certainly the most commented on in private conversation.
I'm in the process of considering how the nature of the body has changed in two years.
No doubt, I'll be revising the list over the course of the next weeks and months.
------------------------------------
I published this revision at the time Lance was moving into the corner office in CGGC headquarters building in Findlay.
At the time, I updated it to reflect my take on the state of the CGGC at the end of the Rosenberry era. It's my snapshot from that time.
The list appears here unedited, as I published it in the summer of 2015.
My guess is that, of all the posts I've entered here, my series on the CGGC brand is the most influential. It is certainly the most commented on in private conversation.
I'm in the process of considering how the nature of the body has changed in two years.
No doubt, I'll be revising the list over the course of the next weeks and months.
------------------------------------
1. Lukewarm-ness. Perpetual, reality-defying self-satisfaction. Akin to the pseudo-Christianity of the Laodiceans. Built on the belief that, spiritually, we are all exactly who and what we should be (Rev. 3:14-18). Read all of the issues of the eNews. Jesus said, "You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked." (Rev. 3:17)
2. Institutional "Churchianity," not Christianity. With increasing fervor, the CGGC focuses on an institutionalized, parish priest-centered view that church is parishes or flocks, led by pastors, with an ecclesiastical elite ruling over all. The CGGC now only pays lip service to what Jesus commands of His disciples. The CGGC today renews churches, makes transformational churches, adopts churches and plants churches yet only goes into the world to make disciples after all the headquarters and local parish work is thoroughly finished, therefore, never.
3. Ecclesiolatry. Ecclesiolatry is the creation and veneration of the church as an idol, as opposed to love of and obedience to Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Church. Idolatry is creating objects of worship and adoration to suit our own passions and prejudices. The CGGC substitutes love for the church for love for the church's Lord. Hence the obsession with planting, adopting, transformationalizing, adopting and renewing local churches while the Church's Lord's talk was about and His prayer and passion was to establish a His Father's Kingdom. The church is the CGGC's Golden Calf.
4. Traditionalism. What the CGGC does is, no longer, rooted in love for, nor obedience to, Bible truth. These days, CGGC practice derives from the way of thinking that led to the rise of the church as an institution in the Middle Ages. The CGGC's founder, John Winebrenner, who saw even the Protestant Reformation as a failure, wouldn't recognize what has become of the movement he began.
5. Creeping High Church-ism. In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of CGGC clergy who don clerical collars and who sport large crosses on chains around their necks. At the same time, there has been increasingly open, unashamed, proud and passionate advocacy of the high church's celebration of Lent, Holy Week and Advent from CGGC mountaintops. This has had the effect of elevating the clergy of the CGGC as a hierarchical priesthood and stealing, from all the members of the CGGC body, their role as a universal priesthood. It also focuses the CGGC on the church that is served by credentialed priests, not the Kingdom Jesus brings.
6. Faddism. The CGGC shifts direction according to what is fashionable among other religious denominations. Hence, today, the people with offices in headquarters buildings fret over the CGGC 'brand.' Most recently, with other trend-driven denominations, the CGGC has sought to embrace the 'transformational church' fad and the coaching and leadership development fads. Currently fads such as these, not biblical truth, drive CGGC change.
7. Mellow Relationships over Truth. The CGGC has serious issues with truth primarily because it values, to the extreme, human relationships rooted in tolerance of others but does not value hunger and thirst for righteousness. The CGGC no longer holds, as the most important relationship, love for the Lord, which Jesus called the greatest commandment. The CGGC no longer takes firm stands on any biblical truth, as the recently adopted revision of We Believe and the 2013 Statement of Faith make clear.
8. A Middle Ages Understanding of Christian Community. Perhaps the most harmful achievement of CGGC elites has been the creation of a 'laity.' In its early years, the Church of God had significantly attained the priesthood of all believers. Recently, however, CGGC higher ups have transformed the typical participant in a CGGC congregation into a mere consumer of the religious products and services supplied by the parish clergy and their higher ups.
9. Strong Central Planning Coupled with Lower Level Clergy and Congregational Resistance. It is not enough to suggest that the CGGC is becoming clergy and higher up dominated. (See item 8) Even in the expanding CGGC clergy world, there are extremes in power from the bottom of the clergy pyramid to its peak. Some higher ups in denominational headquarters and in regional offices act from a sense of power that no Roman Catholic Pope would dream of. However, in response, many pastors outside of the good-old-boy leadership network, and most local CGGC congregations, ignore and sometimes defy (always without consequence--unless money going to leadership is involved), the authority of the leaders located in the denomination's central planning offices.
10. Cynicism. As much as CGGC higher ups are shepherds seeking peace, calm and quiet among the pastors and congregations of the CGGC, there is a stifling atmosphere of cynicism among our pastors and congregations toward those in CGGC seats of power. (See item 9.) There is also thinly disguised cynicism flowing from headquarters leadership down into the body. This cynicism flows in every direction: From the top down, from the bottom up and horizontally among factions in the body.
11. To Talk is to Walk-ism. According to the New Testament, a follower of Jesus is one who possesses a faith that organically produces acts of obedience to God's will. (Matthew 7:21-23, 24-26, 25:1-46; John 14:15; 2 Cor. 5:10; Eph. 2:8-10; Jas. 2:12-26; Rev. 2-3). However, CGGC faith is disconnected from action. It is possible to talk CGGC talk without walking it. Hence, for example, the GC Mission, Vision and Faith Statements that are not lived out--and virtually no one notices.
12. Empty Faith. The Old and New Testaments define saving faith as a way of living that is fruit of who a person trusts and what that person thinks. (See Romans 4:18-22, Ephesians 2:8-10, Hebrews 11:4-40, James 2:14-26). (In the Church of God, see John Winebrenner's 27 point description of its faith and practice, first published in 1844.) More than at any time in CGGC history, today faith can be defined by empty theological pronouncements apart from a way of life. (See the 2013 Statement of Faith.)
13. Cheap Grace. The CGGC calls people to easy-beliefism. Jesus said that anyone who doesn't hate his father and mother isn't worthy of Him. There was a time, in its founding generation, that the Church of God called sinners to a radically changed way of life. Dietrich Bonheoffer (who coined the phrase, cheap grace) could have been viewing today's CGGC when he wrote: "...cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ."
14. False, Flock-focused Righteousness. One need only read the first part of the Sermon of the Mount to understand that right living, as radically defined by Jesus, is key to discipleship. In the CGGC, however, righteousness is defined as a local parish, or flock, achieving consistent growth in parish/flock-oriented activities such as 'worship service' attendance not, as Jesus taught, disciples serving each other and caring for the least of the brothers and sisters of Jesus and going to all nations making disciples.
15. Organized Hypocrisy. There is illogic and outright contradiction among the things the CGGC claims to be true about itself. This illogic and contradiction is, in reality, deeply rooted, highly intentional and carefully executed. A hypocrite is an actor: "...a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings." It is a positive and essential value of the CGGC to speak one message and to, without qualm, act out another that is entirely disconnected from that avowed principle.
16. Decline. This is today's bottom line. In the first sixty years or so of its history the Church of God began from scratch and grew to approximately 800 active congregations. From that peak, the CGGC has declined to far less than half that number, losing a total of 60 congregations between 2001 and 2010 alone!
4. Traditionalism. What the CGGC does is, no longer, rooted in love for, nor obedience to, Bible truth. These days, CGGC practice derives from the way of thinking that led to the rise of the church as an institution in the Middle Ages. The CGGC's founder, John Winebrenner, who saw even the Protestant Reformation as a failure, wouldn't recognize what has become of the movement he began.
5. Creeping High Church-ism. In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of CGGC clergy who don clerical collars and who sport large crosses on chains around their necks. At the same time, there has been increasingly open, unashamed, proud and passionate advocacy of the high church's celebration of Lent, Holy Week and Advent from CGGC mountaintops. This has had the effect of elevating the clergy of the CGGC as a hierarchical priesthood and stealing, from all the members of the CGGC body, their role as a universal priesthood. It also focuses the CGGC on the church that is served by credentialed priests, not the Kingdom Jesus brings.
6. Faddism. The CGGC shifts direction according to what is fashionable among other religious denominations. Hence, today, the people with offices in headquarters buildings fret over the CGGC 'brand.' Most recently, with other trend-driven denominations, the CGGC has sought to embrace the 'transformational church' fad and the coaching and leadership development fads. Currently fads such as these, not biblical truth, drive CGGC change.
7. Mellow Relationships over Truth. The CGGC has serious issues with truth primarily because it values, to the extreme, human relationships rooted in tolerance of others but does not value hunger and thirst for righteousness. The CGGC no longer holds, as the most important relationship, love for the Lord, which Jesus called the greatest commandment. The CGGC no longer takes firm stands on any biblical truth, as the recently adopted revision of We Believe and the 2013 Statement of Faith make clear.
8. A Middle Ages Understanding of Christian Community. Perhaps the most harmful achievement of CGGC elites has been the creation of a 'laity.' In its early years, the Church of God had significantly attained the priesthood of all believers. Recently, however, CGGC higher ups have transformed the typical participant in a CGGC congregation into a mere consumer of the religious products and services supplied by the parish clergy and their higher ups.
9. Strong Central Planning Coupled with Lower Level Clergy and Congregational Resistance. It is not enough to suggest that the CGGC is becoming clergy and higher up dominated. (See item 8) Even in the expanding CGGC clergy world, there are extremes in power from the bottom of the clergy pyramid to its peak. Some higher ups in denominational headquarters and in regional offices act from a sense of power that no Roman Catholic Pope would dream of. However, in response, many pastors outside of the good-old-boy leadership network, and most local CGGC congregations, ignore and sometimes defy (always without consequence--unless money going to leadership is involved), the authority of the leaders located in the denomination's central planning offices.
10. Cynicism. As much as CGGC higher ups are shepherds seeking peace, calm and quiet among the pastors and congregations of the CGGC, there is a stifling atmosphere of cynicism among our pastors and congregations toward those in CGGC seats of power. (See item 9.) There is also thinly disguised cynicism flowing from headquarters leadership down into the body. This cynicism flows in every direction: From the top down, from the bottom up and horizontally among factions in the body.
11. To Talk is to Walk-ism. According to the New Testament, a follower of Jesus is one who possesses a faith that organically produces acts of obedience to God's will. (Matthew 7:21-23, 24-26, 25:1-46; John 14:15; 2 Cor. 5:10; Eph. 2:8-10; Jas. 2:12-26; Rev. 2-3). However, CGGC faith is disconnected from action. It is possible to talk CGGC talk without walking it. Hence, for example, the GC Mission, Vision and Faith Statements that are not lived out--and virtually no one notices.
12. Empty Faith. The Old and New Testaments define saving faith as a way of living that is fruit of who a person trusts and what that person thinks. (See Romans 4:18-22, Ephesians 2:8-10, Hebrews 11:4-40, James 2:14-26). (In the Church of God, see John Winebrenner's 27 point description of its faith and practice, first published in 1844.) More than at any time in CGGC history, today faith can be defined by empty theological pronouncements apart from a way of life. (See the 2013 Statement of Faith.)
13. Cheap Grace. The CGGC calls people to easy-beliefism. Jesus said that anyone who doesn't hate his father and mother isn't worthy of Him. There was a time, in its founding generation, that the Church of God called sinners to a radically changed way of life. Dietrich Bonheoffer (who coined the phrase, cheap grace) could have been viewing today's CGGC when he wrote: "...cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ."
14. False, Flock-focused Righteousness. One need only read the first part of the Sermon of the Mount to understand that right living, as radically defined by Jesus, is key to discipleship. In the CGGC, however, righteousness is defined as a local parish, or flock, achieving consistent growth in parish/flock-oriented activities such as 'worship service' attendance not, as Jesus taught, disciples serving each other and caring for the least of the brothers and sisters of Jesus and going to all nations making disciples.
15. Organized Hypocrisy. There is illogic and outright contradiction among the things the CGGC claims to be true about itself. This illogic and contradiction is, in reality, deeply rooted, highly intentional and carefully executed. A hypocrite is an actor: "...a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings." It is a positive and essential value of the CGGC to speak one message and to, without qualm, act out another that is entirely disconnected from that avowed principle.
16. Decline. This is today's bottom line. In the first sixty years or so of its history the Church of God began from scratch and grew to approximately 800 active congregations. From that peak, the CGGC has declined to far less than half that number, losing a total of 60 congregations between 2001 and 2010 alone!
The Lack of FOLLOWERSHIP in the ERC/CGGC
Despite the fact that Jesus said, very clearly and dramatically, that to be great in the Kingdom of God one must be a servant and that to be first among those in the Kingdom one must be slave of all, the mountaintoppers of today's CGGC and ERC insist on thinking of themselves as leaders and they make "Leadership Development" a central goal.
(I'll ask, at this point, as our decline continues: How's that working out? Or: Is the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing, blessing their yearning to lead and to develop leaders?)
----------------
As I understand reports from ERC sessions, Conference mountaintoppers are touting a new Strategic Plan through which they hope to lead the ERC out of, according to what Jim Moss, Sr. has said, is a numerical decline that began in the late 1950s and a spiritual decline my study of Churches of God history suggests began in the 1930s.
I have not seen the actual Strategic Plan so I can't comment on its content. I can, however, comment on the paradigm: Kingdom-change-through-strategic-planning.
To this point, Strategic Plans have always failed the ERC. What reason is there to think this one will succeed?
The same mountaintoppers and the same leadership values that guided failure in the past are still in place.
The Lord always calls His people to renew themselves through repentance. ERC mountaintoppers have not repented. They insist on practicing old, failed ways.
----------------
On a very practical level, disregarding all the spiritual and theological stuff about how the Lord creates and blesses change: The bottom line issue facing ERC mountaintoppers is that there is very little "followership" in the Conference.
The truth is that the first reality about the East Pennsylvania Conference that surprised me when I entered it in 1976 as an idealistic and submissive 22 year old pastor, is how many "anti-Conference people" there were and how committed those people were to their opposition to all things Harrisburg.
Forty one years later, the spiritual distance between Harrisburg and Conference cynics is, if anything, greater than it was and is increasing with the passage of time. The outright disdain that many cynics feel toward the Conference is, perhaps, the reality that defines who and what the ERC is in the 2010s.
The cynics, very simply, do not, and have not, practiced followership as far as ERC mountaintoppers are concerned. This has been true for all of my years in the Conference, but much more so today than when I entered the Conference.
----------------
No matter what the content of the new Strategic Plan may be, the first challenge facing ERC mountaintoppers is to recreate followership among deep-seated Conference cynics. Winebrenner had followership in his day but trust in the mountaintop disappeared long before Kevin Richardson even drew his first breath.
Is the recreation of followership among the cynics even possible for mountaintoppers? I've said this before: With God all things are possible.
For that sort of near-miracle to take place, however, ERC mountaintoppers will need to lead in obedience.
And, the mountaintoppers will have to take into account the fact that the cynics have either been skipping Conference for years, or, far worse, have been sitting in Conference sessions for years, rolling their eyes and harrumphing, as Conference mountaintoppers tell them what a great job they are doing in leading the Conference in those despicable Yay God sessions.
To recreate followership, the mountaintoppers will have to face up to the considerable sins of their past.
To recreate followership, mountaintoppers will have to repent of their desire to lead and allow the Holy Spirit to take control.
To recreate followership, they will have to seek Kingdom greatness and humble themselves. They will have to begin to serve. They will have to enslave themselves to the Lord and His people in the Conference.
The mountaintoppers will have to be the first in the Conference to repent. I'm not certain they know that. More to the point, I'm far from certain that they are willing to repent.
(I'll ask, at this point, as our decline continues: How's that working out? Or: Is the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing, blessing their yearning to lead and to develop leaders?)
----------------
As I understand reports from ERC sessions, Conference mountaintoppers are touting a new Strategic Plan through which they hope to lead the ERC out of, according to what Jim Moss, Sr. has said, is a numerical decline that began in the late 1950s and a spiritual decline my study of Churches of God history suggests began in the 1930s.
I have not seen the actual Strategic Plan so I can't comment on its content. I can, however, comment on the paradigm: Kingdom-change-through-strategic-planning.
To this point, Strategic Plans have always failed the ERC. What reason is there to think this one will succeed?
The same mountaintoppers and the same leadership values that guided failure in the past are still in place.
The Lord always calls His people to renew themselves through repentance. ERC mountaintoppers have not repented. They insist on practicing old, failed ways.
----------------
On a very practical level, disregarding all the spiritual and theological stuff about how the Lord creates and blesses change: The bottom line issue facing ERC mountaintoppers is that there is very little "followership" in the Conference.
The truth is that the first reality about the East Pennsylvania Conference that surprised me when I entered it in 1976 as an idealistic and submissive 22 year old pastor, is how many "anti-Conference people" there were and how committed those people were to their opposition to all things Harrisburg.
Forty one years later, the spiritual distance between Harrisburg and Conference cynics is, if anything, greater than it was and is increasing with the passage of time. The outright disdain that many cynics feel toward the Conference is, perhaps, the reality that defines who and what the ERC is in the 2010s.
The cynics, very simply, do not, and have not, practiced followership as far as ERC mountaintoppers are concerned. This has been true for all of my years in the Conference, but much more so today than when I entered the Conference.
----------------
No matter what the content of the new Strategic Plan may be, the first challenge facing ERC mountaintoppers is to recreate followership among deep-seated Conference cynics. Winebrenner had followership in his day but trust in the mountaintop disappeared long before Kevin Richardson even drew his first breath.
Is the recreation of followership among the cynics even possible for mountaintoppers? I've said this before: With God all things are possible.
For that sort of near-miracle to take place, however, ERC mountaintoppers will need to lead in obedience.
And, the mountaintoppers will have to take into account the fact that the cynics have either been skipping Conference for years, or, far worse, have been sitting in Conference sessions for years, rolling their eyes and harrumphing, as Conference mountaintoppers tell them what a great job they are doing in leading the Conference in those despicable Yay God sessions.
To recreate followership, the mountaintoppers will have to face up to the considerable sins of their past.
To recreate followership, mountaintoppers will have to repent of their desire to lead and allow the Holy Spirit to take control.
To recreate followership, they will have to seek Kingdom greatness and humble themselves. They will have to begin to serve. They will have to enslave themselves to the Lord and His people in the Conference.
The mountaintoppers will have to be the first in the Conference to repent. I'm not certain they know that. More to the point, I'm far from certain that they are willing to repent.
Thursday, May 18, 2017
ERC Leaders ALWAYS Lie
Yesterday I started to work on a post saying that very thing: ERC leaders always lie.
And, somehow, the first scratchings of a very rough draft of that post were published.
As soon as I realized what happened, I deleted those rough and disorganized thought sketches.
To this point, I can't see a way to organize the various thoughts. So, I will merely list them independently.
1. I have been calling ERC sessions the "Yay God" sessions for years.
The phrase "Yay God," for those who don't know, comes from a member of ERC staff, who, during his reports to Conference, uttered those words, it seemed to me, at every moment he could report the most remotely positive news.
While he is the only person to say those words (apart from me, of course), that expression characterized the tone of virtually everything any ERC staff member or Commission chair said on the Conference floor.
The truth was obvious to everyone in the know. The ERC, during all of those years, was in decline and the rate of decline was increasing. The stench of spiritual death filled the air. But the word from mountaintoppers was consistent: All is well. No. The tone was that Acts 2-6 can't compete with what's going on in our ERC.
Those Yay God declarations heaped one lie upon another.
To be fair to everyone in the Richardson regime, this dishonest, positive tone was a well established tradition in the Conference by the time they ascended the mountain.
To be honest about the Richardson regime though, they took the telling of false tales about the good and great work Conference leaders were doing to heights unimaginable in the previous regime.
Bottom line: Every time I called ERC sessions the Yay God sessions, I was calling ERC gatherings an orgy of lies.
ERC mountaintoppers have been lying for years. Their Lie-Fests became an accepted part of the Conference calendar.
2. No matter the meaning of what ERC leaders in the 2017 gathering, this sudden trashing of 2015 Strategic Plan is an admission, though in deed but not in word, that all of the Yay God drivel, repeated year after year, was actual lying done by Conference staff directly into the faces of Conference delegates.
The trashing of the old new 2015 Strategic Plan is an admission that all truly is not well and it hasn't been for more years than the Richardson regime has been in place.
3. After I reflected on Dan's comment on my post asking why ERC leaders lie, it struck me that it would have been a much more positive and honest thing if, when Conference leaders said that the old new Strategic Plan was only words on a page, they had owned up to not really intending to put that plan into action.
Because I have been observing and commenting on the ERC culture of lies for years, two years ago when I criticized the old new Strategic Plan, I knew it would never happen and that ERC mountaintoppers wouldn't work hard to make it a reality.
The mountaintoppers now, in spite of themselves, are admitting that I was correct about the 2015 Strategic Plan.
What would have been the good thing is for the mountaintoppers to confess that they'd had no intention of doing anything that required effort or sacrifice or risk to make the old new Strategic Plan work.
ERC/CGGC leadership never does anything sacrificial or difficult or risky over an issue of truth or principle.
I suspect that ERC mountaintoppers are still lying to themselves.
4. All of the untruths told by ERC mountaintoppers in all of those Yay God sessions overs a few decades were self-serving. They benefited no one but the mountaintoppers themselves.
We must repent.
And, somehow, the first scratchings of a very rough draft of that post were published.
As soon as I realized what happened, I deleted those rough and disorganized thought sketches.
To this point, I can't see a way to organize the various thoughts. So, I will merely list them independently.
1. I have been calling ERC sessions the "Yay God" sessions for years.
The phrase "Yay God," for those who don't know, comes from a member of ERC staff, who, during his reports to Conference, uttered those words, it seemed to me, at every moment he could report the most remotely positive news.
While he is the only person to say those words (apart from me, of course), that expression characterized the tone of virtually everything any ERC staff member or Commission chair said on the Conference floor.
The truth was obvious to everyone in the know. The ERC, during all of those years, was in decline and the rate of decline was increasing. The stench of spiritual death filled the air. But the word from mountaintoppers was consistent: All is well. No. The tone was that Acts 2-6 can't compete with what's going on in our ERC.
Those Yay God declarations heaped one lie upon another.
To be fair to everyone in the Richardson regime, this dishonest, positive tone was a well established tradition in the Conference by the time they ascended the mountain.
To be honest about the Richardson regime though, they took the telling of false tales about the good and great work Conference leaders were doing to heights unimaginable in the previous regime.
Bottom line: Every time I called ERC sessions the Yay God sessions, I was calling ERC gatherings an orgy of lies.
ERC mountaintoppers have been lying for years. Their Lie-Fests became an accepted part of the Conference calendar.
2. No matter the meaning of what ERC leaders in the 2017 gathering, this sudden trashing of 2015 Strategic Plan is an admission, though in deed but not in word, that all of the Yay God drivel, repeated year after year, was actual lying done by Conference staff directly into the faces of Conference delegates.
The trashing of the old new 2015 Strategic Plan is an admission that all truly is not well and it hasn't been for more years than the Richardson regime has been in place.
3. After I reflected on Dan's comment on my post asking why ERC leaders lie, it struck me that it would have been a much more positive and honest thing if, when Conference leaders said that the old new Strategic Plan was only words on a page, they had owned up to not really intending to put that plan into action.
Because I have been observing and commenting on the ERC culture of lies for years, two years ago when I criticized the old new Strategic Plan, I knew it would never happen and that ERC mountaintoppers wouldn't work hard to make it a reality.
The mountaintoppers now, in spite of themselves, are admitting that I was correct about the 2015 Strategic Plan.
What would have been the good thing is for the mountaintoppers to confess that they'd had no intention of doing anything that required effort or sacrifice or risk to make the old new Strategic Plan work.
ERC/CGGC leadership never does anything sacrificial or difficult or risky over an issue of truth or principle.
I suspect that ERC mountaintoppers are still lying to themselves.
4. All of the untruths told by ERC mountaintoppers in all of those Yay God sessions overs a few decades were self-serving. They benefited no one but the mountaintoppers themselves.
We must repent.
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
That "ERC Leaders ALWAYS Lie" Post that I Deleted..
...was a very rough draft and far from its final form.
They do.
And, if God is willing, I will explain why I think that and I mean when I say it.
But, I didn't intend to publish it in anything close to that form.
I apologize for the the error.
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Why Did/Do ERC Leaders Lie?
I will review recent events and blog posts briefly.
The word I'm getting from people who are in touch with me--and from Dr. Richardson's own video--is that ERC mountaintoppers presented a new Strategic Plan plan to the Conference at its 2017 sessions in spite of the fact that it had presented a new Strategic Plan to the Conference in 2015, and with great fanfare!
As part of the explanation, I'm told, very reliably by sources on the scene, that the people who sold the new Strategic Plan to the assembled masses repeatedly admitted that previous Strategic Plans were merely words on paper, or words on a page.
Even beforehand, I'd have said the same thing, that anything ERC mountaintoppers say they will do is merely words, because on the CGGC mountaintop talk is walk.
Still, since 2015, I was watching for signs that ERC mountaintoppers would do what they said they would do, BECAUSE WHAT THEY SAID THEY WOULD DO INFURIATED ME BECAUSE IT WAS OBVIOUS TO ME THAT WHAT THEY SAID THEY WOULD DO WAS THEOLOGICALLY BANKRUPT!
But, as they've now confessed, they didn't do any of it.
AND, THEY'VE ALSO CONFESSED, if I understand my sources correctly, THAT THEY NEVER INTENDED TO DO IT.
From the beginning, they were simply putting words on paper.
They were promising that they would put plans into action, but the only action they intended was putting words on a page.
And, and there's no more direct way of saying it: When they did that, they were lying to the Conference.
And, more importantly, they were lying to the Lord.
The question I have for the people of the Conference is, why did they, why DO they, lie to us and the Lord?
-------------
I'll suggest some possible answers but I want to make it clear that my suggested answers are not prophetic.
However, I do believe that the question: Why did they/do they lie, is prophetic.
If the ERC is to have a future in the Lord's blessing, that question must be addressed.
And, from what I hear, the mountaintoppers admitted to just putting words on a page but they didn't own up to why they did/do it.
-----------
Here are some possible answers:
1. The mountaintoppers are evil.
2. The mountaintoppers blindly and mindlessly embrace a system whose values are evil.
----------------
We know that to lie is to sin.
For ERC mountaintoppers to put together a highly detailed Strategic Plan, as they did two years ago, and to present it with the fanfare they created in order to convince Conference delegates to adopt it as a plan that promised to DO what the plan describes...
...and, then to come back to the Conference two years later only to confess that they didn't actually do any of it and that they never really intended to because...
...IT WAS ONLY EVER WORDS ON A PAGE...
...is sin.
It breaks one of the Ten Commandments!
It is evil.
And then, as seems to have happened...
...for those same people to have the gall to say, "But, we do mean it this time, so, please approve this next plan...
...WITH US IN CHARGE...
...heightens the evil and suggests that the mountaintoppers have no regret or sorrow over the fact that they lied and even got caught in the lie!
This strikes me as being intense evil.
And, if the people of the Conference accept this plan with this unshamed leadership, I believe that the Conference will be joining the mountaintoppers in the evil.
The Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing is not blessing the ERC and the CGGC.
Can anyone even begin to ask why!
----------------
I'll repeat what I have said. My suggested answers to the question are not, in my opinion, prophetic.
But the question: Why did/do they lie, is.
They lied. They confessed their lie. They merely put words on paper.
Why? What allowed them to do it and feel justified?
Why did/do the mountaintoppers lie?
The word I'm getting from people who are in touch with me--and from Dr. Richardson's own video--is that ERC mountaintoppers presented a new Strategic Plan plan to the Conference at its 2017 sessions in spite of the fact that it had presented a new Strategic Plan to the Conference in 2015, and with great fanfare!
As part of the explanation, I'm told, very reliably by sources on the scene, that the people who sold the new Strategic Plan to the assembled masses repeatedly admitted that previous Strategic Plans were merely words on paper, or words on a page.
Even beforehand, I'd have said the same thing, that anything ERC mountaintoppers say they will do is merely words, because on the CGGC mountaintop talk is walk.
Still, since 2015, I was watching for signs that ERC mountaintoppers would do what they said they would do, BECAUSE WHAT THEY SAID THEY WOULD DO INFURIATED ME BECAUSE IT WAS OBVIOUS TO ME THAT WHAT THEY SAID THEY WOULD DO WAS THEOLOGICALLY BANKRUPT!
But, as they've now confessed, they didn't do any of it.
AND, THEY'VE ALSO CONFESSED, if I understand my sources correctly, THAT THEY NEVER INTENDED TO DO IT.
From the beginning, they were simply putting words on paper.
They were promising that they would put plans into action, but the only action they intended was putting words on a page.
And, and there's no more direct way of saying it: When they did that, they were lying to the Conference.
And, more importantly, they were lying to the Lord.
The question I have for the people of the Conference is, why did they, why DO they, lie to us and the Lord?
-------------
I'll suggest some possible answers but I want to make it clear that my suggested answers are not prophetic.
However, I do believe that the question: Why did they/do they lie, is prophetic.
If the ERC is to have a future in the Lord's blessing, that question must be addressed.
And, from what I hear, the mountaintoppers admitted to just putting words on a page but they didn't own up to why they did/do it.
-----------
Here are some possible answers:
1. The mountaintoppers are evil.
2. The mountaintoppers blindly and mindlessly embrace a system whose values are evil.
----------------
We know that to lie is to sin.
For ERC mountaintoppers to put together a highly detailed Strategic Plan, as they did two years ago, and to present it with the fanfare they created in order to convince Conference delegates to adopt it as a plan that promised to DO what the plan describes...
...and, then to come back to the Conference two years later only to confess that they didn't actually do any of it and that they never really intended to because...
...IT WAS ONLY EVER WORDS ON A PAGE...
...is sin.
It breaks one of the Ten Commandments!
It is evil.
And then, as seems to have happened...
...for those same people to have the gall to say, "But, we do mean it this time, so, please approve this next plan...
...WITH US IN CHARGE...
...heightens the evil and suggests that the mountaintoppers have no regret or sorrow over the fact that they lied and even got caught in the lie!
This strikes me as being intense evil.
And, if the people of the Conference accept this plan with this unshamed leadership, I believe that the Conference will be joining the mountaintoppers in the evil.
The Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing is not blessing the ERC and the CGGC.
Can anyone even begin to ask why!
----------------
I'll repeat what I have said. My suggested answers to the question are not, in my opinion, prophetic.
But the question: Why did/do they lie, is.
They lied. They confessed their lie. They merely put words on paper.
Why? What allowed them to do it and feel justified?
Why did/do the mountaintoppers lie?
Saturday, May 13, 2017
ERC Leadership as The Boy Who Cried Wolf
One of the drums I've beaten repeatedly, going back to the days of Brian Miller's Emerging Church blog, is that truth doesn't matter in the CGGC.
The fact that truth, both doctrinal truth and factual truth, doesn't matter is the reality I describe in my To Talk is to Walk-ism characteristic of the CGGC Brand.
That reality is about to bite the ERC leadership culture on the keister.
Reports I've received from ERC sessions say that, in promoting the new Strategic Plan, ERC mountaintoppers repeated, over and over, the mantra that previous Strategic Plans were only "words on a page."
Whether ERC mountaintoppers like it or not, this admission is acknowledging the accuracy of To Talk is to Walk-ism.
And, it creates a real pickle for ERC leaders.
How does ERC leadership say,
"In the past, a Strategic Plan was just words on a page, but we really mean it this time. Believe us when we say that, in reality, we were lying last time--just two years ago--but we really mean it this time. Really, we do. Really. Really. Really, really, really, really. You can trust us. You know you can."
How far is that going to fly this time around?
---------------
A characteristic of the CGGC Brand that is connected to To Talk is to Walk-ism is Cynicism.
Cynicism is the quality, developed among CGGC pastors (not on the leadership mountain) and congregations, as a defense to protect themselves against the reality that CGGC leaders don't tell the truth, or, put plainly, that they lie to them: their talk and walk don't align.
People in many of the CGGC valleys are predisposed to reject outright what mountaintoppers say. More than that, many in the CGGC valley mock the mountaintoppers and laugh at them behind their backs.
This disbelief, mocking, laughing at perspective is deep-seated. It's fully ingrained. It's a part of the DNA of CGGC valley-dwellers. And, it's been well-earned by mountaintoppers. This cynicism existed when I came into the Conference in 1976.
---------------
It's the proverbial Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome.
Mountaintoppers have said,
"We're going to do (fill in the blank). We are. Trust us. We really are. Really. Really...really, really, really, really...really, really. You know you can trust us!"
But, the truth is that generations ago, the people of many CGGC congregations and their pastors realized, with certainty, that leadership isn't going to do what it claims and that, no matter how often leaders say they can be trusted, CGGC leaders can't be trusted.
---------------
I've been describing this CGGC dynamic for years.
And, also understand this: Many CGGC valley dwellers have told me that they agree but no mountaintopper has acknowledged it.
---------------
So, what now?
Is all lost?
Chances are that all is lost.
Chances are that it's too late for the liars on the ERC mountaintop, and for the cynics as well.
Yet, with God, all things are possible.
But, there must be repentance.
And, the right repentance...because the Word says that there is a repentance that leads to salvation and another repentance process that leads to death.
We must repent.
The fact that truth, both doctrinal truth and factual truth, doesn't matter is the reality I describe in my To Talk is to Walk-ism characteristic of the CGGC Brand.
That reality is about to bite the ERC leadership culture on the keister.
Reports I've received from ERC sessions say that, in promoting the new Strategic Plan, ERC mountaintoppers repeated, over and over, the mantra that previous Strategic Plans were only "words on a page."
Whether ERC mountaintoppers like it or not, this admission is acknowledging the accuracy of To Talk is to Walk-ism.
And, it creates a real pickle for ERC leaders.
How does ERC leadership say,
"In the past, a Strategic Plan was just words on a page, but we really mean it this time. Believe us when we say that, in reality, we were lying last time--just two years ago--but we really mean it this time. Really, we do. Really. Really. Really, really, really, really. You can trust us. You know you can."
How far is that going to fly this time around?
---------------
A characteristic of the CGGC Brand that is connected to To Talk is to Walk-ism is Cynicism.
Cynicism is the quality, developed among CGGC pastors (not on the leadership mountain) and congregations, as a defense to protect themselves against the reality that CGGC leaders don't tell the truth, or, put plainly, that they lie to them: their talk and walk don't align.
People in many of the CGGC valleys are predisposed to reject outright what mountaintoppers say. More than that, many in the CGGC valley mock the mountaintoppers and laugh at them behind their backs.
This disbelief, mocking, laughing at perspective is deep-seated. It's fully ingrained. It's a part of the DNA of CGGC valley-dwellers. And, it's been well-earned by mountaintoppers. This cynicism existed when I came into the Conference in 1976.
---------------
It's the proverbial Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome.
Mountaintoppers have said,
"We're going to do (fill in the blank). We are. Trust us. We really are. Really. Really...really, really, really, really...really, really. You know you can trust us!"
But, the truth is that generations ago, the people of many CGGC congregations and their pastors realized, with certainty, that leadership isn't going to do what it claims and that, no matter how often leaders say they can be trusted, CGGC leaders can't be trusted.
---------------
I've been describing this CGGC dynamic for years.
And, also understand this: Many CGGC valley dwellers have told me that they agree but no mountaintopper has acknowledged it.
---------------
So, what now?
Is all lost?
Chances are that all is lost.
Chances are that it's too late for the liars on the ERC mountaintop, and for the cynics as well.
Yet, with God, all things are possible.
But, there must be repentance.
And, the right repentance...because the Word says that there is a repentance that leads to salvation and another repentance process that leads to death.
We must repent.
Friday, May 12, 2017
I Just Watched Dr. Richardson's Video on the New Strategic Plan
Let me just repeat for the gazillionth time that I love the CGGC and every part of it and all of the people in it.
I am a follower of Jesus and I seek His Kingdom and His righteousness but the Church of God formed me during my impressionable years and it stoked the fire of my passion for Him.
I believe that it's likely that my passion for the CGGC is greater than the feeling that most of the people in its leadership and pastorates feel and that it is my passion for the CGGC that compelled me to keep speaking even when what I had to say would, in time, result in me being defrocked by the institution.
---------------
I just viewed the video Dr. Richardson put out following ERC sessions. In that video, Kevin described the four objectives of the ERC's new Strategic Plan.
I'll tell you the point from which its failure will spring.
The first objective, as Dr. Richardson spoke it, involves "restructuring and restaffing our Eastern Regional Conference..."
There's nice alliteration there, with the repeating of R words.
The framers of this plan for the ERC future had a perfect opportunity to get things right biblically and theologically by having 3 Rs, and making the missing R the first and foundational concept.
Of course, I'm pointing out what is always missing, and always has been since the end of the early days of the Church of God: Repentance.
If Dr. Richardson had said, with conviction, "Our first objective is repentance which, we believe, will lead to restructuring and restaffing," there might be a chance that what the ERC is about to do could connect to the work of the Spirit and the ERC might, in the end, be able to join God in the work He is doing.
However, the ERC is thinking in institutional terms, not spiritual terms. It is not turning to God as the One Who will frame its future.
---------------
I've been saying that the issue that the CGGC and ERC is facing is that the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing is not blessing.
He's not...
...otherwise, as in our early days, our people would be struggling to keep up with the fruit that the Spirit is producing.
---------------
Again...
...the ERC is choosing to tweak the institution rather than fall face down before the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing...
...And, He will not bless.
We must repent.
I am a follower of Jesus and I seek His Kingdom and His righteousness but the Church of God formed me during my impressionable years and it stoked the fire of my passion for Him.
I believe that it's likely that my passion for the CGGC is greater than the feeling that most of the people in its leadership and pastorates feel and that it is my passion for the CGGC that compelled me to keep speaking even when what I had to say would, in time, result in me being defrocked by the institution.
---------------
I just viewed the video Dr. Richardson put out following ERC sessions. In that video, Kevin described the four objectives of the ERC's new Strategic Plan.
I'll tell you the point from which its failure will spring.
The first objective, as Dr. Richardson spoke it, involves "restructuring and restaffing our Eastern Regional Conference..."
There's nice alliteration there, with the repeating of R words.
The framers of this plan for the ERC future had a perfect opportunity to get things right biblically and theologically by having 3 Rs, and making the missing R the first and foundational concept.
Of course, I'm pointing out what is always missing, and always has been since the end of the early days of the Church of God: Repentance.
If Dr. Richardson had said, with conviction, "Our first objective is repentance which, we believe, will lead to restructuring and restaffing," there might be a chance that what the ERC is about to do could connect to the work of the Spirit and the ERC might, in the end, be able to join God in the work He is doing.
However, the ERC is thinking in institutional terms, not spiritual terms. It is not turning to God as the One Who will frame its future.
---------------
I've been saying that the issue that the CGGC and ERC is facing is that the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing is not blessing.
He's not...
...otherwise, as in our early days, our people would be struggling to keep up with the fruit that the Spirit is producing.
---------------
Again...
...the ERC is choosing to tweak the institution rather than fall face down before the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing...
...And, He will not bless.
We must repent.
Thursday, May 11, 2017
The ERC is Agreeing with Me without Admitting that I am Right
As pastors who attended ERC sessions last week fill me in on what took place, they are telling me something that I find to be remarkable.
They say that, in the presentation of the new Strategic Plan, presenters said, repeatedly, that the old plans were simply "words on paper."
Gang!
One of my Characteristics of the CGGC Brand is, To Talk is to Walk-ism.
The ERC mountaintoppers are working straight out of my play book!
One example of the profound dysfunctions of the ERC is that when I say things that are obviously true, my credentials are challenged but, a half dozen years or so later, when mountaintoppers realize it, it's wisdom worthy of changing the direction of Conference ministry!
If there was common sense on the mountaintop, the powers that be would be asking me now what they will only admit to six or so years in the future, probably, at this point in time, when it's too late.
Am I really a prophet? Is the Lord revealing to me truth that portends the future?
Just think through what's going on in the ERC today.
Repent.
They say that, in the presentation of the new Strategic Plan, presenters said, repeatedly, that the old plans were simply "words on paper."
Gang!
One of my Characteristics of the CGGC Brand is, To Talk is to Walk-ism.
The ERC mountaintoppers are working straight out of my play book!
One example of the profound dysfunctions of the ERC is that when I say things that are obviously true, my credentials are challenged but, a half dozen years or so later, when mountaintoppers realize it, it's wisdom worthy of changing the direction of Conference ministry!
If there was common sense on the mountaintop, the powers that be would be asking me now what they will only admit to six or so years in the future, probably, at this point in time, when it's too late.
Am I really a prophet? Is the Lord revealing to me truth that portends the future?
Just think through what's going on in the ERC today.
Repent.
Why, Based on my Limited Knowledge, the ERC Planned Change will Fail
In the past year or so, according to various accounts, the ERC has thrown me, and our work here at Faith, on to a dung heap. It's like being dumped by the girl you've always loved and still do love.
As a result, my only knowledge of what's going on in the Conference is second hand at best.
What follows is rather elementary theology.
I've received several accounts now of what took place last week when the Conference gathered. One of them is Lance's eNews of May 5, 2017. The others are from pastors who are currently serving ERC congregations and participate in the bureaucracy at some level, though they are not mountaintoppers.
So, I do have some decent second-hand data.
What follows is rather elementary theology.
---------------
Based on what I know about how the Lord works, there is no chance that what ERC mountaintoppers have concocted will work.
---------------
---------------
Here are some thoughts I have early on, based on limited knowledge and my prophetic gift:
1. The essential issue facing the ERC is that the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing is not blessing the ERC and the CGGC. From what I know, what's being planned in the ERC will not garner His blessing.
2. Based on what I know, the ERC's proposed solution to its decline is yet another in a long series of attempts to bring institutional change. In fact, it adds to the hierarchy and creates still another committee. The ERC's problem is that it has become an institution, not a spiritual body. Being an institution is the ERC problem. Tweaking the institution is not the solution to the ERC's problems.
3. God's people have been at the place the ERC is at many times in history. God is rich in mercy and has often restored His blessing lukewarm or sinful people, yet He always followed a similar pattern.
-The Lord has employed prophets to call His people back to Him and to reveal to His people the path they should travel. I know of no prophetic voice to have been invited into the ERC conversation. In fact, I don't know that any prophets who remain in the ERC. And, the fact that no functioning prophets remain is itself a problem for the ERC.
-The first act in returning to the blessing of the Lord has always involved turning from fallen ways/repenting. Read Revelation 2 & 3. (In all of the accounts I've received of ERC plans no one, including Lance, has gotten close to using any form of the word repent.)
-The Lord has rarely transformed an entire body. He normally brings forth a remnant out of His fallen people.
-There are very few instances that the Lord blesses plans for change that come from the institutional mountaintop. The one notable exception to this rule is His blessing on the people of Nineveh after the King in Nineveh responded to the message of the PROPHET Jonah and called on the people to put on sackcloth. In the past, I've called CGGC mountaintoppers to lead a "Ninevite revival." What's on the table now is not that.
-The voices who have spoken for the Lord normally come from the wilderness: Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist and John the Apostle from Patmos are examples. From where did Jesus conduct His ministry? In church history: Luther, the Wesleys, even Winebrenner, were nobodies operating far away from the centers of institutional power. From what I've heard, the voices who are calling for this brand of change in the ERC now call out from the very highest mountaintops.
4. The New Testament says that, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, the Lord will continue to give His people apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers to "prepare God's people for works of service." The Spirit's remedy to the decline of our body will involve using men and women with all of those gifts. Our leadership is comprised entirely of people with the gift of being a shepherd. This can not work! It will not work!
5. Based on what I can see, what is being proposed is too much like what was done approximately 25 years ago in the CGGC program that ended up being 35,000 X 2000. We all know that that very sincere attempt at change in our body resulted in disaster. It appears to me that we are on that same path.
6. The word says that it is Godly sorrow that produces a repentance that leads to salvation. Nothing that I have read to this point suggests that Godly sorrow is prompting this new plan. What seems to be behind it is a very simple understanding that things are not working, not a heartfelt desire to glorify and serve the Lord and, certainly, not sorrow over past and present sin.
2. Based on what I know, the ERC's proposed solution to its decline is yet another in a long series of attempts to bring institutional change. In fact, it adds to the hierarchy and creates still another committee. The ERC's problem is that it has become an institution, not a spiritual body. Being an institution is the ERC problem. Tweaking the institution is not the solution to the ERC's problems.
3. God's people have been at the place the ERC is at many times in history. God is rich in mercy and has often restored His blessing lukewarm or sinful people, yet He always followed a similar pattern.
-The Lord has employed prophets to call His people back to Him and to reveal to His people the path they should travel. I know of no prophetic voice to have been invited into the ERC conversation. In fact, I don't know that any prophets who remain in the ERC. And, the fact that no functioning prophets remain is itself a problem for the ERC.
-The first act in returning to the blessing of the Lord has always involved turning from fallen ways/repenting. Read Revelation 2 & 3. (In all of the accounts I've received of ERC plans no one, including Lance, has gotten close to using any form of the word repent.)
-The Lord has rarely transformed an entire body. He normally brings forth a remnant out of His fallen people.
-There are very few instances that the Lord blesses plans for change that come from the institutional mountaintop. The one notable exception to this rule is His blessing on the people of Nineveh after the King in Nineveh responded to the message of the PROPHET Jonah and called on the people to put on sackcloth. In the past, I've called CGGC mountaintoppers to lead a "Ninevite revival." What's on the table now is not that.
-The voices who have spoken for the Lord normally come from the wilderness: Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist and John the Apostle from Patmos are examples. From where did Jesus conduct His ministry? In church history: Luther, the Wesleys, even Winebrenner, were nobodies operating far away from the centers of institutional power. From what I've heard, the voices who are calling for this brand of change in the ERC now call out from the very highest mountaintops.
4. The New Testament says that, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, the Lord will continue to give His people apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers to "prepare God's people for works of service." The Spirit's remedy to the decline of our body will involve using men and women with all of those gifts. Our leadership is comprised entirely of people with the gift of being a shepherd. This can not work! It will not work!
5. Based on what I can see, what is being proposed is too much like what was done approximately 25 years ago in the CGGC program that ended up being 35,000 X 2000. We all know that that very sincere attempt at change in our body resulted in disaster. It appears to me that we are on that same path.
6. The word says that it is Godly sorrow that produces a repentance that leads to salvation. Nothing that I have read to this point suggests that Godly sorrow is prompting this new plan. What seems to be behind it is a very simple understanding that things are not working, not a heartfelt desire to glorify and serve the Lord and, certainly, not sorrow over past and present sin.
7. This may have to do with the fact that I'm getting all of my information second-hand, but it strikes me that not only is the concept of repentance absent from what I'm hearing from the ERC leadership, but also I am not seeing any reference to the authority of scripture in what these people are planning. None of my sources have listed even one reference to the biblical truth from ERC leaders.
8. The goal of the proposed program seems to me to be the saving of the church, perhaps even just the church's hierarchy. But Jesus came preaching the coming of the Kingdom, He taught us to pray for the coming of the Kingdom and he commanded us to seek the Kingdom, not the saving of the church. This is a very serious flaw in what ERC leaders are planning. It's a killer. And, it's one important reason that the Lord will not bless.
---------------
These are random impressions early on.
I'm convinced that the ERC is looking at a continuing disaster.
I wrote to one of the ERC pastors who is filling me in on the details that, in all of this, my heart goes out to Kevin. The decline of the ERC and the CGGC is the result of attitudes and actions that were in place before Kevin entered seminary. He was raised up in that culture. He believed in it. He probably still believes in it. And, he is too shepherdy to superintend the trashing of the deeply entrenched dysfunction ofthe ERC.
We must repent.
8. The goal of the proposed program seems to me to be the saving of the church, perhaps even just the church's hierarchy. But Jesus came preaching the coming of the Kingdom, He taught us to pray for the coming of the Kingdom and he commanded us to seek the Kingdom, not the saving of the church. This is a very serious flaw in what ERC leaders are planning. It's a killer. And, it's one important reason that the Lord will not bless.
---------------
These are random impressions early on.
I'm convinced that the ERC is looking at a continuing disaster.
I wrote to one of the ERC pastors who is filling me in on the details that, in all of this, my heart goes out to Kevin. The decline of the ERC and the CGGC is the result of attitudes and actions that were in place before Kevin entered seminary. He was raised up in that culture. He believed in it. He probably still believes in it. And, he is too shepherdy to superintend the trashing of the deeply entrenched dysfunction ofthe ERC.
We must repent.
Sunday, May 7, 2017
A Report to My Commission: My First Formal Response to the Commission on Church Renewal
As mentioned in a previous thread, when George Jensen contacted me, on behalf of the Commission on Church Renewal, to ask me to forward to him the name or names of leaders at Faith, my initial response was to suggest that George and I have some preliminary conversation intended to ensure the greatest likelihood of a positive outcome of the interaction between Faith and the Commission.
For reasons I'll detail in the future, if God is willing and I have the opportunity, George rejected my offer.
In the wake of the rejection of my olive branch, I sent George a second, formal reply to his request.
My reply is significant in a way that goes beyond the actions of the Commission on Church Renewal.
It reflects on and provides documentation of the behavior of Dr. Richardson as far as his handling of the issue of my credentials is concerned.
Below is the text of my formal reply to George. I'll add comments below.
--------------------------------
For reasons I'll detail in the future, if God is willing and I have the opportunity, George rejected my offer.
In the wake of the rejection of my olive branch, I sent George a second, formal reply to his request.
My reply is significant in a way that goes beyond the actions of the Commission on Church Renewal.
It reflects on and provides documentation of the behavior of Dr. Richardson as far as his handling of the issue of my credentials is concerned.
Below is the text of my formal reply to George. I'll add comments below.
--------------------------------
George,
I have received your note, on behalf of the Commission on Church Renewal, requesting contact information on the equivalent of Faith's Council President or lead elder and, as uninformed as that request may be, there is another even more difficult issue that your note raises.
Your note indicates that my credentials have been removed. However, in spite the passage of a considerable amount of time and a number of private communications from you and a few others suggesting that there was lengthy discussion at Conference on the status of my credentials, I have received no request for the return of my ordination certificate. To this point, I tightfistedly hold on to my ordination certificate and consider myself to be an ordained member of the ERC clergy.
On the other hand, for years now, I have wished for a closer, mutually supportive, connection between Faith and your Commission and the Conference in general. Certainly, we could have benefited from your support in the past and, I believe, others could have learned some things about empowering the Priesthood of all Believers from what we have attempted.
Having said all of that, the fact remains that the premise upon which the Commission made its request is not based on reality as I understand it.
I continue to hope to have the opportunity to contribute to the effectiveness of the ministry of our community of Jesus followers.
Blessings,
bill
---------------
I have thoughts about two issues based on what I wrote to George.
One has to do with the manner in which the Commission/Conference related to Faith from the time the CGGC Mission Statement was created.
From the beginning, we at Faith wanted nothing more than to carry out the CGGC mission and we developed what became a nontraditional CGGC congregation.
And, despite our very intentional pursuit of what the CGGC said it had as its mission, at best, the Commission/Conference ignored us. At worst, it opposed us.
More information about that will come when I detail George's description of the alternatives the Commission envisioned for Faith.
Based on Lance's eNews about ERC sessions in 2017, the Conference mountaintoppers now acknowledge that their ministry is not succeeding.
Since Ed Rosenberry published the Mission Statement in 2009, Faith has been on the cutting edge of practicing the so-called Priesthood of all Believers and the Commission on Church Renewal, whose efforts are now, apparently, acknowledged to be a failure, never even sniffed in our direction.
When I said that Faith could have benefited from the Commission's support and others could have learned from us, I was perfectly sincere.
Second, I wrote this note to George three months to the day after the 2016 ERC sessions and, still, I had received no word from Dr. Richardson concerning the status of my credentials.
However, not long after I sent this note to George, in which I pointed out that I had received no notice that action was taken regarding my credentials, I received a notice from the post office informing me that there was a piece of certified mail awaiting me and it was sent from ERC CGGC.
How amazing is that coincidence?!!!!!!!
A long-time CGGC friend has written to me describing sitting in Conference in 2016, listening to Dr. Richardson describe, as my friend interpreted it, Dr. Richardson's painstaking effort to obey Matthew 18 in confronting me, hoping to reconcile me to the Conference.
I don't remember Dr. Richardson doing any of that, but I do read in this email that he had not followed up on the alleged act of Conference three months after sessions ended.
And, he hadn't.
To this day, the only brief contact I've had with Kevin is when he refused to discuss my concern that he'd not told the truth about me at Conference.
---------------
I have thoughts about two issues based on what I wrote to George.
One has to do with the manner in which the Commission/Conference related to Faith from the time the CGGC Mission Statement was created.
From the beginning, we at Faith wanted nothing more than to carry out the CGGC mission and we developed what became a nontraditional CGGC congregation.
And, despite our very intentional pursuit of what the CGGC said it had as its mission, at best, the Commission/Conference ignored us. At worst, it opposed us.
More information about that will come when I detail George's description of the alternatives the Commission envisioned for Faith.
Based on Lance's eNews about ERC sessions in 2017, the Conference mountaintoppers now acknowledge that their ministry is not succeeding.
Since Ed Rosenberry published the Mission Statement in 2009, Faith has been on the cutting edge of practicing the so-called Priesthood of all Believers and the Commission on Church Renewal, whose efforts are now, apparently, acknowledged to be a failure, never even sniffed in our direction.
When I said that Faith could have benefited from the Commission's support and others could have learned from us, I was perfectly sincere.
Second, I wrote this note to George three months to the day after the 2016 ERC sessions and, still, I had received no word from Dr. Richardson concerning the status of my credentials.
However, not long after I sent this note to George, in which I pointed out that I had received no notice that action was taken regarding my credentials, I received a notice from the post office informing me that there was a piece of certified mail awaiting me and it was sent from ERC CGGC.
How amazing is that coincidence?!!!!!!!
A long-time CGGC friend has written to me describing sitting in Conference in 2016, listening to Dr. Richardson describe, as my friend interpreted it, Dr. Richardson's painstaking effort to obey Matthew 18 in confronting me, hoping to reconcile me to the Conference.
I don't remember Dr. Richardson doing any of that, but I do read in this email that he had not followed up on the alleged act of Conference three months after sessions ended.
And, he hadn't.
To this day, the only brief contact I've had with Kevin is when he refused to discuss my concern that he'd not told the truth about me at Conference.
Saturday, May 6, 2017
Kevin Richardson, Matthew 18 and Me
It has occurred to me that the readers of this blog, who don't have information beyond what appears on the blog, may think that I'm sniping around the edges of this Dr. Richardson-misrepresented-the-truth-during-Conference-sessions thing.
So, for the sake of full-disclosure, I've decided to make public one extremely important fact.
Some time ago, I approached Kevin, via email, and requested a discussion of past events because, as facts were coming to me, it was becoming apparent to me that he had not spoken the truth about me on the Conference floor and had "sinned against me."
Kevin's response?
He refused to have that conversation.
---------------
For quite a long time after that, I was completely flummoxed.
I was confounded by the reality that, in my mind, Kevin was saying, in effect, that he believed his authority as ERC E. D. was so great that it empowered him to defy the teaching of Jesus Himself, in Matthew 18.
For quite a while, I had no idea what to do next.
In time, I decided to tell the story to the pastor who has advised me to get a lawyer and file a suit against the Conference--and has even offered to help me find a lawyer.
---------------
I'm still praying through that advice.
Honestly, it's been difficult for me even to know how to form that prayer.
Just yesterday, I sensed, in an insight that feels to me as if it is from the Spirit, how I should pray.
---------------
I get information from Google, and from interaction with other people, about how many people read my blog posts and, to some extent, who those readers are.
I know that many readers are CGGC and most of those are ERC people.
---------------
At this point, I guess that what comes next, if this doesn’t end up in court, may come from CGGC/ERC people who take the initiative to resolve the issue and make peace.
We'll see.
That is beyond my control.
But, I attempted to obey the teaching of Jesus on resolving conflict. But, one person can't resolve conflict without cooperation.
---------------
I'll add that every part of my story, that I'm relying on, I can document through emails I have saved or from hard copies of letters I have been sent.
There's more that is merely he said/he said.
Kevin, apparently, relied on his version of he said at Conference and no one suggested that I be given the opportunity to tell my story.
When I began to realize that Kevin was playing fast and loose with the truth, I became careful to get as much as I can in writing.
That's why I approached Kevin, suggesting, in an email, that he sinned against me on the Conference floor. I have my notes, and Kevin's reply, in writing in case this ends up in front of a judge.
---------------
I've been saying here that an essential reality about the CGGC, in at least the last decade or more, is that it doesn't care about truth: Doctrinal truth as well as every day, actual, factual truth.
And, so, if Kevin shaved the truth about me on the Conference floor, when I was not present to dispute him, he was simply being a typical person of the CGGC.
---------------
Bottom lining, then:
I have tried obeying Jesus.
I approached Kevin personally, saying, essentially, "Based on what I know, you have sinned against me."
Kevin refused to allow me to, as the NIV has it "go and show (him his) sin."
We are where we are now--with a brother pastor offering to help me find a lawyer to sue the church that both of us love.
---------------
A few years ago, I put myself in the position of being passionately disliked in the CGGC by speaking hard truths harshly. Doing that has not been enjoyable for me.
I understand that CGGC people dislike me and like Kevin. I understand that many want to believe him and not me.
However, in the end, in eternity, this will not come down to who is warm and fuzzy and who's not.
In the end, only truth will matter.
We must repent.
So, for the sake of full-disclosure, I've decided to make public one extremely important fact.
Some time ago, I approached Kevin, via email, and requested a discussion of past events because, as facts were coming to me, it was becoming apparent to me that he had not spoken the truth about me on the Conference floor and had "sinned against me."
Kevin's response?
He refused to have that conversation.
---------------
For quite a long time after that, I was completely flummoxed.
I was confounded by the reality that, in my mind, Kevin was saying, in effect, that he believed his authority as ERC E. D. was so great that it empowered him to defy the teaching of Jesus Himself, in Matthew 18.
For quite a while, I had no idea what to do next.
In time, I decided to tell the story to the pastor who has advised me to get a lawyer and file a suit against the Conference--and has even offered to help me find a lawyer.
---------------
I'm still praying through that advice.
Honestly, it's been difficult for me even to know how to form that prayer.
Just yesterday, I sensed, in an insight that feels to me as if it is from the Spirit, how I should pray.
---------------
I get information from Google, and from interaction with other people, about how many people read my blog posts and, to some extent, who those readers are.
I know that many readers are CGGC and most of those are ERC people.
---------------
At this point, I guess that what comes next, if this doesn’t end up in court, may come from CGGC/ERC people who take the initiative to resolve the issue and make peace.
We'll see.
That is beyond my control.
But, I attempted to obey the teaching of Jesus on resolving conflict. But, one person can't resolve conflict without cooperation.
---------------
I'll add that every part of my story, that I'm relying on, I can document through emails I have saved or from hard copies of letters I have been sent.
There's more that is merely he said/he said.
Kevin, apparently, relied on his version of he said at Conference and no one suggested that I be given the opportunity to tell my story.
When I began to realize that Kevin was playing fast and loose with the truth, I became careful to get as much as I can in writing.
That's why I approached Kevin, suggesting, in an email, that he sinned against me on the Conference floor. I have my notes, and Kevin's reply, in writing in case this ends up in front of a judge.
---------------
I've been saying here that an essential reality about the CGGC, in at least the last decade or more, is that it doesn't care about truth: Doctrinal truth as well as every day, actual, factual truth.
And, so, if Kevin shaved the truth about me on the Conference floor, when I was not present to dispute him, he was simply being a typical person of the CGGC.
---------------
Bottom lining, then:
I have tried obeying Jesus.
I approached Kevin personally, saying, essentially, "Based on what I know, you have sinned against me."
Kevin refused to allow me to, as the NIV has it "go and show (him his) sin."
We are where we are now--with a brother pastor offering to help me find a lawyer to sue the church that both of us love.
---------------
A few years ago, I put myself in the position of being passionately disliked in the CGGC by speaking hard truths harshly. Doing that has not been enjoyable for me.
I understand that CGGC people dislike me and like Kevin. I understand that many want to believe him and not me.
However, in the end, in eternity, this will not come down to who is warm and fuzzy and who's not.
In the end, only truth will matter.
We must repent.
Thursday, May 4, 2017
A Former CGGC Millennial in Ministry Speaks
Some time ago, I mentioned being in contact with a youngish guy who has a CGGC background, and who shares my love for the CGGC based on what the Church of God once was and what we believe the CGGC might be.
He pursued credentials in the CGGC but gave up in frustration over the ways of the current group of what, in the ERC, would be the Commission on Church Vocations. Your region's bureaucrats probably function under another title.
So, he is now investing his passion and calling and gifts in ministry outside of the CGGC.
He's involved in a gathering of disciples which formerly had been a fairly large church which lost all but a handful of the attenders of its Sunday morning show and now is rebuilding from those ashes.
A while back, he sent to me a list of six "distinctives" which describe who this group is and what they do.
I've been thinking them through but, in light of Don Dennison's article in The CHURCH ADVOCATE, I am going to point them out.
Ironically, what is working in non-Anglo congregations in the CGGC, and being praised and promoted in The CHURCH ADVOCATE, could be being done by a very white guy who desperately loves the CGGC, but can't find a place because of denominational bureaucrats.
Understand:
MY MILLENNIAL FRIEND IS DOING, WHAT THE CHURCH ADVOCATE, WELL, ADVOCATES, AND HE WOULD BE DOING IT IN THE CGGC NOW, EXCEPT FOR THE BRUTALIZING, INSTITUTIONAL WAYS OF THOSE DOMINEERING CGGC BUREAUCRATS.
I've suggested in the past that many CGGCers may not really want millennials in the church.
If you're one of those people in the denomination, thank a bureaucrat--a Chair or member of a Commission, in the ERC, thank, especially, members of the Commission on Church Vocations.
But, if you care about the Kingdom or merely want the CGGC to reach people under the age of 40, blame them.
Anyway, here are the distinctives of a ministry that might be ours...
---------------
He pursued credentials in the CGGC but gave up in frustration over the ways of the current group of what, in the ERC, would be the Commission on Church Vocations. Your region's bureaucrats probably function under another title.
So, he is now investing his passion and calling and gifts in ministry outside of the CGGC.
He's involved in a gathering of disciples which formerly had been a fairly large church which lost all but a handful of the attenders of its Sunday morning show and now is rebuilding from those ashes.
A while back, he sent to me a list of six "distinctives" which describe who this group is and what they do.
I've been thinking them through but, in light of Don Dennison's article in The CHURCH ADVOCATE, I am going to point them out.
Ironically, what is working in non-Anglo congregations in the CGGC, and being praised and promoted in The CHURCH ADVOCATE, could be being done by a very white guy who desperately loves the CGGC, but can't find a place because of denominational bureaucrats.
Understand:
MY MILLENNIAL FRIEND IS DOING, WHAT THE CHURCH ADVOCATE, WELL, ADVOCATES, AND HE WOULD BE DOING IT IN THE CGGC NOW, EXCEPT FOR THE BRUTALIZING, INSTITUTIONAL WAYS OF THOSE DOMINEERING CGGC BUREAUCRATS.
I've suggested in the past that many CGGCers may not really want millennials in the church.
If you're one of those people in the denomination, thank a bureaucrat--a Chair or member of a Commission, in the ERC, thank, especially, members of the Commission on Church Vocations.
But, if you care about the Kingdom or merely want the CGGC to reach people under the age of 40, blame them.
Anyway, here are the distinctives of a ministry that might be ours...
---------------
1. Sunday morning isn't the point. - Were we thrilled to have 74 in attendance on Sunday? Absolutely! Do we feel like we've done our job just getting them in the door? Not even close. Our mission, our goal, the metric we care the most about is life change. Sunday morning attendance is only a platform or tool, not the point the of the gospel
2. Style is negotiable - I'm the...and frankly I hate a lot of the media we use and the songs we sing and I think the band is too loud. But it's not about me.
I remember attending...with my grandparent's about 10 years ago and I thought the music was too loud and didn't care for the extent of electric guitar they were using as I stood there a bit indignantly I looked over and saw [grandma and grandpa] singing their hearts out in praise and worship to God with songs they didn't know and didn't care for... After the service was over we got back in the car and I said "Thank you for loving Jesus so much it doesn't matter what the music sounds like." Christians that complain about the music need to grow up.
At our church we do stylistically whatever works. Right now there is a certain aesthetic that is attracting people (again the foot in the door is a first step, not the point). When we notice that aesthetic start to lose it's effectiveness, we will change.
3. Media savviness - I expected that people would find us through our website and Facebook, but I never imagined that someone would attend our church because he saw an instagram post and yet it happened. Jesus used the methods and tools that were effective and customary in his day to spread his message. I am convinced that had Jesus' earthly ministry been commenced in 21st century America he would be leveraging Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and SnapChat to spread the good news. If a church does not have a relevant (with the times) online presence, they simply do not exist to a Millennial and I would argue even many Boomers and GenX aren't interested in attending your church if they can't easily find you online. That's a gigantic segment of the population you have lost influence with.
4. When we say ALL ARE WELCOME we mean it and we show it - We are intentionally creating a church culture that embraces in love and hospitality ANYONE we meet. As a result we are beginning to look more like the kingdom everyday. We are in an affluent mostly white neighborhood in the city and yet somehow we have the very rich sitting next to those who can barely keep a roof over their head and though all of us on staff are white, we have latinos, african americans, and asians in high proportion among the congregation.
5. We don't give a fig about hierarchy. - We have a truly team-oriented approach to ministry. Our lead pastor is absolutely the highest human authority in the organization, but he rarely acts that way. I had the opportunity to preach a few months ago and invited my friend whom I would classify as a seeker. After the service we went out to lunch with he and his family. I asked him what things we were doing right and he mentioned that he was impressed that nearly everyone interacted with him in some way and that he couldn't tell who the pastor was. He had been talking to him for 15 minutes before he realized it was the lead pastor. He said that there is often a feeling of separation between clergy and laity in churches he has visited and it is off-putting. Whatever happened to the priesthood of all believers?!
6. We have removed as many obstacles as we can to getting plugged into ministry - I struggled with this one for years. I used to believe that someone needed to be well on their way to sanctification before they could serve in the church in even the smallest roles. I now realize that one of the tools God uses in our ongoing sanctification is service. Why should someone have to attend for a year, be involved in a Bible Study, be a member, and have a personal interview with the lead pastor before they can hand out a bulletin or run the sound board? As a bonus - those who serve attend more often. Engagement drives attendance. (Admittedly there are issues with the idea of volunteering on a Sunday morning being an act of service that God desires...but that's another discussion for another day.)
---------------
Read it and weep.
This is exactly what we say we want but our bureaucrats continue to deny us of.
We must repent.
---------------
Read it and weep.
This is exactly what we say we want but our bureaucrats continue to deny us of.
We must repent.
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
My Attempt to Make Peace with the ERC, Rejected by a Member of the Commission on Church Renewal
Readers,
Below is the text of an email I sent in July 2016, to the ERC Commission on Church Renewal, through George Jensen.
My note was in response to the Commission's request for the name of a contact person, or people, from Faith so that the Commission could initiate a conversation concerning its future relationship with Faith.
As I wrote the note, my intention was to be as positive and constructive as possible.
My goal was to create a circumstance through which the cause of the Kingdom could be advanced through the interaction between Faith and the Conference.
I've read and re-read the note and I'm convinced that I accomplished that goal.
Nevertheless, George rejected my offer.
I was stunned. Nearly a year later, I continue to be stunned.
My take on George's response is that he received my note with suspicion and cynicism. And, I can only guess why.
George and I have known each other since the early 1990s. I taught his first theology course in seminary. We were neighbors in the seminary apartments for a year and we were charter members of the ERC Commission on Church Renewal, in my opinion working together comfortably for years.
I have two theories on how George achieved the state of mind about me that caused him to misread my note in the way he did.
One is that George believed misrepresentations Dr. Richardson told about me to the Conference during its deliberations on my credentials. (It's what Dr. Richardson said, and didn't say, that prompted the advice I received, from an ERC pastor, to file a suit against the Conference.) One other friend has written to me about believing Dr. Richardson. That person eventually concluded that I've lost my sanity. George's frame of mind in receiving my note matches my friend's.
A second theory has to do with the problem I noted in my recent blog post on Don Dennison's absolutely wonderful CHURCH ADVOCATE article.
I believe denominational bureaucrats are killing the CGGC. George was functioning in that role in this exchange.
I know many CGGC bureaucrats. I was one. Something happens to otherwise spiritual people when they embrace the culture of the CGGC bureaucracy.
George was thinking as CGGC bureaucrats think in this exchange.
Anyway, read my note. I think it represents me as a loyal member of the Conference who wants nothing more than to advance the cause of the Kingdom among the people of the CGGC--and to make peace between Faith and the Conference.
The bottom line is that the ERC, in the end, expelled Faith in spite of the fact that this was the initial response from our side in those deliberations.
---------------
George,
I have received your note requesting the name or names of leaders [of] our community of gatherings.
I have no desire to be obstructive for its own sake.
On the other hand, your understanding of the nature of our community as well as your description of the manner in which the Commission wants to pursue its goal is so disconnected from who we are and our perspective of past and current events that, it seems to me, meaningful conversation is not possible under the terms you describe.
In my opinion, some background work will have to do done if, in fact, the Commission desires to accomplish anything positive.
So, I'm suggesting some conversation between the two of us that would be in confidence. The purpose of this exchange would be to bring the two parties to the point that productive communication can commence.
At the same time as our conversation takes place, I would be testing the waters at our end.
I will say now that, it's almost certain that I am, by far, the best friend the CGGC has here and that, if the Commission actually seeks a positive outcome, it will have to respect our people for who they are in Jesus much more than people in the CGGC have to this point.
Please feel free to respond to this note at your convenience.
Blessings,
bill
---------------
A few concluding notes:
I just re-read my note again. I'm more perplexed than ever that my overture in peacemaking was rejected.
Having said that, I point out that my note and George's response to it is not the end of the story.
If God leads, and is willing, I will include later chapters in the story in future blog posts.
Below is the text of an email I sent in July 2016, to the ERC Commission on Church Renewal, through George Jensen.
My note was in response to the Commission's request for the name of a contact person, or people, from Faith so that the Commission could initiate a conversation concerning its future relationship with Faith.
As I wrote the note, my intention was to be as positive and constructive as possible.
My goal was to create a circumstance through which the cause of the Kingdom could be advanced through the interaction between Faith and the Conference.
I've read and re-read the note and I'm convinced that I accomplished that goal.
Nevertheless, George rejected my offer.
I was stunned. Nearly a year later, I continue to be stunned.
My take on George's response is that he received my note with suspicion and cynicism. And, I can only guess why.
George and I have known each other since the early 1990s. I taught his first theology course in seminary. We were neighbors in the seminary apartments for a year and we were charter members of the ERC Commission on Church Renewal, in my opinion working together comfortably for years.
I have two theories on how George achieved the state of mind about me that caused him to misread my note in the way he did.
One is that George believed misrepresentations Dr. Richardson told about me to the Conference during its deliberations on my credentials. (It's what Dr. Richardson said, and didn't say, that prompted the advice I received, from an ERC pastor, to file a suit against the Conference.) One other friend has written to me about believing Dr. Richardson. That person eventually concluded that I've lost my sanity. George's frame of mind in receiving my note matches my friend's.
A second theory has to do with the problem I noted in my recent blog post on Don Dennison's absolutely wonderful CHURCH ADVOCATE article.
I believe denominational bureaucrats are killing the CGGC. George was functioning in that role in this exchange.
I know many CGGC bureaucrats. I was one. Something happens to otherwise spiritual people when they embrace the culture of the CGGC bureaucracy.
George was thinking as CGGC bureaucrats think in this exchange.
Anyway, read my note. I think it represents me as a loyal member of the Conference who wants nothing more than to advance the cause of the Kingdom among the people of the CGGC--and to make peace between Faith and the Conference.
The bottom line is that the ERC, in the end, expelled Faith in spite of the fact that this was the initial response from our side in those deliberations.
---------------
George,
I have received your note requesting the name or names of leaders [of] our community of gatherings.
I have no desire to be obstructive for its own sake.
On the other hand, your understanding of the nature of our community as well as your description of the manner in which the Commission wants to pursue its goal is so disconnected from who we are and our perspective of past and current events that, it seems to me, meaningful conversation is not possible under the terms you describe.
In my opinion, some background work will have to do done if, in fact, the Commission desires to accomplish anything positive.
So, I'm suggesting some conversation between the two of us that would be in confidence. The purpose of this exchange would be to bring the two parties to the point that productive communication can commence.
At the same time as our conversation takes place, I would be testing the waters at our end.
I will say now that, it's almost certain that I am, by far, the best friend the CGGC has here and that, if the Commission actually seeks a positive outcome, it will have to respect our people for who they are in Jesus much more than people in the CGGC have to this point.
Please feel free to respond to this note at your convenience.
Blessings,
bill
---------------
A few concluding notes:
I just re-read my note again. I'm more perplexed than ever that my overture in peacemaking was rejected.
Having said that, I point out that my note and George's response to it is not the end of the story.
If God leads, and is willing, I will include later chapters in the story in future blog posts.
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