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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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We must repent.