As the details of the ERC new New Strategic Plan of 2017 trickle my way, I get the feeling that I've seen this all before.
Mark Twain reputedly said that history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme.
There are two ways that what ERC hierarchs are doing with the new New Strategic Plan rhymes with events that were taking place 25ish years ago.
There will be a third. Take it to the bank...unless we repent.
The two ways the new New Strategic Plan already channel 35,000 X 2000:
1. Both were born from moments of despair.
I was not around for the very beginning of 35,000 X but I've talked to several people who were on ground floor of that fiasco.
They've told me that the plan came about from a moment of realization, that borders on panic, that the trend in the Churches of God was disastrous and that, if leaders didn't change course, ultimately the institution would crumble.
That, from what I'm hearing, is the also the story of the new ERC New Strategic Plan.
Can you who are ERCers remember 2015? Remember the fanfare, that accompanied the unveiling of that Strategic Plan? Remember the confidence and conviction of the people who developed it? Am I not correct in remembering that you of the ERC approved it UNANIMOUSLY?
And, we know that, only a few months ago, at 2017 Conference, ERC hierarchs stood before their minions casting vision for a new New Strategic Plan, confessing that the recent plan, vaunted only two years ago, had become mere words on a page, yet claiming excitement about the new plan that matched their confidence in the 2015 plan hatched only two years earlier.
They were in panic mode, praising a new plan which they, apparently, didn't have time to polish up enough to present it in finished form.
Both 35,000 X and the new New Strategic Plan of 2017 have been born of despair and panic.
2. Both, while they're presented as being radical, are attempts merely to tweak the institution.
Key to 35,000 X was the shepherd-oriented, and theologically corrupt, belief that a disciple is a person who sets their fanny in a pew for a church's Sunday morning show and is counted in the annual average attendance figure of a church.
In the same way, the 2017 ERC new New Strategic Plan relies even more passionately than the ERC ever has on the clergy/laity, pastor-as-parish-priest model of church which is, of course, absent from the New Testament and is, essentially, an invention of the Roman Catholic church in the Middle Ages.
As I hear it from multiple and trusted sources, key to the new New Strategic Plan, is the conviction that healthy pastors lead healthy churches.
I've pointed out in the past that CGGC hierarchs draw a line in the sand as far as the institution, hierarchy and parish priest leadership are concerned.
They say:
"Lord, we are yours. We ask you to bless us. Just to let you know, though, our love for the church as an institution is powerful. All we ask of you is that you let us keep our organizational structure, our belief that ministry revolves around the role of the pastor and the laity's attendance of the Sunday morning show and our positions in the hierarchy. Other than that, Lord, we are yours."
Even in moments of despair, both 35,000 and the 2017 ERC new New Strategic Plan begin and end with the institution and, in effect, tell the Holy Spirit, "Get over it."
The third rhyme? The one that will take place in the future?
3. Failure.
The Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing did not bless 35,000 X 2000. In fact, the rate of the decline of the CGGC has increased as a result of that fiasco.
If delegates of the ERC empower the hierarchs to put this plan into action, the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing will stand aloof as He has done with our body for all the time shepherds have been in control.
The ERC 2017 new New Strategic Plan is more of the same and it will end as the plans and dreams of the hierarchs have always ended. In failure.
But, it's not too late.
We can repent. We MUST repent.
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