Key to the creation of the "Connextion" pastors Safe Space groups that the hierarchs see as the core of their plan to create healthy, life-giving churches led by healthy, life-giving pastors is learnings the ERC hierarchs gleaned from a Lily Foundation study conducted...
...TEN YEARS AGO...
Ten years ago!
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When all is said and done...
TEN YEARS FROM NOW...
...if the ERC/CGGC is going to be viable and, perhaps, even exist as an institution at all, it will be because it has succeeded in making itself relevant to the people who are, at this moment, 35 years old and younger.
And, more than that, it will have to turn those people into genuine disciples of Jesus--people who radically live out the Gospel, who do more than sit their fannies down in an ERC Sunday Morning Show.
To have a chance to be doing that in ten years, they have to be refocusing NOW.
The truth about the current leaders--and the plan they have devised--is this:
They are the very people who, for the past decade, have been following their own deeply held convictions and have continued the trend of driving millennials, and their families, away from the ministry of the ERC.
And, this plan will continue that trend.
These people have no ability to reach people younger than their own generation. They've been proving that since they took over the hierarchy.
Now, they're hitching the ERC wagon to the wisdom of a ten year old study defining how--TEN YEARS AGO--pastors could be more effective.
Doesn't this seem outrageously foolish to anyone but me?
Can't anyone else see that this plan is geared to making the ERC comfortable to over-the-hill Baby Boomers and their Builder parents?!
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Millennials don't want what this plan provides.
We have to stop enabling the dysfunction of our geezers and reach out, in the power of the Spirit with the truth of the Gospel and proclaim Jesus.
We must repent
And, more than that, it will have to turn those people into genuine disciples of Jesus--people who radically live out the Gospel, who do more than sit their fannies down in an ERC Sunday Morning Show.
To have a chance to be doing that in ten years, they have to be refocusing NOW.
The truth about the current leaders--and the plan they have devised--is this:
They are the very people who, for the past decade, have been following their own deeply held convictions and have continued the trend of driving millennials, and their families, away from the ministry of the ERC.
And, this plan will continue that trend.
These people have no ability to reach people younger than their own generation. They've been proving that since they took over the hierarchy.
Now, they're hitching the ERC wagon to the wisdom of a ten year old study defining how--TEN YEARS AGO--pastors could be more effective.
Doesn't this seem outrageously foolish to anyone but me?
Can't anyone else see that this plan is geared to making the ERC comfortable to over-the-hill Baby Boomers and their Builder parents?!
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Millennials don't want what this plan provides.
We have to stop enabling the dysfunction of our geezers and reach out, in the power of the Spirit with the truth of the Gospel and proclaim Jesus.
We must repent
Bill, in one of your recent blog posts you invited comments so let me accept the invitation.
ReplyDeleteI will begin by saying there are a few things you said recently that demand a response. In the interest of full disclosure I want to make clear who I am in the event that my user name may suggest I am trying to post anonymously. All my French friends would know it is a play on words and is not meant to obscure. However today I am writing as Apostle Lew Button that means I am greater in rank than a prophet as my fellow Apostle wrote in 1 Cor. 12, “First apostle, second prophets…” and we know that means rank/position and is not the Greek equivalent to bullet points. For the record I know exegesis, I know eisegesis and I know the real Jesus. But I digress.
Let me clear up one small matter initially. Your subversive friend who feeds you information about the conference, etc. is sadly mistaken about the vote calling for your credentials. I was there. I am also an Eagles fan and I can tell you that nothing of the sort happened. I know what Eagles fans act like and nothing like the cheers/jeers at the conference happened. They are a myth created by your confidant. I can understand why he would create such a myth. But that is not for this epistle. He can feel free to contact me if he chooses to move from the Dark Side. But in this case he/she created that story.
I was also present at Church and Pastor when your credentials were discussed and there was no cheering.
Secondly (not in matter of rank but 2nd in the things I want to address), I can see how “No Creed but the Bible” is a useful tool for you. You can spout whatever opinion you have and run to your personal creed which is “no creed but the Bible” and it makes it okay. Being a prophet also puts you in a position that is almost unassailable because as a prophet you claim to see things that others of lesser rank, without that gift, haven’t seen. You can also justify to yourself anything you come up with as authoritative and needing no confirmation. At the same time you don’t have to be accountable to anyone. Why do you make a big deal about the recall of your credentials when it would seem not having ordination credentials would be the most freeing thing in the world for you.
(Without cre4dentials you can have your own denomination and elect yourself the leader and claim it was given to you as a prophet by the word of the Lord. You wouldn’t be the first prophet to start your own group.)
I suggested above that you actually do have a creed, in the broad sense at least. Let me suggest further that it seems that along with your personal creed “No creed but the Bible” (which is a creed in the general sense) you have a creed that could be called “Original Winebrennarianism”. If this is so then you have placed the teaching of man on the same level as the Bible and if so, then anyone who moves from what Winebrenner originally taught is wrong even if it can be demonstrated that what Winebrenner taught was not right.)
Thirdly (not in rank) let’s talk about hubris. Based on your blog I would have to say I have met few people as arrogant as you come across. Maybe that is because you wear the mantle of the prophet but I think the mantle should be worn with humility and very lightly.
If I am an apostle then you ought to give heed to what I say because an apostle is greater than a prophet and without apostles prophets will run amuck. Repentance is a good place to start for all of us.
Lew,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the conversation starters.
While I always welcome dialogue, that invitation to comment was in reference to the question of what the ERC hierarchs considered to be the win in challenging my credentials and expelling Faith from the Conference. I certainly am happy to respond to these comments, but I'd love to know your thoughts on what, apparently, you, and your colleagues hoped to achieve.
Regarding your take on the my description of the enthusiasm of the delegates who voted on the challenge to my credentials, I can't tell if you are defending beered-up Eagles fans or the members of the Conference.
I, of course, only have the word of the person who described it to me, and yours now, of course. I wouldn't describe the motive of the person who detailed the vote to me as subversive. I would say that s/he was honestly taken aback at the very least and possibly offended in that brief, raucous moment.
Perhaps you yourself shared in the enthusiasm of the moment to so great a degree that you didn't notice the enthusiasm of the crowd.
The person, as you say, feeding me information, didn't vote Yay on the motion so s/he was purely an observer while you, obviously, were a participant.
On a related note, I do, in faith and in action, enthusiastically embrace CGGC doctrine and Mission and Vision. No one has ever suggested otherwise. When, in the Commission, you discussed the reasons for challenging my credentials, what was the charge?
No one has been clear to me about that yet.
More later...
As far as the Bible as our only rule of faith and practice is concerned, your comments astonish me.
ReplyDeleteI, as far as I know, am still an ordained minister in the ERC CGGC.
When I took my ordination vows, I vowed, before the Lord and my brothers and sisters in the Eldership, that I accept the teaching of the Churches of God and I pledged to teach them and practice them. In that day, more than three decades ago, the most prominent of the doctrines of the Churches of God, General Conference was that the Bible is our only rule of faith and practice.
Since then, however, as I hope you know, only very recently, in 2013, our General Conference in session updated WE BELIEVE and affirmed that the Bible is our only rule of faith and practice. And, it created a 2013 Statement of Faith which lists, as our first belief, that the Bible is our only rule of faith and practice.
I take my connection to the CGGC community seriously. And, I consider the vows I took when I was ordained to have been made, not only to the church, but also to the Lord.
It seems, based on what you've said, that you might not.
Regarding your suggestion that I have placed the teaching of man on the same level as the Bible, this is an issue I take to heart as someone who has taken ordination vows.
In my case, I connect to the teachings of the CGGC organically. I actually do, in my heart, honestly, believe in CGGC doctrine. I really do believe this stuff.
I, actually, subordinate myself to the Conference naturally, with no effort at all.
Again, though, I have to suggest that, of the two of us, YOU are the one who may be unsubordinate.
Regarding my claim to be gifted to be a prophet and the accountability that comes with that claim:
ReplyDeleteIt is an issue, as it was for Isaiah and Jeremiah and John the Baptist.
Years ago, I asked someone I used to know and who claimed to be a prophet:
Do you worry about being a false prophet?
The answer was an immediate and certain, Yes!
And, so do I.
I review my prophetic comments and, frankly, I think I'm walking in a genuine calling.
Take the old New Strategic Plan of 2015 as a case study. Y'all approved it UNANIMOUSLY, did you not?
And, from the first moment, I denounced it as fiercely as I was able.
Don't we all now agree that I, walking in the Spirit, got that one right? And, no one else did?
Doesn't that seem prophetic?
Don't we all now agree that Kevin was wrong, as were all of the members of his staff? As were all of the delegates who voted, Yay, on that motion?
There certainly is accountability in what I write. It's in print. Check it out. Hold me accountable, even, ESPECIALLY, after the fact.
As far as why I make a big deal out of the ordination thing:
It's important.
I was never charged with any offense.
And, so far, there are only rumors and gossip that any action was taken against me.
You've made that point clear by challenging the one account I was trusting regarding the vote on the Conference floor.
Finally, regarding hubris:
ReplyDeleteThis is my greatest struggle as I walk in my calling.
It's difficult to stand vehemently against beloved leaders and do it in a way considered to be humble and gentle by people who love and follow those leaders.
As was the case in 2015 with that Strategic Plan, I had strong opinions, which I felt passionately, which were, at the time, at odds with what everyone else was saying and wanted to be true.
How was I supposed to walk in the Spirit and tell all of you that the Lord would not bless that unspiritual atrocity without speaking the Lord's strong word against it?!
Whether I'm a true or false prophet, the people of the CGGC have the same view of me that the institutional contemporaries of Isaiah and Jeremiah and John the Baptist had of them.
And, I'll add this:
I'm not alone.
People in the CGGC who share my take, are certainly a silent minority but they are around.
Those people, who view the CGGC reality in a way similar to the way I do, don't see hubris.
MILLENNIALS AND ME
ReplyDeleteIt's possible that I'll develop this theme later on as a topic or multiple topics but for now...
The danger that Dr. Richardson and Dave Williams and the rest of the ERC staff and hierarchs have created for the future of the ERC...
...and this will be the central issue for the Eldership as it considers what to do about the Strategic Plan the hierarchs are presenting...
...is that the fruit of the tenure of leadership of Dr. Richardson and the staff and the rest of the hierarchs, including the power brokers who run the powerful Commissions such as Church Vocations and Church and Pastor is:
1. They have, in their institutional shepherdly way, created a denominational culture that is hostile to millennials.
2. In effect, they have driven millennials out of the ERC.
3. And, with me as a case in point, they have gone as far as they need to go to, and I haven't used this term in a long time, to "Shepherd Whack" geezers who can speak to millennials and whose spiritual vision millennials find empowering.
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Back in the 1960s, there was a lot of conversation about the "Generation Gap," i.e., the extreme gulf that distinguished the values of the World War II generation and their Baby Boom children.
I was around in those days.
Understand this:
THE GAP BETWEEN GENERATIONS IN THE SIXTIES CAN'T HOLD A CANDLE TO THE GAP THAT EXISTS TODAY BETWEEN THE PEOPLE OF DR. RICHARDSON'S GENERATION AND TODAY'S 30SOMETHING GENERATION.
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What current ERC leaders genuinely believe and do is repulsive to millennials and, it seems, vice versa. The lack of millennials in ERC churches is proof of that reality.
Think, for a moment, how the culture has changed in the past decade. Think of Supreme Court decisions that turned the culture upside down. Realize that millennials took those decisions in stride.
Appreciate the vast shift in values from the day Dr. Richardson was 30 years old and the culture in which a 30 year old today lives.
Now, try to understand the ridiculous folly of the ERC hierarchs attempting to move the Conference into the future based on the findings of that Lily Founation study released a decade ago.
The more I think about that, the more the vertigo that sent me to the hospital last week returns.
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It is curious and unexpected to me that the things that I write here resonate with millennials and people younger...
...and that I form fast and meaningful friendships with people I work with, AND WITH THEIR PARENTS.
But, realizing that that is the case, it makes sense to me that ERC hierarchs would challenge my credentials and expell my ministry from the Conference.
The ERC hierarchs DESPISE everything millennials hold dear.
These people can't possibly develop an effective ministry to the people of this age and the next.