From the early chapters of the Gospel of Matthew on, a central message of Jesus and His early followers...the core of the gospel...is that from emotional pain and spiritual grief and sorrow comes blessing.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness..."
"Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation..."
"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. "
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From my experience, living almost all of my life closely enmeshed in institutionalized Christianity, when people gifted to be shepherds consolidate power atop a once thriving religious movement, they drive out, in the gentlest way, what remains of apostolic and prophetic giftedness.
And, what remains is a temperate, civilized, sophisticated and bland and calm misrepresentation of the Way intiated by the One Who fashioned a whip with His own hands to drive people out of the temple and who once commanded the disciple upon whom He said, "I will build my church," "Get thee behind me, Satan!"
The Jesus touted in the ERC these days has been miniaturized. He's pathetic and small compared to the One presented in the Word.
The ERC's Jesus is a caricature of Jesus of Nazareth. He's been tamed. He IS tame. He's a cosmic good guy...
...a Forest Gump-like figure more likely to tell you that life is like a box of chocolates than He is to teach that, on the Day, those who don't sacrifice for the benefit of the hungry and homeless among the least of these will be sent away into eternal punishment.
Their Jesus doesn't promote spiritual grief or godly sorrow. He knows nothing about working out one's salvation with either fear or trembling.
Their Jesus, particularly in the new New Strategic Plan, if He ever talks about God's Kingdom at all does so only after pastors and churches are healthy.
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And, this, more than anything else, is why there is...
... no chance in heaven,
...that the Lord will empower this plan and that it will revitalize our once flourishing and blessed movement.
There is narry a drop of spiritual poverty among ERC mountaintoppers, nor spiritual grief.
There is, I believe, fear...and perhaps even trembling.
But the fear and trembling is not over the hierarchs' own salvation or for the souls of the people in their churches...
...it is fear of the increasing likelihood that their institution, their fiefdom, their hierarchy will fail.
There is no spiritual connection between the Gospel preached by Jesus and the plans, in 2017, of the ERC hierarchs.
We must become poor in spirit. We must mourn. We must become meek. We must hunger and thirst for righteousness.
We must repent.
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