I received this, can I go so far as to say, Word, as I was putting into human language the, Paying for the Sins of our CGGC Fathers, post.
What Lance wants us to be doing, as seen in his latest eNews post, and many other things he's said and written, requires men and women empowered by the Spirit to be APEs, i.e., apostles, prophets and evangelists...
...not shepherds and teachers.
And, due to the sins of CGGC fathers, committed over the course of the last 80ish years,...
...nearly every man and woman leading a CGGC church is, in fact, a shepherd or a teacher functioning as a parish priest, providing religious products and services to the congregation's laity.
So, we are paying for the sins of our CGGC Fathers.
The fruit of their leadership for generations, is not only the numerical decline and spiritual decay that has created our current crisis,...
...it is, much more importantly, the reality that we don't have people who, in the Spirit, can carry out our mountaintoppers' vision.
And, that's bad enough.
----------------
Here's what's worse:
With the nearly unanimous approval of its new New Strategic Plan this past January,...
...the ERC, our, by far, largest Conference, has, as one ERCer noted on the eNews blog, "doubled down" on the, um, leadership, of shepherds and teachers functioning in the role of the parish priest.
Understand what that means!
The ERC not only did not repent of the cause of its decline and decay,...
...it has, for, what?, the next generation?, invested in again?!!?????!!
Here are two thoughts about that:
1. My informants in the ERC tell me that the "young" pastors in the Conference are enthusiastic about the new New Strategic Plan. And, that they don't realize that the new New Strategic Plan is, essentially, nothing more than a new coat of paint on the old jalopy,...
...i.e., it's an approach to ministry that has been tried and retried numerous times and has always...
...ALWAYS...
...failed...
...and is precisely the cause of our numerical decline and spiritual decay.
2. The ministry vision that is the foundation of the new New Strategic Plan, is:
+ what John Winebrenner and the first Church of God people revolted against, and,...
+ for that matter, what the originators of many vital and dynamic revival movements opposed.
----------------
It's true.
We are incapable of carrying out Lance's vision for Kingdom-focused ministry because past generations of CGGC leaders have driven away our APEs and made us a body of internally focused shepherds and teachers.
And, tragically, the ERC has actually, well, doubled down on the very leadership model that is killing it.
We must experience the godly sorrow that produces a repentance that leads to salvation...
...and, we must repent.
Thursday, June 28, 2018
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Paying for the Sins of our CGGC Fathers
This post derives from a point I made in my eNews blog comment to Lance's June 22, 2018 article.
Lance suggested that CGGC people are afraid to fail and that it's our fear of failing that prevents many of our, uh, churches from engaging in Kingdom oriented activities such as ministering to the children in their neighborhoods.
In my comment, I actually defended the people of the CGGC. I argued that the CGGC people I know love the Lord and are faithful to Him and are serving Him according to their callings.
And, I also suggested that the problem that Lance points out is a real problem but that the cause of the problem is not fear.
The problem, I said, is that, in the CGGC, we've been doing two things wrong for a long time and that we now have to pay the price for what we've done:
1. We've overvalued the shepherd and teacher gifts to excess and
2. We've created a culture which is frustrating for apostles and prophets and evangelists so that men and women with those spiritual gifts have left us.
I said that the people who remain, at least the people I know personally, are, truly, walking in the Spirit and doing the things that the Spirit gives them the vision to do. But, because nearly everyone left is a shepherd or a teacher, what these people do when they walk in the Spirit is church, not Kingdom, focused.
And, of course, I noted that we must repent.
----------------
In the CGGC, in 2018, we are in a difficult place. The, almost exclusively, men who went before us have thwarted the Spirit for generations.
The Word says that the household of God has been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. But, our CGGC fathers have built their church on the ministry of shepherds and teachers functioning in the role of the parish priest.
As a body, we are not what we might be.
Our forebears began digging the hole we're in a long time ago.
No doubt at all, they were sincere. No doubt they were well-intentioned.
I'm certain that the men who began digging the hole, all those years ago, believed they were doing a good thing.
But, the testimony of history is that they were wrong.
We are in the midst of an era of numerical decline and spiritual decay that threatens our very future.
Today, we are not writing on a blank slate.
We are standing at the bottom of a deep pit.
And, because of the sins of our CGGC fathers, we lack people who live confidently and self-consciously as apostles and prophets and evangelists...
...and, they normally oppose any who attempt to DO what apostles, prophets and evangelists do.
We are led, across the body, by people who fall into two categories.
First, people who are shepherds and teachers, of course.
Second, a very, very few who are apostles, prophets and evangelists...
...but who have been domesticated by the shepherd/teacher culture and hide their calling under a bushel.
----------------
So, what can we do? Is it too late? Is there anything at all we still can do?
Honestly? Prophetically, I'm not certain.
But, we must try.
It may be too late but the Lord is a God of mercy.
In my eNews comment, I said that current and past CGGC leaders must confess their error (sin) in creating a church culture that is overloaded with shepherds and teachers.
That, I believe, is essential.
----------------
Do they believe that they've sinned? I don't think so. Not yet.
And, until they begin to believe it...and feel godly sorrow over it...and act on that...I can't see a reversal of the current state of decline and decay in the CGGC.
I could write a book about this. I couldn't write a book on much. But, I could write a book on this.
We must repent.
Lance suggested that CGGC people are afraid to fail and that it's our fear of failing that prevents many of our, uh, churches from engaging in Kingdom oriented activities such as ministering to the children in their neighborhoods.
In my comment, I actually defended the people of the CGGC. I argued that the CGGC people I know love the Lord and are faithful to Him and are serving Him according to their callings.
And, I also suggested that the problem that Lance points out is a real problem but that the cause of the problem is not fear.
The problem, I said, is that, in the CGGC, we've been doing two things wrong for a long time and that we now have to pay the price for what we've done:
1. We've overvalued the shepherd and teacher gifts to excess and
2. We've created a culture which is frustrating for apostles and prophets and evangelists so that men and women with those spiritual gifts have left us.
I said that the people who remain, at least the people I know personally, are, truly, walking in the Spirit and doing the things that the Spirit gives them the vision to do. But, because nearly everyone left is a shepherd or a teacher, what these people do when they walk in the Spirit is church, not Kingdom, focused.
And, of course, I noted that we must repent.
----------------
In the CGGC, in 2018, we are in a difficult place. The, almost exclusively, men who went before us have thwarted the Spirit for generations.
The Word says that the household of God has been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. But, our CGGC fathers have built their church on the ministry of shepherds and teachers functioning in the role of the parish priest.
As a body, we are not what we might be.
Our forebears began digging the hole we're in a long time ago.
No doubt at all, they were sincere. No doubt they were well-intentioned.
I'm certain that the men who began digging the hole, all those years ago, believed they were doing a good thing.
But, the testimony of history is that they were wrong.
We are in the midst of an era of numerical decline and spiritual decay that threatens our very future.
Today, we are not writing on a blank slate.
We are standing at the bottom of a deep pit.
And, because of the sins of our CGGC fathers, we lack people who live confidently and self-consciously as apostles and prophets and evangelists...
...and, they normally oppose any who attempt to DO what apostles, prophets and evangelists do.
We are led, across the body, by people who fall into two categories.
First, people who are shepherds and teachers, of course.
Second, a very, very few who are apostles, prophets and evangelists...
...but who have been domesticated by the shepherd/teacher culture and hide their calling under a bushel.
----------------
So, what can we do? Is it too late? Is there anything at all we still can do?
Honestly? Prophetically, I'm not certain.
But, we must try.
It may be too late but the Lord is a God of mercy.
In my eNews comment, I said that current and past CGGC leaders must confess their error (sin) in creating a church culture that is overloaded with shepherds and teachers.
That, I believe, is essential.
----------------
Do they believe that they've sinned? I don't think so. Not yet.
And, until they begin to believe it...and feel godly sorrow over it...and act on that...I can't see a reversal of the current state of decline and decay in the CGGC.
I could write a book about this. I couldn't write a book on much. But, I could write a book on this.
We must repent.
Sunday, June 24, 2018
An eNews Prophecy?
I just submitted, to the CGGC eNews, a response to Lance's latest in which I put into words, thoughts and visions that the Spirit has been giving me. Some of it's old stuff. Some I've received from the Lord a while ago but not said often or well. And, some of it's new and focused on what Lance and Brandon have been saying lately. Some of it, I believe, is important.
I wouldn't actually go so far as describe it as a prophecy but I'll call it strongly prophetic.
So far, the moderator of the eNews blog has been reasonably faithful in publishing my comments.
I'd expect to see it later on Sunday or on Monday.
I wouldn't actually go so far as describe it as a prophecy but I'll call it strongly prophetic.
So far, the moderator of the eNews blog has been reasonably faithful in publishing my comments.
I'd expect to see it later on Sunday or on Monday.
Thursday, June 21, 2018
The Demise of this Blog
Five months ago, January 2018, was a record setting month for this blog...by far. Total page views exceeded the previous record by 20 percent.
The central theme then was the special Conference session of the ERC.
Page views this month are on track to be about one fourth of that record and the lowest number in about five years.
Why? Well, I'm posting almost nothing.
Again, why?
The most compelling reasons are connected to the decline in Evie's health. Cardiologists have been monitoring her heart since the early 90s. So, we are aware of the deterioration of her heart sooner and in a much more sophisticated way than people usually are at this point.
She's in bad shape, but still not critically so.
But, she declining at a rate I never imagined she would be.
She's decided to seek the care of the most highly regarded surgeon in Pennsylvania, really. The question now is if she can survive long enough to get to the top of his waiting list.
She's able to do less each day and that means that there's more for me to do.
Also, there's more for me to do on the job. And, my job was already exhausting.
And, there's the fact that, as I see it, the ERC is treading water until the College of Cardinals proudly and defiantly elevates the new Pope.
And, the CGGC mountaintoppers, these days, seem to be doing little beyond sitting in their offices and talking. And, I've already beaten the Talk-ism horse to death.
There are two posts I'm working on, both, I think, are important. But, they're assuming a finished form slowly.
So, there's not much happening here to provoke a prophetic response.
But, I suspect that there will be...eventually.
Blessings.
The central theme then was the special Conference session of the ERC.
Page views this month are on track to be about one fourth of that record and the lowest number in about five years.
Why? Well, I'm posting almost nothing.
Again, why?
The most compelling reasons are connected to the decline in Evie's health. Cardiologists have been monitoring her heart since the early 90s. So, we are aware of the deterioration of her heart sooner and in a much more sophisticated way than people usually are at this point.
She's in bad shape, but still not critically so.
But, she declining at a rate I never imagined she would be.
She's decided to seek the care of the most highly regarded surgeon in Pennsylvania, really. The question now is if she can survive long enough to get to the top of his waiting list.
She's able to do less each day and that means that there's more for me to do.
Also, there's more for me to do on the job. And, my job was already exhausting.
And, there's the fact that, as I see it, the ERC is treading water until the College of Cardinals proudly and defiantly elevates the new Pope.
And, the CGGC mountaintoppers, these days, seem to be doing little beyond sitting in their offices and talking. And, I've already beaten the Talk-ism horse to death.
There are two posts I'm working on, both, I think, are important. But, they're assuming a finished form slowly.
So, there's not much happening here to provoke a prophetic response.
But, I suspect that there will be...eventually.
Blessings.
Sunday, June 17, 2018
No, We can't all...GET ALONG
Can you believe that it's been 26 years since south central Los Angeles erupted in riots that lasted six days in response to the not guilty verdict in the trial of four LA police officers charged with using excessive force while arresting Rodney King, an act that had been videotaped and replayed numerous times on TV broadcasts?
So, several days into the riots, Mr. King stood before camera to address the people of the city and he asked, stammeringly, in words that have become among the most memorable of the 20th century, "Can we get along?"
Sadly, in real life, most of the time, we can't.
----------------
And, more to the point of issues addressed on this blog, in the, uh, church, the answer, I believe, by God's design, is, "No. Certainly not."
Get along? No. Not get along.
I believe that Paul of Tarsus was correct when he wrote in his letter to the Christians in Ephesus that, (Jesus) gave some to be apostles, others to be prophets, others to be evangelists and others to be shepherds and teachers.
Paul added that Jesus would continue to give these human gifts to His people, "until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature..."
His description of these five giftings is often referred to these days as APEST.
The whole story of the early Christian movement convinces me, beyond doubt, that Jesus' ministry laid the groundwork for APEST, that the Book of Acts details the unfolding of APEST and that the Epistles describe the operation of APEST in Christianity's earliest days.
And, I personally live as if APEST continues to happen today and that I participate in its operation.
Here's one truth about APEST as I have always experienced it:
The Spirit empowers disciples of Jesus to be different from each other and passionate, as they walk in the Spirit, about who He makes them to be.
Those passionate differences create tension, very real tension.
Speaking for myself:
I consider myself to be a prophet. People with the other APEST gifting are, at best, a mystery to me. And, I can't get along with them naturally.
Apostles fascinate me but they make my head spin, their innovation regularly confuses me.
The intense passion for the most basic elements of the Kingdom message, the gospel, which drives evangelists, often embarrasses me.
Shepherds, when they merely function within their gift, bore me. When they presume to take control of the church and institutionalize it and create hierarchies within it...and lead it, I, honestly, hate what they do to the point that I struggle constantly to forgive them.
Teachers, on the one hand, intrigue me but, because they can uphold human tradition as easily as genuine truth, they cause me to fear that the Lord's genuine truth will never prevail.
[And, though this is off point:. Other prophets? There are moments when the passion for truth we share excites me. But, when another prophet calls ME to repent? Yikes!]
----------------
Having lived APEST full-throttle for over a decade now, I am absolutely certain that it is the Lord's design that, in His body, we can't just get along.
My experience is that He actually created His body so that there would be, at best, tension among His people--that, on their own, APESTs would be at odds with each other.
And, they are.
There are people in the Kingdom today who have made careers for themselves, writing books and speaking at seminars explaining APEST...
...not to doubters but,...
...to the very people who embrace it!
So, why this designed tension? What purpose does it serve?
----------------
Here's what I've become convinced of:
This tension among APESTs is designed to remind us that the body has a Head on it upon which all of us must depend.
We are nothing unless He is everything.
At another place in Paul's letter to the Ephesians he writes about, "submitting to each other out of reverence for Christ."
And, I'm convinced that His purpose in giving five different APESTs is so that He alone can be acknowledged as the Head of the Body.
All four of the other APESTs drive me to distraction.
But, in Him...
...and in mutual submission to other disciples,...
...there is power and the potential for victory.
-----------------
Perhaps the most dangerous error of the institutionalists whose self-described "leadership" is driving the decline and decay of the Western church, is their belief and insistence that we can all get along. And that tension among the called is bad and that it is sin.
We can't all just get along...on our own...walking in the Spirit.
We can submit to each other out of reverence for Him.
We can, we must, obey the New Commandment to love each other as He loved when He washed the disciples' feet.
But, get along?
No.
Never!
That's not His way.
We must repent.
So, several days into the riots, Mr. King stood before camera to address the people of the city and he asked, stammeringly, in words that have become among the most memorable of the 20th century, "Can we get along?"
Sadly, in real life, most of the time, we can't.
----------------
And, more to the point of issues addressed on this blog, in the, uh, church, the answer, I believe, by God's design, is, "No. Certainly not."
Get along? No. Not get along.
I believe that Paul of Tarsus was correct when he wrote in his letter to the Christians in Ephesus that, (Jesus) gave some to be apostles, others to be prophets, others to be evangelists and others to be shepherds and teachers.
Paul added that Jesus would continue to give these human gifts to His people, "until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature..."
His description of these five giftings is often referred to these days as APEST.
The whole story of the early Christian movement convinces me, beyond doubt, that Jesus' ministry laid the groundwork for APEST, that the Book of Acts details the unfolding of APEST and that the Epistles describe the operation of APEST in Christianity's earliest days.
And, I personally live as if APEST continues to happen today and that I participate in its operation.
Here's one truth about APEST as I have always experienced it:
The Spirit empowers disciples of Jesus to be different from each other and passionate, as they walk in the Spirit, about who He makes them to be.
Those passionate differences create tension, very real tension.
Speaking for myself:
I consider myself to be a prophet. People with the other APEST gifting are, at best, a mystery to me. And, I can't get along with them naturally.
Apostles fascinate me but they make my head spin, their innovation regularly confuses me.
The intense passion for the most basic elements of the Kingdom message, the gospel, which drives evangelists, often embarrasses me.
Shepherds, when they merely function within their gift, bore me. When they presume to take control of the church and institutionalize it and create hierarchies within it...and lead it, I, honestly, hate what they do to the point that I struggle constantly to forgive them.
Teachers, on the one hand, intrigue me but, because they can uphold human tradition as easily as genuine truth, they cause me to fear that the Lord's genuine truth will never prevail.
[And, though this is off point:. Other prophets? There are moments when the passion for truth we share excites me. But, when another prophet calls ME to repent? Yikes!]
----------------
Having lived APEST full-throttle for over a decade now, I am absolutely certain that it is the Lord's design that, in His body, we can't just get along.
My experience is that He actually created His body so that there would be, at best, tension among His people--that, on their own, APESTs would be at odds with each other.
And, they are.
There are people in the Kingdom today who have made careers for themselves, writing books and speaking at seminars explaining APEST...
...not to doubters but,...
...to the very people who embrace it!
So, why this designed tension? What purpose does it serve?
----------------
Here's what I've become convinced of:
This tension among APESTs is designed to remind us that the body has a Head on it upon which all of us must depend.
We are nothing unless He is everything.
At another place in Paul's letter to the Ephesians he writes about, "submitting to each other out of reverence for Christ."
And, I'm convinced that His purpose in giving five different APESTs is so that He alone can be acknowledged as the Head of the Body.
All four of the other APESTs drive me to distraction.
But, in Him...
...and in mutual submission to other disciples,...
...there is power and the potential for victory.
-----------------
Perhaps the most dangerous error of the institutionalists whose self-described "leadership" is driving the decline and decay of the Western church, is their belief and insistence that we can all get along. And that tension among the called is bad and that it is sin.
We can't all just get along...on our own...walking in the Spirit.
We can submit to each other out of reverence for Him.
We can, we must, obey the New Commandment to love each other as He loved when He washed the disciples' feet.
But, get along?
No.
Never!
That's not His way.
We must repent.
Friday, June 15, 2018
Jesus would have Baked the Cake??????????
This post is time-sensitive and, perhaps, already past its expiration date.
The title of the post refers to the recent U. S. Supreme Court decision supporting a Christian baker who refused to bake a cake for a same sex wedding and a church near where the event took place which posted on its church sign, "JESUS WOULD HAVE BAKED THE CAKE."
Clearly, though, Jesus would not have baked the cake.
Certainly, He would have loved the couple planning the wedding. He DOES love them.
Yet, Jesus could not have been more clear about who marriage is appropriate for.
Jesus said, straightforwardly, that the Creator made humans male and female.
And He added that it was for this reason "a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."
Jesus would have loved that same sex couple but he would have stood up for truth. He would have called them to repent and to turn from their sin.
He would have, therefore, stood for truth above relationship.
-----------------
It strikes me, as a member of the Churches of God, General Conference, that the assertion that Jesus would have baked the cake illustrates why our body will fail, unless it engages in repentance.
I'll be clear.
The overwhelming majority of the people of the CGGC are socially conservative. No doubt, most of them were overjoyed to hear that the court sided with the baker in this case.
But, on the broader issue, when they are put in the position of choosing between truth and relationship, unless the issue of truth is radical and extreme, and unavoidable, they choose relationship.
They almost never, ever choose truth.
They practice lukewarmth and tolerance, not the sort of love for His Father's truth Jesus demonstrated when He fashioned a whip with His own hands and physically drove the moneychangers out of the temple, calling them thieves.
They don't love in the way Jesus commanded when Jesus said, after washing the disciples' feet, "as I have loved you so you must love one another."
There is nothing about the CGGC that makes it possible for it to be a prophetic witness in the world today.
Until we change, we will remain bland. There will be nothing about us to recommend us.
We will be a nonfactor in the world...
...and for the Kingdom of God.
No doubt, we will continue to talk, from our mountaintop, about being radical. We will converse among ourselves about how good it is that some people are radical.
But, unless we begin to grieve over our lukewarmth, we will always choose relationship over principle, over truth.
And, our decline and our decay will continue.
And, we will fail the King.
We must repent.
The title of the post refers to the recent U. S. Supreme Court decision supporting a Christian baker who refused to bake a cake for a same sex wedding and a church near where the event took place which posted on its church sign, "JESUS WOULD HAVE BAKED THE CAKE."
Clearly, though, Jesus would not have baked the cake.
Certainly, He would have loved the couple planning the wedding. He DOES love them.
Yet, Jesus could not have been more clear about who marriage is appropriate for.
Jesus said, straightforwardly, that the Creator made humans male and female.
And He added that it was for this reason "a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."
Jesus would have loved that same sex couple but he would have stood up for truth. He would have called them to repent and to turn from their sin.
He would have, therefore, stood for truth above relationship.
-----------------
It strikes me, as a member of the Churches of God, General Conference, that the assertion that Jesus would have baked the cake illustrates why our body will fail, unless it engages in repentance.
I'll be clear.
The overwhelming majority of the people of the CGGC are socially conservative. No doubt, most of them were overjoyed to hear that the court sided with the baker in this case.
But, on the broader issue, when they are put in the position of choosing between truth and relationship, unless the issue of truth is radical and extreme, and unavoidable, they choose relationship.
They almost never, ever choose truth.
They practice lukewarmth and tolerance, not the sort of love for His Father's truth Jesus demonstrated when He fashioned a whip with His own hands and physically drove the moneychangers out of the temple, calling them thieves.
They don't love in the way Jesus commanded when Jesus said, after washing the disciples' feet, "as I have loved you so you must love one another."
There is nothing about the CGGC that makes it possible for it to be a prophetic witness in the world today.
Until we change, we will remain bland. There will be nothing about us to recommend us.
We will be a nonfactor in the world...
...and for the Kingdom of God.
No doubt, we will continue to talk, from our mountaintop, about being radical. We will converse among ourselves about how good it is that some people are radical.
But, unless we begin to grieve over our lukewarmth, we will always choose relationship over principle, over truth.
And, our decline and our decay will continue.
And, we will fail the King.
We must repent.
Sunday, June 10, 2018
The Demise of the Seminary...from 40,000 Feet
I still read the CGGC eNews with interest, though I'm told that I'm one of the few to read it at all.
There are several reasons I comment on it here as often as I do, rather than always comment on it directly on its blog. One of the most important of those reasons is that I am giving it publicity and, hopefully, increasing its readership.
This week's title suggests that its about leadership [gag me] in a post-"Christendom" world.
(The demise of Christendom has been a regular theme for Lance of late.)
However, the article considers the challenges facing theological seminaries at least as much as it deals with leadership as a generic issue.
Lance notes dramatic changes talking at Fuller Seminary likening them to recent decisions made at (at least in name) the CGGC's own Winebrenner Theological Seminary.
Lance notes that what the seminary has become, is a bad fit for the world today and that change is necessary.
I have a few big-picture thoughts:
1. While many people don't realize it, the seminary itself is a rather modern phenomenon especially in the U. S.. Certainly, a few seminaries have been around for more than a century, but very few have.
Fuller, whom Lance notes is very important, was established in 1947. Winebrenner, in 1942 and the school from which I graduated, now known as Evangelical Theological Seminary, opened in 1953.
2. Taking the experience of the CGGC and Winebrenner as representing the larger picture:
The seminary era has been a disaster of historic proportions.
The 76 years in which Winebrenner Theological Seminary has been in existence has been, without question, the worst 76 years in CGGC history...
...by every Kingdom-focused, to use a fad word, metric.
As I understand CGGC history, the formation of the seminary was one part of a series of events that are fruit of the beginning of the spiritual decay from which the CGGC is now suffering, a decay now in an advanced stage.
According to ERC statistics wiz Jim Moss, Sr., the actual numerical decline began about a decade later.
But, there can be no question. The 76 years of the existence of its seminary has been the worst era in the history of the CGGC.
3. With its history in mind, then, the demise of the seminary, as it has existed, can only be a positive development and should be celebrated, not regarded with chagrin.
It's a fact that seminaries, as we've known them, will soon cease to exist. Lance's article makes that case powerfully.
Wisdom demands that the death of the seminary be understood to be an opportunity.
A theme of this blog is that disciples of Jesus must walk by the Spirit, as Paul admonishes in Galatians 5.
One truth is obvious to me. The history of the church in the seminary era, I believe, makes my conclusion indisputable:
The Lord of all authority and power and blessing isn't blessing the theological seminary.
He never has.
As far as the seminary as it has existed is concerned, its time to repent of it, turn from it and seek, in the Spirit, a way of moving forward from it that is a way that the Lord will bless.
4. I attended a seminary. And, I enjoyed the experience. Those years may have been, while I was living them, the most enjoyable years of my life.
I was on staff at Winebrenner for a number of years and, in many ways, I found those years to be joyful, though the whole experience was a mixed blessing.
And, I have connections to people at seminaries today, people whom I admire, respect and love.
But, the indisputable truth remains: The theological seminary has been a disaster and, as it exists today, it will continue to be a disaster...
...which will cost the church resources...
...and will impair its ability to serve the cause of the Kingdom.
The seminary, as it has existed, is dying. It must die.
The question now has to do with what lies ahead.
As I often say here, the only acceptable next step is repentance.
We have no idea what might come after a moment of earnest repentance.
Paul picks up on the theme of the so-called Beatitudes of Jesus and says that godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation.
We need to grieve about these things so we can experience the repentance that leads to salvation.
Let's, all of us, repent.
There are several reasons I comment on it here as often as I do, rather than always comment on it directly on its blog. One of the most important of those reasons is that I am giving it publicity and, hopefully, increasing its readership.
This week's title suggests that its about leadership [gag me] in a post-"Christendom" world.
(The demise of Christendom has been a regular theme for Lance of late.)
However, the article considers the challenges facing theological seminaries at least as much as it deals with leadership as a generic issue.
Lance notes dramatic changes talking at Fuller Seminary likening them to recent decisions made at (at least in name) the CGGC's own Winebrenner Theological Seminary.
Lance notes that what the seminary has become, is a bad fit for the world today and that change is necessary.
I have a few big-picture thoughts:
1. While many people don't realize it, the seminary itself is a rather modern phenomenon especially in the U. S.. Certainly, a few seminaries have been around for more than a century, but very few have.
Fuller, whom Lance notes is very important, was established in 1947. Winebrenner, in 1942 and the school from which I graduated, now known as Evangelical Theological Seminary, opened in 1953.
2. Taking the experience of the CGGC and Winebrenner as representing the larger picture:
The seminary era has been a disaster of historic proportions.
The 76 years in which Winebrenner Theological Seminary has been in existence has been, without question, the worst 76 years in CGGC history...
...by every Kingdom-focused, to use a fad word, metric.
As I understand CGGC history, the formation of the seminary was one part of a series of events that are fruit of the beginning of the spiritual decay from which the CGGC is now suffering, a decay now in an advanced stage.
According to ERC statistics wiz Jim Moss, Sr., the actual numerical decline began about a decade later.
But, there can be no question. The 76 years of the existence of its seminary has been the worst era in the history of the CGGC.
3. With its history in mind, then, the demise of the seminary, as it has existed, can only be a positive development and should be celebrated, not regarded with chagrin.
It's a fact that seminaries, as we've known them, will soon cease to exist. Lance's article makes that case powerfully.
Wisdom demands that the death of the seminary be understood to be an opportunity.
A theme of this blog is that disciples of Jesus must walk by the Spirit, as Paul admonishes in Galatians 5.
One truth is obvious to me. The history of the church in the seminary era, I believe, makes my conclusion indisputable:
The Lord of all authority and power and blessing isn't blessing the theological seminary.
He never has.
As far as the seminary as it has existed is concerned, its time to repent of it, turn from it and seek, in the Spirit, a way of moving forward from it that is a way that the Lord will bless.
4. I attended a seminary. And, I enjoyed the experience. Those years may have been, while I was living them, the most enjoyable years of my life.
I was on staff at Winebrenner for a number of years and, in many ways, I found those years to be joyful, though the whole experience was a mixed blessing.
And, I have connections to people at seminaries today, people whom I admire, respect and love.
But, the indisputable truth remains: The theological seminary has been a disaster and, as it exists today, it will continue to be a disaster...
...which will cost the church resources...
...and will impair its ability to serve the cause of the Kingdom.
The seminary, as it has existed, is dying. It must die.
The question now has to do with what lies ahead.
As I often say here, the only acceptable next step is repentance.
We have no idea what might come after a moment of earnest repentance.
Paul picks up on the theme of the so-called Beatitudes of Jesus and says that godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation.
We need to grieve about these things so we can experience the repentance that leads to salvation.
Let's, all of us, repent.
Sunday, June 3, 2018
What happens when you Kill your Scapegoat?
Or, more to the point: What happens when your dysfunction demands that you have a scapegoat and you kill off the one you have?
I try not to overestimate my significance.
When, according to unsubstantiated, but widely spread, rumor, the ERC, in session, voted to recall my credentials, most of the people who voted to defrock me wouldn't have been able to pick me out of a lineup. Most of them had not even heard my name before those Conference sessions...
...and don't remember it now.
Yet, as still unsubstantiated rumor has it, time was set aside in the Conference agenda to debate my status in the Conference.
Several years earlier, I had been summoned to appear before the ERC Standing Committee to answer charges, presented by George Jensen, in a letter that, printed out, was 21 pages long...
21 stinkin pages. Can you imagine!?!!???!
I was important enough to inspire a 21 page indictment...
...and, of course, to inspire the subpoena to appear before the ERC's most elite body of hierarchs, the committee that continually stands.
And, important enough for the Standing Committee to revisit the matter of my still, to this day, unspecified, offense(s) against whom? against what?
And, important enough to inspire an attempt by the committee that stands to get the ERC Ad Council to recall my ordination, under the cover of darkness, during an end-of-Conference session special meeting.
Clearly, I'm nothing more than a nobody in the real ERC world, among the people who have no access to the peaks of the mountain.
But, on the mountaintop, I...
...was...
...a significant irritant...
...a bug that needed to be squashed.
And, I was squashed.
Back in the day, I was the scapegoat.
I was the whipping boy.
I was the villain...
...blamed, by the hierarchs, for Conference misfires and mistakes, for its faults and failings.
So, they presented me to the Conference as an offense, presumably a reason for its malaise...
...for its numerical decline and spiritual decay...though nothing, so far as I know, was specified.
And, I was whacked...in the most public way...in its most public setting.
----------------
But, in reality, I was not the problem, even a problem. I was nothing more than their whipping boy of the moment.
I wasn't the problem. I wasn't the cause of decline and decay.
So, nothing in the real world changed.
The spiritual decay continued.
More disturbingly, I suspect, for the Shepherd Mafia, than the spiritual decay, the numerical decline continued.
What to do, what to do?
The whole Conference had declared me worthy of shaming and blaming...
...in the first Conference-in-session defrocking in decades.
Yet, all the problems remained. Worsened, even.
----------------
What to do?
The genuinely Christ-obedient act would have been for the Conference hierarchs to repent and turn from fallen ways.
The alternative? The unrepentant act that suits ERC dysfunction?
Create a new scapegoat.
----------------
Has anyone else noticed how quickly, after the hierarchs' focus shifted from me, that Kevin Richardson was placed on the ERC Hot Seat? And, began...
...really, and amazingly...
...to sing my song...
...that the ERC is in trouble? That our decline and decay has become a crisis? That the Conference must change?
Have you noticed that it was virtually immediately after I was bug-squashed that talk of a new New Strategic Plan began and that Kevin began to hope aloud, rather sadly I think, that he'd be given the chance to lead it?
(Did anyone, for a moment, seriously think he'd be given that chance?)
No,...
...in the ERC dysfunction of these days, there must be a scapegoat.
----------------
Kevin's mistake, I believe, is that he, well, really, led the effort to bug-squash me. Ironically, he's the one who stood before the Conference to argue that I be squashed. Or, so I'm told.
When I was gone, it was a slam-dunk that Kevin was the obvious choice to be my replacement.
And, almost immediately, he became my replacement...
...the new scapegoat.
----------------
Sadly, for Kevin, he was fired.
Think about it:
Kevin became the first person, in the nearly 60 years there's been a paid, highest-ranking Conference hierarch here, to be...
...fired.
And, even more sadly: KEVIN IS STILL THE SCAPEGOAT.
He's still the one to blame.
----------------
Two comments:
1. Being the scapegoat fits me. I didn't mind it, even expected it. Being the scapegoat suits my calling, as it did Elijah's and John the Baptist's. It even enhanced my ministry to the Conference.
Being the scapegoat doesn't suit Kevin, poor guy.
All Kevin wanted to do, as I see it, was to be true to the institutional values of the ERC.
He WAS true to those values, and with all his heart.
And, in the fullness of time, when the hierarchs needed a new scapegoat, Kevin was chosen.
He was rejected by the hierarchs. He was fired.
He was pooped on...Diarrhea pooped!
Having been the scapegoat, my heart breaks for Kevin.
My defrocking freed me from being the ERC scapegoat, though I was happy to be it.
Kevin's firing enhanced his position as scapegoat...
...and, he may be the Conference whipping boy for years to come...perhaps forever, depending on how far into the future the ERC tanks.
Kevin will wear the role of scapegoat with gentility and grace, though I'm certain that it will rip at his heart.
I love you, Kevin, and I hate what they did to you.
2. The ERC doesn't need a new scapegoat.
It needs to repent.
I try not to overestimate my significance.
When, according to unsubstantiated, but widely spread, rumor, the ERC, in session, voted to recall my credentials, most of the people who voted to defrock me wouldn't have been able to pick me out of a lineup. Most of them had not even heard my name before those Conference sessions...
...and don't remember it now.
Yet, as still unsubstantiated rumor has it, time was set aside in the Conference agenda to debate my status in the Conference.
Several years earlier, I had been summoned to appear before the ERC Standing Committee to answer charges, presented by George Jensen, in a letter that, printed out, was 21 pages long...
21 stinkin pages. Can you imagine!?!!???!
I was important enough to inspire a 21 page indictment...
...and, of course, to inspire the subpoena to appear before the ERC's most elite body of hierarchs, the committee that continually stands.
And, important enough for the Standing Committee to revisit the matter of my still, to this day, unspecified, offense(s) against whom? against what?
And, important enough to inspire an attempt by the committee that stands to get the ERC Ad Council to recall my ordination, under the cover of darkness, during an end-of-Conference session special meeting.
Clearly, I'm nothing more than a nobody in the real ERC world, among the people who have no access to the peaks of the mountain.
But, on the mountaintop, I...
...was...
...a significant irritant...
...a bug that needed to be squashed.
And, I was squashed.
Back in the day, I was the scapegoat.
I was the whipping boy.
I was the villain...
...blamed, by the hierarchs, for Conference misfires and mistakes, for its faults and failings.
So, they presented me to the Conference as an offense, presumably a reason for its malaise...
...for its numerical decline and spiritual decay...though nothing, so far as I know, was specified.
And, I was whacked...in the most public way...in its most public setting.
----------------
But, in reality, I was not the problem, even a problem. I was nothing more than their whipping boy of the moment.
I wasn't the problem. I wasn't the cause of decline and decay.
So, nothing in the real world changed.
The spiritual decay continued.
More disturbingly, I suspect, for the Shepherd Mafia, than the spiritual decay, the numerical decline continued.
What to do, what to do?
The whole Conference had declared me worthy of shaming and blaming...
...in the first Conference-in-session defrocking in decades.
Yet, all the problems remained. Worsened, even.
----------------
What to do?
The genuinely Christ-obedient act would have been for the Conference hierarchs to repent and turn from fallen ways.
The alternative? The unrepentant act that suits ERC dysfunction?
Create a new scapegoat.
----------------
Has anyone else noticed how quickly, after the hierarchs' focus shifted from me, that Kevin Richardson was placed on the ERC Hot Seat? And, began...
...really, and amazingly...
...to sing my song...
...that the ERC is in trouble? That our decline and decay has become a crisis? That the Conference must change?
Have you noticed that it was virtually immediately after I was bug-squashed that talk of a new New Strategic Plan began and that Kevin began to hope aloud, rather sadly I think, that he'd be given the chance to lead it?
(Did anyone, for a moment, seriously think he'd be given that chance?)
No,...
...in the ERC dysfunction of these days, there must be a scapegoat.
----------------
Kevin's mistake, I believe, is that he, well, really, led the effort to bug-squash me. Ironically, he's the one who stood before the Conference to argue that I be squashed. Or, so I'm told.
When I was gone, it was a slam-dunk that Kevin was the obvious choice to be my replacement.
And, almost immediately, he became my replacement...
...the new scapegoat.
----------------
Sadly, for Kevin, he was fired.
Think about it:
Kevin became the first person, in the nearly 60 years there's been a paid, highest-ranking Conference hierarch here, to be...
...fired.
And, even more sadly: KEVIN IS STILL THE SCAPEGOAT.
He's still the one to blame.
----------------
Two comments:
1. Being the scapegoat fits me. I didn't mind it, even expected it. Being the scapegoat suits my calling, as it did Elijah's and John the Baptist's. It even enhanced my ministry to the Conference.
Being the scapegoat doesn't suit Kevin, poor guy.
All Kevin wanted to do, as I see it, was to be true to the institutional values of the ERC.
He WAS true to those values, and with all his heart.
And, in the fullness of time, when the hierarchs needed a new scapegoat, Kevin was chosen.
He was rejected by the hierarchs. He was fired.
He was pooped on...Diarrhea pooped!
Having been the scapegoat, my heart breaks for Kevin.
My defrocking freed me from being the ERC scapegoat, though I was happy to be it.
Kevin's firing enhanced his position as scapegoat...
...and, he may be the Conference whipping boy for years to come...perhaps forever, depending on how far into the future the ERC tanks.
Kevin will wear the role of scapegoat with gentility and grace, though I'm certain that it will rip at his heart.
I love you, Kevin, and I hate what they did to you.
2. The ERC doesn't need a new scapegoat.
It needs to repent.
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