Being CGGC-Catholic in the ERC

I've been chatting off the blog with someone, making the point that the founders of our movement were very careful to declare that they were not Protestants. They hoped that their efforts would be part of, as Winebrenner said it, on the very day the Church of God was formed, "another great reformation."

And, we've trashed that founding vision. We've become blatantly and blandly Protestant. And, we're, as we all know, declining.

----------------

Having made that point, I'll go a step beyond to note that, in my ERC, we've become more than a little too Roman Catholic.

If you're a Roman Catholic, you define righteousness in terms of your involvement in your local parish and of receiving the sacraments provided by your parish priest and by faith in the doings of the church's institutional hierarchy from your Bishop up to the Pope.

If you're ERC CGGC, think about the new New Strategic Plan.

In the ERC these days, you define, well, righteousness by involvement in your local healthy, life-giving church whose leadership is provided by your healthy, life-giving pastor and by your healthy, life-giving Conference leadership.

The parallel is stunning.

I often remark that CGGC pastors function as parish priests, as providers of religious products and services to be consumed by a passive laity.

And, that's true.

We don't call the religious products and services provided by our parish priests, sacraments...

But, they really are CGGC sacraments.

In the ERC way of thinking, the goal is to get people to consume our pastors' religious products and services in the same way Roman Catholics want good Catholics to participate in the sacraments.

These days, the most important CGGC sacrament is the sermon.

We don't ask our people to take the Eucharist weekly but we do want the laity to take to heart their pastor's sermon.

------------------

There are many ways that the ERC's new New Strategic Plan is theologically bankrupt.

Perhaps the most dangerous is in its definition of righteousness in terms of involvement with the church, the parish priesthood and the institutional hierarchy.

This is so un-Jesus.

Read the Gospels.

We must repent.