Why Brent Sleasman's Call to "Important Conversations" will come to Nothing

Apart from the brouhaha over why my eNews comment on Brent's guest article in the eNews, SETTING THE STAGE FOR IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS: HUMAN SEXUALITY, was not published, I want to make a predictive prophecy about it.

I don't do the predictive part of prophecy often. In this case, as is usually the case, when I do it, I'm slightly embarrassed because I suspect everyone who reads it will think, "Well, duh! Who doesn't already know that?"

Yet, what seems obvious to me usually isn't to everyone. 

So, in case you haven't realized it, what Brent and Lance want to happen in the CGGC...with CGGC people setting the stage for and having important conversations about difficult issues...isn't going to become the way of the CGGC future.

Unless, of course, we repent. 

It's the reasons I see for that reality that leads me to type this out even though you probably already know it. There are several reasons and they're not all that profound. 

1. They want our parish priests to be the people leading these conversations. 

This is a mistake that we started making at least 80 years ago and we continue to make and it ALWAYS leads to failure. ALWAYS. 

In Church of God movement days, our minute handful of ministers, they weren't called pastors until very recently, did not provide religious products and services to be consumed by a passive laity. 

In Church of God movement days, we didn't have a clergy and we most certainly didn't have a laity.

In Church of God movement days, it was understood that the work of the Kingdom was done by the people of the congregations and that the ministers were servants of the Lord whose role was to prepare the saints for works of ministry, as Paul describes the role of APESTs in Ephesians 4:11-13.

It's become our way constantly to tweak the role of the parish priest, to add just one more little duty to the job description to suit changing times or to follow fads. 

And, that's what's being done here. 

Let's have our parish priests devote a nice chunk of time, emotion and energy to setting the stage for important conversations...and, then, of course, to having those conversations. 

And why not!??!!?!! 

Church pastors don't have nearly enough to do now. It's long past time that we asked to work a full-time schedule. 

In Church of God movement days, our people...our PEOPLE...were having the important conversations...about slavery, about war, about alcohol abuse. 

And, our ministers were empowering those conversations. But, they weren't being paid to be the people who invested time and established space for those conversations to take place. 

We always do this these days. 

We talk about discipling but we walk the system in which our pastors are parish priests who provide religious products and services to be consumed by our passive laity...and, now, apparently, by the unchurched world.

We always do this. It always fails. 

It will fail again.

2. More at the place where parish priest ministry meets the road...

...what are the people of our aging congregations expected to think when their pastor adds setting the stage for important conversations to his/her schedule and has less time for sermon and Bible Study preparation and home and hospital visitation?

What does the laity always think!

The time and energy invested in setting the stage for important conversations breaks the unspoken agreement between pastor and church and the laity, justifiably, becomes angry.

And, when the people of the laity, who pay the Conference tithe, complain to regional leadership and demand that their pastor either spend more time with the old people, or get them a pastor who will, what's regional leadership always do?

And, what happens to all the important institutional obligations a parish priest attends to? The church and regional meetings?

What happens to the time the parish priest needs to devote to his/her family?

This setting the stage for important conversations is a big task. It involves the investment of time and emotion for a parish priest. 

What's the consumer of the parish priest's more traditional products and services supposed to do? Those consumers are paying good money for the services that they expect to receive. What's the pastor's family supposed to do?

What does the parish priest stop doing to start preparing for important conversations?

CGGC mountaintoppers created our laity. They've created the expectation that churches consume religious products and services. CGGC mountaintoppers created, from Winebrenner's movement, the notion of credentialed priestly leadership in the place of Winebrenner's universal priesthood.

For this setting the stage for important conversations vision to work, the roles of the parish priest and the consuming laity will have to be adjusted, at the very least.

They won't be. 

3. One of my Characteristics of the CGGC Brand is, Cynicism. 

Despite the fact that I regularly denounce the cynics, I suspect that many who read my blog are cynics. If you're not already a cynic, imagine being a cynic reading these articles by Brent...

...or, more likely, reading about them on this blog because you probably wouldn't waste your time reading the eNews blog. 

How many times have you heard, or heard of, these ideas and initiatives rolling down from the CGGC mountaintop?!!!?!

Are you even going to bother to moan at this one?

There's nothing in what Brent's suggesting that will soften the hearts of our many cynics.

------------------ 

So, the SETTING THE STAGE FOR IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS thing will go nowhere. 

And, I need to be clear about one thing: In my opinion, that's a bad thing.

By leaving the parish priest ministry to live in the world as an ambassador of the Kingdom of God, I actually have the conversations Brent advocates.

Having those conversations has become my life in a significant way. I live for the moments those conversations happen.

But what the eNews has in mind? It's not going to happen.

A significant theme in my lost comment to Brent's post was my call, again, to turn from the belief in the church as an institution led by a clergy class...

...and to empower every believer to be a priest.

So far, CGGC mountaintoppers refuse to do that.

What Brent and Lance propose is impractical for life in the real world.

It can't work. It won't happen, no matter how valuable the core idea may be.

Until the mountaintoppers repent of and turn from their institutional vision of the church with its stark clergy/laity divide, it can't happen.