Update on Evie's Recovery from Heart Surgery

Tomorrow will be ten weeks since Evie had aortic valve replacement surgery.

The surgery went very well but other issues began to present her first day home from the hospital.

She began to experience an irregular heartbeat in ways that I still don't understand. Often her heartbeat was in the 90s but her pulse about half that.

As I say, I don't understand.

I know many of you have been seeking updates on her progress but the whole situation has been so uncertain that I...believe it or not...was at a loss for words.

Throughout, the doctors have been saying that this condition is not life threatening. And, we've chosen to believe that.

One problem that seems to be a part of the irregular heartbeat issue is that she lost a lot of blood during surgery and she became very anemic.

Our GP recommended a form of iron we'd not heard of...and was hard to get at a local drug store. She finally found it in the recommended dose on Amazon and has been taking it for about a month.

The iron supplement seems to have made the difference, though we may never know for certain.

For nearly two weeks now, her heart has rarely been out of rhythm and her energy level is rising.

She's returned, on a limited schedule, to her part-time job and is holding her own.

At this point, the only meaningful restriction on her is that she won't be able to walk Laddie for another two weeks. I can't tell you how anxious I am for that day to come!

Thank you all for your prayers.

It's getting Hard for me to Care about the CGGC

I, honestly, to the depths of my being, believe that, "until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature..." that Jesus will give apostles, prophets, evangelists and shepherds and teachers to His disciples "to prepare the saints for works of ministry."

And, with that same conviction, I believe that I am one who is called to be a prophet.

I have many historical role models. Among them are several in particular of the Old Testament prophets. And, more particularly, several in the New Testament who prophesied, including John the Baptist and Agabus (who appears twice in the Book of Acts), and, more and more as I walk in my calling, John, the writer of the Book of Revelation, particularly as he detailed the message of Jesus to those seven churches.

And, I have several historical role models from what you'd probably call church history...but I'm certain Jesus doesn't. One of them is Martin Luther, another is John Winebrenner.

One aspect of this walk that fascinates me and challenges me is the fact that many prophets lived faithfully as prophets, and in the face of fierce, sometimes violent, opposition for many DECADES. And, that they kept on going...to the end.

I've been doing this for what? ten-ish years?

And, for most of that time, with vigor, in spite of opposition, in spite of the fact, if gossip is true, I've been defrocked even though I embrace every part of CGGC doctrine and mission...and live it out as sincerely and faithfully as I am able.

But, as I see no change in what CGGCers actually do, the shameless dissonance between talk and walk, and as I see the body's ongoing decline and decay and petrification continue, I have to admit that I feel like I'm hitting a wall.

It's, for the moment at least, not as easy for me to care as it had been...

...and I wonder at, and am amazed by the staying power of the prophets who are my role models.

I've been in this struggle against, well, apathy for a while and I have a thought: I'm thinking that my role models were motivated more by their love for the Lord than by their concern for the people to whom they prophesied.

One of my past failings, I'm realizing, is that, to this point, a significant part of my motivation has come from my love for the CGGC and it's people.

Certainly, I do love the Lord but, because I am so committed to the CGGC, the hard-heartedness of CGGCers hits me harder than I wish it would.

And, if my focus was more on, as Jesus said, "God's Kingdom and His righteousness," I doubt I'd be this flummoxed.

Don't despair though. I won't stop. I believe to abandon this calling is to abandon my salvation.

And, I do know that part of this is that I am emotionally drained by Evie's heart surgery and her lengthy recovery, not so long after she battled cancer and my dad's death last year and my mom's advance in her own journey in dementia.

I hope it won't be this hard to care about living in my calling always.

CONTAGIOUS: Institutionalizing, Managing and Moderating Repentance

During this past week the mountaintoppers in Findlay went public with something that has been percolating for a month and a half or so.

It's a, well, blog: What they describe as an "online 'commons' where CGGC folks will have the opportunity to interact about issues common to us all."

Between now and the end of the year, this blog, named, CONTAGIOUS, is encouraging conversation about corporate confession and repentance.

To be involved from the beginning, a person had to be invited. CONTAGIOUS is anything but an open forum.

In fact, the thing operated in secret since about the beginning of September. So, I'm guessing it has been pretty much established as what it's intended to be.

Now that the blog's been publicized, you can ask for permission to contribute to it by emailing Michael Martin, at the General Conference headquarters building, and requesting "contributor status."

Someone in conversation with me about the conversation on CONTAGIOUS took the words out of my mouth in describing the posts there so far as not bad but consisting of "tweaks and reminders."

It's, for the most part, bland and it's always polite and restrained. So far, on CONTAGIOUS, as the song says, "never is heard a discouraging word."

I have lots of thoughts about this call for conversation on confession and repentance. And, in time, I may say more than what's in this post.

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For now, I'll point out that what the Findlay gang has designed could not be more out of touch with how repentance is called for in the Word and in the history of the Kingdom...but it is very shepherdy, as are all things that have rolled down from the mountaintop in recent decades.

CONTAGIOUS is an attempt at institutionalizing, managing and moderating the call to repent.

However, as unseemly as it may appear to institutional hierarchs sitting in comfy headquarters offices, calls for repentance that come from the Lord normally are bold, primitive, unsophisticated and raw. Often...much more often than not...they are outlandish, outrageous and outright offensive.

The Lord commanded Isaiah to walk around naked from the waist down for three years as a prophecy against Egypt and Cush!

At the moment the Lord called Jeremiah to speak for Him, the Lord explained to and warned Jeremiah of the spiritually destructive and violent nature of the message Jeremiah would preach in His Name: "...to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow..."

As forerunner of Jesus, John taunted Pharisees and Sadducees who traveled into the wilderness to hear him, calling them a "brood of wipers," and ordering them to "produce fruit in keeping with repentance."

Jesus, speaking through another John in the Book of Revelation said to a whole church, "...if you do not wake up, I will come to you like a thief."

Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther offered an invitation to discuss important changes in church practices which, beyond his wildest imaginings, was so offensive that it changed organized and institutionalized Christianity forever.

And, in the face of that history, CGGC leaders hope to slowly simmer a move toward confession and repentance through a conversation that they will, uh, moderate.

Imagine the High Priest of the Israelites attempting to moderate Isaiah as he traipsed bottomless three years running along the highways and byways of the land. "Isaiah, you git yer clothes on!"

I won't go so far as to say that this will come to nothing.

I'll say it this way: If this plan to bring about repentance is successful, it will be the first time in the long history of the people of God that a move to repentance has been institutionalized, managed and moderated.

Indeed, something may come out of this but, before it does, the mountaintoppers will have to get over themselves.

Perhaps, a few of the people who've agreed to participate under the mountaintoppers' moderation will push the boundaries...will behave in the outlandish and outrageous manner of Isaiah and Jeremiah and John and Jesus.

Perhaps, if they do, they'll be permitted to speak for the Lord.

Perhaps we will repent.

A Kingdom of God Ambassadorial Colleague

As I've noted many times, I have a non-parish priest job. And, I see myself, in all of my life, but intentionally, and specifically, on my job, as an ambassador of the Kingdom of God.

When I've mentioned my role as an ambassador of the Kingdom, I've normally been thinking theologically, advocating what I do as a much more biblically oriented way to live than the life I once lived, as a pastor or parish priest and as a provider of religious products and services to be consumed by a passive laity.

In this post, I'll take a different view and describe a way my job as a manager of the Front End of a grocery store functions.

There are nearly 300 people employed by the company and 50ish of them are coworkers in my department of my store.

One of them, call her Jenny, is a devoted follower of Jesus. She loves the Lord and is wonderfully open and transparent about her walk as a Jesus-follower.

She has a powerful devotional life about which she speaks frequently to me and to others. She cares deeply about biblical truth, specifically about how to live out biblical teaching. She, as Jesus commands, seeks first God's kingdom and His righteousness. She struggles openly over the life she lives and is honest about her failings when she sins...or thinks she's sinned.

We have a lighthearted relationship and I consider her to be an ambassadorial colleague on the job.

The degree to which I have impact on the people I work with is greatly enhanced by Jenny's presence as a fellow Kingdom of God ambassador.

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One other important fact about her:  Jenny doesn't, uh, "go to church."

She has drifted in an out of one of our gatherings and would be more involved, I'm certain, if we cared to make the point of inviting her.

She was going to a church that would be the dream of CGGC mountaintoppers and drifted away from it and, and we've talked about this often, Jenny has no desire to hook up with that, or any other, church.

As I point out, as consumed as many people are these days with the church, Jesus wasn't big on church. Three of the four Gospels don't even contain the word yada, yada, yada.

But, when Jesus does talk church, one thing He says is that when two or three are gathered in His Name, He's there.

I have come to conclude that, based on that line of Jesus' thinking, the church is present for Jenny and me...and there are others...on the job...

Because of the way we approach our job.

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Anyway,...

It seems to me that that there are more and more people like Jenny.

And, I don't know exactly what to think about that.

I do know that in the Church of God movement days, the Church of God was concerned first and foremost with connecting people to Jesus and, only after that, getting those people to church and to a church established on the New Testament plan.

And, really, isn't that what we see in the ministry of Jesus who almost never talked about the church?

The Gospels say that Jesus' ongoing message was a call for people to repent and believe the good news. He called individuals to be disciples. And, he acknowledged that there would be a church. But, he was far less interested in the church than in repentance and belief and the life of a disciple.

I think that Jenny has it right. She tells me that someday, maybe, at some future time, she just may reconnect with a church and go to church. But, that's not her priority. Yet, clearly, going to church doesn't seem to be essential to the strength and vitality of her faith.

And, as I say, she's not alone. There are more, and more, and more people like her all the time.

As I live in the world, it seems to me that the American church, with so much focus on itself and, really, so little thought of Jesus, is missing the whole point.

And, that more and more lovers of Jesus all the time, get the point that the church is missing the one thing that is most important, Jesus.

We all need church.

But, I doubt, more and more all the time, that you or I need to "go to" an organized, institutional church.

If you do go to an organized, institutional church, I think, you need to empower yourself to engage the Jennies of the world.

I believe that they grasp something about Jesus that probably you don't.

Muslimville

We're in Philly. It's the day of Evie's follow-up appointment with the surgeon. She had to have a chest X-ray so we gave ourselves plenty of time to be caught in traffic and get the X-ray before the meeting with the surgeon. Now, we're just killing time.

As I was when I was here to visit her when she was a patient, I'm amazed at the number of people here who are Muslim and, obviously, not of Middle Eastern ancestry. And, many of them millennials.

And, my heart breaks over the ineptitude of the institutional, shepherd dominated, parish priest obsessed American church in taking the powerful, life-changing gospel of Jesus into our world.

You who have a death grip on the church, you have to step aside and empower men and women living in and empowered by the Spirit to reach our world...before it's too late.

A Brief Comment on Brandon Kelly's Second Article of Evangelists

It's, again, a very shepherdy take on APEST.

And, it omits noting that, essential to the activity of Evangelists, is calling people to repentance.

From my experience, and from my knowledge of the history of the Kingdom, evangelists call for repentance more than prophets do.

This article is on how churches can participate in the "evangelistic function in the church." It certainly ignores the history of the Church of God in its movement days.

Then, all of our churches were evangelistic. Being evangelistic was the essence of being Church of God.

Lance's, What do you Seek?

Lance wrote an eNews article six weeks ago, entitled, What do you Seek? 

The article appeared on August 24, the day I rushed Evie to the ER on the day after she returned home from heart surgery.

That was a stressful day and it began a new chapter in her struggle against heart disease...more about that at some point in the future, I'm sure.

From the first reading of Lance's article, I was struck by its poignancy and power and since then I've been determined to comment on it.

Please go into the eNews archives and find it and read it.

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In the article, Lance quotes Luke 19:10 which says that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. Lance points out that Jesus was constantly in the presence of "people who had been told that they were beyond the reach of God."

Then he asks what about us? You? Me? He asks, "When's the last time you went looking, searching for someone who was lost?"

In this powerful article, Lance confesses, "My natural inclination is to seek comfort, safety and security."

So, no. Lance doesn't seek the lost.

In this moment of unusual honesty and transparency from a leader of our declining and decaying body, Lance compares himself to Jesus and admits personal failure.

Lance's honest confession is, indeed, poignant.

To this day, I continue to be stunned by the article and its power.

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I love Lance.

I knew him when he was a seminary student, a ministerial greenhorn.

I've seen him in his youth, in his naivete. I encountered his heart when it was still forming.

I believe I know what's underneath today's man of the mountaintop and what he's become after decades of involvement in the dysfunctioning CGGC institution.

I know him, today, to be a man who, as he confesses in his article, doesn't follow Jesus...who doesn't seek the lost...

But, whose heart is torn over that truth...

Who truly wants to follow another path than the one he's walking.

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But, here's the thing.

There was a time when our brother made the choice not to seek the lost and, instead, to seek something else in their place.

Lance chose to seek an important institutional job in which he'd sit in a corner office, in which he'd be located on the outskirts of a nice sized city, with oodles of lost people.

Lance chose to seek ex officio membership in numerous institutional councils and commissions and conferences which meet in the headquarters building and other councils and commissions and conferences scattered across the country, well, across the world, really.

When Lance made that choice, he was, at the same time, deciding to choose to be separated from the lost of his city, who'd need to get past his office staff if they even wanted to meet him.

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Yet, I'm confident that I know Lance's heart.

I'm convinced that Lance knows that he shouldn't be anchored to that corner office desk and that he should be in the world seeking the lost, following Jesus' way and teaching.

Torn.

I think that's the best word to describe the heart of the man who wrote that poignant and powerful eNews article.

I truly believe that his heart is torn.

And, I'll say this:

The root of this very real problem, this problem that, truly, is driving our denominational demise, is our dysfunctioning value system which, itself, is entirely disconnected from the way and teaching of Jesus...

A value system that created the CGGC institution which Lance loves and serves...

And which Lance chose to serve first, before he serves and follows Jesus.

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Jesus never attended a council meeting, nor a conference nor did He ever meet with a commission. 

Jesus didn't create an institution.

He didn't sit in a corner office.

Jesus lived love...and grace...and mercy...in the world.

Among the lost. Among the least.

And, He defined greatness, not in terms of leadership authority or position, but in being a slave to all.

Our broken and dysfunctioning system tells its best and brightest, people like Lance...

...to seek that corner office with its staff and all the meetings and the councils and commissions and conferences...

But, Jesus would have our best and our brightest go into the world, not to work from offices in headquarters buildings.

Jesus would have our best and our brightest follow the ways of the Kingdom, not lead the institution of the church.

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I know that there was a time that Lance gave his heart to Jesus.

But, more recently and to this day, as can be seen in the way he invests his time, Lance gave his LIFE to the institutional church.

As did many others among our best and brightest.

And, we decline and decay...

And, the Lord of all authority and power and blessing isn't blessing.

We need to define greatness in the CGGC by greatness in the Kingdom, not by position and authority in our institutional church.

We must repent.

Go, Lance. Go. Seek