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.