I received several useful and interesting off-the-blog comments on my post about heresy and theological error in what Brandon Kelly has been posting on the CGGC eNews and publishing in The CHURCH ADVOCATE regarding APEST.
One of those off-the-blog comments contains perhaps the most important observation I've seen about the culture the CGGC has created for itself in the past 80 plus years.
I refer to it as H-I-T: Honest, Insightful and True, because that's, precisely, what I think it is.
This is the two-sentence comment:
I don't think think the CGGC is really interested in APEST. They're just letting Brandon play.
And, based on the fruit we are producing, that fits.
I'm choosing to call this comment a H-I-T because...
The comment was communicated honestly and that's noteworthy to me because, in the CGGC, we're not honest with ourselves about ourselves. We're declining. Lance wrote that on the eNews since his first article as ED. Yet, in our dishonesty, in our denial of our own reality, we still will only mildly tweak, and only in talk, here and there.
It's insightful. It describes concisely, precisely and accurately the response of the CGGC body to this, nearly completed, year-long effort, by the leadership in the General Conference office, to educate, edify and motivate the body to implement APEST.
And, it's true. Does anyone deny either statement? Have CGGC people shown any interest in turning from their failing and non-blessed traditions to actually do APEST? Is there one shred of evidence anywhere that, as a people, the CGGC body is doing anything but to let Brandon invest his time playing around with APEST?
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I've been clear that, in my opinion, Brandon's APEST thinking is laced with theological error, even heresy. So, obviously, it doesn't bother me that what he's teaching will come to nothing.
However, those two sentences I quoted don't describe Brandon. They describe us, the people of the CGGC.
As I was meditating on the totality of this tragedy, the final words of the Book of Judges overpowered me:
...everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
Those were spiritually dark years for Israel. They marked a time of spiritual decline and decay.
To be fair to those people, they sought good. They did what was right, not wrong, in their own eyes.
As do, apparently, each of us, as we allow Brandon to play around with APEST for a whole year without any intention of heeding his wisdom or following his leadership.
Like the people of ancient Israel, each of us unrepentantly do what is right in own own eyes.
What that really means about the people of Israel, in those sad and dark days, is each person was his/her own authority, in effect, his/her own god.
It means precisely that about the CGGC today.
Woe unto us.
And, we know that we live in the midst of woe, don't we? The Lord of all authority and power and blessing isn't blessing us. And, we don't seem to care...at least, to care enough to change our ways...
...or, at least, follow our leaders in changing our ways.
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So, according to someone other than me, the people of the CGGC are willing to let Brandon invest a year of his time in General Conference leadership playing with himself over the issue of APEST. And, that we have no intention of following the vision he is casting for us.
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To speak in traditional terms, the denominational i.e., church body, the CGGC, is declining.
And, Brandon and Lance, and the whole CGGC General Conference leadership team, really, is calling the body to a different practice of the Doctrine of Church, of Ecclesiology.
Does anyone think that it's a good or healthy or loving or Christlike thing that we'd let our denominational Director of Transformational Ministries go on and on about transforming our way of being a church together...
...and to have no intention of doing it...
...with the universal conviction that the wise thing, in Christ, is to allow our brother simply to play with his ideas!?!?!?!!!
That seems to someone other than me, to be the height of the wisdom of the CGGC body.
We must repent.
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