A Double-Glimpse from 40,000 Feet

Two foundational observations that I made...again...as I was putting together the 40,000 foot critique of the newest CGGC vision.

1. The whole thing is wrong. If the whole thing was right, i.e., if the paradigm was correct, this vision might groove. But, the vision can't be right because the perspective is wrong, the paradigm, the system from which we are operating, is wrong. We are starting at a wrong place. We can't get to the right place from where we started.

2. The whole thing is at odds with what once was. There was a time when the power of the Spirit and the blessing of the Spirit was so dynamic in the Church of God that, reading Winebrenner's accounts, you get the sense that there was a genuine struggle to know how to keep in step with the work God was doing. Of course, today the struggle is knowing that the Lord is doing nothing among us.

We are at odds with what we once were in many ways. Here is the one way that may be the most essential:

On the day the Church of God formed, Winebrenner preached that the "counsel and work" of the church was, first and foremost, "the conversion of sinners." That focus on people outside of the, well, church who needed Jesus was fierce and single-minded.

From 40,000 feet, that stark focus on winning sinners to Jesus, which was so obvious back in the day, is gone.

Back in the day, the humans who were the driving force of the ministry of the Church of God were, in my opinion, gifted to be evangelists first, prophets second and apostles third. Today, in the CGGC? Well, none of the above.

This second observation is more important than you might think. It may, actually, be a starting place for genuine repentance and change.

Frequently in the Word, people who were powerful voices for the Lord called God's people to move forward by remembering the ways of God's people in the past.

Why wouldn't we do the same?