A One-Year-Later Update on my Brent Sleasman eNews Prophetic Prediction

A case study.

From time to time, comments offered here imply that I get things wrong. Yet my sense is that my take on the CGGC is accurate. So, I decided, nearly a year ago, to test myself in an objective way...based on real words.

Last September, I entered a post here predicting that a recommendation offered in an eNews article by Brent Sleasman, President of Winebrenner Theological Seminary, would "come to nothing."

I rarely make predictions on this blog.

It's very possible that I've never, ever been as specific and detailed...and bold... in a prediction as I was in that post.

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Here's some background. I'm certain you don't recall the details.

Last summer, Brent was invited, by Lance, to author an eNews article on engaging people who are not disciples in conversation about important issues.

Brent's article was intelligent and provocative. It dealt, in this case, with discussion of issues of human sexuality. And, I responded to it.

I mentioned Brent's article, and my response, here on the blog.

I recommended readers of this blog check out Brent's article as well as my response. I noted that I didn't save my response but I was certain it would be published, because my responses always had been published in the past. (A description of my response is included in the post I've copied below.)

However, my comment wasn't published as a comment on the eNews. After a time, I entered a rather miffed comment about that fact.

Later, Lance sent me a private email saying that it had "come to (his) attention" that I was saying he didn't publish my comment. (Until then, I didn't know that Lance was the moderator at that time.)

Lance added that he wanted me to know that he didn't receive the comment and that he had always published my comments in the past, no matter what they said. He added that I shouldn't bother responding to his email because he wouldn't read anything I wrote to him personally. (I did, however, respond with an apology, though I'm certain that Lance was true to his promise and that he didn't read it.)

It was after that that I wrote the post that is copied below, suggesting that nothing would come of Brent's post.

Brent created a Facebook link to the post...and it became the second most read post in the history of this blog.

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To the point of this post:

1. My prediction...that Brent's idea would come to nothing...was purely and perfectly accurate. What Brent suggested, with Lance's blessing, has come to absolutely and precisely nothing in the CGGC. My guess is that it long since forgotten by everyone, except me.

We, in the CGGC always do forget. We have been conditioned to forget. We are constantly inundated with grand ideas from CGGC institutional authorities. But, there hasn't been follow-up, for at least a decade, on any of the great ideas.

My post serves to illustrate the reality of the CGGC characteristic, To Talk is to Walk-ism.


2. It's true that I decide long ago to revisit my prediction from a year ago, however the timing of this revisit strikes me as being significant.

Significant how?

The institutional authorities in Findlay have recently rolled out a first-ever-in-nearly-200-years CGGC Strategic Plan.

Can you guess why I think that there's a very high probability that it will come to nothing?

Here, however, is a twist on my "come to nothing" prediction:

I'm convinced that, if it depends on the hierarchs in Findlay, the Strategic Plan will come to nothing. These folks are talkers, not walkers.

In fact, their booklet introducing the plan tells CGGCers that they are not expected to adopt the Strategic Plan.

Here's the twist on the "come to nothing" prediction:

It's possible that others in the Eldership, to whom Lance and his crew are, technically, accountable, may force the issue and demand that the Findlay Talkers actually walk.

I'm not predicting that they will. In fact, my doubts about that are immense.

I've been clear that I think that the very idea of adopting any strategic plan is a very serious mistake.

Yet, for the sake of defeating Talk-ism, even only one time, I'm hoping.

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So, here is the predictive prophecy from last September. I've abridged it slightly to prevent this post from being longer than necessary. You are welcome to read the whole thing in the blog's archives.

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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. 

And why not!??!!?!! 

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 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!

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?

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.

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.

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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.

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.