Mixed Signals from the ERC about Conference Sessions

Gang,

I've been reading through my ERC Conference docket for next week's gathering with the greatest of interest.

This year's theme?  (BTW, theme?  What, in the New Testament plan, is a theme for a gathering of elders?)

The theme?  "It is well!"

And, while it is true that the official explanation of the theme highlights the need for wellness among "pastors, leaders and congregations in order for God to bless the work of the Conference," based on the reports contained in the docket, things are already extremely well!

It is already extremely well, we are told, with Church Planting and Church Renewal.  All is now very well as far as Conference leadership is concerned--and with finances too.  This has been a year of abundant wellness in the ERC--on par, it seems, with the wellness experienced by the church in the year of the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost!

The docket is nothing less than a manual for a "Yay God" orgy!

It is surprising then--or, is it, really?--that ERCers'd receive an email from the Commission on Discipleship last week containing these words: 

"...we are asking each congregation within the region to pray for the annual conference in session.  These past several years have shown that Satan likes to work against us, we have seen the need for repentance and for relationships to be healed and we have seen the benefit of being united in Christ."

"The need for repentance?"

So what are we to believe?  Is all well?  Or do relationships need to be healed?  Has our shepherd leadership become so desperate that it's now able to publish the "R" word and confess that it sees the need for repentance in the ERC?  Do we lack unity?

This is typical.

And it highlights four of my "Characteristics of the CGGC Brand:"

1. Mellow Relationships over truth.  We, very simply, don't seem to know what the truth about the state of the ERC is.
2. Strong Central Planning with low-level Clergy and Congregational Rebellion.  Relationships in need of healing?  The need for the R word?  Could it be that, outside of the good-old-boy/girl-network, few of us are really feel blessed by what's happening on the ERC mountaintop?
3. Cynicism.  There is a serious lack of trust coming from the top down, going from the bottom up and stretching from side to side in the ERC.  Leaders feel unsupported by those they presume leadership authority over and those in the hinterland often feel as if their visions and passions are disrespected by the people who will ascend the stage next week.
4. To Talk is to Walk-ism.  The docket seems to possess the deep-seated CGGC conviction that leaders can talk a Spirit-led and blessed reality into existence simply by saying it exists while others sense that those people don't possess that authority in the Kingdom of God.

The truth? 

It is not well in the ERC.  The Commission on Discipleship is correct in its assessments of the problem of broken relationships, the need for repentance and for unity.

I suggest that the pattern to be followed must come from the Book of Jonah where the leader put on sack cloth and led, by example, confession of sin and repentance.

But, reading that email, my sense is that ERC leaders are convinced that "they," not "we," need to do the confessing and repenting.