Reflections on the MLI Reunion

If you read the eNewses of September 26 and October 3, you know that past participants in the Missional Leadership Initiative were invited to come together about a month ago, as Ed says it, "to return for a kind of reunion with an agenda."

I don't have many reflections worth mentioning, but I believe some of my insights have value--especially as our body considers how it will move on from the Rosenberry era.

I can detail two realities that I, very personally, think are worth mentioning:

1.  I wasn't invited.

I didn't even know there was a reunion planned until I read Ed's brief mention of it in his article on the recent GC Ad Council meeting.  The following week's eNews was Ed's account of the MLI gathering of Eagles--as a fait accompli. 

I was stunned to realize that it had been planned and held and that I had not gotten even a sniff of it from my brethren and sisters in Findlay.

I wrote a note to a friend whose heart has some passions for the Lord and the world that are similar to mine, who has also completed MLI, asking if, like me, he also wasn't invited.  To my surprise, he told me that he had been invited.  At that point I began to wonder how small the universe of the excluded is.

In his reply, noting that I was not invited, my friend asked, "What's up with that?"

While I have my thoughts, I think that his is a good question.

Before MLI was even a twinkle in GC Leadership's eyes, I was calling for missionality in the CGGC and I was living it and participating in it in my local setting.  Since my two years in MLI ended, I have continued to support the goals of MLI and still, today, live out missionality with a passion that is at least as great as anyone in the CGGC.

So indeed, "What's up with that?"

What could have possessed the people making the decision to exclude me from having the opportunity to share my missional joys and sorrows, my triumphs and failures, in community with my brothers and sisters on mission in the CGGC?

I do have a theory.  But, I do not know.

2.  In spite of my absence, my presence was felt.

A telling passage in Ed's glowing account of the successes of the CGGC missional and of the denomination in general is this:

"Friends, God is alive and moving across the CGGC. Heed not the naysayers."

 Obviously, Ed could not forget that there are those inside the CGGC who reside beyond the borders of his preferred world in which we all just get along and in which the CGGC word is spoken and received in unity and with power.

But, "naysayer-s?"--in the plural?  Who, besides me could Ed mean?  Who, besides me, in the CGGC is actually saying nay?

Certainly, Ed's innovations have been opposed by minorities--sometimes fairly large minorities--but actually speaking nay?  To me, it feels very much as if I am a lone voice crying in the CGGC wilderness.  I know that some agree at least on points that I make.  They tell me so.  But, no one I know of is voicing--i.e., saying--nay.

Now, please understand, while I may be saying nay, I'm not saying what Ed says I'm saying.  I'm not denying, as he says, "God is alive and moving across the CGGC."  To this moment, I neither confirm nor deny that He is.  I've never really talked about that at all and I rarely have thought in those terms.

I can say that what I see around me is churches that are either--with very, very few exceptions--struggling to hold their own or are declining and some of them are declining rapidly.  I acknowledge that there are some exceptional stories of churches doing well--but not nearly enough of them to justify Ed's glorious accounts of growth across our body.

But, I will say now that, according to the standards established by the Bible which is, our "only" "rule," that God is NOT alive and moving across the CGGC.  Certainly, the institution of the CGGC is in better shape than it was when Ed's regime began. 

But, when I read the Word--in both Testaments--I see, as fruit of God's blessing, two things taking place among God's people:

First, they repent.
Second, the turn from their evil ways.

While Ed often reports of his travels to the churches and Regions across the CGGC, I can't recall a single account either of repentance or of conversion under his leadership.

By the standard of the Word, since Ed has raised the issue, I don't think God is alive and moving across the CGGC. 

Clearly, the institution has been undergirded.  But, as far as I can tell, God's work is still not being accomplished.  Hearts are not being moved.  Lives are not changing.

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So, these are my reflections--in absentia--on the MLI Reunion.  Sorry I missed it.  I, and the people with whom I serve here at Faith, no doubt, could have benefited from an invitation.

But, alas...