Gang,
I probably read The CHURCH ADVOCATE more closely than anyone else in the world. And, the last issue is one for the ages. If I have time, I will detail how that is so.
For now, I'll just say this. It is everything that is mature, church-focused Rosenberrianism. It makes church everything and Jesus all but an afterthought.
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For now, some observations about MLI.
1. Two thirds of a page of this CA is an advertisement for MLI. I don't know exactly what that means, but I suspect that it is becoming difficult to scrounge up enough people to attend MLI. Why else would you run the ad?
2. The unidentified author of the ad states the "end goal" of the "experience" as being to produce "leaders" who are "healthier, more resilient, self-aware and...able to lead local congregations...."
Back in the day, when I was participating in the experience I asked Reggie McNeal, in a whole group session, what he wanted MLI to accomplish. His answer was very different from what appears in the CA this issue.
McNeal said he wanted to create:
-Frustration,
-Agitation and
-Critical mass.
(I had to look up critical mass which is the minimum amount of matter necessary to create a NUCLEAR REACTION.)
So, back in the day, before CGGC leadership got hold of MLI, we were in the business of frustrating people, of agitating them and of gathering together a group of those frustrated, agitated people large enough to blow up the CGGC for the sake of the KINGDOM OF GOD.
Now, as the CA says, we are about producing leaders of local congregations.
Big, big difference.
Big, BIG difference.
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In my opinion, this is why we need to advertise and why we don't have a waiting list.
Interestingly, back in the day, on the day after the MLI retreat in which Reggie talked about frustration, agitation and critical mass, I sent an email to Lance and Ed saying that, if Reggie is right about the end goal of MLI, I should be the poster boy because, even then, I was frustrated and agitated and I yearned to be apart of a community of people intensely committed to kingdom living.
ReplyDeleteEd, as you might expect, didn't enter the conversation. Lance responded and, as a tenderhearted man would, graciously tried to address the issues of my frustration and agitation, as if they were bad things, not goals to be achieved.
It was from that moment, I think, that my ultimate despair over the future of the CGGC began to form.
As I understood Reggie, he envisioned the creation of a state of heart necessary for repentance to take place.
Paul says that godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and I suspect that Reggie wanted to start by creating the emotional state that could bear fruit in repentance and bring salvation again to and through the CGGC.
But, the warm, fuzzy sensitivities of the Shepherd Mafia won't allow people to get to the place from which repentance might come.
This is why shepherd domination is, ultimately, evil. It is why we will never prosper spiritually until the Shepherd Mafia is broken up.
I had actually forgotten about the "frustration, agitation, critical mass" comment from Reggie. My how things have changed in so short a time.
ReplyDeleteWhat is perhaps most interesting to me is, it seems for those the MLI was fairly successful for then (the ones who became frustrated and agitated), there was so little support offered by the powers that be (okay, there was NO support). But I guess that would fall under your "talkism/walkism" category. Harumpf.
I think you have hit on the reason that the current "leadership" paradigm will never move us in a direction that will be blessed by the Holy Spirit. Godly grief, which the SM will always resists, produces a repentance, which it seemingly abhors, that leads to salvation. We will never get to God's end game because our, um, leaders will not permit it.
DeleteI have this picture, more a short video, in my mind:
DeleteEd and I are walking. He is in front and I am walking a short distance behind him. We come to a door. Ed opens the door and holds it open for me and gestures for me to go through it ahead of him. As I walk through the doorway, he kicks me in the, uh, butt.
He did that to me with the "New Testament plan" Mission Statement. Shame on him. He did it again with MLI and I naively gave him a clear shot at my butt a second time. Shame on me.
Right on, Dan, about those for whom Reggie's end goal was achieved and they became frustrated and agitated. As we both know first hand.
ReplyDelete