The Historic Importance of the CGGC's Rosenberry Era

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What follows is something I began to work on nearly three years ago.  As you will see, it is an attempt to assess the significance of the Rosenberry Era in the CGGC. 

I wrote it in the flood of my strong, negative emotion that was my response to Ed's Leadership by Program, after the Findlay mountaintoppers announced their embrace, on behalf of the entire CGGC, of the fad-of-the-moment that was Transformational Church.  (You will note that my prediction at the time that it would amount to nothing more than one more flash in the pan was accurate.)

Anyway, by the time I finished writing what follows, I discovered that I was thinking outrageous thoughts and coming to outlandish conclusions about Ed's leadership which startled even me.  So much so that I couldn't bring myself to click Publish. 

I've been sitting on this for nearly three years, not knowing if I agree with myself or not but, in the end, I'd have to say that I'm about 90% on board with what I wrote.

I publish it now because the import of the Rosenberry Era is something that Lance and, for that matter all of the CGGC, will have to deal with.

We know how great the struggle is for a single congregation to move forward after a pastor who has radically redefined that church's ministry has moved on.  How will Lance deal with filling Ed's shoes?  How will we, as a body, treat Lance in the light of the end of the historically game-changing Rosenberry Era.

Think about it.

Feel free to agree or disagree with me on the blog or in private.

I'd love to know how you appraise Ed and how you think we should embrace Lance and the challenges he faces as Ed's successor.

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"I have concluded that by the year 2025...only about one-third of the population will rely upon a local congregation as the primary or exclusive means for experiencing and expressing their faith..." (George Barna, Revolution, 2005, p. 49)

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Ed Rosenberry is a game changer.

In all the history of the Church of God, no one impacted our body in the way John Winebrenner did.

In the space of ten years, Winebrenner progressed from being an attractive, dynamic young ministerial candidate in the view of the German Reformed Church's congregations in and near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to become a radical advocate of 'new measures' evangelism so much so that his actions caused him to be locked out of the Harrisburg church.

In a short time within those ten years, Winebrenner became an innovative church reformer who could not function even as a radical in the German Reformed Church.

Ultimately, Winebrenner's views became so outside the mainstream that he formed a new body of converted sinners committed to "the establishment of churches on the New Testament plan."  On the day that body, the Church of God, was formed Winebrenner went so far as to reject Protestantism, calling for "another great reformation."

To this date, only one person, Christian Henry Forney, has been acknowledged to have an impact on the Churches of God that can be spoken of in the same conversation as Winebrenner's.

Forney's impact was so great that he was able, within about 70 years of the founding of the Church of God, to transform Winebrenner's "another great reformation" movement into a Protestant denomination which no longer yearned for that other "great reformation" of Winebrenner's dream. Forney succeeded in redefining the Churches of God as a Protestant body.

Forney did that by leading the Church of God away from Winebrenner's extreme view of the ordinances--Feetwashing, in particular--into an understanding of church rituals which, though unique, accepted Protestant Low Church presumptions.

Ed Rosenberry is noteworthy because he is, in this day, creating change nearly as groundbreaking as the change Winebrenner wrought and, in some ways, even more extraordinary than the change Forney achieved. 

Agree or disagree with the fruit of Ed's leadership, the time has come to acknowledge his extraordinary achievement. 

In doing so, however, it is important to note:

One difference between Ed's revolution and that of Winebrenner
is that Winebrenner's thinking was innovative
--far ahead of its time--
while Ed's is reactionary, intended to restore
imagined old days and old ways.

Until recently, I would have agreed with conventional wisdom and said that the three big movers of  CGGC change have been:

1. John Winebrenner,
2. C. H. Forney, and
3. S. G. (Sherman Grant) Yahn.

And, until recently, both Forney and Yahn were and should have been ranked above Ed for the degree in which their achievements broke important ground. 

Because Yahn is less studied:

Yahn's great achievement was to shepherd into existence the first formal CGGC Doctrinal Statement.  In 1925, after years of preparation, Yahn was able to lead the adoption of a Doctrinal Statement, and to convince the people of the Churches of God that they were being true to their history, even though Winebrenner was famous to them for saying,

“The Church of God has no authoritative constitution, ritual, creed, catechism, book of discipline, or church standard, but the Bible. The Bible she believes to be the only creed, discipline, church standard, the test-book, which God ever intended his church to have.”

The adoption of the Doctrinal Statement was an historic achievement.  It does not, however, rank with what Ed Rosenberry is doing in the CGGC today for two reasons:

First, what Yahn did fit tightly into the spirit of his time.  The year 1925 was the height of the Fundamentalist-Modernist debate.  Other bodies were doing what Yahn led the Church of God to do, i.e., to choose, formally, one side or the other. 

Second, what Yahn did, simply extended what Forney began.  Forney chiseled out a Protestant identity for the Churches of God.  Yahn merely refined that identity in terms of the driving issue of his day.

Ed Rosenberry's leadership is far more noteworthy in that it is succeeding

in convincing the CGGC to defy the spirit of this time. 

Rowing upstream is difficult.  It is even harder to convince others to join you in doing it.  It is a rare and extraordinary achievement to do that and to convince people who you've convinced to row upstream to feel complacent, even excited, even righteous, about doing it.

That is precisely what Ed is doing.

Between about 2005 and 2007, a small but passionate, yet growing, core in the CGGC had formed around the conviction that the CGGC must no longer be church-centered and internally-focused with an increasingly top-heavy leadership hierarchy. 

In those years, words and phrases such as Kingdom-centered, externally-focused, apostolic, the priesthood of all believers and flat organizational chart entered into the CGGC conversation. 

In addition, during those days, and for a few more years while Ed was laying a foundation, there was vibrant conversation about how the CGGC should respond to that day's fad, the Emerging Church's, passion to make the gospel meaningful to postmodern people. 

Before Ed, a remnant of CGGC people engaged in that conversation and formed themselves into a rather tight apostolic/prophetic community which carried on a cutting-edge dialog regarding those issues on a blog devoted to fashioning a place for "The CGGC in an Emerging World."

Under Ed's historically powerful leadership, all of that is now dust in the wind.

Ed Rosenberry is about church.

He is a shepherd--a flock man.

Here are five historically important fruit of Ed Rosenberry's leadership:

1. There is no longer conversation valuing Kingdom over church.
2. There is, now, no dialog about making the gospel meaningful to postmoderns.
3. Focus has been returned to discipleship through bringing people to the institutional church, instead of the sending disciples to reach the people who need to follow Jesus.
4. The organizational chart is not flattening; it is has become more hierarchical and top-heavy than it has ever been.
5. Conversation about abandoning the distinction between clergy and laity and the priesthood of all believers has been replaced by a stronger emphasis than ever on the leadership of the clergy.

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This reversal of passion for Kingdom and ministry to postmoderns and universal priesthood

to return to CHURCH-focus incarnated in the introduction of new programs
administered from denominational headquarters
is the extraordinary shift

to upstream rowing
that Ed leads.

• In the years since Ed was installed as Executive Director in Findlay, the CGGC has stopped thinking about Kingdom. 
• Our leadership team has readjusted its focus, once again--NOW MORE THAN EVER--on the CHURCH.
• We are no longer concerned with joining in Jesus' prayer, "your kingdom come, your will be done."  We are now, again, church improvers.  Church builders.  Church adopters.
• We don't talk about reaching postmoderns.  (I can't recall the last time I read that word in communication from the General Conference.)
• We talk less and less now about going into the world and more and more about improving the church and bringing people to it.
• And, while we once chatted excitedly about the Priesthood of all Believers, we have now, through our new credentials proposal, expanded the ease with which people can become members of our annually licensed clergy.

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I once heard Norman Sawchuck define a leader as a person able to get people to follow him/her where they would not go otherwise.

If that's leadership, Ed may be our greatest leader ever!

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Remember that, with only minor editing, this was written nearly three years ago.  You may want to substitute, for postmodern, millennial because the jargon has shifted. 

What do you think?