How the CGGC Defines Discipleship?

Please understand that this entire blog post is a question.

What follows is my understanding, as someone who has a history in the Churches of God and who attended his first East Pennsylvania Conference Session in 1976, of the way the mainstream of the CGGC defines discipleship.

The question(s) that undergird this entire post is/are:  Do you agree with my understanding?  If not, in what way(s) do you think am I wrong?

[Responses on and off the blog and welcome and invited.]

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There has been and continues to be conviction, in the CGGC universe, that we are in what is now an alarming decline [read Lance's eNewses and his articles in The CHURCH ADVOCATE] and that our body must begin yesterday to make disciples.

While there is agreement about making disciples, I don't remember reading or hearing anything substantial recently, from any mountaintop, about what we are making when we make a disciple.

Now, there is a very clear definition, in the CGGC, that serves as the core of how we define disciple making.  The problems with that definition are, first, that it was being composed more than 20 years ago, when Lance was a seminary student and Brent Sleasman was attending the University of Findlay and, second, that the pursuit of that definition, in my opinion, is what had produced the exponential spiritual and numerical decline the CGGC is experiencing.

The current, 20-year-old core definition, is packed within the, uh well, last CGGC mega program:

MORE AND BETTER DISCIPLES--35,000 by 2000:  35,000 in worship by 2000

While I get the sense that the current batch of younger mountaintoppers regard 35,000 by 2000 be be folly and a colossal failure, two things are true of our current batch of self-styled leaders:

1. None of them, even Lance, has disavowed, or rejected, it, and
2. No one, apart from people like me, has even suggested an alternate understanding of what a disciple is.

Exegeting, "MORE AND BETTER DISCIPLES--35,000 by 2000:  35,000 in worship by 2000" (please tell me if you think I am wrong), it seems clear to me that:

A disciple is anyone who contributes, in the CGGC, to the average annual worship attendance in a congregation and, by extension, the entire denomination.  Or, a disciple is anyone who attends a CGGC Sunday morning show, even one time in a year.

A "better disciple," I'm guessing, is anyone who participates in a local church's ministry at any level beyond attending at least one show.  Therefore, someone who signs up to be an usher would be a better disciple as would someone who volunteers for the nursery or who bakes a cake for a youth retreat.  Of course, a better disciple would also be someone who serves on the Church Administrative Council or teaches a Sunday School class or who participates on a worship team.

That, as far as I can tell, is the essence of the core of the current operating definition of a disciple in the CGGC, and it has been the definition since the early 1990s.

There is one other important component of today's definition of a CGGC disciple that has been added much more recently, only two years ago, in fact. 

According to that recent tweaking of the definition, a person can be a disciple in the CGGC without regard to belief in even the most essential Christian truth.

After General Conference in 2013 we assert of We Believe, based on our highest earthly authority,

From its formation, the Churches of God stressed the importance of unity in essentials, liberty in non-essentials, and charity in all things. The Church seeks to uphold biblical truth while respecting personal freedom. As such We Believe is not intended as the final word on the faith and practice of the Churches of God. Only God’s Word can do that and one day this current edition will likely be revised. Nor is it intended as a litmus test for fellowship or a proscription for ministry as there is diversity of thought and practice across the body on several items discussed herein. It needs to be remembered that this document is a “centered set” delineating the mainstream of the Churches of God and not a “bounded set” prescribing what is required of all.

Therefore, no point of Christian teaching of belief can be a "litmus test for fellowship or a proscription for ministry" to define a CGGC disciple because we tolerate "diversity of thought and practice across the body."

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I'm a geezer.  I've been around in the CGGC for a long time.

What I have described is what I believe we think we have as our goal when we talk about making disciples.  Please tell me, how you think I'm wrong.  I only ask that you base your opinion in some CGGC authority.

Thanks.