Defending the CGGC Covenant

Recently, I entered a post in which I made the claim that the draft of HERE WE STAND is fruit of an act of insubordination engineered by CGGC mountaintoppers in Findlay.


Sadly, while I am convinced that they are guilty of insubordination, what they did has become commonplace and, certainly, not unusual in the CGGC in the past five years or so.


As outrageous as what I say probably sounds to many, I genuinely believe it and I am convinced that I am entirely correct. And, I believe this goes a long way in explaining why the CGGC continues to decline and why the Lord continues not to bless her.


The CGGC is a Conference, what the founders in our movement days called an Eldership.


It was established, in 1830, on the strong belief that human authority among God's people exists as the Holy Spirit guides the community of disciples. Its core conviction then was that the Lord's will can be discovered only as believers all serve one another and submit to each other. In the language of recent centuries, the CGGC is intended to be radically democratic. We are, by design, a body in which all voices speak and are listened to. No one is spoken to before they have opportunity to speak.


That conviction that the Holy Spirit guides through the wisdom He gives to His people living in community, however, is dead in today's CGGC, especially in Findlay.


The way the people in Findlay went about writing HWS makes that clear.


What they did spits in the face of our history and the covenant the people of the Church of God shared with each other since our first day.


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I have been told that when the ERC Standing Committee voted to recommend that I be defrocked, one reason was that I refuse to cease my attacks on church leaders.


If they had actually confronted me with that charge, I would have denied that I have ever attacked church leaders.


WHAT I DO IS TO DEFEND THE CGGC COVENANT, AND, IN THE PROCESS, THE AUTHORITY OF THE CONFERENCE.


Often, when I do that, I am very passionate and, normally, I am responding to a specific violation of our covenant, as is the case here with the writing of HWS. Yet, I am certain that the people who are violating the covenant feel attacked, even if I don't name names.


Believe me, I don't do this to attack. I do it to defend our whole community and all of the things we claim to stand for.


In my mind, the group that created HWS is guilty of insubordination because they have, again, usurped the authority of the community, the Conference. And, they have denied the Holy Spirit the opportunity to speak to us through the many diverse voices of our body.


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Truly, what they have done is fairly typical these days, but repeating a sin doesn't stop the sin from being a sin. It merely hardens the sinner's heart.


THE LORD IS NOT BLESSING US.


We must repent.