What You Mean "We," White Man?

The Lone Ranger and Tonto were riding along one day when, suddenly, the horizon was filled with screaming Indians on the warpath. The Lone Ranger turned to Tonto and said, "I don't think we are going to get out of this alive."
And, Tonto said, "What you mean, 'We,' white man?!"


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There is a lot in HERE WE STAND that disturbs me but nothing offends me more than this committee of mountaintoppers' definition of the word, we.


The CGGC is, to use the technical term, Presbyterial. It is an Eldership. That means that it believes that human authority and wisdom exists in its community, in the community of the called. It believes that its salaried people with the title Director SERVE the community. Those people are not Bishops who rule over the community, dictate to it or hold authority over the body in any way. They have been appointed to serve, not to BE served.
The problem is that, in truth, our Directors behave, not as servants of the body but as its rulers.
In the case of HERE WE STAND, they, as is typical, dictate to the body. They, from among themselves alone, tell the body where it stands. They don't ask it. They don't listen.
The Introduction of HWS is honest and shamelessly blatant in making that clear. It says, without shame, that, at the beginning, "a writing committee was appointed." In a body in which human authority and wisdom is recognized to be in the Eldership, in the community, a writing committee is, absolutely, the wrong place to start.
In an Eldership, the only appropriate place to start is consulting the Eldership and noting it's wisdom. Nowhere in the process was that done.
It seems to me that, if the people behind the writing HWS acknowledged that they actually serve the body, not rule over it, they would have appointed a group of people to go out among the people of the body they serve and seek its wisdom.
But, the fruit of what they believe is easy to judge. They don't think they serve the body. To use one of their favorite words, they lead it. The body doesn't lead in this Eldership, the mountaintoppers do.


For some time, I have been accusing the mountaintoppers of theological bankruptcy and theological corruption.
The way they went about producing HWS is evidence of those sad realities. They defy what we believe about our community. I believe, in the language of institutional, churchly discipline, this is insubordination.


HERE WE STAND?
What you mean "we," mountaintoppers?


We all must repent.