Recently, I received a mailing from the ERC office informing me that the Conference is updating its mailing list and if I am still interested in receiving its hard copy newsletter I need to send an email to the Conference office secretary asking to be kept on the mailing list.
Of course I want to continue to receive it.
The ERC mountaintoppers initiated a one-sided process in which the status of my credentials was considered, never meeting with me, never making a charge against me and never offering me an opportunity to respond to the concerns they had about me.
Others on the mountaintop initiated a separate process which resulted in the Conference expelling Faith Community from the role of Conference congregations.
I, for myself, love the CGGC and the ERC.
Up until the time Faith began to be the object of the Conference's abuse, our people here were more than content to be a part its ministry. While we are concerned with the Kingdom, not the institutional church and its hierarchy, we were content to be in ministry among the people of the ERC.
We embrace, passionately, the Conference's doctrine.
We have put the CGGC Mission Statement into practice..
...and we pioneered in living out the central principle of the CGGC Vision Statement.
It is the Conference who turned on me, on US, despite my/our absolute loyalty to the teachings and practices of the CGGC.
But, love is patient, love is kind. It keeps no record of wrongs. It always perseveres.
I forgive the mountaintoppers. Doing so is not difficult for me. And, to the degree that the Conference in session may have sanctioned the mountaintoppers' unchrist-like behavior toward me, my love for it remains unphased.
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So, having been through the process of advanced academic training, I began to wonder how it would work out if, many years in the future, the mountaintoppers and I were to be part of a doctrinal dissertation in the area of American religious history.
A future area of study for religious historians almost certainly will be the demise of Christian denominations in the twenty-first century.
How would it go if a doctoral student, aware that the CGGC is on the list of groups that died during this era, did a study of us? (When I was in school, when profs found out that I was part of Winebrenner's group, they wanted me to do every paper I could on him and us. We were, at least at that time, fascinating.)
I think of Richard Kern's biography of Winebrenner and his chapter on the Winebrenner-(John Williamson) Nevin Controversy that took place in the 1840s.
What if, 150 years from now, A.D. 2270-ish or so, someone starts reading CGGC stuff as a scholar would, taking the eNewses and The CHURCH ADVOCATE, We Believe, the Statements of Faith, Here We Stand and all the newsletters and Healthy Church Updates and the emails they can access with that day's technology AND also read this blog and other things I write.
What conclusions do you suppose s/he would conclude?
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In the CGGC, we know that we're dying and our leaders themselves are telling us that we need to change. The ERC, at this moment, is attempting to change.
The important thing about me in all of this, as I see it, is that I, with abandon, do what the (especially Findlay) mountaintoppers talk about:
The Bible as our only rule of faith and practice,
The church on the New Testament plan,
Incarnational living,
Focus on the expansion of the Kingdom of God.
It's this I-do-what-they-say thing and how the institution responds to it that would be worth a chapter in a dissertation on this era of the CGGC.
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Future scholar, if you're reading this? Have at it.
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