I've been as clear as I can be...before and after the vote to approve the ERC's new New Strategic Plan: I'm convinced that the plan is theologically corrupt.
But, even if I'm the one who is off-base biblically, there's another problem with the ERC especially, and with the whole CGGC as well...
...a problem with executing our ideas and plans.
I'll illustrate that problem here. We are so dysfunctional. We are so broken.
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If rumors are true, the Eldership of the Eastern Regional Conference of the Churches of God, voted to instruct their hierarchs to retrieve my ordination certificate...20 months ago.
I still have the certificate.
Make no mistake about it: I have not refused to return my ordination certificate.
The hierarchs simply haven't asked me for it.
As I've made clear on the blog in the past, I did get notification of a Certified Letter from the ERC CGGC...
...101 days after the rumored vote...
...a whole hundred and one days...fourteen and a half weeks!
I didn't pick up the letter...
...and, I was clear on this blog, read by some among the mountaintoppers, that, as a member of the CGGC, I demand the hierarchs be true to the authority of the Eldership and submit to the Bible, as their only rule of faith and practice:
If your brother sins, go and show him his fault just between the two of you.
As I've said, I still have my Ordination Certificate and I haven't refused to return it. Despite the rumored action of the Eldership, the hierarchs have not submitted to the authority of the Eldership. They have not acted on the body's instruction.
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A defining truth of the ERC, and the whole CGGC, is that leadership talks, but never walks.
Evidence of that in the ERC?
The 2015 ERC old New Strategic Plan: Leadership presented it with enthusiasm and fanfare. The Eldership approved it unanimously.
And, it came to nothing. It became words on paper, and never, ever anything more than that.
The ERC hierarchs talk, but, for generations, they, very simply, don't walk...
...they don't lead.
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Since before I entered the East Pennsylvania Conference in the 1970s, the hierarchs of this Conference have not put their words into action.
In all those years, they have never walked their talk.
How could the ERC Conference in session unanimously approve that 2015 old New Strategic Plan?
How could it approve, nearly unanimously, this year's new New Strategic Plan?
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For generations, there has been an unspoken agreement between ERC leaders and the people of the Conference:
The leaders can say anything they want...
...so long as they don't ask the people of the Conference to actually do something about it.
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The hierarchs sit in their ivory tower, in that office complex in Harrisburg that they rent from the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, and they plan and they scheme...
...and they share their brainstorms with the Conference...
...but ERC hierarchs never walk the talk and they never ask or expect anyone else to walk the talk either.
So,...
...the 2015 old New Strategic Plan became mere words on a page one second after it was unanimously approved by the Eldership...
...and, I still hold my ordination certificate rumored to have been recalled by the Eldership in 2016.
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We, in the ERC, may be at a crossroads.
The hierarchs are making noises, this time around, about breaking the unspoken agreement with the Conference and actually walking the talk...
...and expecting the rest of the Conference to abandon their part of the unspoken agreement...
...and to walk their talk, too.
If the hierarchs do that, the ERC will be in a dangerous moment.
Talk-ism has a long history in the CGGC. It's been functioning longer than any of the current hierarchs have been active in the ERC..
...maybe before some of them were born.
They have never experienced anything but Talk-ism.
Talk-ism is assumed and understood by everyone to be the way and the truth and everyday life the ERC.
Will the hierarchs really change? What will the Eldership do, if they do?
We'll see...we'll see.
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