Another Congregation that has been Expelled from the Denomination

As readers here know, the group with which I gather as a part of the Eastern Regional Conference has of the Churches of God, General Conference has been expelled.

The letter from the Conference which declared the fact of the expulsion gave no reason for the act of the Conference other than to say that the Administrative Council voted the expulsion into reality. 

As an aside, our ministry actually still is, to this day, perfectly loyal to the teachings of the CGGC and to its statements of Mission and Vision. 

There were twists and turns in our story and the entire thing got messy...and ugly. Yet, in the end, we were booted out of the CGGC institution. 

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Anyway,...

I attended Evie's brother's 80th birthday party yesterday and, while I was there, I chatted briefly with one of the people I admire most in the world.

He's our great nephew.

He's 30 years old, married with four children. 

Last year, his wife and he sold their home in a very safe and comfortable small town not far from us so they could move into the metropolitan Harrisburg area, into a, well, slummish area and live missionally.

As they were preparing to move, they began visiting churches in the area so that they could connect to and receive mutual support from like minded followers of Jesus. 

They found a group with which they were comfortable and which welcomed them: A multi-ethnic, extremely outward focused community of disciples.

And, as far as I know, things are going well as far as their lives as servants of Jesus is concerned. 

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However, when we chatted yesterday, call him Jim, told me that their new congregation had recently been, as he said it, "kicked out" of their denomination. 

Jim's an on-fire millennial radical follower of Jesus. He's unreservedly passionate about following Jesus...

...and, he's also absolutely unconcerned with institutional churchianity. 

When I asked why their congregation was kicked out of the denomination, he said that he didn't know. The subtext of his reply was, "And, I don't really care."

Jesus is everything to Jim. EVERYTHING. 

The institution that the American church has become is not his concern.

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I will add about Jim that he is theologically aware. While the institution doesn't concern him, historically acceptable truth does matter.

That is to say that I'm confident that heresy could not be an issue between the church and the denomination. 

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It amazed me that so shortly after Faith was expelled from the ERC, Jim's radically missional group got the heave ho from its also rapidly declining Protestant denomination.

Fascinating.