INVESTING IN the Sins of our CGGC Fathers

I received this, can I go so far as to say, Word, as I was putting into human language the, Paying for the Sins of our CGGC Fathers, post.

What Lance wants us to be doing, as seen in his latest eNews post, and many other things he's said and written, requires men and women empowered by the Spirit to be APEs, i.e., apostles, prophets and evangelists...

...not shepherds and teachers.

And, due to the sins of CGGC fathers, committed over the course of the last 80ish years,...

...nearly every man and woman leading a CGGC church is, in fact, a shepherd or a teacher functioning as a parish priest, providing religious products and services to the congregation's laity.

So, we are paying for the sins of our CGGC Fathers.

The fruit of their leadership for generations, is not only the numerical decline and spiritual decay that has created our current crisis,...

...it is, much more importantly, the reality that we don't have people who, in the Spirit, can carry out our mountaintoppers' vision.

And, that's bad enough.

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Here's what's worse:

With the nearly unanimous approval of its new New Strategic Plan this past January,...

...the ERC, our, by far, largest Conference, has, as one ERCer noted on the eNews blog, "doubled down" on the, um, leadership, of shepherds and teachers functioning in the role of the parish priest.

Understand what that means!

The ERC not only did not repent of the cause of its decline and decay,...

...it has, for, what?, the next generation?, invested in again?!!?????!!

Here are two thoughts about that:

1. My informants in the ERC tell me that the "young" pastors in the Conference are enthusiastic about the new New Strategic Plan. And, that they don't realize that the new New Strategic Plan is, essentially, nothing more than a new coat of paint on the old jalopy,...

...i.e., it's an approach to ministry that has been tried and retried numerous times and has always...

...ALWAYS...

...failed...

...and is precisely the cause of our numerical decline and spiritual decay.

2. The ministry vision that is the foundation of the new New Strategic Plan, is:

+ what John Winebrenner and the first Church of God people revolted against, and,...
+ for that matter, what the originators of many vital and dynamic revival movements opposed.

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It's true.

We are incapable of carrying out Lance's vision for Kingdom-focused ministry because past generations of CGGC leaders have driven away our APEs and made us a body of internally focused shepherds and teachers.

And, tragically, the ERC has actually, well, doubled down on the very leadership model that is killing it.

We must experience the godly sorrow that produces a repentance that leads to salvation...

...and, we must repent.