In the January 4, 2019 eNews, Lance mentioned that at the upcoming General Conference sessions, attention is going to be on the future and how we're going to move forward in a world where "no maps exist."
The word I'm hearing on the CGGC street is that setting attention on the future means the hierarchs will be unveiling a first-ever General Conference Strategic Plan.
As part of the process of preparing us for General Conference, Lance promises, in future articles of the eNews, to describe, for us, a picture of where we are now, noting that if you are going to move forward, you have to understand where you currently are.
Nine thoughts about this came to me very quickly based on Lance's article:
1. Describing where we are must be done. Lance is right. We need to move forward. And, to move forward, one absolutely has to understand where s/he is as the journey begins. We have not been honest with ourselves about where we are since Wayne Boyer retired as General Conference Executive Director. We absolutely must come to grips with the reality of where we really are.
2. Focusing on where God's people are is God's way. It has always been God's way. Lance is being very biblical is setting the stage for a focus on the future by zeroing in on the present. Throughout history, the Lord has repeatedly called His people to understand, as Lance says it, "You are here."
3. God's way of bringing understanding of the present place and state of His people has always been to speak that truth and show that reality through men and women God has called, gifted and empowered to speak for Him...His prophets. A large part of the Old Testament contains the words of prophets. Jesus promised the coming of prophets in the New Covenant and taught His disciples how to distinguish between true and false prophets. The Book of Acts is amply peppered with accounts of the ministry of prophets. Paul says that the foundation of God's household is the apostles and the prophets. And, as Lance and Brandon have been reminding us, Paul also says that Jesus gave the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers. Key to the role of prophets is to speak for the Lord, telling His people, as Lance has it, "You are here."
------------------
These facts lead me to consider several questions about Lance himself.
4. Is Lance able to help the people of the CGGC know where it is? Certainly, of course, he's an intelligent and articulate guy. Humanly speaking, if a man can be able to tell us, in the CGGC, where we are spiritually, Lance could certainly be our guy. However, the ability to speak truth about where God's people are, doesn't come from human ability. It's a spiritual empowerment. It's possessing the gift of prophecy. Does Lance possess that gift and calling? As far as I know, Lance has never claimed that gift. And, I see no fruit of it in him.
5. Does Lance have the guts to tell a group of people who are in the midst of generations of numerical decline and spiritual decay where they are? If he does have that courage, I'll be surprised. Lance is a very, very nice guy who, I believe, likes being liked. People who've told God's people, "You are here," when God's people have been in decay and decline are not remembered as being nice people. Elijah. Isaiah. John the Baptist. We'll have to see a Lance far different than the one we've known, if he's going to tell us where we are. We're going to have to see a Lance willing to be despised and rejected.
6. Is Lance honest enough to be accurate in telling us where we are. Not all that is spoken falsely is spoken with evil in mind. Prophets are remarkable, among God's people, for their uncompromising love for truth and righteousness. John the Baptist told people who traveled great distances into the wilderness, "Produce fruit in keeping with righteousness." They were offended. Said in the way John said it, it was offensive. Yet, who's going to say that John sinned in using that tone with those people? Is Lance too tenderhearted to tell our people, so steeped in their ways, "Produce fruit in keeping with righteousness!" To do so will take an ability to be honest when to be honest means to be brutally honest, as John the Baptist was. Can Lance set aside his niceness and be brutally honest.
7. Can, and will, Lance personally repent for his past leadership sins and shortcomings? In his early eNews articles, Lance talked about the CGGC's numerical decline and spiritual decay. He described the need for repentance in the CGGC body. But, he hasn't done that recently...at least regularly. Lance has been CGGC Executive Director long enough now to be seen to be a crucial part of the problem. By now, Lance is part of the problem. Will he openly confess his own responsibility for our numerical decline and spiritual decay under his watch? Will he repent and turn from past ways or will he do what's been done for most of the past 80 plus years: Attempt to tweak old ways?
------------------
8. Lance's notion that we must know where we are is critical if the CGGC is to reverse course. One constant theme of this blog is that repentance is, itself, fruit of brokenness. Jesus said that it is the poor in spirit, those who mourn, are meek and who hunger and thirst for righteousness who are blessed. Paul instructs that disciples work out their salvation with fear and trembling. He says that godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation. No one I know denies that the CGGC is in the midst of numerical decline and spiritual decay. We know that the Lord of all authority and power and blessing isn't blessing us. We must face those realities. We must allow ourselves to be crushed by them. If Lance is to describe where we are in a way that matches the way it was done in the Word, it will be in a way that produces, in us, grief. Lance is, by nature, a man who brings comfort, not one who causes grief.
-------
9. My fear is that nothing will come of what Lance is about to attempt for many reasons but the most essential is that Lance seems to plan to be doing the one thing that, for 80 years plus, has driven our decline and decay: He's trying to institutionalize repentance and change. The Lord doesn't move through religious institutions. He empowers His own people, usually voices crying in the wilderness (think of John Winebrenner), and almost never from atop an institutional hierarchy. He empowers them to define what change needs to take place, and how it must happen. Lance is a very nice man but, by attempting this as an institutional hierarch, he's attempting to re-invent a wheel the Lord's been using since He first called a people to be His own.
No comments:
Post a Comment