A One-Year-Later Update on my Brent Sleasman eNews Prophetic Prediction

A case study.

From time to time, comments offered here imply that I get things wrong. Yet my sense is that my take on the CGGC is accurate. So, I decided, nearly a year ago, to test myself in an objective way...based on real words.

Last September, I entered a post here predicting that a recommendation offered in an eNews article by Brent Sleasman, President of Winebrenner Theological Seminary, would "come to nothing."

I rarely make predictions on this blog.

It's very possible that I've never, ever been as specific and detailed...and bold... in a prediction as I was in that post.

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Here's some background. I'm certain you don't recall the details.

Last summer, Brent was invited, by Lance, to author an eNews article on engaging people who are not disciples in conversation about important issues.

Brent's article was intelligent and provocative. It dealt, in this case, with discussion of issues of human sexuality. And, I responded to it.

I mentioned Brent's article, and my response, here on the blog.

I recommended readers of this blog check out Brent's article as well as my response. I noted that I didn't save my response but I was certain it would be published, because my responses always had been published in the past. (A description of my response is included in the post I've copied below.)

However, my comment wasn't published as a comment on the eNews. After a time, I entered a rather miffed comment about that fact.

Later, Lance sent me a private email saying that it had "come to (his) attention" that I was saying he didn't publish my comment. (Until then, I didn't know that Lance was the moderator at that time.)

Lance added that he wanted me to know that he didn't receive the comment and that he had always published my comments in the past, no matter what they said. He added that I shouldn't bother responding to his email because he wouldn't read anything I wrote to him personally. (I did, however, respond with an apology, though I'm certain that Lance was true to his promise and that he didn't read it.)

It was after that that I wrote the post that is copied below, suggesting that nothing would come of Brent's post.

Brent created a Facebook link to the post...and it became the second most read post in the history of this blog.

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To the point of this post:

1. My prediction...that Brent's idea would come to nothing...was purely and perfectly accurate. What Brent suggested, with Lance's blessing, has come to absolutely and precisely nothing in the CGGC. My guess is that it long since forgotten by everyone, except me.

We, in the CGGC always do forget. We have been conditioned to forget. We are constantly inundated with grand ideas from CGGC institutional authorities. But, there hasn't been follow-up, for at least a decade, on any of the great ideas.

My post serves to illustrate the reality of the CGGC characteristic, To Talk is to Walk-ism.


2. It's true that I decide long ago to revisit my prediction from a year ago, however the timing of this revisit strikes me as being significant.

Significant how?

The institutional authorities in Findlay have recently rolled out a first-ever-in-nearly-200-years CGGC Strategic Plan.

Can you guess why I think that there's a very high probability that it will come to nothing?

Here, however, is a twist on my "come to nothing" prediction:

I'm convinced that, if it depends on the hierarchs in Findlay, the Strategic Plan will come to nothing. These folks are talkers, not walkers.

In fact, their booklet introducing the plan tells CGGCers that they are not expected to adopt the Strategic Plan.

Here's the twist on the "come to nothing" prediction:

It's possible that others in the Eldership, to whom Lance and his crew are, technically, accountable, may force the issue and demand that the Findlay Talkers actually walk.

I'm not predicting that they will. In fact, my doubts about that are immense.

I've been clear that I think that the very idea of adopting any strategic plan is a very serious mistake.

Yet, for the sake of defeating Talk-ism, even only one time, I'm hoping.

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So, here is the predictive prophecy from last September. I've abridged it slightly to prevent this post from being longer than necessary. You are welcome to read the whole thing in the blog's archives.

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Why Brent Sleasman's Call to "Important Conversations" will come to Nothing

Apart from the brouhaha over why my eNews comment on Brent's guest article in the eNews, SETTING THE STAGE FOR IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS: HUMAN SEXUALITY, was not published, I want to make a predictive prophecy about it.

I don't do the predictive part of prophecy often. In this case, as is usually the case, when I do it, I'm slightly embarrassed because I suspect everyone who reads it will think, "Well, duh! Who doesn't already know that?"

Yet, what seems obvious to me usually isn't to everyone. 

So, in case you haven't realized it, what Brent and Lance want to happen in the CGGC...with CGGC people setting the stage for and having important conversations about difficult issues...isn't going to become the way of the CGGC future.

Unless, of course, we repent. 

It's the reasons I see for that reality that leads me to type this out even though you probably already know it. There are several reasons and they're not all that profound. 

1. They want our parish priests to be the people leading these conversations. 

This is a mistake that we started making at least 80 years ago and we continue to make and it ALWAYS leads to failure. ALWAYS. 

In Church of God movement days, our minute handful of ministers, they weren't called pastors until very recently, did not provide religious products and services to be consumed by a passive laity. 

In Church of God movement days, we didn't have a clergy and we most certainly didn't have a laity.

In Church of God movement days, it was understood that the work of the Kingdom was done by the people of the congregations and that the ministers were servants of the Lord whose role was to prepare the saints for works of ministry, as Paul describes the role of APESTs in Ephesians 4:11-13.

It's become our way constantly to tweak the role of the parish priest, to add just one more little duty to the job description to suit changing times or to follow fads. 

And, that's what's being done here. 

And why not!??!!?!! 

In Church of God movement days, our people...our PEOPLE...were having the important conversations...about slavery, about war, about alcohol abuse. 

And, our ministers were empowering those conversations. But, they weren't being paid to be the people who invested time and established space for those conversations to take place. 

We talk about discipling but we walk the system in which our pastors are parish priests who provide religious products and services to be consumed by our passive laity...and, now, apparently, by the unchurched world.

We always do this. It always fails. 

It will fail again.

2. More at the place where parish priest ministry meets the road...

...what are the people of our aging congregations expected to think when their pastor adds setting the stage for important conversations to his/her schedule and has less time for sermon and Bible Study preparation and home and hospital visitation?

What does the laity always think!

When the people of the laity, who pay the Conference tithe, complain to regional leadership and demand that their pastor either spend more time with the old people, or get them a pastor who will, what's regional leadership always do?

This setting the stage for important conversations is a big task. It involves the investment of time and emotion for a parish priest. 

What's the consumer of the parish priest's more traditional products and services supposed to do? Those consumers are paying good money for the services that they expect to receive. What's the pastor's family supposed to do?

What does the parish priest stop doing to start preparing for important conversations?

CGGC mountaintoppers created our laity. They've created the expectation that churches consume religious products and services. CGGC mountaintoppers created, from Winebrenner's movement, the notion of credentialed priestly leadership in the place of Winebrenner's universal priesthood.

For this setting the stage for important conversations vision to work, the roles of the parish priest and the consuming laity will have to be adjusted, at the very least.

They won't be. 

3. One of my Characteristics of the CGGC Brand is, Cynicism. 

Despite the fact that I regularly denounce the cynics, I suspect that many who read my blog are cynics. If you're not already a cynic, imagine being a cynic reading these articles by Brent.

How many times have you heard, or heard of, these ideas and initiatives rolling down from the CGGC mountaintop?!!!?!

Are you even going to bother to moan at this one?

There's nothing in what Brent's suggesting that will soften the hearts of our many cynics.

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So, the SETTING THE STAGE FOR IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS thing will go nowhere. 

And, I need to be clear about one thing: In my opinion, that's a bad thing.

By leaving the parish priest ministry to live in the world as an ambassador of the Kingdom of God, I actually have the conversations Brent advocates.

Having those conversations has become my life in a significant way. I live for the moments those conversations happen.

But what the eNews has in mind? It's not going to happen.

A significant theme in my lost comment to Brent's post was my call, again, to turn from the belief in the church as an institution led by a clergy class...

...and to empower every believer to be a priest.

What Brent and Lance propose is impractical for life in the real world.

It can't work. It won't happen, no matter how valuable the core idea may be.

Until the mountaintoppers repent of and turn from their institutional vision of the church with its stark clergy/laity divide, it can't happen.

Comments on My eNews Comment

Apologies to the few who read the CGGC blog. I've copied my comment to Lance's latest. Mike published it yesterday. For Lance's article, you will have to go to the blog.

Lance suggests that change is hard, really, really hard.

Below the copy of my comment I'll add some observations I believe to be of a prophetic nature about what I've written.

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Lance,

Yours is an informative and academic post, the sort of writing I enjoy and which is provocative to me and I thank you for it.

I’m somewhat familiar with Deutschman’s, CHANGE OR DIE, and, so, I think I can guess where you will go with your next post.

However, I want to fold into the recipe, one ingredient that is normally left out when organizations, or institutions, like ours attempt to shift direction and move forward.

It is this:

There is a type of change that is not hard. In fact, that sort of change is accomplished so easily that is next-to-inevitable.

In the CGGC, we are already changing. As statistics published during General Conference sessions make clear, we have changed again in the past three years. There are fewer of us. Those who remain are older than our people have ever been. Across the body, our spiritual vitality has diminished to a new low.

More to the point, the characteristics that were at the core of our existence in our first days as the Church of God have changed very radically…and not for the good.

For example, our fierce, white-hot obedience to the Bible as our “only rule of faith and practice,” which could once be taken for granted among people in the Church of God, has disappeared.

The conviction that we should be taking the gospel into the world, once an essential conviction for us, has been replaced with an internal focus.

We have changed dramatically.

And, no one had to master the literature of leadership gurus to create the change that has taken place.

Others before you have been struggling to introduce, to our body, a different sort of change…the change that is hard…for at least 30 years.

I believe that they have, instinctively, been attempting to apply Deutschman’s three step approach, since before he even wrote the book.

Yet, without success.

What we have ignored to this point, I believe, is the reality that what the CGGC is now is rooted in a very sophisticated theology…even philosophy…of church.

You and I reject that way of thinking, of course.

What we can’t do, however, is pretend it away.

Our people do what they do because of what they believe. They believe what they believe about church because of what they were taught years ago by the men who were sitting behind the desk you use, in the office you occupy.

As you attempt to lead the change that is hard, you will be leading a battle over what is true.

You will be fighting against truths once embraced by the people in our body who possessed the highest institutional authority.

You and I may disagree with what most people in the CGGC believe about church but we have to respect the reality that many, even among the CGGC clergy, have very strong and settled beliefs about church and that what they are doing today is the fruit of those very real convictions.

You are not writing on a blank slate.

I believe that you are going to have to find the substance that will erase what’s already been etched in CGGC stone.

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Here are some comments on my comment:

1. Change is not hard. In fact, it is inevitable. However, two types of people have nearly always failed to bring about positive change among the people of the Kingdom of God: First, institutionalists, second, people gifted to be shepherds operating a parish-priest dominated culture focused on church, not gospel.

2. As I note, attempts to bring about good change in the CGGC have been taking place for about thirty years. All of those attempts have failed...as statistics published during the recent General Conference sessions make clear.

3. Change for the good is hard, next to impossible, for institutionalists. On the other hand, bad change, what the CGGC institutionalists have been leading for decades, is, actually, very easy for institutionalists...as our history proves.

4. One thing all failed CGGC attempts at good change in the past three-ish decades have in common is that they were the genius of institutionalists focused on the parish-priest dominated culture, sincerely hoping, yet failing, to move CGGC people not connected to the institutional hierarchy.

5. Led by the people in power in the institutional hierarchy, the CGGC body has been operating under a theology of church that, first of all, is distinctly different from the understanding of church put into practice by our founders in the day that we were being blessed, second, came into dominance in the 1930s, and third, has driven the CGGC's numerical decline and spiritual decay.

6. Change in the CGGC is taking place at this very moment and it is real! We are changing. We have changed compared to three years ago. We have changed from what we were at our beginning. Change in the CGGC is not hard to bring about. Change comes easily. For us, it also has come disastrously.

7. In the last 30 years or so, the people who have attempted to bring about the change that is hard failed were sincere. But, they all failed because they ignored the reality that the battle for change is a struggle between competing notions of truth. Shepherds, of course, are weak on truth, by virtue of their spiritual calling. They are strong on relationship, and, while relationship is important in bringing about change...as Deutschman observes...without foundation in truth, or principle, relationship doesn't help us in the current crisis.

8. False notions of truth don't simply disappear at the convenience of the leaders of an institution. They fight tenaciously for dominence. Lance is not writing on a blank slate.

9. If Lance is going to lead the change that is hard, he will have to confess his own past (if it is, indeed, past) belief in a false truth...the corrupt theology of church. He will have to beg the body for forgiveness and be very clear about his conversion to a new truth.

9. Lance will also have to call past leaders to repent of their service to the false truth, something that will be hard for him, and for them, even with a heartfelt commitment.

10. Those past leaders who won't confess, will have to be disciplined lovingly, but harshly and publicly, if they won't confess their sin.

11. The battle for the change that is hard will have to go through a time in which past error is exposed and condemned.

12. Only those who turn from error and come together loving newly discovered truth will be able to share in the benefits of the change that is hard.

"Al's" Funeral

A celebration of the life of our friend Al was held at the Unitarian Universalist church he attended most recently.

Even though it was the biggest day of Labor Day sale at the store, I was given permission to take off, to skip my manager's shift, to attend it.

We met Al in 1980 because he was about to marry a high school friend of ours. Though our friendship became one of the closest of our lives, we were always on the edge of each other's worlds...because our spiritual lives were so much at odds with each others'.

By the time he died, Al had been a UU for 60 plus years. In the spirit of his church, he happily tolerated every religion, every path to God, even Christianity...with the exception of born again/evangelical Christianity.

As far as people like Evie and me are concerned, he'd have been one of those people who would say, "I love Jesus but I hate (born again) Christians." At times, he was...to use the verbiage of the first-ever CGGC Strategic Plan..."daring" about it.

Yet, our friendship was as genuine, and our mutual affection was as real, as any relationship we have ever had.

Needless to say, attending the celebration of his life created mixed thoughts and feelings.

Listening to his eulogy, spoken by a member of the UU clergy, and hearing memories of his leadership in a number of UU congregations over the span of several decades, I learned things about him...and the world he was comfortable in...that I never knew.

Clearly, hanging with us would have stretched him as much as knowing him challenged us.

In the service, one of his UU friends even called Al a "religious institutionalist."

Al truly loved the UU church. He loved the committees and commissions and councils he served on. He revelled in being respected as a "lay leader" at the congregational and denominational level.

Two thoughts about that:

1. Evie said, as we drove home, that she couldn't distinguish between what the UU people said about their love and devotion to their church and what institutionalists in the CGGC say about ours. God, by definition, means less in the UU world than among other religious connections so the UU passion for the institution, the church, is understandable. I was swooning over how much affection the UUers had for the UU  institution itself. It was unashamed. Unrestrained. To us, that focus on church-above-God is neither understandable nor acceptable in the Church of God. But, the similarities were striking to both of us.

2. It occurred to me that that one source of tension between Al and us that I didn't apprehend until yesterday is his love for institutional religion and our increasing abhorrence of it. On the other hand, by virtue of our disdain for the institutional, we may have seemed less guilty of what Al saw as the sins of born againers. We are born again but not connected to, well, the politics of evangelicals.

Al's daughter, whom we'd never met, shared memories of her dad in the service. She concluded by quoting "verses" that spoke to her about her dad. I don't know the woman at all, so, at that moment, I expected her to recite poetry. What she quoted was, "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink...(and the four other things Jesus says to the "sheep.") I never actually saw that in Al but, in her eyes, it was there.

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As you might expect, yesterday was an emotionally powerful day.