The CHURCH ADVOCATE Article on Apostles

The CHURCH ADVOCATE is devoting articles to APEST in each of its issues this year. In addition, the CGGC eNews plans to carry an article on APEST each month in 2018. Apparently, all of these articles will be written by CGGC Director of Transformational Ministries, Brandon Kelly.

This month's CA APEST article focuses on apostles.

Prophetically, the CA article made me sad. The article in the eNews made me angry.

A characteristic of CGGC thinking about everything, but particularly about APEST, is that it is church, not really Kingdom, focused.

Within that context, the mountaintoppers seem to know, in their hearts, that this is a Kingdom issue and they seem really to want to focus on Kingdom matters but, in the end, they just can't get themselves to do that.

So, typically, this article on apostles begins with references to the Kingdom but, in the end, it focuses on what to do about the problems connected to having apostles IN YOUR LOCAL CHURCH.

Reading the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, I can't see how this focus could be more off-base.

And, Brandon's vision seems to be more about tweaking declining and decaying CGGC parish priest dominated religion than living out the "New Testament plan" which is demanded by the CGGC Mission Statement.

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Apostles, in the New Testament, were, to use the term employed by the CGGC Shepherd Mafia in their credentialing document, translocal. Apostles' ministries function on the level of the Kingdom. Their involvement with a local gathering of disciples, in the New Testament, came from above and beyond the local gathering.

As I've said here and on the eNews blog, this is how the Church of God functioned in its early days when it experienced God's blessing and grew rapidly.

From a New Testament plan perspective, the importance of apostles to kingdom ministry in the CGGC today will be realized when apostles are empowered, by people like Brandon, to operate above and beyond the local church...

...AND ABOVE AND BEYOND THE AUTHORITY OF INSTITUTIONAL HIERARCHS LIKE BRANDON HIMSELF...AND LIKE LANCE AND LOCAL CONFERENCE HIERARCHS.

So, yeah.

As the article suggests,...

...Someone in your local church who always has ideas for new ministries and who chafes against your church's status quo may have a spark of apostolic calling,...

... but the way to empower, to DISCIPLE, those people is not,...

...as the article suggests,...

...to give budding apostles freedom to be themselves within your local fiefdom. It's to connect them to a broader community of apostles beyond your local church...

...in the same way apostles functioned in the Book of the Acts OF THE APOSTLES in the Word.

For that broader community of apostles to exist in the CGGC world, our institutional hierarchs are going to have to be willing to decrease so that ministry in the Spirit can increase.

They are going to have step back to empower apostolic ministry. They are going to have to practice, in their own context, what they're telling people in our churches to do.

They are going to have to live what they preach.

This is what, for most of the past generation, CGGC hierarchs have not done.

Our churches will not practice what the hierarchs preach...

...until the hierarchs walk their own talk.

Brandon and the CGGC staff in Findlay are not living APEST.

They are foolish to think we will embrace apostles when they aren't embracing apostles in their world.

We, all of us, must repent.

If you haven't heard from Me Lately

My leadership posts have been very provocative and generated some challenging and, for me at least, thought inspiring and rather lengthy off-the-blog dialogues.

In addition, current CGGC events have resulted in several interesting and important notes.

And, I'm very busy on the job.

I'm waaaaay behind in replying to EVERYONE.

All of you who haven't heard from me read this blog sporadically at least. So, I'm sending one note to all y'all.

I will reply as soon as opportunity allows.

Thanks for sharing your wisdom and experience with me.

My most Fascinating Post Ever...

It has to be the one about the leadership ability of the manager of the Front End of the super market that I work in.

The post has spawned some interesting off-the-blog conversation.

I am steadfast in my conviction that the only leader in a kingdom is the king. I've been critical of the desire of, mostly, men who hold positions of authority in the institutional church, to declare themselves to be leaders and to set, for themselves, the task of developing other leaders.

I've pointed out that, as far as I can tell, no one actually follows those people and that they aren't inspiring anyone and that the whole leadership development scheme has been, to this point, a colossal bust.

Yet,...

...while Jesus taught servanthood, even telling the Twelve to aspire to be the slave of all, not to be like the leaders of the Gentiles...

...while He was praised, among early disciples, because He made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant who humbled Himself and became obedient to death...

...He did challenge people: "Come, follow me."

While leadership is only the king's and, in the Kingdom of God, leadership...GREATNESS...is defined by self-denial and service of, even, the least of these...

...being followed is essential to the expansion of the Kingdom of God.

I've said. And, I say. This is not about being a leader in any way that people outside of the Kingdom of God speak of leadership.

Jesus didn't call it leadership.

Jesus didn't train or develop leaders.

The early disciples who were essential to the expansion of the Kingdom didn't think of themselves as leaders.

("Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle..." [Rom. 1:1])

Whatever it is that the institutional church's self-proclaimed leaders are chasing after, two things are true about it.

1. It's definitely real.
2. It's not leadership.

It seems to me that, in hoping to be leaders who are developing leaders, our self-proclaimed leaders are looking to the world for their wisdom.

They are not looking to Jesus and the early Christian movement.

And...and who can dispute this?...they are failing.

And, they will fail.

Let's turn, not to the world, but to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

Let's read the Word with open hearts and minds.

Let's learn lessons from the history of the Kingdom.

Let's repent of worldly ways.

"I just want someone to bid me to come and die."

I've been in the midst of a chat with a friend. The chat is focused on the bland and benign communication that comes down from the CGGC mountaintops to the body.

Characterized in my own words, my friend actually brought this up and noted, as I'll say it, that what we get, from on high in the CGGC, is comforting and encouraging but not confronting and challenging.

This chat began a few weeks ago, and, in the wake of the latest eNews, I wrote to observe that we got more of the same bland, namby pamby stuff that we've become accustomed to and which is a profound frustration to us.

After a few comments on both sides, my friend paraphrased Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a way that made me well up with tears. Here's the whole brief remark:

I just want someone to bid me to come and die. Is that too much to ask?

I have two thoughts.

1. Yes, apparently, actually it is too much to ask, in the vision of anyone in CGGC leadership, though, the Lord is certainly screaming it in the Spirit.

2. This focus and passion describes precisely what CGGC leadership is missing out on.

We, in the CGGC, are encouraged, in this eNews issue, to be looking for beauty in this life,...

...while there are more than a few of us in the CGGC chomping at the bit to engage together in a lifestyle that, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer had it, pays the cost of discipleship.

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Gang,

Who doesn't know that we are decaying and declining?!?!?!!!!!

So, what's the message? As our ministry dies and the world around us goes to hell, let's be sure to see the beauty in that tragedy!?!

"I just want someone to bid me to come and die."

There are others, in the CGGC in addition to me, whose passion and conviction are being wasted while the people charged with leadership in our body seem to be content to keep us lukewarm and satisfied with our damnable spiritual state.

I, too, just want someone to bid me to come and die. Is that really too much to ask?

A Tension I deal with in every Prophetic Post

Before I click Publish for every prophetic post here, I struggle with two frames of reference that are, unquestionably, in tension with each other.

One of those frames is my conviction that I share, with Jeremiah, the call to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow and to build and to plant. With only that orientation, in my opinion, no post I've ever entered here has been harsh or firm enough.

The other frame of reference comes from Paul's wisdom, shared in his letter to the Colossians (3:12), "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience."

Compassion, kindness, holiness, gentleness and patience.

With this goal in mind, certainly nothing I've ever written here has been nearly as gracious as it should be.

This prophecy thing is extremely emotional. Much of the message I believe I receive from Him, I receive stewing in emotion.

It should be understandable that much of the emotion is negative. Our Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing is not blessing us. And, He's not pleased with our pursuit of church-bound traditions. And, I believe, I feel some of that.

Still, He Himself is compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

I feel His sadness and His yearning for genuine connection with us.

So, when I'm polishing off a post, I, sometimes, imagine a continuum ranging from 0 to 10, with 0 being pure uproot, tear down, destroy, overthrow and 10 being unblemished compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

That last one, about my friend and his suggestion that, in lieu of the new New Strategic Plan, the Conference just send everyone to Disney World, was about a 3.

How sad and angry must He be that the hierarchs simply run around in the same circles to pursue useless traditions He will never bless!

How irked must He be with the majority of Conference people who continue to approve fruitless programs and plans dreamt up by the hierarchs!

A Historically-Grounded Insight into the ERC Healthy Pastors Strategy

I had a brief exchange recently with a friend who is, let's say, not exactly wet behind the ears as far as the ways of what, back in the day, was still called the East Pennsylvania Conference of the Churches of God.

The two of us have seen a lot. Many reruns...

...but not much that is new.

My good buddy noted to me, and apparently others as well, that the strategy built into the ERC's new New Strategic Plan has been tried before.

He put it into perspective for me in this way:

If they took everyone to Disney World we would have better success. 

No doubt at all.

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One of the ongoing failings of people who are breathing the thin air atop the highest ERC mountain is their conviction that they have just invented a brand-spanking-new gizmo that they are calling the wheel.

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Note to this new batch of hierarchs:

Your new New Strategic Plan ain't new.

Integral to the staffing plan which you just dumped, was an intense focus on supporting and building up the pastors of the ERC.

There was even a Director of Pastoral Care...

...as well as a whole team of Pastoral Care Workers!

And, for that matter,...

...there was also a Director of Congregational Care...

...who, if he'd succeeded, would have already empowered the existence of a whole gaggle of healthy life-giving churches.

Nuthin new.

Nuthin new at all!

Those wheels have already been invented...

...and,...

...gone flat.

What must we do? We must repent.

Three Ways My Ministry is Received in the CGGC

I have been thinking about what I write here, and how other things I say and do, are received in the CGGC.

I see three responses.

1. The, He's a leper, response.

This was, according to still unsubstantiated rumor, the response of the delegates to ERC Conference in session a few years back.

According only to what some have told me, the motion was made, and debated and approved, on the Conference floor that my ordination certificate be recalled by the leaders of the Conference.

To this point, it has not been recalled. Still, several people tell me that the Conference in session took that action.

And, that rumored action is one way my ministry is received by some.

By some, I'm considered to be a pariah, someone worth only being cast out.

2. The, Just ignore him and maybe he'll shut up or go away, response.

I get a lot of this, though, after all these years, that sentiment has proved to be baseless and wishful thinking.

As an example? My posts on the CGGC eNews blog. So far, for the most part, comments I enter on the blog have been accepted by the administrator and have been published.

Yet, while others' comments receive a response from time to time, my just dangle out there as if, as I've said before, they are out-loud flatulence in polite society.

I have no idea how many people actually read the eNews and I don't know if more people read it than read this blog or not...

...and, of course, the mountaintoppers in Findlay don't know that either.

It's possible that this blog has a larger or, at least, more highly focused and motivated readership that the official CGGC blog.

And, I wonder if the mountaintoppers are afraid not to accept my comments for publication out of fear that more people would know they didn't publish than if they do.

Either way, there might be one comment they didn't publish. I don't remember.

But, they always ignore what they publish from me.

Across the CGGC, there's, apparently, a lot of ignoring going on.

3. Active acceptance of and engagement with me and my words.

This is, by far, the least common response.

It comes from some very high CGGC peaks as well as some deep and forgotten or nearly forgotten CGGC valleys. And, many CGGC elevations in between.

I never expose the identity of these people and always carefully protect their anonymity if I mention them in passing.

I often wonder how open these people are about being in contact with me, though I never ask.

If I'd ever be tempted to keep quiet, it is for the sake of these people that I'd always keep going, as long as I'm able and I believe that the Lord is giving me a message.