I'd actually been working on it as Ed Rosenberry's tenure was coming to an end. It was intended to provide a baseline for Lance's impact on the body.
I still stand by it as my honest assessment of what the CGGC was when Ed stepped down.
If God is willing, I will reflect on where we were and where we are now, more than four years later.
One thing is clear, from the beginning, though. Based on statistics presented during General Conference sessions in 2019, Characteristic 16, Decline, still holds.
Other than that, at an initial glance, some things have changed while others, in my opinion, have not.
At this point, I'm thinking that I'll take the characteristics one at a time and in the order that they seem interesting and important to me.
This whole enterprise seems important to me, actually. This is not a silly little game or a fun thought experiment.
We must repent.
One aspect of what leads to repentance is a willingness to be honest with oneself about oneself.
In my opinion, we've not done that well for a long, long time.
So, here's what I recorded over four years ago:
1. Lukewarm-ness. Perpetual, reality-defying self-satisfaction. Akin to the pseudo-Christianity of the Laodiceans. Built on the belief that, spiritually, we are all exactly who and what we should be (Rev. 3:14-18). Read all of the issues of the eNews. Jesus said, "You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked." (Rev. 3:17)
2. Institutional "Churchianity," not Christianity. With increasing fervor, the CGGC focuses on an institutionalized, parish priest-centered view that church is parishes or flocks, led by pastors, with an ecclesiastical elite ruling over all. The CGGC now only pays lip service to what Jesus commands of His disciples. The CGGC today renews churches, makes transformational churches, adopts churches and plants churches yet only goes into the world to make disciples after all the headquarters and local parish work is thoroughly finished, therefore, never.
3. Ecclesiolatry. Ecclesiolatry is the creation and veneration of the church as an idol, as opposed to love of and obedience to Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Church. Idolatry is creating objects of worship and adoration to suit our own passions and prejudices. The CGGC substitutes love for the church for love for the church's Lord. Hence the obsession with planting, adopting, transformationalizing, adopting and renewing local churches while the Church's Lord's talk was about and His prayer and passion was to establish a His Father's Kingdom. The church is the CGGC's Golden Calf.
4. Traditionalism. What the CGGC does is, no longer, rooted in love for, nor obedience to, Bible truth. These days, CGGC practice derives from the way of thinking that led to the rise of the church as an institution in the Middle Ages. The CGGC's founder, John Winebrenner, who saw even the Protestant Reformation as a failure, wouldn't recognize what has become of the movement he began.
5. Creeping High Church-ism. In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of CGGC clergy who don clerical collars and who sport large crosses on chains around their necks. At the same time, there has been increasingly open, unashamed, proud and passionate advocacy of the high church's celebration of Lent, Holy Week and Advent from CGGC mountaintops. This has had the effect of elevating the clergy of the CGGC as a hierarchical priesthood and stealing, from all the members of the CGGC body, their role as a universal priesthood. It also focuses the CGGC on the church that is served by credentialed priests, not the Kingdom Jesus brings.
4. Traditionalism. What the CGGC does is, no longer, rooted in love for, nor obedience to, Bible truth. These days, CGGC practice derives from the way of thinking that led to the rise of the church as an institution in the Middle Ages. The CGGC's founder, John Winebrenner, who saw even the Protestant Reformation as a failure, wouldn't recognize what has become of the movement he began.
5. Creeping High Church-ism. In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of CGGC clergy who don clerical collars and who sport large crosses on chains around their necks. At the same time, there has been increasingly open, unashamed, proud and passionate advocacy of the high church's celebration of Lent, Holy Week and Advent from CGGC mountaintops. This has had the effect of elevating the clergy of the CGGC as a hierarchical priesthood and stealing, from all the members of the CGGC body, their role as a universal priesthood. It also focuses the CGGC on the church that is served by credentialed priests, not the Kingdom Jesus brings.
6. Faddism. The CGGC shifts direction according to what is fashionable among other religious denominations. Hence, today, the people with offices in headquarters buildings fret over the CGGC 'brand.' Most recently, with other trend-driven denominations, the CGGC has sought to embrace the 'transformational church' fad and the coaching and leadership development fads. Currently fads such as these, not biblical truth, drive CGGC change.
7. Mellow Relationships over Truth. The CGGC has serious issues with truth primarily because it values, to the extreme, human relationships rooted in tolerance of others but does not value hunger and thirst for righteousness. The CGGC no longer holds, as the most important relationship, love for the Lord, which Jesus called the greatest commandment. The CGGC no longer takes firm stands on any biblical truth, as the recently adopted revision of We Believe and the 2013 Statement of Faith make clear.
8. A Middle Ages Understanding of Christian Community. Perhaps the most harmful achievement of CGGC elites has been the creation of a 'laity.' In its early years, the Church of God had significantly attained the priesthood of all believers. Recently, however, CGGC higher ups have transformed the typical participant in a CGGC congregation into a mere consumer of the religious products and services supplied by the parish clergy and their higher ups.
9. Strong Central Planning Coupled with Lower Level Clergy and Congregational Resistance. It is not enough to suggest that the CGGC is becoming clergy and higher up dominated. (See item 8) Even in the expanding CGGC clergy world, there are extremes in power from the bottom of the clergy pyramid to its peak. Some higher ups in denominational headquarters and in regional offices act from a sense of power that no Roman Catholic Pope would dream of. However, in response, many pastors outside of the good-old-boy leadership network, and most local CGGC congregations, ignore and sometimes defy (always without consequence--unless money going to leadership is involved), the authority of the leaders located in the denomination's central planning offices.
10. Cynicism. As much as CGGC higher ups are shepherds seeking peace, calm and quiet among the pastors and congregations of the CGGC, there is a stifling atmosphere of cynicism among our pastors and congregations toward those in CGGC seats of power. (See item 9.) There is also thinly disguised cynicism flowing from headquarters leadership down into the body. This cynicism flows in every direction: From the top down, from the bottom up and horizontally among factions in the body.
11. To Talk is to Walk-ism. According to the New Testament, a follower of Jesus is one who possesses a faith that organically produces acts of obedience to God's will. (Matthew 7:21-23, 24-26, 25:1-46; John 14:15; 2 Cor. 5:10; Eph. 2:8-10; Jas. 2:12-26; Rev. 2-3). However, CGGC faith is disconnected from action. It is possible to talk CGGC talk without walking it. Hence, for example, the GC Mission, Vision and Faith Statements that are not lived out--and virtually no one notices.
12. Empty Faith. The Old and New Testaments define saving faith as a way of living that is fruit of who a person trusts and what that person thinks. (See Romans 4:18-22, Ephesians 2:8-10, Hebrews 11:4-40, James 2:14-26). (In the Church of God, see John Winebrenner's 27 point description of its faith and practice, first published in 1844.) More than at any time in CGGC history, today faith can be defined by empty theological pronouncements apart from a way of life. (See the 2013 Statement of Faith.)
13. Cheap Grace. The CGGC calls people to easy-beliefism. Jesus said that anyone who doesn't hate his father and mother isn't worthy of Him. There was a time, in its founding generation, that the Church of God called sinners to a radically changed way of life. Dietrich Bonheoffer (who coined the phrase, cheap grace) could have been viewing today's CGGC when he wrote: "...cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ."
14. False, Flock-focused Righteousness. One need only read the first part of the Sermon of the Mount to understand that right living, as radically defined by Jesus, is key to discipleship. In the CGGC, however, righteousness is defined as a local parish, or flock, achieving consistent growth in parish/flock-oriented activities such as 'worship service' attendance not, as Jesus taught, disciples serving each other and caring for the least of the brothers and sisters of Jesus and going to all nations making disciples.
15. Organized Hypocrisy. There is illogic and outright contradiction among the things the CGGC claims to be true about itself. This illogic and contradiction is, in reality, deeply rooted, highly intentional and carefully executed. A hypocrite is an actor: "...a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings." It is a positive and essential value of the CGGC to speak one message and to, without qualm, act out another that is entirely disconnected from that avowed principle.
16. Decline. This is today's bottom line. In the first sixty years or so of its history the Church of God began from scratch and grew to approximately 800 active congregations. From that peak, the CGGC has declined to far less than half that number, losing a total of 60 congregations between 2001 and 2010 alone!
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