I love words, especially unusual words. But, on this blog and everywhere, I hate big and unusual words a person would learn during the process of "theological education."
Using them is a curse on the practice of the so-called Priesthood of all Believers.
Two words that I despise are the words "exegesis" and "eisegesis."
My guess that most people who read this blog learned the two terms while they were being theologically educated.
I found these definitions on line.
Exegesis is:
critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture.
And,
Eisegesis is the process of interpreting text in such a way as to introduce one's own presuppositions, agendas or biases. It is commonly referred to as reading into the text. (emphasis mine.)
The Greek preposition ek or ex means "out of." Eis means "into."
So, exegesis means to take meaning out of, in this case, Scripture. Eisegesis means to put meaning into Scripture.
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The story of the origin of the Church of God, which is the fruit of the ministry of John Winebrenner and his colleagues is truly thrilling.
There was a dark period between the mid 1820s and 1829. Little is known about those years. Winebrenner had become estranged from the German Reformed Church by, say, 1825.
In 1829, he published the extremely important book, A BRIEF SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF THE CHURCH OF GOD.
In October 1830, Winebrenner and others assembled in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to join together in a ministry they called the Church of God, a ministry established on the principles contained in Winebrenner's 1829 book.
Almost nothing is known about Winebrenner between 1825 and 1829 except that Winebrenner devoted time, during those years, to reading the Scriptures on his knees.
It is from Winebrenner's searching of Scripture that the Church of God movement was born.
The Church of God, in its movement days, is as pure and vivid a picture of living exegesis as can be known.
In its first generation, the Church of God was precisely fruit of a "critical explanation or interpretation of...Scripture."
Winebrenner's years, spent on his knees, drawing truth out of the Word, produced fruit in an explosion of spiritual blessing.
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Jump forward 190 years from 1829 to 2019.
In that year, the people who possessed institutional authority in the CGGC presented, to the delegates of General Conference, a first-ever Strategic Plan.
One of the responses to the Strategic Plan that I've received, in personal conversations, is praise of the fact that it includes so many Scriptural references.
Those Scripture references are noteworthy. They couldn't have been assumed ten years earlier.
Ten years ago, the Credentialing document presented, by possessors of institutional authority in that day, to the delegates of General Conference in session became controversial. It was well over 10 pages long and had no references to Scripture at all.
There is, indeed, reason to be surprised, at least, that the Word is cited in the Strategic Plan.
However, the difference between the use of the Word in the 2019 Strategic Plan and Winebrenner's prayerful search for truth in the 1820s could not be more stark, nor startling.
Winebrenner went to his knees, yearning to draw truth from the Word.
Reading the Strategic Plan, it seems obvious to me, that the possessors of institutional authority began with their plan and then opened their Bibles to find support for what they'd already decided they want to do.
Never in the process have we heard an account of the truth of the Word steering our institutional authorities away from a principle or value they already had in mind.
The Bible served the framers of the Strategic Plan.
In our movement days, our people served the Word, and through it, they glorified the Lord...and the Lord blessed them in a way that kept their heads spinning.
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I, very simply, can't see the Lord blessing the Strategic Plan for many reasons, only one being that the plan came from human wisdom.
The possessors of institutional authority in the CGGC are currently working on implementing the Strategic Plan. They are, as I understand it, working, in a very preliminary way, on walking the Strategic Plan's talk.
But, by 2022, this plan will have gone nowhere substantial among the people of the CGGC.
I call, today, for the following of this, uh, "strategy" in the CGGC, beginning with the next meeting of the General Conference in 2022:
That Lance and whoever else has an office in the headquarters building in Findlay set the example of reading the Scriptures on their knees, calling the rest of the body to follow their walk and to continue to do so until the Spirit speaks from the Word.
I'm convinced that we can walk again in the Spirit's blessing as we were blessed in the past.
But, we're going to have to seek our wisdom from Him.
We will have to repent.
We will have to stop demanding that He respect the wisdom of the possessors of the authority of our institution.
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