Gang,
Since the latest eNews arrived two days ago, I've been involved in two stimulating conversations about biblical authority, high church-ism, the CGGC, and Lance.
It began when someone...besides me...someone who holds a decently significant place in the ministry of the ERC emailed me to ask when ERC churches started recognizing Ash Wednesday.
I hadn't read the eNews by then and at the time, didn't understand the context of the question.
I said that Ash Wednesday observance is very recent and that, when it happens John Winebrenner rolls over in his grave.
I asked for his view about Ash Wednesday. He said, in part,
We don't practice or celebrate it (in our church). I see no Biblical command or precedent to do it. But I understand more COG churches recognize Lent, which again I see no Biblical command to recognize.
And, in those words, my friend defined the many issues created by Lance's passing, yet powerful, reference, in the eNews, to how deeply he was moved by his participation in last week's Ash Wednesday activities.
Among those MANY issues?
Is the CGGC, under Lance, now a high church church?
Considering our recent Statement of Faith, how is the Bible the "only rule of faith and practice" in the CGGC?
In what way does Lance submit himself to the authority of the Word?
In what way does Lance submit to the authority of the Conference?
And, realizing that the person who wrote to me is one of many in the CGGC who takes seriously the assertion that the Bible is "our only rule of faith and practice," and that Lance, by flaunting his involvement in an Ash Wednesday service without apology or explanation: Does Lance disrespect those CGGC people?
Oddly, I'd not noticed high church-ism in Lance until the latest eNews and I was actually considering writing a post removing Creeping High Church-ism from my Characteristics of the CGGC Brand.
Now, of course, that's off the table. Lance has brought high church-ism back into the CGGC conversation with a vengeance.
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So, here's that characteristic:
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.
Now, with the latest eNews, add to Lent, Holy Week and Advent...Ash Wednesday.
That first conversation I mentioned, at the beginning of this post, was initiated by a friend, the second conversation is one that I began.
As a result, I'll fold into this post only my own comments. It will be obvious that what I say is in response to an ongoing exchange. No doubt, there will be formatting issues. I apologize. Also, understand that this is an exchange that may continue:
"Regarding the "fruit" question, to me the first question would be, "What is this fruit of?" (After that, what fruit is being produced can be a useful question.)
That's where the church calendar has problems.
What is the church calendar fruit of? I see it coming from Middle Ages parish priest focused churchism and the provider/consumer of religious products and services way of being church focused.
Further, it makes the parish priest a sort of religious Avon Lady who consumes a religious product from the source to be distributed to the ultimate consumers. It certainly doesn't promote the priesthood of all believers.
And, Ash Wednesday? Priesthood of all believers? Ha!
The laity become the ultimate and very bizarre consumers. And, righteousness becomes having a smudged forehead. (I know that is in Mt. 5-7 somewhere...or is it Mt. 25. No James 2. Or, is it Ephesians 2:11?)"
I also wrote,
"Re: Winebrenner and the Bible.
The reason Winebrenner is in My Top Five Heroes of the History of the Kingdom is due to his deadly serious and uncompromised attempt to bring New Testament Christianity to life in his time and place.
Clearly, I don't embrace his finished product without reservation. And, I suspect that Winebrenner himself believed his 1829 A BRIEF VIEW...was a first sketch. We formed the Eldership the next year with the 1829 book as a sort of unofficial road map, but was that to be the end-all, be-all? I doubt it.
After the Civil War, the Holiness/Pentecostal movement came from precisely the same yearning to bring the New Testament to life as the Church of God came from in 1830.
Perhaps the biggest mistake of our body was to reprint A BRIEF VIEW...in 1880 as a rejection (to) and defense against the Holiness/Pentecostal movement. From that moment on, we, in effect, ceased to be New Testament Plan people and became people who had canonized St. Winebrenner of Harrisburg.
Since then, Winebrenner's New Testament plan, in terms of what we actually DO, has come to mean nothing. Lance has even rewritten the CGGC Mission Statement to expunge those words from our conversation."
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The friend who wrote to me and raised the issues of "biblical command or precedent" raises crucial questions. And, very importantly, he is one of many.
The holders of institutional authority in the CGGC want the body to take their Strategic Plan seriously but the truth is that the holders of institutional in the CGGC don't have the trust of many in the body.
In the wake to the latest eNews, it will now be more difficult for the people who wrote the Strategic Plan to earn the trust of a significant number of the people in the body.
When I responded to the question about Ash Wednesday in the first conversation, I said, "We are a mess."
We are a mess.
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