Not everyone in the CGGC embraces the idea of APEST.
Years after the APEST conversation began in the CGGC, the hierarchs rewrote We Believe and created a first-ever CGGC Statement of Faith...
...and, nowhere in either is there any suggestion that we believe in APEST...
...in fact, based on those documents, the CGGC is a Christendom body that has a view of the Holy Spirit and a view of the church that hasn't moved an inch beyond the traditions that formed around the debates that took place 500 years ago, in the 1500s.
But, Lance, the CGGC E. D., talks APEST. In fact, he superintendented a year's worth of promoting APEST in the eNews and in The CHURCH ADVOCATE.
Lance talks (talked) APEST yet he certainly doesn't walk it. Set aside all the talk. Consider only what Lance does.
This CGGC day of "prayer, fasting and seeking the Lord" screams out the question:
"Since the Holy Spirit has come, as is mentioned in the passage quoted in the eNews, and we have been 'clothed with power from on high' (Lk. 24:49), why don't we simply allow the Spirit to speak to us and empower us as the Lord promised He would?"
The truth is that, after the coming of the Spirit (Acts 2), fasting was not a big deal among New Testament disciples. Seeking the Lord is not as necessary because the Lord seeks, and speaks to, us...and, by the Spirit, through us.
What is a big deal in the New Testament is not seeking the Lord. What's big now is disciples walking in the Spirit.
What was huge in the New Testament, after believers were filled with the Spirit, is the Lord speaking to His people through disciples who possessed gifts to speak words of revelation, prophecy, teaching and knowledge and wisdom, etc.. (I Cor. 14:6 and 26)
In what the people who are holders of institutional authority in the CGGC say, the Spirit is here and active, gifting and empowering our people.
But, in what they do...
...in what they DO, the Lord is out there somewhere in the heavens. He can be sought, through extraordinary means, such as through this day of fasting, prayer and Lord seeking...very Old Testament or, at least, very pre-Pentecost.
The day-to-day truth about the CGGC is that what we say and what we do are in conflict as a matter of course.
Do we believe in APEST? Do we believe in the presence of the Holy Spirit among us? Do we believe the He gives gifts to His people? Do we believe that He is always speaking to us?
In what many of us say, the answer to all of those questions is yes.
In what the planners of this fasting thing did, the resounding answer to all of those questions, is no.
Why aren't we reaching out to the people among us whom the Spirit is empowering to speak to the body for Him?
Because we don't live what we say we believe.
Based on feedback I'm receiving, there's no strong sense that the Lord has spoken through our day of prayer, fasting and seeking.
Do we even have any idea of what He's been saying through the people among us to whom He's given spiritual gifts!!!?
There was a time, in the movement days, when talk and walk were tightly connected.
Those days are gone.
We must repent.
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