I follow a number of our congregations on Facebook.
The other day I watched a very well produced video announcing how one of those congregations would proceed as gathering again becomes possible.
Clearly, a lot of planning has gone into the manner in which gathering will continue. In my opinion, much wisdom is being employed.
However, the part of the video that made the deepest and most long lasting impression on me is the emphasis that was placed on the fact that the congregation will resume gathering on the Sunday that high church, ecclesiastical calendar users call Pentecost Sunday, the birthday of the church.
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In our body, nothing even closely approaching community exists. We are a people in which, as was the case in dark times in the Old Testament, everyone did what is right in their own eyes.
The truth is that a key element in the existence and the continuation of community...fellowship...among a group of religious people, is a common understanding of what righteousness, or right living, is.
For community to exist, there must be a shared understanding of what the right way to DO is.
It is a fact of history that, in the German Reformed Church in the days when the Church of God movement was formed, there was an "evangelical" wing, which encouraged the coming of revival in the way Church of God people did. And, who made, as its first priority, "the conversion of sinners," precisely as the founders of the Church of God movement people did.
It is crucial, in the search for genuine community in our body today, to understand that:
What this Churches of God congregation, and others that fit into the Churches of God category, do in pursuing righteousness, in following the liturgical calendar...
... is precisely what Church of God people rejected to form themselves around commitment to the "New Testament plan."
They want permission to do one thing our fathers and mothers intentional rejected.
It's impossible for us to live in community if we tolerate ministry that promotes the precise behavior we rejected to gather together in ministry.
Churches of God people themselves tend to be bland, nice people who don't make trouble for anyone...and don't seem to stir up trouble.
And, that's how they're dangerous.
That are, in fact, stealth spiritual terrorists. They oppose one very important definition of righteousness upon which our movement was founded.
By promoting one behavior our founders rejected, and by demanding the right to do it, they are subverting any chance that there will ever again be community for us...
...unless, of course, it is community rooted in the overturning of all that we once were.
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