APEST Envy

That's what I'm picking up from most of the eNews articles since the quarantine took hold.

Have you noticed the yearning for openness to change?

Have you noticed the frequent questions about what we have to repent of?

And, the desire that we be people who reach beyond ourselves. From the latest:

Have you noticed the openness that people have to their unknown neighbors or even strangers (at a safe distance, of course)? Have you noticed that people are more open to questions about the meaning of life and spiritual things? Have you noticed that people are moved when they see compassion in action? You have neighborhoods filled with people who will probably never “attend” your church, but they are open to spiritual conversations with their neighbor who happens to be connected to your church body. How are you equipping folks and encouraging them to make the most of these opportunities?

Oh, that we would be a people who walk a life of love for our neighbors!

But, of course, it's all yearning, desire. Not reality. As always, talk, not walk.

From the beginning of the above paragraph in the latest eNews: The church-consumed focus that flows through the veins of all shepherds with every beat of their heart:

Sure, your congregation can’t gather in person for worship. I know that it hurts, but do you see the opportunities? (emphasis, justifiable, and,  mine).

What throbs in each paragraph of these quarantine eNewses is the vision to see what apostles, prophets and evangelists do, done.

What lacks?

Self-awareness.

The translating of talk into walk, of belief into action.

First and foremost: Repentance. (At least, that's what a prophet thinks.)

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These articles all vividly describe us being a body which empowers apostles, the disciples gifted to lead change, prophets, the disciples able, through the Spirit, to generate the godly grief that produces a repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, and evangelists, the believers who can't resist the temptation to reach out.

Clearly, the highest holder of institutional authority in the CGGC can envision us as a body that reaps the benefits of APEST.

What he doesn't do, what he, apparently, refuses to do, in real life, is to empower APEST.

From what I understand...and I suspect that this is really the problem...

...the institution will have to repent of itself. 

We will have to walk the power and authority of the Holy Spirit and uproot and tear down and destroy and overthrow the power and authority of the institution.

I can see no other way for APEST to happen.

Certainly, for all of the APEST talk from the holders of institutional authority in the CGGC, we are, if anything, further from a real life APEST walk than we were when the talk began.

You can't serve two masters.

The holders of institutional authority in the CGGC haven't empowered APEST, despite the talk, and I can't see that they ever will.

They'll talk it.

They'll want it, even yearn for it.

But, walking it, clearly, is not in their DNA.