One of my heroes is a nephew of ours (great-nephew, really), who, along with his wife and four young children, sold their home in a sleepy small town here in central Pennsylvania, to move to an impoverished, dead steel town near Harrisburg, along the Susquehanna River, to live a missional life and join in the ministry of a mixed race church.
Joe and his wife, Debbie, love Jesus. They reached the point that they could not sleep peacefully until they were walking their Jesus talk.
While their example is extreme, they are like many Christians of their generation who yearn to see racial justice happen.
I've been following Joe's Facebook posts in recent days. They share the vision contained in Andrew Draper's eNews guest article. They reveal a heart for the oppressed and a commitment to "let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everlasting stream." (Amos 5:24)
My question...and it's not rhetorical...though I'm tempted to make it a rhetorical question, is, besides Andrew Draper and his ministry in Indiana,...
... how many of the vast number of millennials whose hearts beat with a passion for racial justice are there in the CGGC?
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What we know about the CGGC is that the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing has not been blessing us.
We know that we have been in the midst of a time of spiritual decay and numerical decline that has lasted for generations.
We know that our congregations are getting older.
We know that we've, essentially, lost the millennial generation.
AND, the few millennials I know who remain in the CGGC have bought into the Shepherd Mafia vision of church in which the clergy provides religious products and services to be consumed by the laity...
...so that our few millennials, I suspect, are spiritually bloated religious consumers, members of a passive laity, consumers, takers...
...and certainly not the sort of Christians willing to raise their prophetic voices in shouts for justice, shouts accompanied by fierce, sacrificial acts,...
...shouts that will not be silenced until the dream of racial justice becomes reality.
Shouts like those of the founders of our body, in the Church of God days. Those shouts didn't become silent until some of those voices were silenced on the battlefields of the Civil War.
As I say, my question is not quite rhetorical.
And, I passionately hope that what I'm inclined to believe is wrong.
But, I'm afraid that our Shepherd Mafia's chickens are about to come home to roost.
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I began to pray for revival in our land more than 30 years ago.
It could just be that Andrew Draper and my nephew's family will be the sort of people who lead the Kingdom of God into a new age...
...and, that revival fills the land.
And, if that's the case, most likely, the CGGC will be left in the Spirit's dust.
We may very well be entering a day when mere vigorous, radical talk will be seen for the sad joke it is.
I hope there's a remnant in the CGGC. I hope even, as a new day dawns, that CGGC, uh, leaders will repent of their Talk-ism and begin a walk that matches their words...that people like Lance, for instance, will find more to do than search for the words to frame a lament and join the on-the-streets-fight for racial justice.
It is possible because with God all things are possible.
But,...
...we must repent.
We must repent.
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