Gang,
I'm going to publish this. I think it's poorly written, even by my standard.
Still, it's a point that I want to make, which, I think, is important for any sort of meaningful future for our body.
Community can only exist where there is a common understanding of what right doing...righteousness...is.
Our body doesn't have that. It's an everyone does what is right in their own eyes thing.
When the first Church of God people formed independent of the German Reformed Church, it was over righteousness, not doctrine. There was minimal difference in theology between the two groups.
It is doing that defines...
...unifies.
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Background: I see three eras in the history of our body...and, with each, a distinct set of values. And, ultimately, a distinct definition of righteousness:
1. The Church of God, the movement which envisioned itself as joining in a "new Reformation," and that formed around the ministry of John Winebrenner and others, which was blessed and thrived from before its first moment and which inspired the "planting" of about 800 congregations within 60 years.
2. The Churches of God, the denomination that rejected the radical to settle for being a small, respectable, Protestant, church, which progressively institutionalized the former movement, created the beginnings of a hierarchy and which witnessed the beginnings of what is, by now, a generations-long trend toward spiritual decay and numerical decline which continues to this day.
3. The CGGC, the effort to reverse the disaster that was the Churches of God, attempting to end decay and decline by increasing the size of the denomination's hierarchy and adopting a leadership model which describes its highest ranking official as the denomination's Chief Executive Officer, and which defines a disciple as a person who attends church worship and which has seen the spiritual decay and numerical decline of the Churches of God continue.
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One essential quality of today's CGGC has been to create radical talk which it ignores with an incredibly bland and tepid walk. I've called this behavior, Talk-ism.
Most of the people active in the body today are CGGC people. CGGC "leaders" create the radical talk and walk the bland walk. The others of the CGGC approve of the talk, or, don't disapprove of it.
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Nearly everyone active in the body these days who's not CGGC is Churches of God.
Interestingly, one important trait that distinguishes Churches of God people from CGGC people is that,...
...unlike people of the CGGC, Churches of God people do not practice Talk-ism.
I began to understand this about five years ago when I was noticing differences between what takes place among General Conference staff and what was normal, at the time, among the leadership culture of the ERC.
I was surprised, back then, when I realized that ERC staffers didn't talk big. They never exaggerated.
In those days, General Conference people talked the early Church of God radical movement talk...,"the New Testament plan," the language of rejection of the Reformation, the language of being part of something energetic, dynamic and new. But, in practice, in walk, they were everyday and run of the mill.
That was not the way of the ERC. The ERC, then, was pure old-school, Protestant, Church-es of God.
They were staid, respectable and, forget that "new Reformation" vision announced by John Winebrenner. They were very, very, content to be Protestant.
I've occasionally used the phrase, "theologically conservative Lutheran wannabes" to describe ERC staff in that day.
Back in the day, that described ERC staff. To this day, something similar describes the Churches of God faction of our body.
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The truth about Churches of God people is that they walk their talk.
Yet, I see two problems with their walked talk:
First, and, most importantly, their walked talk is not being blessed. It has never been.
In history, the Churches of God saw the beginning of our time of spiritual decay and numerical decline and the Churches of God people who live in that way today continue in that tradition.
Second, Churches of God people ignore the authority of the Eldership, the Conference.
They concoct a way of being church that, in effect, rejects both the talk and the walk of our movement days to embrace a wannabe way of reclaiming the ways of the high church German Reformed Church.
That is precisely what Church of God people rejected to become the Church of God. It brings to mind the people of Israel clamoring to be able to return to Egypt.
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I criticize CGGC people for their Talk-ism, but, give CGGC people this:
CGGC people acknowledge, and even, I think, love, our radical past. To use their language, they talk "aspirationally." They're simply unwilling, unable?, to live radically.
The Churches of God people, on the other hand, truly walk their talk. The problem is that their walked talk is of everything we rejected in calling for "a new Reformation" and "the New Testament plan."
So, Churches of God people walk their talk. The problem is that theirs is not ours.
For example, they outright reject the core Church of God belief in the Bible as our "only rule of faith and practice." They refuse to submit to the founding Church of God commitment to "establish churches of the 'New Testament plan'" to be mundanely and conventionally Protestant.
Churches of God people groove on the clergy/laity divide. They see it as a good thing that pastors function as parish priests who provide religious products and services to be consumed by the laity.
And, they are very comfortable with high church practices, especially the use of the ecclesiastical calendar.
One of the congregations I follow on Facebook/YouTube is a Churches of God group.
They are unabashed in their observance of the high church ecclesiastical calendar. I watched their "worship service" this past Sunday. Yikes! If I had $100 for every time the words Pentecost Sunday were spoken, I could pay back my first Social Security check and use what's left to take Evie to the Jersey shore, ocean front, for a week, once the beaches open!
Churches of God people walk their talk. Sadly, their talk ain't ours.
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Why does that matter?
It matters because community in a religious body is the fruit of a shared commitment to a walk...to a common understanding of what righteousness is.
These people reject our core understanding of what it means for a congregation to walk together for Christ.
I've called them spiritual terrorists.
Individually, they are nice people. Bland, even.
But, in what they DO, in the context of this body, they subvert our need to reverse the trend to spiritual decay and numerical decline that began in the Churches of God era with what they believe...and do.
If our body is going to move forward, it's going to have to think seriously about walk. About righteousness.
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