Central to the theme of this blog is my commitment to work a nonchurch job, in the world, specifically and intentionally as an Ambassador of the Kingdom of God.
It is my intention to use this blog, among other things, to explore and to reflect upon the meaning of the life I've chosen.
The job...the MINISTRY...allows me to practice, on a small and intimate scale, tremendously important, big-picture principles of Kingdom living.
--------------------
Here's something I am, WE are, dealing with:
There's an elderly bagger on our team, who's about to turn 80, who's only coming to work because he needs the money.
His health is bad and has been deteriorating for years.
However, he's gotten to the point now that all he does is clock in, walk to the area where the cash registers are located and sit down in one of the chairs provided for customers to sit in.
His wife packs him a lunch and, during the course of the time he's scheduled to work, he munches on it...
...but he doesn't do his job.
...he just sits and watches the rest of us do our jobs. When his shift is over, he clocks out and goes home.
He's been doing this for months!
I'm certain that he's not goldbricking. He's clearly incapable of doing the work. And, he's poor.
He doesn't do his job right out in the open. The owners of the store see him not working.
The front end managers have gone as far up the company chain of command in reporting this as we can...several times...
It's up to the HR guy to talk to him, warn him and, if, appropriate, terminate him.
The HR guy knows. He, too, sees it daily...
And, I'm not sure what he would do on his own...
But, the owners of the store are committed Lancaster County Sermon on the Mount living Anabaptists.
You know, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." It's right up there near the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.
Clearly, the company's not rolling in the dough as well as it might be, and for many reasons, and this merciful attitude toward unproductive employees is one of them.
--------------------
Here's the problem: Call him Bob, isn't even the oldest person who works at the Front End. And, his health probably isn't the worst of the lot.
As only one example, there's a petite and frail woman in her late 70s who is a cashier, and who, about three months ago, was in a car accident in which she cracked ten ribs and is still in pain...
...but who also needs the money.
And, when Bob is assigned to be her bagger, she has to do the job without help.
You may not realize how physically demanding cashiering in a grocery store can be.
Our store doesn't serve many vegans.
At holiday time in the autumn and winter, a cashier in a typical hour many easily push around nearly a ton of turkeys and hams and beef fillets.
Image your granny doing that five or six hours a day, five days a week.
Then, think of the guy who's supposed to be helping nanna sitting by, munching on a pretzel, and joking with a customer.
--------------------
I can only guess that the disciples of Jesus who own the store are choosing to show mercy to Bob.
And, as this case makes obvious, showing mercy rarely takes place in a vacuum. Usually, in my experience, when I show mercy to Person A, there's a Person B, and, perhaps, many others, paying a price.
At Faith, it's probably about five years ago that we began to struggle with the question:
How do you show mercy without enabling sin?
I have no better an answer to that question now than I did then.
---------------------
In my opinion, if the holders of institutional authority in the CGGC want to lead a resurgence in our ministry, this is the sort of thing they should be leading.
Tell me, Lance, or here in the east, Nick, how you, personally, do this in real life.
Teach me...if you want to preach to me about something, preach to me about the connection between mercy and injustice.
Because, as much as I'm committed to showing mercy, I rarely do it, in actual practice, in a way that doesn't produce at least some negative consequence.
Jesus did warn that if your righteousness doesn't surpass that of the Pharisees and the Scribes you won't see the Kingdom.
We have to get righteousness right. I don't think we are.
I'm pretty sure I'm not.
Serious stuff.
Thursday, November 28, 2019
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Exegesis v. Eisegesis: The Stark Difference between Winebrenner and the Writers of the Current CGGC Strategic Plan
I love words, especially unusual words. But, on this blog and everywhere, I hate big and unusual words a person would learn during the process of "theological education."
Using them is a curse on the practice of the so-called Priesthood of all Believers.
Two words that I despise are the words "exegesis" and "eisegesis."
My guess that most people who read this blog learned the two terms while they were being theologically educated.
I found these definitions on line.
Exegesis is:
critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture.
And,
Eisegesis is the process of interpreting text in such a way as to introduce one's own presuppositions, agendas or biases. It is commonly referred to as reading into the text. (emphasis mine.)
The Greek preposition ek or ex means "out of." Eis means "into."
So, exegesis means to take meaning out of, in this case, Scripture. Eisegesis means to put meaning into Scripture.
--------------------
The story of the origin of the Church of God, which is the fruit of the ministry of John Winebrenner and his colleagues is truly thrilling.
There was a dark period between the mid 1820s and 1829. Little is known about those years. Winebrenner had become estranged from the German Reformed Church by, say, 1825.
In 1829, he published the extremely important book, A BRIEF SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF THE CHURCH OF GOD.
In October 1830, Winebrenner and others assembled in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to join together in a ministry they called the Church of God, a ministry established on the principles contained in Winebrenner's 1829 book.
Almost nothing is known about Winebrenner between 1825 and 1829 except that Winebrenner devoted time, during those years, to reading the Scriptures on his knees.
It is from Winebrenner's searching of Scripture that the Church of God movement was born.
The Church of God, in its movement days, is as pure and vivid a picture of living exegesis as can be known.
In its first generation, the Church of God was precisely fruit of a "critical explanation or interpretation of...Scripture."
Winebrenner's years, spent on his knees, drawing truth out of the Word, produced fruit in an explosion of spiritual blessing.
--------------------
Jump forward 190 years from 1829 to 2019.
In that year, the people who possessed institutional authority in the CGGC presented, to the delegates of General Conference, a first-ever Strategic Plan.
One of the responses to the Strategic Plan that I've received, in personal conversations, is praise of the fact that it includes so many Scriptural references.
Those Scripture references are noteworthy. They couldn't have been assumed ten years earlier.
Ten years ago, the Credentialing document presented, by possessors of institutional authority in that day, to the delegates of General Conference in session became controversial. It was well over 10 pages long and had no references to Scripture at all.
There is, indeed, reason to be surprised, at least, that the Word is cited in the Strategic Plan.
However, the difference between the use of the Word in the 2019 Strategic Plan and Winebrenner's prayerful search for truth in the 1820s could not be more stark, nor startling.
Winebrenner went to his knees, yearning to draw truth from the Word.
Reading the Strategic Plan, it seems obvious to me, that the possessors of institutional authority began with their plan and then opened their Bibles to find support for what they'd already decided they want to do.
Never in the process have we heard an account of the truth of the Word steering our institutional authorities away from a principle or value they already had in mind.
The Bible served the framers of the Strategic Plan.
In our movement days, our people served the Word, and through it, they glorified the Lord...and the Lord blessed them in a way that kept their heads spinning.
--------------------
I, very simply, can't see the Lord blessing the Strategic Plan for many reasons, only one being that the plan came from human wisdom.
The possessors of institutional authority in the CGGC are currently working on implementing the Strategic Plan. They are, as I understand it, working, in a very preliminary way, on walking the Strategic Plan's talk.
But, by 2022, this plan will have gone nowhere substantial among the people of the CGGC.
I call, today, for the following of this, uh, "strategy" in the CGGC, beginning with the next meeting of the General Conference in 2022:
That Lance and whoever else has an office in the headquarters building in Findlay set the example of reading the Scriptures on their knees, calling the rest of the body to follow their walk and to continue to do so until the Spirit speaks from the Word.
I'm convinced that we can walk again in the Spirit's blessing as we were blessed in the past.
But, we're going to have to seek our wisdom from Him.
We will have to repent.
We will have to stop demanding that He respect the wisdom of the possessors of the authority of our institution.
Using them is a curse on the practice of the so-called Priesthood of all Believers.
Two words that I despise are the words "exegesis" and "eisegesis."
My guess that most people who read this blog learned the two terms while they were being theologically educated.
I found these definitions on line.
Exegesis is:
critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture.
And,
Eisegesis is the process of interpreting text in such a way as to introduce one's own presuppositions, agendas or biases. It is commonly referred to as reading into the text. (emphasis mine.)
The Greek preposition ek or ex means "out of." Eis means "into."
So, exegesis means to take meaning out of, in this case, Scripture. Eisegesis means to put meaning into Scripture.
--------------------
The story of the origin of the Church of God, which is the fruit of the ministry of John Winebrenner and his colleagues is truly thrilling.
There was a dark period between the mid 1820s and 1829. Little is known about those years. Winebrenner had become estranged from the German Reformed Church by, say, 1825.
In 1829, he published the extremely important book, A BRIEF SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF THE CHURCH OF GOD.
In October 1830, Winebrenner and others assembled in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to join together in a ministry they called the Church of God, a ministry established on the principles contained in Winebrenner's 1829 book.
Almost nothing is known about Winebrenner between 1825 and 1829 except that Winebrenner devoted time, during those years, to reading the Scriptures on his knees.
It is from Winebrenner's searching of Scripture that the Church of God movement was born.
The Church of God, in its movement days, is as pure and vivid a picture of living exegesis as can be known.
In its first generation, the Church of God was precisely fruit of a "critical explanation or interpretation of...Scripture."
Winebrenner's years, spent on his knees, drawing truth out of the Word, produced fruit in an explosion of spiritual blessing.
--------------------
Jump forward 190 years from 1829 to 2019.
In that year, the people who possessed institutional authority in the CGGC presented, to the delegates of General Conference, a first-ever Strategic Plan.
One of the responses to the Strategic Plan that I've received, in personal conversations, is praise of the fact that it includes so many Scriptural references.
Those Scripture references are noteworthy. They couldn't have been assumed ten years earlier.
Ten years ago, the Credentialing document presented, by possessors of institutional authority in that day, to the delegates of General Conference in session became controversial. It was well over 10 pages long and had no references to Scripture at all.
There is, indeed, reason to be surprised, at least, that the Word is cited in the Strategic Plan.
However, the difference between the use of the Word in the 2019 Strategic Plan and Winebrenner's prayerful search for truth in the 1820s could not be more stark, nor startling.
Winebrenner went to his knees, yearning to draw truth from the Word.
Reading the Strategic Plan, it seems obvious to me, that the possessors of institutional authority began with their plan and then opened their Bibles to find support for what they'd already decided they want to do.
Never in the process have we heard an account of the truth of the Word steering our institutional authorities away from a principle or value they already had in mind.
The Bible served the framers of the Strategic Plan.
In our movement days, our people served the Word, and through it, they glorified the Lord...and the Lord blessed them in a way that kept their heads spinning.
--------------------
I, very simply, can't see the Lord blessing the Strategic Plan for many reasons, only one being that the plan came from human wisdom.
The possessors of institutional authority in the CGGC are currently working on implementing the Strategic Plan. They are, as I understand it, working, in a very preliminary way, on walking the Strategic Plan's talk.
But, by 2022, this plan will have gone nowhere substantial among the people of the CGGC.
I call, today, for the following of this, uh, "strategy" in the CGGC, beginning with the next meeting of the General Conference in 2022:
That Lance and whoever else has an office in the headquarters building in Findlay set the example of reading the Scriptures on their knees, calling the rest of the body to follow their walk and to continue to do so until the Spirit speaks from the Word.
I'm convinced that we can walk again in the Spirit's blessing as we were blessed in the past.
But, we're going to have to seek our wisdom from Him.
We will have to repent.
We will have to stop demanding that He respect the wisdom of the possessors of the authority of our institution.
My 11/22/19 eNews Comment: APEST in Action
I am the only person in the universe who is producing fruit of reading the CGGC eNews, that is, I'm the only person currently engaging with it as a part of Contagious, the CGGC blog.
And, that's a shame.
It's a good blog, though everything except for the eNews seems to have died out.
I recommend it.
I think that the most important things I've written in the last six months or so have been comments to the blog.
My comment about Lance and "Joe" is still unpublished, yet I'm still hopeful. Often, it takes time.
And, I've now entered another comment.
Because I'm not certain who, if anyone, reads Contagious, I'm entering that comment here, too.
Please read Lance's article on the blog.
--------------------
Lance,
Thanks for painting this encouraging picture of the impact one of our US congregations is having in another place in the world.
As I was reading, it struck me as the sort of thing Paul and his first century missionary team would have done if they could have been transported into this century.
I see this as APEST in action.
This is precisely what happens when people gifted to be apostles…as these people at Grand Point seem to be…are given the freedom to live in their gift and passions.
I recalled listening to Reggie McNeal, about a decade ago, in a talk he gave to another denomination, saying that, at the beginning of the 20th century, 80 per cent of the Christians in the world lived in Europe and the US but that, by the beginning of the 21st century, 80 per cent of disciples of Jesus lived outside of Europe and the US.
We live in exciting times!
And, that's a shame.
It's a good blog, though everything except for the eNews seems to have died out.
I recommend it.
I think that the most important things I've written in the last six months or so have been comments to the blog.
My comment about Lance and "Joe" is still unpublished, yet I'm still hopeful. Often, it takes time.
And, I've now entered another comment.
Because I'm not certain who, if anyone, reads Contagious, I'm entering that comment here, too.
Please read Lance's article on the blog.
--------------------
Lance,
Thanks for painting this encouraging picture of the impact one of our US congregations is having in another place in the world.
As I was reading, it struck me as the sort of thing Paul and his first century missionary team would have done if they could have been transported into this century.
I see this as APEST in action.
This is precisely what happens when people gifted to be apostles…as these people at Grand Point seem to be…are given the freedom to live in their gift and passions.
I recalled listening to Reggie McNeal, about a decade ago, in a talk he gave to another denomination, saying that, at the beginning of the 20th century, 80 per cent of the Christians in the world lived in Europe and the US but that, by the beginning of the 21st century, 80 per cent of disciples of Jesus lived outside of Europe and the US.
We live in exciting times!
Friday, November 22, 2019
My eNews Comment on Lance and "Joe"
I just entered this yesterday. I'm confident that Mike will publish it but it will be superseded by another eNews article this afternoon and you won't see it on the blog unless you're looking at old posts.
Lance spent two weeks relating his encounter with a guy he's calling "Joe" who has a role in our Asian ministries. Lance describes Joe as, "the strongest spiritual leader I've had the privilege of knowing."
Please read up on Joe if you haven't.
Lance says he wants to be like Joe. I want that, too.
I'm convinced, as I've been saying, that we have good people in positions of institutional authority but that having good people sitting behind desks in the offices of our headquarters buildings has never been our problem.
My comment says that...again.
--------------------
Lance spent two weeks relating his encounter with a guy he's calling "Joe" who has a role in our Asian ministries. Lance describes Joe as, "the strongest spiritual leader I've had the privilege of knowing."
Please read up on Joe if you haven't.
Lance says he wants to be like Joe. I want that, too.
I'm convinced, as I've been saying, that we have good people in positions of institutional authority but that having good people sitting behind desks in the offices of our headquarters buildings has never been our problem.
My comment says that...again.
--------------------
Lance,
These last two posts have been powerful, encouraging and challenging.
Yet, for all you say about Joe and his life of love for the Lord and for his neighbor, here’s the one sentence in your posts that lingers with me.
You say,
“I wish I had the kind of witness that this dear brother exhibits but I fall far short of his example.”
I take you at your word.
I’m convinced that the best thing for the CGGC body, and for you personally, is for your staff and your Administrative Council to empower you to get out from behind your desk and beyond the walls of your corner office and into your community and into the world, to live the life of love and service that Joe lives.
It’s undoubtedly true that you want to live like Joe lives and that, as you say, you chide yourself because you fall short of his example.
About 30 years ago, the people who created it envisioned the job of CGGC Executive Director as that of a CEO.
Don’t we all know now that they were wrong? Doesn't our ongoing decline make that clear?
I think the time is long since passed for us to rethink who we are and what we do and to begin with you, by freeing you up…
…by EMPOWERING you to live the life you so often tell us you yearn to live.
In your own words, you say that you fall short of Joe’s EXAMPLE.
And, truly, you do…
…because it is your job to fall short of his example.
It’s time to change your job so that success for you would be to love the Lord with all your heart and soul and strength and your neighbor as yourself.
SO YOU CAN SET AN EXAMPLE TO CHALLENGE US.
Blessings.
Sunday, November 17, 2019
A Dorm for Geezers
We've been in independent living for nearly two weeks now and it's still going surprisingly well.
I lived in on campus housing during my freshman year when I was in college. As it turned out, I had a roommate with whom I was compatible. And, I loved it.
I'm beginning to think of life here, in an independent living apartment, as life in a dorm for old people and I'm...we're...enjoying it.
It's still early days, of course, but we're settling in nicely.
This past week is actually the week we had originally planned to move in and I'd scheduled vacation. All of the moving in was done and Evie and some friends had done a lot of the work of unpacking by the time my week off began, so it was a fairly easy week for me.
I go back to work tomorrow and, while my job's okay and I love the people I work with, it's going to be hard.
And, I'm reminding myself that my job is my ministry. I am an ambassador of the Kingdom of God, and that gives me some focus but, I'd really like to spend some time hanging out in the dorm, just taking it easy.
I still have to work full-time for about a half year and I will because I have to. But, after that? Right now?, I don't know.
This is nice.
I lived in on campus housing during my freshman year when I was in college. As it turned out, I had a roommate with whom I was compatible. And, I loved it.
I'm beginning to think of life here, in an independent living apartment, as life in a dorm for old people and I'm...we're...enjoying it.
It's still early days, of course, but we're settling in nicely.
This past week is actually the week we had originally planned to move in and I'd scheduled vacation. All of the moving in was done and Evie and some friends had done a lot of the work of unpacking by the time my week off began, so it was a fairly easy week for me.
I go back to work tomorrow and, while my job's okay and I love the people I work with, it's going to be hard.
And, I'm reminding myself that my job is my ministry. I am an ambassador of the Kingdom of God, and that gives me some focus but, I'd really like to spend some time hanging out in the dorm, just taking it easy.
I still have to work full-time for about a half year and I will because I have to. But, after that? Right now?, I don't know.
This is nice.
Sunday, November 10, 2019
We Moved on Tuesday
We are now residents of the independent living community of Fairmount Homes. We live on what is literally, a fair mount, by Lancaster County, Pennsylvania standards, a high hill which affords a substantial view of the countryside for a great distance. Our mailing address is Ephrata, PA but we're probably closer to the town of New Holland.
We're young to do this. We're among the first to move into a new building. We're regularly meeting very nice people who are close to our age...and who are the children of people who will be our new neighbors.
Before the move took place, I wasn't certain I'd be pleased.
There are many practical reasons for us to make this move.
We're certainly young and healthy enough to own and live in our own home.
We're also certainly very young to have moved into a home. I don't know everyone here, but I'm confident that we're the youngest residents here at the moment.
But, I was a low church parish priest for many years and I know many people older than I am and have seen what happens when a sudden illness takes over a life.
Suddenly there's a need for personal care, what was, until recently, called assisted living, or nursing care. The person who needs it may be incapable of making decisions, even if funds are available and, if there's a close and supportive family, the loved one's health is what matters.
And, we don't have children, though we are close to family on both sides.
By making this move, we've prepared for the moment, those moments.
And, if being here was less than pleasant, there'd be comfort in knowing the future was accounted for.
But, five days in, I'm pleased and at peace.
The staff here is amazing. Cooperative. Friendly. Kind. Efficient.
The apartment is smallish, but adequate. We'll be comfortable, I'm certain.
To live here, one has to be compatible with a fairly conservative Anabaptist lifestyle. And, we are. Few people we know would be, but we are.
While it's restrictive in some ways, it's an amazing love culture...very Sermon on the Mount-ish, as Anabaptists understand it.
It's an understanding that to be a Christian is to live as a follower of Jesus, not merely to attend a church and to submit to low church rituals, such as listening to the sermon.
And, of course, we're all about that.
My dad moved into an independent living community when he was about 80. He'd fought the move, kicking and screaming, and gave up only when it became clear that mom couldn't take care of her part of maintaining the house.
But, after dad adjusted, he lived nearly a decade of happy carefree life, until dementia took away the quality of his life. And, then, he was cared for wonderfully.
I can see that happening to me...probably the dementia, too.
We'll see.
But, we're here. It's a done deal.
We're young to do this. We're among the first to move into a new building. We're regularly meeting very nice people who are close to our age...and who are the children of people who will be our new neighbors.
Before the move took place, I wasn't certain I'd be pleased.
There are many practical reasons for us to make this move.
We're certainly young and healthy enough to own and live in our own home.
We're also certainly very young to have moved into a home. I don't know everyone here, but I'm confident that we're the youngest residents here at the moment.
But, I was a low church parish priest for many years and I know many people older than I am and have seen what happens when a sudden illness takes over a life.
Suddenly there's a need for personal care, what was, until recently, called assisted living, or nursing care. The person who needs it may be incapable of making decisions, even if funds are available and, if there's a close and supportive family, the loved one's health is what matters.
And, we don't have children, though we are close to family on both sides.
By making this move, we've prepared for the moment, those moments.
And, if being here was less than pleasant, there'd be comfort in knowing the future was accounted for.
But, five days in, I'm pleased and at peace.
The staff here is amazing. Cooperative. Friendly. Kind. Efficient.
The apartment is smallish, but adequate. We'll be comfortable, I'm certain.
To live here, one has to be compatible with a fairly conservative Anabaptist lifestyle. And, we are. Few people we know would be, but we are.
While it's restrictive in some ways, it's an amazing love culture...very Sermon on the Mount-ish, as Anabaptists understand it.
It's an understanding that to be a Christian is to live as a follower of Jesus, not merely to attend a church and to submit to low church rituals, such as listening to the sermon.
And, of course, we're all about that.
My dad moved into an independent living community when he was about 80. He'd fought the move, kicking and screaming, and gave up only when it became clear that mom couldn't take care of her part of maintaining the house.
But, after dad adjusted, he lived nearly a decade of happy carefree life, until dementia took away the quality of his life. And, then, he was cared for wonderfully.
I can see that happening to me...probably the dementia, too.
We'll see.
But, we're here. It's a done deal.
What's Missing from My Characteristics of the CGGC Brand, 2015
LEADERSHIP...FOLLOWERSHIP
If you read this blog, even a little bit, you know that I have strong feelings about the desire of CGGC people at the top of our mountains, especially in Findlay, to practice so-called leadership development.
It seems like forever that I've been saying that I consider their obsession with leading and with making leaders blasphemy, or close to it.
Obviously, I haven't been saying it forever because I wasn't saying it when I put together my latest list of the characteristics of the CGGC brand in the summer of 2015.
I recall, clearly, writing that list and the leadership, uh, heteropraxy (I love that word and sometimes can't resist), wasn't in my mind at all.
Believe me, if the, almost exclusively, guys, with CGGC institutional authority had been beating the leadership drum back then, I would have been screaming about it. And, I absolutely would have included it in my Characteristics of the CGGC Brand.
I honestly believe that their inclination to think of themselves as leaders in the Kingdom of GOD approaches the line that makes a behavior heretical, and, perhaps, crosses over that line.
--------------------
As I consider my last list of the characteristics of the CGGC brand, it strikes me how powerful the CGGC Executive Director is.
The last list substantially describes the essence of Ed Rosenberry.
At least one of the characteristics in the last list no longer applies at all, in my opinion. I attribute that fact to the difference between Ed's personality and Lance's.
It's very interesting to me that, if I did a new list of the characteristics of the CGGC brand, I'd maintain many of the titles, or headings, such as, for instance, Cynicism, but I'd change the description. The cynicism that exists today in the CGGC, for instance, while it continues, is of a different quality, or, it suggests a different ethos, that reflects Lance, not Ed.
--------------------
Anyway,...
...one change in the CGGC, since Ed rode off into the sunset, is the appearance of the issue of Leadership/Followership.
Leadership/Followership is a new thing in the CGGC.
What strikes me as not being new, and as being connected to the Cynicism characteristic, is our self-understood leaders' inability to create followership.
Our men with institutional authority dash about shouting, "Leadership, leadership, leadership!"
Yet, and still, followership eludes.
Interestingly, and of course, John Winebrenner, never talked leadership and people enthusiastically followed.
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