“You know, it’s like I always said… the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
These were the final words spoken in my favorite television series of all time, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. After seven years of stories, conflicts, battles, and drama, the space station called “Deep Space Nine” comes to a place of peace and stability. The local bartender (a Ferengi named Quark) finds himself tending to his shop there once again as he had done for many years. And as the final episode draws to a close, Quark speaks the above words, which has become a favorite quote of mine over the years.
Life is full of transitions and adjustments. We leave one place or situation in life, and we move on to other challenges. One relationship ends, and another begins. Sometimes, when we’re experiencing many changes, we can feel a little out of sorts – as if the world is somehow unstable or unpredictable. For some people, this kind of unpredictability can be invigorating and exciting. For others (like me), big changes are a bit stressful. Continue reading →
Last week, something fascinating unfolded on Facebook. Church of God Ministries, our national office in Anderson, maintains a Facebook page to help Church of God people connect with each other. (It’s very similar to Mt. Haley’s Facebook page, but it reaches a much broader audience than ours does.) Occasionally, the people who maintain that page will ask a question, post a thought, or share a picture – and usually not a whole lot of discussion takes place.
That was not the case this week, when Church of God Ministries asked these questions: “How can the Church of God re-engage congregations, from California to the New England states? And, what would you say the Church of God needs to do to re-engage the younger generation?”
Martin Luther (by Lucas Cranach, 1533)
What followed was an intense, thoughtful discussion involving many different individuals. This is rather unusual for Facebook, especially for an online discussion about faith-related issues! Many of the responses were short and terse calls to “preach the Word of God alone” and “get back to the basics” – a kind of “scripture only” stance that many Christian groups have called for over the years. (In Latin, one would say “sola scriptura“; that phrase was a guiding principle of the Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther in the 1500s.) While I agree with the principle, there’s nothing uniquely Church of God about that stance.
Many people discussed our annual national campmeeting, which has always been held in Anderson, Indiana. Some people are calling for a moving, rotating convention so that people in all locations have equal opportunity to attend a campmeeting that is close to them. Others are concerned about programming, service opportunities, and speakers at these conventions. Several mentioned how the 20-to-30-something age bracket is missing at the national campmeeting and, not coincidentally, in our local congregations. Again, many church groups (we can use the word “denominations”) are struggling with issues like these.
But one theme kept popping up over and over. While all of the above issues are important, the identity of the Church of God resurfaced again and again as a question that needs to be answered. If we are just another church group that holds annual conventions and connects local churches together and is losing touch with people in their third decade of life, then woe to us. If we do not have compelling reasons to exist as “The Church of God (Anderson, Indiana),” then perhaps we should join arms with other like-minded church groups like the Nazarenes, Free Methodists, and Wesleyans. I would argue that history, tradition, hymnody, emotional attachment, and generational connectedness are not good reasons to exist as a denomination. (These were many of the ideas mentioned in the Facebook discussion!)
Christian faith is about one thing – salvation through Jesus Christ – and the far-reaching consequences of that salvation. We live in a time of great division and distinction among church groups, and truthfully I don’t see that changing any time soon. Denominations are here to stay. While some might question the legitimacy and validity of other church groups (and this is part of our history in the Church of God), I believe each group has something important to contribute to the conversation about salvation through Jesus Christ.
This is what we as the Church of God must figure out in the years that lie ahead. What is it about our history, theology, hymnody, and traditions that leads us to contribute something unique to the global conversation about Jesus Christ? Why do we exist as a people?
Only once we have answered these questions will we be able to address the issue of reengaging widely diverging congregations and generations.
Pastor David
P.S. You can read the full Facebook conversation here:
This Wednesday, at the annual national-level General Assembly meeting of the Church of God, we ratified our new General Director, Rev. Jim Lyon. He will take up the reins of leadership in this movement upon the retirement of Rev. Dr. Ron Duncan later this summer. For various reasons, I have wavered back and forth in my support of this nomination, but in the past few weeks I have come to see the value and importance of Rev. Lyon’s appointment to this post, at this particular time in our movement’s history.
Rev. Jim Lyon
I’d like to share with you one of the most important pieces of my growing sense of support for Rev. Lyon. This begins with a concern that many people in the movement have: the Church of God needs a singular identity, something around which to rally ourselves, a message to proclaim to the broader church and to the world. (If you participated in the Revelation Bible study on Sunday nights last year, you may remember that this question came up frequently. That’s because the identity the Church of God had 100 years ago – related to a specific interpretation of Revelation – is no longer accepted broadly today. However, nothing that strong has risen up in its place in the past few decades.)
After his ratification, Rev. Lyon spoke to the General Assembly for a good half hour. During this talk, he reminded us that he does not come to this position with an agenda, a crystal-clear vision, or a list of programs to implement. Instead, he comes with a singular conviction. As he talked about this conviction, I realized he had written about this in his public responses to questions earlier this year:
To move forward, the unity of our own church family must be cemented. There are factions, subsets, splinters, and tribes within the Movement, all held loosely together but sometimes moving in different directions. All of us need to embrace the truth that Jesus is the subject. The church is not the subject.
When we are in right relationship to Jesus, the church will be fine. If we are not in right relationship to Jesus, no program, doctrine, distinctive, or emphasis in the church will be healthy. Who Jesus is. What Jesus thinks. What Jesus cares about. What Jesus died for. What Jesus calls us to do. How Jesus loves. How Jesus forgives. How Jesus walked and would have us walk. This is the stuff of unity. Focusing along these lines is our only hope to realize our Heaven-sent destiny as a Movement.
The Church of God, perhaps more than any other part of the larger Christian family, is hinged on relationships, grounded in the Word. We must nurture relationships with each other, tethered by this truth: Jesus is the subject. Supremely. When we obey Him, we love Him. When we see Him, we see the Father. When we follow Him, we find life.
My first object will be to bring Jesus into view, to focus, insofar as I am able, the church on its Lord.
Friends, this is good stuff. I can rally around this core conviction. It may not be a full vision for the Church of God, but that’s ok – it’s a wonderful starting point. It’s something that can spark our movement’s quest for identity and purpose. I look forward to thinking and moving with you and with Rev. Lyon in the days ahead as we reflect on the impact of this truth: Jesus is the subject.
As I type these words tonight, there is no Pope heading up the Roman Catholic Church. This is rather significant in terms of world affairs and religious news: only once in a long while is there a transition of power in this position, and never in the past several generations has there been a Pope who has resigned, like Benedict XVI has done. This is the kind of thing that gets my religion-antennae perked up!
source: www.vatican.va
The Church of God has had a mixed view of the Roman Catholic Church (which I’ll abbreviate RCC) since our inception in the late 1800s. Originally, we viewed the RCC as an evil institution, one which embodied some of the most evil and grotesque images in the book of Revelation. This was rather fundamental to our identity as the Church of God and, for a while, seemed to be the primary way for us to view that group.
Our view toward Catholics has become much more generous, generally speaking, in the past few decades. We are becoming more and more aware that many true, honest Christian believers exist within the vast 1.2 billion adherents that the RCC claims. Personally, one of my high school friends grew up as a United Methodist but converted to the RCC when she married one of my Catholic friends. Both are firm, fully-committed believers in Jesus Christ and are raising their children to know and love the Lord.
Now, you’ll notice that I have not pursued priesthood in the RCC. I serve as a pastor in the Church of God movement on purpose, and I’m not about to switch loyalties. After all, my view of Christianity allows for a great deal of diversity of denomination. To quote one of our heritage hymns (by modifying its intent), “we reach our hands in fellowship to every blood-washed one.” I believe we must be very gracious in distinguishing who, in fact, is washed by the blood of the Lamb.
So how should we react to the RCC being between Popes and struggling to search for a leader? For all its problems (and I believe there are many), the RCC is very important to a large number of honest Christian believers. To that end – and that end alone should be enough to convince us – we should pray for our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters during this time of transition.
After all, we too are in a period of transition in the Church of God. Our current General Director, Dr. Ron Duncan, is retiring soon, and a search team is working hard to interview candidates and to make a recommendation for Dr. Duncan’s successor. (There are a few somewhat insignificant parallels between this process and the RCC’s Conclave to choose the next Pope. In short, though, our General Director is not our Pope.) Just as we should pray for God’s wisdom in guiding those who will select a leader for our group, which numbers about a million people, so too we should pray for God’s wisdom among those who will select the spiritual leader for a group one thousand times larger than ours.
We live without a Pope all the time; we live under the reign of Jesus Christ alone, and we journey freely in his kingdom with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. But for those brothers and sisters in Christ who live in a system that normally has a Pope but does not right now – for these people, let us pray. (1 Thessalonians 5:25)
Our congregation is associated with the Christian group formally known as the Church of God Reformation Movement. We balk at calling ourselves a denomination, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s what we are. And for the past several years, this denomination has been guided along its course by our current General Director, a man named Dr. Ron Duncan.
Dr. Duncan is an excellent leader with a pastor’s heart and a servant’s attitude. I have had a few conversations with him over the past few years, and I have always walked away grateful that he is providing such good leadership for this movement. Yet his retirement is just around the corner, and the necessary questions are being asked now: what kind of person do we want as our next General Director?
This is extremely significant for us as a movement, because the General Director gives voice to our collective vision. He or she works with other leaders in our movement to strengthen congregations and to help us move forward in our mission, which is to spread the message of Jesus Christ throughout the world in a way that resonates with our theological emphases on personal holiness and the unity of all believers. The next General Director will shape the course of this movement for years to come.
I was privileged to participate in a focus group yesterday regarding this very issue. Several friends and colleagues of mine – we were called “young theologians” by the organizers of this group – had a 90-minute conference call with the team that will eventually search for a new General Director. We were asked to give our thoughts on the current state of the Church of God, the challenges facing the next General Director, and the opportunities facing the next General Director.
This was an incredibly encouraging phone conversation for me! I appreciated being reminded that there are many leaders in the Church of God who are concerned that this movement actually move somewhere, that we clearly express our vision for ministry in the present-day world. Many individuals commented on the importance of understanding and articulating our identity in a way that drives us to service and ministry in our local communities in the name of social holiness. Several mentioned the need for Christians to partner with other believers across denominational lines to do the work of the kingdom of God in our local communities in the name of Christian unity.
The Church of God won’t have a new General Director for another eighteen months or so. The search process is very involved! But rest assured that the Church of God currently has many young leaders who are committed to seeing this movement fulfill God’s purposes in the present generation.
