A Do-Your-Own-Thing-Culture that would Make a Hippie Blush

It's your thing, do what you wanna do. I can't tell you, who to sock it to. -- "It's Your Thing," Ronald, O'Kelly and Rudolph Isley, 1969

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he who heeds counsel is wise. -- Proverbs 12:15

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In the CGGC our real core value is: "We value people who do their own thing in community. "

"Do your own thing" is not a biblical value even if it is done in community.

I make this point now because we are nearing crucial a moment in our history at which we can practice repentance of Do-Your-Own-Thingism. Two years ago we had that same opportunity and chose do your own thing.

More than two years ago, our most authoritative body, our General Conference Administrative Council composed a Mission Statement rooted in the message John Winebrenner presented on the very day that the Church of God was formed. This is that Statement:

As witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ, we commit ourselves to make more and better disciples by establishing churches on the New Testament plan and proclaiming the gospel around the world.

Two years ago, when the ink of the Mission Statement was barely dry on the page, representatives of our Regions assembled, called together by the General Conference. They were tasked with standardizing CGGC ministerial credentials and revising the CGGC faith statement. When they completed that work, they had incarnated the real CGGC core value. They did it with unabashed zeal in a way that would have made a 60's hippie cringe.

When they standardized credentials, they standardized the traditions of our Regions with each other. They did not standardize those traditions with the Word--or, as the Ad Council declared, "the New Testament plan." When you read those standards can you even imagine that, at any point one of them asked, "But, what does the New Testament say?"

They ignored the Word. They ignored the Mission Statement. They ignored our history. They formed a consensus rooted in tradition.

They did their own thing in community.

When they updated the faith statement, they didn't present a New Testament model. They tweaked tradition and wrote a 20,000+ word sectarian monstrosity. (Do you know that only three New Testament book contain more words than our 'statement' of faith?)

True to the CGGC way, they ignored the Word. They ignored the Mission Statement. They ignored our history. They formed a consensus among themselves in community. They did their own thing and they did it without shame.

It may surprise you to know that it's hard for me to point this out. It is.

I know most of those people. I love them all. Everyone I know who wrote the credentials is a good-hearted person. All are sincere men and women who, individually, want to serve and please the Lord. They want to obey.

When they did this, they wanted to get it right. When they were writing these documents, one of them called me and spoke with me for hours about revising We Believe because, he told me, he respected my knowledge and my passion for truth.

When the documents were sent to the Ad Council, one of its members sent me We Believe as a Word document. He exchanged numerous emails with me and met me for a lengthy lunch and spent hours with me on the phone discussing the most profound issues of truth. (I believe that he was instrumental in putting the kibosh on We Believe so that it didn't even make it to the floor of General Conference. There is a remnant on Ad Council, my friends.)

As individuals, for the most part, the men and women who wrote the documents are good people.

I have two insights about them that I think are from the Lord:

1. The problem is macro, not micro. It is with our culture, not with our individual people. When we come together we function like the priests and kings of the Old Testament and like the religious culture of the Scribes and Pharisees and the priests of the New Testament did.

Like most of the people in the Bible to whom the prophets spoke, CGGCers are sincere people of religious tradition. We are not people of the Word. Read the books of the prophets and the Gospels. The Lord sent the prophets to very religious people.

Take the credentials document at face value. It was written by good-hearted people who looked to church tradition, not the Word, as their guide. Scripture references don't drive our Credentials. What drives them is practices rooted in Middle Ages Catholicism as tweaked by the Reformation. There's more of Constantine and Pope Gregory and John Calvin in the credentials document than there is of the New Testament and of John Winebrenner's passion for establishing the Church of God on the New Testament plan.

The same is true of We Believe. Paul recorded the gospel he preached in a handful of words near the beginning in 1 Corinthians 15. His gospel connected all believers. We Believe resembles a creed from the Middle Ages or, worse, from the seventeenth century. Like the creeds and confessions of the seventeenth century, it stresses what separates us from the rest of the Body of Christ, not what unites us with it.

The people who wrote these documents are good people who did something very, very bad.

2. When we come together, we assume ungodly values that turn good intention into sin.

I'm not attempting humor when I say, "Do your own thing in community" is our real core value. That principle has been guiding us for generations.

We do our own thing. We value consensus but we value the wrong consensus. We look for agreement among ourselves, not consensus with the Lord who makes Himself known to us in His Word and through the Spirit. We ask, "How can we all get along with each other?" not "How can we repent before the Lord?"

The Lord tells me that the credentials and We Believe are an abomination. Good-hearted people composed them sincerely. Yet the Lord despises them.

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I say this now because on February 21, 2011 people of the CGGC are invited to assemble for symposia on Credentials and We Believe. As far as I know, attendance at these meetings is not restricted. Those who love the Kingdom should attend if at all possible.

I believe that these gatherings are the best chance the CGGC has to begin to repent of the ways of past generations which have led to our exponential spiritual and numerical decline. These gatherings may, in fact, be our last chance. If we set the wrong course in credentialing and in articulating our faith now, there may be nothing left when we'd get around to doing it again.

I believe we are good people who need to repent of shared values that lead us into sin. We need macrorepentance.

I believe that we can begin to repent.

I believe that we can acknowledge the authority of the Word and of the Spirit not the authority of tradition and human consensus.

I believe that we can demand nothing less from our credentials and faith statement than unadulterated submission to the New Testament.

I believe that we can stand together against of our long tradition of Do-Your-Own-Thingism. This will be hard to do. The peer pressure will be stifling!

I believe we can call the Do Your Own Thing value exactly what it is: Sin!

The questions are: Will we? Will we stop merely talking? Will we act in repentance?