23 December 2013

AN OPEN LETTER RE: (1) The First 140 Days, (2) Church of God Convention 2014, (3) Logo, (4) Merry Christmas!

To my Church of God family:

One hundred forty days have passed since I first stepped into my new post as General Director at Church of God Ministries. My life has been a whirlwind since then; I have been on the road more days than I have been at home; I have been listening to voices from across the Church of God, from coast-to-coast and even abroad; I have been thinking and praying earnestly, waking and sleeping, breathing and wondering about the Church of God and the role Church of God Ministries might play in its future course. I’ve been handed (Providentially, I believe) both a sobering and exciting opportunity; I have been humbled and challenged by a task at once daunting and exhilarating.

On some days, I feel as if I have been prepared for a lifetime for just this moment. On other days, I feel overwhelmed and altogether spent, thinking myself foolish and unprepared, wrestling with the fear that accepting this appointment has been the stupidest thing I have ever done. “Why, oh why,” I ask myself quietly, “did I surrender a ministry I loved and in which I felt secure, to tackle this brief of impossibles, uncertainties, and towering mountains to climb?” At the end of every day, though, I am persuaded once more that the Lord has called me to walk onto this stage and to lead in this hour. About this, I am daily made more certain.

I’m still learning the ropes, of course. I have fumbled a few balls, no doubt about it. On the other hand, I’ve been able to complete a few passes, too, and believe the Lord is coaching the whole. Thanks to all who are on the field with me, working as a team. And, thanks, as well, to all those watching from the sidelines, who have cheered, prayed, and been graceful even when confused about the game plan.

I’m making this post online as a way of connecting with my Church of God family, in these days of accelerated change and death-defying challenges. And, yes, I mean: death-defying. The Church of God we know and love, this Movement of God’s people that has clothed many of us (myself included) from earliest memory, the sacred calling of a people by God Himself, is in jeopardy, its very existence hanging by a thread stretched thin.

How so? The Succession Committee (established by the Ministries Council in 2012 to nominate a new General Director), spent a year surveying the Church of God in the United States and Canada, attempting to take the pulse of the nearly quarter million who call the Church of God home. To do so, two independent consultants were retained to develop and pursue a credible process. These two firms worked in tandem, conducting interviews (for example, exploring the thoughts of a broad demographic of 1,500 people representative of the church), facilitating focus groups with key influencers across the continent, objectively assessing the metrics and hard data, and producing a profile of who we are and where we are. This elaborate study (its reliability on par with a Presidential poll) brought the consultants to the same overwhelming conclusions: (1) the Church of God as we know it is near death, and (2) the Church of God desperately wants to live, but only if sweeping changes can be made to make it worth living for.

Great men and women have poured their lives into the Church of God over many generations and up to the present hour; there are times and seasons for every work. The world around us is experiencing exponential change, our churches are often buffeted by wind and rain we cannot control; how to tack the sails, unload cargo that is unnecessary, and stay true to a fixed course is the imperative of our time.

There is much to talk about in this research, but suffice it to say, the analysis spoke strongly into the Succession Committee’s (and ultimately the Ministries Council’s) recommendations for the next General Director (which proved to be me). The data was delivered to me in a presentation by the chief consultant and then, again, in writing, in the first quarter of this year, as I was asked to consider accepting the appointment. The whole enterprise was bathed in prayer, measured by Scripture, and governed, we believe, by the Holy Spirit.

My charge, affirmed by the Ministries Council, has consequently been to “bring sweeping, substantive, dramatic, and Biblically-grounded change to the Church of God, for the purpose of re-energizing the Movement.” Whew. That’s one tall order.

Of course, I know that the office of General Director—indeed the whole of Church of God Ministries—is not empowered to mandate change, affirm the status quo, or compel anybody to do anything. The most we can hope to wield is influence; I know, as everyone knows, that every congregation in the Church of God is, at the end of the day, its own master, every pastor a kind of free agent. The only leverage any of us have over any others is the power of ideas, an anointing of the Holy Spirit to persuade, the chance to be heard and to listen.

With this in view, Church of God Ministries does have a role to play in speaking into the course of the Church of God; we believe it can be an instrument in Heaven’s hand to help vouchsafe the future of a sacred trust we all hold dear. God called the Church of God into being; I believe He is calling us again to renewed life and purpose.

(2) But, time is not on our side. The rapid secularization of our culture, the pale of a post-Christian civilization, and the splintering of the church among us (with competing agendas, rival meetings that vie for precious time and resources, independent visions and methodologies that tug the Body first this way, then that, and more)—conspire to hasten our end if we are not determined and ready to act.

The status quo cannot be maintained; we will grow or we will die. We will come together or we will fly apart. We will find ourselves again in common purpose or we will divide again into devolving weakness. Hell is not perturbed as we wrestle with ourselves, focus on our disagreements, and view each other warily. Hell’s greatest fear is that God’s people will become one. If we exacerbate our fault lines, we will find ourselves at fault for crippling the Kingdom’s advance.

The Movement is at an intersection today that will define its next generation. The contest is real. The stakes are high. Time is short.

If we are to meet the test, we must meet together.

The key to focusing our congregations and reclaiming our identity and purpose is held in the hands of our pastors—the shepherds the Lord has called to lead His flock in the separate congregations across the land into which He has placed them. No congregation can embrace a new day, no congregation can hold true its legacy, no congregation can fulfill its destiny if its pastor is not engaged and at the point. A church cannot grow past its pastor; no pastor can grow in isolation, separated from his or her peers. In the Church of God, the meeting of our pastors has been historically dubbed the General Assembly. In this crisis hour, the General Assembly must be revitalized, reconstituted, and reborn as the vital forum it once was to galvanize the church once more.

Of course, our General Assembly now also includes lay delegates, chosen by local churches to be eyes and ears and voices for them. The General Assembly also includes members of our church agency boards (like our universities and college) and ordained and licensed clergy who may not now be serving in a local pastoral ministry, but who have been recognized by the church for their calling. Each member, by whatever criteria they are made eligible to participate, is important. The active pastors, more than any others, hold the keys to the engine of their local parishes.

There are 11,182 eligible voting members of the General Assembly in the United States and Canada. Less than 4% of those eligible have participated, on average, in recent years. The Assembly’s quorum was lowered from 400 to 300 in 2011, because the quorum could not be routinely met; a quorum of 300 represents just 2.7% of the whole.

Our annual Church of God Convention (meeting in Anderson since 1906, but moving around in the quarter century before that) includes the annual meeting of the General Assembly. These two events (one originally a campmeeting, the other a spiritual forum for church leaders) have been joined at the hip, always. It is no secret that participation in both meetings has fallen drastically in the last fifteen years, and especially in the last decade (despite the best efforts of all involved in the planning and development process). Huge sums of money (budgeted at $100,000 each year) and countless hours have been invested in maintaining the meetings in Anderson, over time.

The reasons for the decline in participation have been hotly debated for many years; no definitive single answer probably exists (or, at least, can be agreed upon); but these truths are beyond dispute: (a) attendance is withering, (b) attendance is aging, (c) participants are reluctant to camp (few campsites are engaged), (d) participants are reluctant to stay in Anderson University dorms (fewer than 100 Americans and Canadians choose the dorms each year), (e) families no longer attend in significant numbers (less than 50 teenagers are on the grounds each year; Kids Place attendance in 2013 was 111, 30 children less than the year before, with many children present those of the local volunteers working the program), and (f) regional participation is narrowing (fewer participants come from afar, the percentage of those within driving distance is increasing: 53% of those attending in 2013 came from Indiana and adjacent states, representing just 33% of the whole church; only 6% attended from the 13 states of the American west, 13% from the seven southern states, and so on; 19% of those attending lived in Anderson).

These realities must be seen by the light of some other truths: (a) 25% of the whole Church of God is found in just 30 of our largest congregations—twelve of these are in the west (nine on the Pacific coast, three in the Rocky Mountain west), eight are in the Great Lakes, and the rest are spread everywhere else, (b) 50% of the whole Church of God is found in just 200 of our largest congregations (which includes the 30 largest); (c) 50% of the whole Church of God is found in the remaining 1,899 congregations in the United States and Canada; (d) we have 160 congregations with 25 people or less meeting together each weekend; (e) the growing edges of our church family are increasingly moving to the west and the south (reflecting, perhaps, population shifts in the United States and Canada generally).

Another startling truth with which we must contend is the shortage of housing in Anderson. There are less than 200 acceptable hotel/motel rooms within 20 miles of the Anderson University campus.

Indeed, two of the largest (the once-Holiday Inn and, across Scatterfield, the Ramada-turned-Day’s Inn both closed within the last year and are abandoned. If our church family will not camp or stay in the University dorms in large numbers (and that is irrefutably the case in recent years), Anderson does not have sufficient housing infrastructure to support critical mass for the Convention or the General Assembly.

But, we used to see 5,000 or 8,000 come to Anderson for the Convention each June. What’s different now? Again, in days gone by thousands camped—and the campus dormitories could house another 2,000. Anderson was an economically vibrant community with hotels and motels lining the approaches to both the north and south sides of town, which were booked with convention-goers. Many stayed with friends in homes, bearing witness to relationships forged over the years. But, few would consider staying in those same motels these days (and few remain open), the community’s economic fortunes have declined (sending many who once opened their homes to convention-goers in search of jobs elsewhere), and folks will not take days off to camp on the campus or populate the dorms.

With the 2014 Convention looming and decisions forced to be made by the march of time, the Convention Planning Committee, previously formed before my time (and comprised of both Church of God Ministry staff members and clergy from outside the building), stared down these facts in September and recommended to the Ministries Council that the primary venue be relocated to the Crossings Church in Oklahoma City, with a satellite location in Anderson.

The rationale was grounded in six truths: (a) the Church of God must, in this critical hour, when its very life is in the balance, call together its own and facilitate a meeting that reaches for far greater participation in the General Assembly and Convention than has been the norm in recent years, (b) Anderson no longer possesses the infrastructure (given the demonstrated reluctance of our people to camp and populate the University dorms) to host such a meeting—and that convening the meeting there again in 2014 will necessarily deny access to the church that cannot drive to the site for a day, requiring overnight accommodations (that includes nearly 222,000 people—or 92%–who worship with us each week), (c) the cost of staging the event in Anderson is steep, drawing huge sums away from other missional needs (at home and abroad), (d) the Crossings Church (with seating for 6,000 under one roof) in Oklahoma City is available to us without cost and is proximate to 3,000 hotel/motel rooms, (e) Oklahoma City is as accessible as is Indianapolis for travel by air or car, with similar costs; additionally, the Oklahoma City airport is 17 miles from the Crossings site; the Indianapolis airport is 65 miles from the Anderson University campus, and (f) like Anderson, Oklahoma City has a substantial Church of God constituent base, able to help facilitate the event with volunteers, support, and helping hands.

The Ministries Council received this recommendation and approved it unanimously in October. A second Ministries Council meeting was held in November, a month later, to review the decision and it was, once again, affirmed.

This decision is for 2014 only. How and where the Convention and General Assembly convene in subsequent years will be discussed at the meeting in June.

The Ministries Council spent time considering a General Assembly motion carried in 2012, calling for the 2014 meeting to be held in Anderson and a satellite location. While it is clear that the Constitution and Bylaws of the General Assembly and the Ministries Council Bylaws (set in motion by the General Assembly some years ago) empower the Council to act on the Assembly’s behalf when it is not in session (the General Assembly’s own constitution describes it as a “temporary presbytery” and says the Ministries Council “plans and convenes the annual General Assembly and North American Convention”), the Council, nevertheless, weighed carefully the Assembly’s decision captured in the 2012 motion regarding venue and arrangements.

The Council even requested legal counsel in its deliberations, to be certain it was not misreading or misappropriating powers not properly within its purview. Church of God Ministries legal counsel, Ken Hatch (himself a Church of God stalwart and son of the same, with a long history with the Convention and General Assembly), studied the record of the 2012 General Assembly meeting, the General Assembly’s Bylaws, the Ministries Council Bylaws, and all other relevant material and concluded that the Council did have the capacity to act, scheduling the Convention’s and General Assembly’s primary venue in Oklahoma City. One interesting outcome of the legal review was the identification of several inconsistencies in the General Assembly and Ministries Council charter documents, which can lead to confusion about who does what and how on several fronts; these must be addressed by the Assembly’s Committee on Bylaws and Organization.

The Council determined that the conditions of the Assembly’s motion, as read to require the primary venue to be in Anderson, could not today be met, given the new information and imperatives on the table today that were not available then. The interpretation of the motion itself has some elastic (depending on how it is understood). Rebecca New Edson (who placed the motion on the 2012 General Assembly floor following a committee report of which she was a part) was asked if the move to Oklahoma City with satellite access in Anderson was within the spirit and intent of the original and she replied, “Yes.” Considering all of the evidence, the legal brief, Rebecca’s testimony, and the critical juncture at which the church now finds itself, requiring a concerted effort to dramatically expand access to and participation in the Convention and General Assembly straightway, the Council concluded that the change for 2014 was unavoidable.

I was one of the 96% of the General Assembly that was not present in 2012 to hear the motion presented, its context, and its debate, or to cast a vote. I know there are some who were present who have been greatly disturbed by this change. The fact that less than 4% were present to vote is not cause to upend the outcome, but it does bear witness to the problem-at-hand: the Movement cannot move forward with such a tiny representation in the Assembly. If there is nowhere for Assembly members to stay (and the Assembly is necessarily limited by Anderson’s lodging), how can a credible General Assembly meeting that speaks for the whole church be constituted?

The satellite plan in Anderson will allow participants there to not only see and hear what happens in Oklahoma City in real time, it will allow voting and voice interaction between venues. In other words, someone at Madison Park in Anderson (which is also making its facilities available without cost) will be able to speak on the floor of the General Assembly (even though the Chair, for instance, is in Oklahoma City). Eligible voting members in both locations will be able to vote on every issue brought forward.

I realize this venue change is a huge marker in the church’s life and history. I also believe it is consistent with the Movement’s legacy. We are not people bound by tradition or place, but wholly on the move.

Our founders gave no prominence to an address, but were bound by inspired ideas. Their identity was not drawn from a location here below but by a fixation with Heaven above. They understood they were just passing through—by riverboat, by coach, by train, by foot. Theirs was an ambition, like that of Jesus, to go from village to village with the Good News of the Kingdom, without regard to the place where they would lay their heads. Jesus is the subject, after all. And, I am persuaded that He is altogether pleased for us to throw open the doors wide in 2014 in two houses for as many and all that will come.

Yes, Be Bold. That’s what the time requires; that’s what the Church of God requires.

The move to Oklahoma City has one object and one alone: to strengthen the whole Church of God and to make the Convention and General Assembly as accessible as possible to as many as possible.

Anderson has been my home for over twenty-two years and it is a community into which I have poured my life; I live here. But, my calling today requires me to look beyond my home and what I can see from the windshield of my car and speak up for the church everywhere. I am confident most members of our church family are doing the same.

(3) Soon after I arrived on the job, Church of God Ministries began to review its logo. Introduced for the first time in 1980 (one hundred years after the Movement’s beginning), the familiar-to-some-but-not-to-others flame art posed a few challenges. Panned when it arrived on the scene as “sectarian,” bearing too much likeness to denominational imprints already then in play (e.g. the United Methodist Church), today it is even more similar to other, newer faith brands (see for instance the Metropolitan Community Church logo—a group with some emphases quite different from our own). The flame logo has never been embraced by the whole church (nor was it necessarily intended to be) and is unknown in many (if not most) of our congregations across the country.

Furthermore, the flame does not communicate abroad what many of us take for granted in the United States and Canada. In western Christian culture historically, fire has been seen as an emblem of the Holy Spirit—and with good reason, found in the Bible (e.g., the Holy Spirit descended on Pentecost in the form of visible tongues of fire, famously). In the Orient, though, this symbolism for the Holy Spirit has little traction. Fire can suggest many other themes (in Hindu India, e.g., fire often burns before the idol, inspiring worship) and rarely would lead an unbeliever to think about Jesus. Even in the Occident, traditional Christian emblematic representations are falling out of the common cultural core and do not speak as they once did.

There is one symbol, however, which is recognized universally, in every place Jesus has been preached, as the mark of the Gospel and that is the Cross. If Jesus is the subject—and I believe He is—the beginning and the end, the Word become flesh, the Way, the Truth, and the Life—then the Cross is His signature.

I listened to the graphic designer engaged in the development of the new logo present a very careful and reasoned case for the how and why of the new look, developed by his hand (after elaborate research and exploration of core ideas and themes, listening to Church of God people) and understood it. But, my assessment of the new look was much simpler and straightforward: (a) the logo places the Cross at the center—in the middle of everything; it makes Jesus the subject (the appearance of the Cross in the logo was strengthened, after initial response and review contended it was too faint), (b) whatever the pieces of my world might be, whatever the challenges, the relationships, the shapes and sizes of life, they all come together at the Cross—Jesus makes everything whole, (c) the circular form of the logo spoke to me clearly of wholeness, unity, holiness: something shattered and disparate coming together, again, drawn together by the Cross. It’s all about Jesus.

Of course, it’s a subjective exercise, discerning messages from art, ink stamps, logos, and the rest. And, like the flame introduced on letterhead in 1980, no church or agency or pastor or school is required to employ the brand. But, in a world of global exposure—when thousands can access our website from every continent every day—when correspondence I send reaches not just to Kokomo but Kolkata, the Cross-in-the-middle, pulling all things together in unity, is an imprint I believe will serve Church of God Ministries well.

Some today have panned the Cross-in-the-middle logo as others did the three-colored flame in an earlier age. Some have readily grabbed it, praised it, and already employed it in their ministry publications and online presence. Whatever imprint our state and local ministries use, let’s focus our message on Jesus. Making Him the subject is our best hope for coming together and changing the world.

Whew. Thanks for reading this far.

(4) I rarely visit Facebook; I cannot monitor every stream; I can’t even keep up with my own page. My Facebook posts all originate with my Twitter account; Twitter allows me to throw out ideas, but is not so interactive. One of my great challenges in my new role is managing my time—and especially the time it takes to respond to all of the surface mail, electronic mail, and social media I now receive daily from across the continent and around the world. But, I’m working on it. Thanks for understanding.

For all of the challenges that stand before us, I know that the Lord has positioned the Church of God to overcome, outrun, and prevail over every scheme Hell can throw in the way. God has called His church into being and He is calling us to take up the mantle and, once again, be bold. We must be measured, tough, smart, confident, savvy, and gracious. We must believe the best about each other (the proof of our love) and stand together. Jesus is the subject. If He is for us, who can be against us? And, if He is in us, we will change the world. Transformed lives will bear fruit in a transformed society.

It’s Christmas week and I and the other wonderful folks who are a part of the Church of God Ministries team are taking a few days off. As the new year dawns, there will be time to press forward and share more. For now, I am ready to take a deep breath, and a step away from the ordinary routine that so often occupies our days. May God’s unspeakable Gift be at our every table, at the heart of our conversation and fellowship, may His Spirit bless and hold each one close, calling the best out of us and blessing others around this Christmastime.

It is a sacred privilege to be a part of the Church of God. I am humbled to be, with you, in Christ, your brother,

Jim