The pursuit of political power results in spiritual impotence and the sanctification of worldy wealth results in spiritual poverty.

But I believe the church in opposition and exile is a far more dangerous and effective creature than the church in captivity ever will be. God is faithful and consistent, when the church got to comfortable in Jerusalem and failed to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” He sent persecution to scatter them. My fear is that things won’t get bad enough for us here to motivate real revival.

As previously posted, indifference is a far more deadly condition than persecution.

Look at the scrappers in the COG. The first that comes to mind is Paul Walker. He’s brilliant, eloquent, socially astute. We’re more likely to want to duplicate those characteristics of his and Gospel pioneers like him than the characteristics that led him to and through one of the greatest revival stories in our history.

We are more likely to want to emulate the brilliant characteristics of the Paul Walkers of the COG than we do the grit, determination, and pioneering spirit, avant-garde approach to Gospel and culture.

That leads us to do more ministry out of memory than out of imagination and prayer.

Absolutely. I’ve talked a few people about the decline the COG is experiencing in the US and one of the primary (not only and not always) is that the Church in general in the US is experiencing the same decline.

But, if we rest on this trend that would turn focus from us specifically and excuse our situation as inevitability, then we excuse ourselves or our functioning as being causal. We can assign blame as a “cultural” problem we’re all going through.

The problem is rather than us being able to identify our own dysfunction, we broaden blame, assigning accountability to no one. And by default, it becomes a problem of the Church and thus the Gospel.

But, the problem isn’t the Gospel. The Gospel is as powerful and as relevant as ever. Perhaps, as you’ve said, like Constantine, we’ve emasculated Christianity. Are we less likely to adventure ourselves? Pioneer? Scrap? Get dirty? Gritty? Wild-eyed? I think so.

We’re safe. Predictable. Sanitary. Socially “unoffensive.” Taken care of. Patroned.

We’ve minimized the power of the Gospel by turning Christianity into a sideshow of sorts…without letting the power of the Gospel be brightest. Instead It competes with our systems and things- becoming more of an accessory than a necessity.

Once you get out from under the yoke of Christendom – trying to ram Christian morals & values down the throats of unbelievers – then the field is clear to start sharing authentic Christianity with those who live in a post-Christendom world.

Christianity began as a counter-cultural movement until it was hijacked and emasculated by Constantine and the Roman Empire. In my opinion it still works best as a counter-cultural movement.

There’s a very short post on my blog about the Florida Campmeeting, but will write more later. Words just aren’t sufficient to describe what Dr. Taylor and the state did in bringing in such anointed people to minister this year.

I’ll definitely be back.

International
State
World Missions

The Executive Council Report even stated these as the 3 entities as 1 of the 5 General Assembly mandated parameters in the official documents as read by Lamar Vest at the Committee of Action Meeting on April 30th. Further, Evangelism and Home Missions was specifically and intentionally not named in the Substitute Motion as written by me and was not on the table for discussion. And, we spent two nights with Ordained Bishops discussing how we could accomplish this. In addition to the packed audience at the USO and those watching via live streaming, after speaking directly to this issues and citing the FL COG EHM budget, 950 Ordained Bishops voted in favor of this motion in direct opposition to the ruling of the chair.

This was a specific and clear motion.