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Text of the page (random words):
brated advent this year thr executive director of my conference and of the general conference sent out messages to the body focusing on the meaning of advent and on the the importance of the church calendar back in the day churches of god christmas sermons if there were christmas sermons decried the evil of the commercialization of the season if christmas sermons were preached at all now from what i see the advent ification of our churches is nearly complete and our slow decline of past decades has become decay from what i see our pastors are content to blend advent ritual with secular commercialization we do our advent candles and simply acknowledge that apart from advent sundays and today let s give thanks to the lord above cause santa claus comes tonight since i ve stopped blogging regularly i ve received more feedback than i expected that people miss reading what i blog it s time i think to blog a prophecy i entered for the first time as far back as the days of brian miller s emerging church blog the celebration of christmas let alone advent is a disastrous lost opportunity the new testament doesn t detail early disciples celebrating the birth of jesus only two of the four gospels even mention it and then only to demonstrate that jesus came to earth in fulfillment of old testament prophesy i e he was born of a virgin in bethlehem etc my friends early disciples didn t preach his advent they proclaimed his incarnation the word became flesh and lived among us have the same mindset as christ jesus who being in very nature god made himself nothing taking the very nature of a servant in matthew 25 jesus is clear when he separates sheep from goats believing the right things about his coming will not be the issue what will matter is whether if your knowledge and faith produced fruit in righteousness and mercy particularly among the least of these this year again most pastors and parents missed the opportunity to take advantage of the commercialization of christmas because they focused on the advent of jesus not on the truth that the moment of his coming was merely preface to the story of the true miracle the word became flesh and he lived among us we must repent posted by bill sloat at 11 02 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest wednesday july 16 2025 a time to mourn being the geezer i am the byrds 1965 hit turn turn turn is a compelling earworm dancing through my head as i think about cggc delegates gathering for general conference business sessions and to remember the origin of the church of god in 1825 btw the church of god eldership was formed in 1830 and the 50th anniversary was celebrated in 1880 turn turn turn is a 1950s folk anti war protest song written by folk music mega star pete seeger seeger adapted ecclesiastes 3 for the lyrics a time for every purpose under heaven for many boomers it s a classic anyway i know how things go in the cggc john winebrenner will appear at conference sessions delegates will receive from him the message that we have a proud history all of us should be glad here s the thing the church of god has an awesome history of walking in the power and blessing of the spirit and of calling to use winebrenner s word sinners to repent and believe the good news our history is thrilling but our present is tragic at general conference you will be encouraged to cheer but you should weep and wallow today we are not walking in the power and blessing of the spirit many of our churches are declining many others have already closed our membership is aging we are not raising up leaders we have to beg people from outside our body to pastor our churches this general conference is a critical moment when instead of looking to our early days to celebrate we should examine our present and mourn we are failing the lord but he loves to forgive jesus began the sermon on the mount blessed are the poor in spirit blessed are those who mourn later he challenged come to me all you weary and burdened then he promised i will give you rest later after paul challenged the corinthians to repent after they did repent paul explained godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret my dear friends the cggc is dying but it can once again experience the power and blessing of the spirit as it did at the beginning this is as the song says a time to weep a time to mourn posted by bill sloat at 9 56 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday april 21 2025 pope francis i woke up to the news that pope francis died during the night i despise institutionalized christianity there s nothing in the gospels that allows for the creation of a clergy class among disciples let alone a multilayered hierarchical elite class of leaders in the body of christ that provides religious products and services to a passive class of consuming lay people as time passes our own cggc becomes less a vibrant body of spirt empowered followers of the way in which the greatest is the servant of all and where leaders equip the saints for works of service eph 4 12 and the cggc declines for roman catholics pope francis was a baby step in the right direction true he embraced the pomp of the institution yet he at least didn t see institutional trappings as his end all and be all francis was a least of these matthew 25 guy i was hungry and you gave me something to eat i was thirsty and you gave me something to drink francis practiced john 13 not as ritual but as life francis moved catholics toward raw obedience the cggc has needed someone like him for generations posted by bill sloat at 9 28 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday september 8 2023 enews what will church planting look like in 2033 i still read the cggc enews these days in my opinion the quality of the articles is higher than it has ever been today s enews articles tell the truth about who cggc leaders are how they re thinking and what they re doing still while i appreciate the quality of enews writing i am more than ever concerned and disburbed about what s going on in the cggc headquarters building last week s september 1 2023 article was by lance a rarity these days the title of this post what will church planting look like in 2033 is the title of lance s article lance details some things that he and about 25 cggc leaders learned at a two day training organized by an organization called axelerate about a third of my way into reading the article i decided to stop and return to the beginning then scan the whole thing to see how many times the word jesus appears nada today more than ever cggc leaders are all about institution all church no jesus i m old i can remember it was about 40 years ago that we decided that the way to reverse our decline was to plant churches we were wrong our last 40 years have been bad years gang jesus didn t say therefore go and plant churches in my opinion this group of current cggc leaders does what it does very well but very simply it doesn t do the right thing we need to turn to jesus we must repent posted by bill sloat at 12 40 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday september 1 2023 for better or for worse that s what evie and i promised as a part of the vows we spoke on our wedding day we got hitched long before writing your own vows became a thing as you get older the worse part becomes the norm my back is killing me again it s a genetic thing my dad struggled with back pain from my earliest memories of him my brother quit his job before he could receive social security at age 62 because his back pain was excruciating last year at this time i was in physical therapy to treat back pain i still do the exercises a minimum of a half hour most days often i do them for about an hour i ve met with a back pain doctor he said essentially i m an old man with a bad back i take a strong prescription nsaid daily i m happier to be on the other end of worse since 2010 evie s had cancer open heart surgery and a perforated colon more surgeries than i can remember since she survived i m happy to have been with her through them but for me to spend these days as the care receiver not the care giver is difficult it s a spiritual thing about twenty years ago i read hirsch and frost s the shaping of things to come and the present future by reggie mcneal as i ve noted on my blog i have never been the same since then my intention has been to practice radical grace and mercy among the least of these since then a handful of bible passages have ruled what s in me head among them matthew 25 35 36 i was hungry and you gave me something to eat and ephesians 2 8 10 for it is by grace you have been saved 8 for we are god s handiwork created in christ jesus to do good works 10 when evie struggled that was a piece of cake i was on mission but to receive grace and mercy uh graciously for me that s a very serious struggle it points to a spiritual problem i chide the american church and the cggc specifically for its clergy laity culture in which its laity consumes the religious products and services provided by its priesthood as far as i can tell there s not one jot nor tittle of that vision of kingdom life in what jesus did and taught me i go so bonkers for ephesians 2 10 created in christ jesus to do good works that i m tempted to ignore 2 8 it is by grace you have been saved through faith so for me the receiving part of for better and for worse is a difficult convicting part of my discipleship journey the line separating works righteousness from a life in which the full ephesians 2 8 10 dynamic thrives where faith produces fruit that line is a very fine line when i m laid up with back pain i have extra time to think about it it s painful in several ways posted by bill sloat at 6 27 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday august 28 2023 a view from 40 000 feet my friends thanks for your reception of my earlier post i sent it out to an abridged mailing list i was stunned to note the number of hits on it in just a few hours blessings it s been a long time since i ve walked in my prophetic calling within the cggc particularly as far as the writing of articles in this forum is concerned being prophetic among people whom the lord is not blessing is not fun in fact merely being among a people whom the lord is not blessing isn t fun what s even more painful is to be among people who are as content not to be blessed as cggc people are it s easy for a prophet to burn out and to lose focus when ears don t hear and hearts are hard considering the most prominent names that have gone before me i have no excuse elijah isaiah jeremiah ezekiel john the baptist i cower in shame noting those examples of faithfulness i m resolved to be faithful still as ringo starr sang back in 71 it don t come easy so for today the cggc pays lip service to a belief in the continuing ministry of apostles prophets evangelists and shepherds and teachers the cggc talks a good talk but it doesn t walk the walk to my knowledge there are no prophetic voices in the cggc conversation in 2023 there are at least no prophetic voices being listened to one characteristic of the prophetic is the ability to see the big picture and also the inability to comprehend up close detail i still read the cggc enews faithfully i read the erc e newsletter i hear the oral scuttlebutt it s the gift and the curse of the prophet to discern a big picture vision from everything i know in the cggc all big picture vision is being stifled or ignored or those people have moved on there is no big picture perspective gang the lord promised that even the gates of hell will not stand against the church the lord of that promise is not blessing us in every way decline can be measured the cggc is in decline so in future days and weeks if the lord allows i m going to contribute some big picture insights blessings posted by bill sloat at 8 30 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest wednesday august 23 2023 we went to church again yesterday gang it s been a year since i posted a blog actually i ve rough drafted about a half dozen but have not hit publish on any of them though i might still many of them still seem like good ideas and of the lord i m still up here at 40 000 feet and observing we did go to church on sunday the last time we went i blogged that too so i know the last time we did the traditional institutional church service was in august 2021 yesterday was an okay experience it was a small group that meets in a bowling alley very nice welcoming people mostly people a little older than are we plus some grandkids just like many cggc congregations for the most part they appeared to be people from a mennonite background in the sermon the guy who self identifies as lead elder pastor preached a topical sermon mostly from james on the connection between faith and works he spent a chunk of time on 1 26 27 verses i harangued on often when i was blogging regularly it s the religion that is pure and undefiled verses which few if any cggc churches practice we must repent or else anyway the message content was fine but gang it was by definition at its core unbiblical because sermons ain t biblical after the service as we were chatting the lead elder pastor engaged evie in a cordial conversation about why she isn t a regular attender of the services of the institutional church i was fascinated she and i don t talk about this regularly her explanation was far less theoretical and theological than mine is but i was nodding through the whole thing bottom line what happens in church services doesn t resemble in even the slightest way anything jesus did or taught the same is true of the behavior of the apostles and early disciples evie has a part time job now the pastor s wife works with her is her supervisor and they re becoming close friends we promised that we ll be back to their gathering from time to time it wasn t an empty promise still american institutionalized church involvement doesn t enhance our lives of obedience i have struggled for about a half dozen years with hebrews 10 24 25 let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing i am convinced that what happens in an american church in 2023 has absolutely nothing in common with early disciples meeting together and truly does me more harm than good certainly the lord isn t blessing it still the early followers of jesus knew that it was important not to give up meeting together i m convinced that it still is important but how where anyway we went to church again my guess is that i may reflect more on the hebrews 10 teaching in the future blessings we must repent posted by bill sloat at 6 11 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest older 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