Blogging the COG General Asembly

On Monday, I will fly into Indianapolis for the Church of God General Assembly. This will be the first year I will be able to participate in the discussion and voting as an "Ordained Bishop."  I've already done enough speaking in the Open Forums. During business, I will only be voting.  Since the Forums, people that didn't know my name, now pat me on the back and say "hey doc!" Or, they, look at me like I'm some kind of rebel. 

Perhaps, I should be more delicate when pointing out that our denominational organization is too top heavy.  Fortunately, I'm not even close to being the first to say it.  John Maxwell and Injoy were paid big bucks to say the same thing several years ago except they delved into Patronage issues as well.

The issues that I am particularly interested in that are coming to the Ordained Ministers are:

• A gradual elimination of the mandatory percentage sent in to World Missions.  I will vote for this but, I think it should be done immediately and it should all come out of the administrative budget.  For this to happen 2/3 of the body is going to have to agree to suspend the rules and submit a substitute proposal.
• Appointment of Evangelism, Youth, and World Missions Directors by the Executive Committee.  World Missions is one thing we do really well.  I can't understand why we would fire the General Assembly from being able to select leadership and give that authority to a few good guys with a more limited scope of who can effectively lead.
• Unified Budget (Consolidation of the World Missions Budget with the International Budget). Again, this seems like the parable of the talents in reverse.  The biggest producer on a corporate level for the Church of God is World Missions.  Yet, we have a proposal on the table to remove the World Missions budget and give it to our ever-growing International bureaucracy.  That makes no sense to me.
• Election of Denominational Leadership.  I am focusing on the selection of the Council of 18 since it      is basically the Elders Board of our denomination and there is decent opportunity for pastors to be selected. Additionally, selecting Administrative Bishops for this role makes no sense as they are unable to provide straightforward, honest feedback to the Committee that appointed them.  Four guys that I really would like to see on the Council of 18 are Marty Baker, Anthony McDaniel, Mike Chapman, and Harold Bare.  Those guys have big voices that pastors are listening to. As they speak, they are not considering first how the denominational guys perceive their statements.

Basically, I am not in favor of anything that further centralizes our structure.  I will be blogging from Indy.  I'm sure there will be others that get the facts out on the taboo, unofficial Church of God message forum, Actscelerate.  I'll try to share my personal observations here as well as there.  If it comes across as being too political, just ignore me for a week and it will be out of my system.

Related COG General Assembly posts:

Day One - Embassy Suites - Day Two - Council of 18/Grant McClung - Day Three - Day Four - Glad to Be Home