Yet again we turn the pages on our calendars to a new year (or at least allow our devices to simulate the experience). As always, it is a time of reflection of the previous year and consideration of the opportunities and challenges ahead of us.
In this, my first post of 2024, I want to share my personal thoughts on the key issues facing the Church of God this coming year. These are the matters I believe will have the greatest impact on us, and therefore should be addressed with prayerful responses.
While I am sure there are others (please add yours in the comments), these are the four I am most concerned about.
Search for the next General Director
The search for the new General Director of Church of God Ministries remains the most important organizational matter before us at this time. This is a lengthy process, with likely no announcement of a candidate before next year. Nevertheless, 2024 will be critical as the Search Team finalizes the position profile and conducts interviews. I have already made my initial statements on this process (including this most recent one), so not much more needs to be said right now. As requested, the best most of us can do currently is to pray for the Ministries Council and Search Team during this time of transition.
Congregational Instability
Many of our congregations in the United States and Canada are at a critical point in their history and respective life cycles. We are seeing a number of factors converge, raising questions about viability. These include aging congregations, greater financial constraints, the growing difficulty in finding pastors, and the new internal and external pressures facing churches post-COVID. There have been an increasing number of church closures over the past few years, and there is every indication that this will continue for the immediate future, at minimum. Deliberate strategies are needed to address these tumultuous shifts, and to assist those congregations desiring to change and have greater impact within their communities.
2024 Elections
The political temperature will be blazing hot this year with the build-up toward the United States Presidential election in November. The country will be fixated on the anticipated dramas that will unfold in 2024 around personalities and parties. Canada, like the rest of the world, will be impacted by what unfolds in the U.S., but also has its own political tensions that could come to a head over the next twelve months.
The outcomes of our political posturing are significant not only because of the national contexts in which we find ourselves, but because of the increasing important role that religion plays in politics today. Most Christians are no longer just interested bystanders in these outworkings, but deeply invested in the political process itself and in their party allegiances. For decades now, the political machinery has lured many to believe that the problems we face are best solved by power and politics, with the result that our trust in the way of Jesus has declined.
For us in the Church of God, two particular concerns are evident. First, political divisiveness will continue to spill over into our congregations and across the entire movement. In the last eight years especially, we have seen how churches have been torn apart because of the harsh political rhetoric fueled by the parties and their media mouthpieces. There are many examples of pastors who have been caught in the crossfire of these battles, and who have been threatened or actually punished for speaking truth to the evils of this narrow partisanship. I am personally aware of a number who have simply resigned or retired, exasperated by this and other pressures sucking the life out of their ministry. In the end, our ideal of Christian unity has been fractured along political lines.
This leads me to the other concern: we have not addressed our political involvements through the lens of holiness.* As a people who eschew worldliness, it is tragic how this has been overlooked when our involvement in the dysfunctional political systems of our world is considered. One of the major influences has been the increasing identification with American Evangelicalism, which has lost its theological moorings to become a political movement (something I have written on previously). One tragic result of this new politicization of the church has been a tarnished witness to the world and a growing inability to present the gospel of Jesus to address the problems of today.
Christian Nationalism
United States politics will not only be about the elections this year, but also about the increased social unraveling taking place. In particular, the one aspect that has me most concerned is that of Christian Nationalism, the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should actively maintain and expand this relationship. It would be extremely easy to ignore this is a fringe movement, but there is evidence of its growing appeal, largely fueled by extreme right-wing politics and aberrant Christian teachings. It is apparent to me that there are a growing number of people associated with the Church of God who are sympathetic, if not outright proponents, of this dangerous and, ultimately racist, heresy contrary to our understanding of the Kingdom of God. We should not be surprised at this, as it has been part of our history in the past when the Ku Klux Klan had a footing among us. Today, the message of Christian Nationalism comes from other sources as well, some of them appearing to fit under the larger Evangelical tent. Most notable is the neo-pentecostal New Apostolic Reformation, which has influenced our movement in others ways, including some of the popular worship music we have adopted. With the prospects of a divisive year of politics, it is apparent that Christian Nationalism will continue to gain momentum across the country and within the Church of God this year. How will we respond to it?
I will be watching the above developments with you, and will address them more throughout the year.
God’s best for you in 2024!
* I am addressing this topic in a book I am currently writing. I will have more to say on it this year.
Addressing the Christian nationalism issue. The identifying of the church with any political party or movement is to abandon our mission from Jesus himself to be salt, light and leaven in this world. Jesus appointed the Church to be his body carrying out his mission, not any political party or movement.
In the early days of this movement the majority of Church if God persons chose not to participate in politics in any fashion including not voting.
Lloyd:
This is deadly accurate. From the beginning this movement avoided identifying with any particular "strain" of Christian sectarianism. We deliberately disavowed "sects and creeds."
We haven't always lived up to those ideals. For instance, the assembly battle over establishing "standard literature." There was the Earl Slacum controversary, and the Helms movement. More pronounced was the anti tongues stance that divided us. Some congregations even adding "non-Pentecostal to the name of the church.
For the most part we have dodged those bullets, though they damaged us and our witness for a time. Unity is not easy and will never come about through uniformity.
The profound belief of the Church of God reformation movement has been, and I pray, still is that those Christ saves are members of his body, which is the Church. Humans do not make that determination.
The Apostle urges us to "maintain the unity of the faith within the bond of love."
May we be true to our calling.
Richard Willowby
Anderson, Indiana