Synchronicity

wasn't just the name of a great Police album. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it: "Coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related." Psychoanalyst Carl Jung injected the term into popular discourse.

It generally includes two types of phenomena:

1) When two connected events pop up in different places at the same time
2) When you think of an idea or event, just before or while it appears in the outside world

Jung hypothesized not that one event causes the other, but that they are linked "acausally," outside of space and time.

Of course, this concept creates enough questions. What's the difference between a synchronicity, which is presumably meaningful, and a "mere coincidence," which is presumably not meaningful? Well, it's all in the eye of the beholder -- the one attributing the meaning.

Also, I can't help but wonder: Does synchronicity happen to everyone at pretty much the same rate? If you notice an increase in synchronicities in your life, is it because they really are increasing, or is it simply because you started paying closer attention?

All I know is that in the past few years I've been noticing a lot more in my life. I have even been taking note of them (more carefully at some times than at others). I encounter at least two or three per day that really make me take notice. Some of them are pretty weak, but others are incredible, as if the result of meticulous planning. They can also be quite amusing.

Here are some examples, perhaps weaker ones because they involve the passage of a week or so between the two events. But anyway, they're interesting.

WHILE DRIVING LAST WEEK, I decided to do more than to merely not be a jerk behind the wheel; more, even, than just remaining calm and cool while maniac drivers did everything possible to push me over the edge.

I decided I would make a conscious effort, whenever on the road, to show extreme consideration to at least one person, for no other reason than to be kind.

For example, I'd slow down to let other drivers turn out in front of me instead of just whizzing past. Or if someone wanted to pass, I'd slow down and let him pass (instead of speeding up, as I'm sometimes tempted to do). I figured that perhaps just doing that one good deed would so shock and dumbfound the recipient that he wouldn't be able to help passing on the good deed to someone else -- and on the chain reaction would go, as I made my stealthy getaway. Talk about a mind virus!

What if everyone would do just one senseless act of kindness to one stranger every day? How different would this world be? (It certainly works in the other direction: negative acts certainly create human chain reactions of their own.)

This got me thinking of the movie Pay it Forward, a movie which an acquaintance had urged me to rent, and which dealt with the very same idea of changing the world one kind act at a time -- paying people forward, in unearned acts of kindness, as opposed to paying people back for doing you a favor.

So that was last week. Now, yesterday -- essentially a week later -- I heard the new Faith Networks was out. The lead article, by Joan Osborn, begins: "In 2000 a movie hit the box office that was both inspiring and sad. It was called Pay it Forward ..."

We should pay it forward too, Joan wrote, sowing the seeds of peace.

Interesting.

I continued reading FN. The next article, by Ron Dart, was titled "Church Music -- Blessing or Burden?" That too was interesting since a couple of days before I had also started working on this post, in which I discuss the ways in which church music is too often a heavy burden.

Now, I might not see eye to eye with Ron about which hymns are the best, but it's interesting that our respective articles agreed in several respects. We agree that there are good old hymns and bad old hymns. We both praise the music of Bach.

Ron wrote that worship music is meant to "inject feeling into knowledge ... We must somehow get beyond the intellect. ... Music ....says things that can be said no other way." While I wrote that "worship is all about emotion!" and that "song is communication."

Ron wrote: "Worship seeks to honor God, not man. It is a short step in a music ministry from participation to performance. We live in a performance-oriented culture. It is plain to see that the churches have not been unaffected by this. It is easy for those who worship in music to emulate those who get the greatest applause." I wrote that the CoG tradition of applauding after special music "praises the performer, not the Eternal, and renders the performance mere
entertainment rather than worship."

ANOTHER EXAMPLE that might fit under "synchronicity": Last Sabbath, at the Christian Renewal Conference, someone asked me: "Hey, how's Jim Rector doing these days? You keep in touch with him?"

Ashamedly, I answered: "Um, no, not really. I was on his list. He hasn't sent out a tape for about a year. He was being treated for cancer. I e-mailed Rita a few months ago and she said he was still hanging in there. I've been praying for them. That's about all I know."

The next night, on a Church of God forum, I joined a discussion related to women and ministry, in which I supported the right of women to serve equally with men.

The day after that, in the mail comes an unsolicited and unexpected -- but still welcome -- package from . . . Jim Rector. It was the last thing I'd expected.

As it happens, one of the three lengthy articles in the package is a comprehensive study on the right of women to serve equally with men in the church.

Interesting.

Jim's article, by the way, is excellent and probably a more complete and sweeping look at the subject than you have ever been presented in a COG context. It's not yet up on the Cornerstone site but may appear soon; if not, you can always request the hard copy, and send a donation. More importantly, pray for Jim, because according to his site, he is still being treated for cancer.

* * *

RIGHT NOW I'M READING Inventing God, a novel by Nicholas Mosely. I regret to say I can't highly recommend it: it focuses too much on philosophical ideas and too little on character development; the author's idiosyncracies are very distracting from the story; there's too much touting of "alternative lifestyles"; and the ending is a dud. But the buildup to the ending, anyway, is fascinating, full of action and tension: it has to do with a cast of characters from disparate places and backgrounds who are led, by a series of synchronicities, to embark on a spiritual quest which ultimately draws many of them down the same paths and into each other's lives.

Do you ever see or feel that happening in your life? I sure do, and I wish I could introduce you to the motley cast of characters who've assembled in mine.

There's one particular character who I always run into at the particular university library where I sit right now. Talking to her is like talking to myself: it seems we have the same life, the same struggles -- much the same characters in our family, even. We're both without cars (although I borrow my sister's sometimes), and we both have to walk about two miles (plus a short train ride for me) to get here.

I "ran into" her today before even reaching the campus, as we were both stepping off the train. The campus was a half mile away, down a trail between fields of corn and soybeans, through a prairie preserve, and past a pond. We walked in the 90-degree heat and talked nonstop about our lives and fortunes and, of course, about faith and the Bible. Once seated inside we kept talking for another half hour or so.

As it turned out, she ended up inspiring me to not be dragged down by the negative or apathetic attitudes of family and friends -- to go for my dreams, to invest the talents I've been given instead of those others wish I'd been given. She too is about to take an entrepreneurial leap of faith to take her business to the next level and move out of her disapproving, critical mother's house. She admitted to me she was scared to take this leap of faith. Then it was my turn to encourage her.

The funny thing is, I've met several other friends like her, people with whom I share extraordinary similarities. One such friend, a girl, even remarked that we were "twins." (We would sometimes amuse onlookers by inadvertently speaking or laughing in perfect unison -- as if we'd rehearsed -- only we hadn't.) Another, a guy, said, "we seem to be living parallel existences." I met both of these friends at the Feast of Tabernacles a few years back. Human synchronicity, you could call it.

I guess when you think about it, it's unremarkable that birds of a feather would flock together. But it's remarkable that, despite the tremendous diversity of us birds in this world, there are still ones out there with whom you'll share such uncanny similarities.

Folks like this tend to come and go from my life, which is precisely why I don't try to make more of these friendships than is warranted. Perhaps they are just way stations, or signposts to help point me in the right direction. They often seem to be mirrors strategically placed to help me see things about myself; I suppose I serve the same purpose for them. (Yet another one of my twins -- another female -- told me that she stopped talking to me after a date because she saw so much of herself in me, "both good and bad." It freaked her out.)

And perhaps the Author of our lives has more in store for us. Perhaps we're coming into one another's storylines for a reason and will all end up converging somewhere down the road. One of the thrilling things about the Way is that, while we know the ending, we don't know which way the plot will twist next.

Renewal? Now that would be nice

LAST WEEKEND WAS the tenth annual Christian Renewal Conference here in the Chicago area. My appraisal of this one, as with most Church of God events, is mixed.

Was it great to see old faces, eat heartily, and get away from everyday life? Sure. (Doubly so for me, since I had been AWOL from the CoG for more than a year.)

Did I feel the the implied goal of the conference was met? Did I come away
feeling renewed?

No, not really.

Yeah, I know, you're not supposed to say that about church events, are you? You're supposed to say everything is awesome, spectacular, fantabulous. But isn't that attitude -- the attitude that we can't talk about problems -- a big part of the problem?

Now it could be that the non-renewed feeling was in part physiological in origin. I'd had little sleep during the week, and had to get up at 6:30 both Saturday and Sunday mornings to carpool to the conference.

But then, it wasn't just me. Conference attendance overall wasn't great. Many of those who showed up seemed to be going through the motions. There wasn't a lot of excitement, nor the sort of joy one would expect at an event whose aim was billed as renewal. (Maybe they were all tired too?) Moreover, the under-35 crowd was perhaps at an all-time low. Surely, "renewal" would include attracting and retaining younger people.

While I doubt any of the ten conferences to date has conferred any deep and lasting renewal among most attendees, at least in past years I could say there was great fellowship between and after the services to offset any shortcomings in the services themselves.

For example, until a few years ago, there were the always-fun barbecues at the Svehla house. In '99 and '00, some of us attending singles shared a motel room (co-ed style, but we behaved). The next year, a few of us went out dancing Saturday night, and on Sunday after the conference ended we spent the afternoon and evening downtown. We hung out at favorite coffeehouse of mine, walked about a mile down the Chicago lakefront, visited Navy Pier, ate Thai food, struck up conversations with strangers, and talked excitedly about anything and everything, making our time together truly memorable.

However, I can't say the same of this year's CRC. For one thing, the last two conferences have occurred entirely in the same facility -- no more gatherings at the Svehlas'. (In my opinion, that change has brought advantages but also disadvantages; more on that later.) And my own circumstances didn't allow for any extracurricular fun: I was carless and could make no plans of my own. Aside from that, the dearth of singles or folks of my age group would have put a damper on things anyway. The few under-35 folks who were present were only there Saturday, and they left fairly early.


THE CHRISTIAN RENEWAL CONFERENCES were started in 1996 by Ron Dart's Christian Educational Ministries. The idea was good, born of hopes of new beginnings for people newly freed from a corporate church organization. At its core, it's still a good idea. Those involved with this year's conference appear to have done the best they could with what they had. The organizers, from Church of God Downers Grove (Ken and Trisha Svehla, Paul and Loreen Blissard, et al.), put in lots of hard work. We had musical offerings from some talented performers. Dave Havir and David Antion gave very educative messages. In fact, a more appropriate name for these events might be "Christian Education Conferences."

Nothing's wrong with education, of course, but surely Christian renewal requires more than the delivery of facts to an audience in a classroom-like setting, which is the pattern for the CRCs -- and the pattern of CoG corporate activity in general.

Real renewal would require, among other things, unleashing the power of worship. But CoG culture, by and large, seems oblivious to what true worship is; its true purpose or purposes; the styles of music, or other modalities, conducive to real worship and meaningful to people today; and what scripture itself says about how to worship. It seems that these things were never firmly grasped by the Armstrongs, nor have their successors done much better.

The problem of imbalanced and anemic worship often stems from a root which David Antion covered in his Sunday message at the CRC:


THE TRADITIONS OF MEN.

The life and work of Herbert Armstrong were full of ironies, and surely one of the greatest was that while excoriating "traditional Christianity" at every turn, he was vigorously installing some of its most insidious and ruinous traditions within his own church.

Thanks to the uncritical accepting of tradition, many of us inherited

* certain accepted forms and styles of worship which act more to stifle the spirit of true worship, thanksgiving, and celebration than encourage it

* a pulpit-centered format in which the "minister" performs and the "laity" are mainly spectators

* Indeed, the very idea of "format": the notion, nowhere stated in scripture, that church meetings must follow a regular, unvarying format week after week

* Other seemingly trivial but subtly significant practices, such as the traditional arrangement of seating in the meeting room

Few Armstrong followers have questioned these traditional trappings, probably because they're such familiar and comforting features of the churchianity from which so many came. (While those not from a religious background may have simply accepted the traditions since, after all, this was "the True Church.")

This acceptance of manmade traditions as The Truth may in fact be the single greatest problem of the CoG movement, a wellspring of many other problems. The matrix of borrowed traditions continues to act powerfully but invisibly upon the churches. That is, after all, what tradition usually does: it structures, guides, directs the flow of human thought and action -- it's the cultural version of the unconscious. For that very reason it can be the worst form of tyranny. It tends to supplant thought and study, making our decisions for us, keeping us mired in the practices of the past simply because "it worked back then" -- or seemed to work -- or for the even less reflective reason that "it's what we've always done."

The Armstrongist style of worship, like much of the music itself, seems borrowed from early-20th-century Protestantism (a tradition itself heavily influenced by Catholicism). Here are some specific observations of mine based upon the worship at this year's CRC, and to my CoG experience in general:

1) Confusing worship with a musical recital. While I admire the talents of some of our musicians, I have never understood the practice of holding recitals of instrumental solo pieces which are not recognizable to most people -- certainly not to myself -- as worship or praise music. I have always felt those displays are better suited to a talent show than to a worship service.

Sometimes, too, vocalists choose songs which may have vague spiritual or "inspirational" overtones but do not exactly inspire or help others in worship of the Eternal.

2) Not clapping, then clapping. In an especially absurd paradox, CoG tradition proscribes the clapping of hands to the beat of the music (if there is one), yet encourages clapping afterward -- for the performer! This practice is backwards: it makes the performer the object of praise and renders the performance mere entertainment. It has nothing to do with worship. I don't think this tradition is prevalent in any Protestant denomination; frankly I do not know where it might have originated.

3) Lifeless worship. The notion that the only acceptable way to worship the Eternal is to stand stock-still, like prisoners or slaves chained together at the wrists and ankles, and sing hymns written between 60 to 500 years ago is ludicrous. In fact, in light of the starkly different sort of corporate worship prescribed and portrayed in the Bible, we should question whether this is an acceptable mode of worship at all!

In stark contrast to the tradition of eschewing emotion, the Bible tells us worship is all about emotion: It's about joy, about shouting, about loud cymbals, about horns and harps and lyres and tambourines. It's about moving, about clapping hands, about dancing. It's about getting as excited -- if not more excited -- about praising the Eternal than when your favorite team scores a touchdown. In this sense the Armstrongist tradition is, to borrow a phrase often used by Armstrong himself, "the DIAMETRIC OPPOSITE of what the Bible teaches!"

If you wonder why so many people -- particularly young people -- become disillusioned and leave CoG groups, this is one place to start looking.

A few years ago a woman in her late 20s, who belonged to the largest WCG splinter group, told me that she often found services so boring and depressing, she'd have to get up and leave: she'd go to the ladies' room, outdoors -- anywhere to escape. Or she'd simply not show up, opting instead to go to Starbucks and read her Bible alone. To her, church meetings seemed life-depleting rather than renewing.

Then there's the comment of a woman in her mid-30s who attended an independent CoG group largely comprising ex-CGI members. She wrote on an Internet forum, "In our semi-dead and non-happening church services, I feel as dead as the darkest winter."

Having been around the CoGs for 13 years, I can say, "I feel your pain."


4) Fixation with the past. The Psalmist sang: "I will sing a new song unto thee, O God" (Ps. 144:9), but entering a CoG worship service is like taking a time machine back 100 years. As a rule, new songs are shunned.

I know there may be practical reasons for this. Newer compositions of a commercial nature often require paying royalties for reprinting and performance. But there is open-source contemporary worship music available. Also, there's no reason not to solicit new music written for free by talented people in our own churches.

"But," some might say, "we can't exactly revise our hymnal every year. Do you know how expensive it is to have a set of handsome, hard-bound hymnals printed?" Who said you had to have handsome, hard-bound hymnals? Just admit it -- it's a tradition!

Anyway, other methods can be used to introduce new music, such as hymn supplements or, if suitable, the overhead projector.

In any case, to rely overwhelmingly on music from our great-grandfathers' day, drawn from a single cultural idiom, is not only a sign of cultural tone-deafness; it's just bizarre. (As is the fact that anyone should need to point out its bizarreness!) It's like wearing knickerbockers, silk top hats, pointy waxed mustaches, or hoop skirts.

"In my heart there rings a melody" -- but it's not of the sort Fanny Crosby wrote, nor is it likely she could have. (I'm speaking as one with musical training, including a course in composition.) Composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries did what they could within the cultural and technological limitations of their day, but those limitations were significant. A composition which to pre-jazz ears may have sounded fresh and innovative, today may sound at best simplistic and at worst stilted and impoverished harmonically, melodically, especially rhythmically. Just like the automobile to the horse-drawn carriage, music today can do everything yesterday's could do, and much more.

Of course, there's a lot of mediocre contemporary music out there too. But thanks to the greatly expanded toolbox of ideas and genres and technology available today, the best of today's music is surely superior to the bulk of yesteryear's.

By no means am I a hater of all things old. From childhood I was exposed to great music of all kinds. In high school I learned the choral works of Handel, Mozart, Bach, Brahms, and others. I love some of the old hymns. One of my favorites is "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," with music by Bach. I even like some of old Fanny's work. (I haven't heard a Dwight Armstrong hymn I liked yet.)

We should know better than to suppose that a song is superior or more godly simply because it's old, or that the newer is inferior or less godly. We must never rationalize our own carnal attempts to freeze in place the music of a particular day by citing the permanence of truth or the unchanging nature of the Almighty. As the gentlemen of dc Talk sang in their classic composition, "Nu Thang":

My God is doin’ a brand nu thang
But since time began, he remains the same
Faithful, forever to his word
And solid, a cornerstone unstirred
But, look down through the ages and you will find
God doesn’t change, but he knows the time
From harp to piano, and song to rap
Ya know, god’s wit us, so we can not lack ...

Nor can we claim, as some in the CoG world seem to believe, that there is only one acceptable cultural tradition or style from which to draw worship music. In other words, it's not "of the world" just because it has a beat.


5) The message gets lost. Song is communication. When most of our worship music uses expressions and words such as "thee," "thou," "o'er," and "'tis" -- words which were obsolete in everyday speech even at the time the hymns were written -- what message is it saying about the Mighty One we serve? That he doesn't know what year it is? That his power to create and inspire ran out about 100 years ago?

What is it saying about us? Indeed, what is it saying to us? Does the language communicate much of anything at all? While there are a few standouts among the classic hymns that possess a universal, timeless appeal, much of this music says little to me -- and I'm used to it! What could it possibly say to those who aren't?

6) Formats that discourage participation. This point is one I won't belabor much right now, but it deserves at least a brief mention. The physical arrangement of a meeting space, particularly the way seats and people are arranged in a room, says something about the power relationships between those present. It can serve to silently direct our attention in various patterns and help make a gathering interactive or non-interactive, one-another-focused or focused on the man up front. Notwithstanding invitations to discussion, the traditional seating arrangement (seats lined up in rows facing the front) may serve to discourage open discussion by triggering lifelong conditioning associated with school and church: SHUT UP. LOOK STRAIGHT AHEAD. YOU ARE A SPECTATOR.

As I said, this is a bigger topic than I want to fully discuss right now, but I'll just say that it's one of many elements that were introduced by the apostate church, passed on into Protestantism, and were adopted by Armstrongism.


EVERYONE IS FAMILIAR with at least some of the above problems. Probably most of you reading this have within the last year complained, to yourself or to someone else, about one or more of them. But in my experience few people want to complain or criticize in public; in general, criticism is taken as evidence of a "bad attitude."

In my case, the above problems, and the lack of a forum in which to even discuss them in the local church, lengthened my stay away from church to over a year.( I had originally stopped attending simply because I found myself suddenly carless and broke last summer; I tired of all the walking and train-catching required to get to the services. I also figured that staying away for a while would help me study certain scriptural issues with more objectivity. But I felt ambivalent about returning, precisely because of the issues I've mentioned above, as well as others.)

I felt our local church had failed to capitalize on the seeming promise it had held upon its founding nine years ago. The above-mentioned "traditions of men" still held great sway: you could almost say the church was being automatically piloted by tradition.

I felt that progress away from the old traditions and toward a more biblical model (or, in cases where the Bible isn't clear or specific, traditions more suited to those we're trying to reach) was neither being made nor sought. Furthermore, we were making neither time or space in our meetings for such concerns to be aired. Several of my young adult peers have expressed similar concerns.

This seems to be the case not only in my local church, but in many of the independent groups that emerged from the WCG. In many churches, it seems, not much progress has occurred in the way of changing unbiblical and limiting traditions, or even doing the necessary thought, study, and discussion to see which are biblical and which aren't; which make sense and which don't.

I will take part of the blame for the worship shortcomings in my congregation, since I have musical abilities yet haven't contributed as much as I could. Nor have I put on any sort of pressure to advocate or advance the above-stated views -- I'd feel like I was playing politics. But hey, I'm advocating the change right here, right now. The first step to fixing a problem is making it okay to talk about the problem out loud.


ONE OTHER CHANGE has in my opinion affected the success of the CRCs. Previously, we'd held the services either at a private school or at the Park District facility; then in the late afternoon we'd go to a nearby private home (that of Ken and Trisha Svehla) for the cookout. We don't do that any more; instead, all activities on both days are conducted at the Oak Brook Park District shelter. To be sure, staying in one place carries some logistical advantages; and admittedly, the shelter is in a nice setting, surrounded by a very nice suburban park. But I think this change has had disadvantages as well.

I used to love hanging out at the Svehlas'. (Admittedly, the Svehlas themselves may have felt differently about the herd who would occupy their house for several hours.) There were the endless and endlessly amusing knick-knacks that gave the house a museum-like quality (some of which, I imagine, would be knocked off shelves or banisters over the course of an evening). There was the friendly dog Hercules (may he rest in peace).

The Svehla home gatherings made me think of the gatherings and feasts of the early church, which were primarily held in homes. I liked how the structure of rooms and seatings often separated cliques and prompted strangers to sit near one another, to mix it up, to feel comfortable. Seating in a living room is naturally conducive to group conversations. And of course, as in any home gathering, people always seemed to end up in the kitchen. (No one winds up chatting in the kitchen of the Oak Brook Park District Shelter.)

Environment has a lot to do with setting a mood and spirit and how people interact. A home has something a meeting facility lacks: it feels like, well, a home. Inviting someone in is an act of grace, generosity, hospitality -- gifts of the Spirit which the Svehlas seemed to have in abundance.

Renting a room, by contrast, is just renting a room: as at a motel, you sign, you pay, and you had better be out by check-out time.

And of course there was another big difference between the gatherings at the Svehlas' and those at the Park District Shelter: at the Svehlas', we could drink. That might make more of a difference than one might think. While alcohol may not go well with worship and teaching services (caffeine works better), nothing beats it for stimulating fellowship later on. It's not for nothing that wine is known as a social lubricant and is praised as such in the Bible itself -- with appropriate cautions against its misuse.

I always marveled at how the same substances which in the wrong company in the wrong place could lead to disaster, could in the company of brethren unleash the best and deepest conversation: about the Bible, spiritual matters, our own lives. It could release stiffness and inhibition, help break down cliques, help spark great friendships. Especially when you're in an environment like the shelter -- not exactly a cozy and welcoming place despite its rustic-looking exterior -- it's regrettable not to have the help that a couple of drinks might have provided. But at the Park District fieldhouse, alcohol is forbidden.


WHAT ARE THE SOLUTIONS to all these problems I speak of? Well, I guess that depends on whether you want real solutions or pretend ones. The only real solutions to some of these problems are radical ones. We need to radically rethink what the church, or ekklesia, is, how it's supposed to operate, what it's supposed to do. We need to "blow the dust off our Bibles" and study subjects that in all likelihood few CoGers have ever studied in depth. We've been coasting on autopilot, computer-guided by tradition, for long enough.

Stardate -317427.91622272966

MY LATEST ENTERPRISE

Okay, forgive me.

I just couldn't resist the impulse.

However, despite the dorky name, this blog is not some sort of weird blend of Armstrongism and Star Trek fandom, so relax.

I'm not even a Trekkie, so please don't ask me to write something in Klingon.

The dorky title came to me a while back. I was inspired to write an essay about the next generation of the Church of God movement and came up with the rather clever title, "The Next Generation." Which of course made me think of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So, in the spirit of ironic cheesiness and whimsy, I decided to make that the title of this blog. (Mad props, by the way, to whomever created the handy Stardate Calculator.)

But there is, come to think of it, a more serious meaning to the word trek: for to trek means to travel, and scripture repeatedly likens the life of faith to a journey, a pilgrimage, a road, a walk, a Way. It is not for the complacent who prefer sitting, nor for those who'd prefer to stop in a certain place to build great towering edifices to "make a name for themselves." The Way is for the restless, the never-satisfied, the pilgrims, the searchers, the nomads.

This weblog will probably end up serving several purposes. For now we can say its purpose is to provide the Church of God movement with a unique perspective from a younger (yeah, I'm over 30, but in COGdom anything under 60 is "younger") perspective. And, you might add, a nomadic perspective.

The content will vary: I'll vent, opine, speculate, share insights, and point your attention to the noteworthy work of others, all with the purpose of glorifying Yahweh Elohim and building up his people. In so doing I will be sure to examine new ideas and ways of understanding scripture. I will also criticize whatever deserves criticism. You are welcome to criticize me, too, if you like. (Unlike many of the teachers, prophets, apostles and "Witnesses" dotting the COG landscape, I have no problem acknowledging that every once in a blue moon I might be wrong about something.) In fact, I can guarantee you won't agree with everything written here. But by the same token, I can guarantee that you will learn, or at least will be stimulated to think.

If any of that -- criticism, thinking, learning -- scares you, it would be best for you to exit now and to never return. If not, then carry on.


SO WHO ARE YOU?

I hate writing introductions and profiles and such, but for once I'll try to be halfway thorough about it. To describe myself:

* David Harrell
* 31
* Chicago
* Single, nephews, niece, dog
* Journalist (currently paid more in satisfaction than in money)
* Songwriter and erstwhile artist
* Black sheep of the family and, so far, the only "cult member" (see story below)
* "Hunter/Explorer"
* INFP (at times a bit more T than F)
* second-decan Aries (right on the edge of the third)
* One-man think tank & wacky idea machine
* Or, maybe just a bad case of ADD

For what it's worth, I have subscribed to COG publications for more two-thirds of my life, which is 31 years long, which makes me a Gen-Xer. Appropriately, I possess the requisite penchant for irony and a default setting of cynicism, which if you dig deep enough, is really only the sour lemon coating on a soft, sweet idealistic center.

I am always reading and/or thinking about deep stuff, not to revel in the arcanity of it all, but in order to uncover the underlying principles of things. (I prefer to eschew obfuscation.) I try not to let my schooling get in the way of my education.

Despite being overly philosophical at times, I'm not averse to sports (playing, not watching other people play on TV), mechanical tinkering (like turning an AM radio into a shortwave radio by accident), or getting my hands dirty. In my youth I was consumed with drawing, but now I'm more into playing music, or better yet, letting the music play me.

I follow politics closely enough to know how rotten the whole game is. My world view is not one of the coincidence theorist (for examples of this view see The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11); it is a biblical world view, which some folks ridicule as "conspiracist," but which I call "realist," in the sense that Franklin Delano Roosevelt said: "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happened, you can bet it was planned that way."


Q: ALL RIGHT, BUT HOW DID YOU COME INTO THE TRUTH?

A: Well, I'm still learning the truth.

But if you mean to ask how I came to associate with the Church of God movement, here's the story.

I grew up in an American Baptist church where I got dunked and "saved" at the age of 10.

Later that same year, a most fascinating magazine called The Plain Truth came into our home by way of an aunt who gave my older sister a gift subscription. (The aunt has regretted it ever since.) Being naturally curious and contrary, I instantly took to the magazine's broad-based and integrative approach to world events, science, politics, history, religion and practically every other field of knowledge. (My sister ignored it.)

I greedily devoured the Ambassador College Correspondence Course and other church literature — which so sparked my interest in the Bible that I read my little Today’s English Version from cover to cover (except for Psalms) over several months’ time. I was probably one of few 11-year-olds to reverently pore over that “most important book since the Bible,” Mystery of the Ages. With all this material it was easy to stump my Sunday School teachers. For example: "Jesus said 'no man has ascended to heaven' ... So why do you teach that we go to heaven after we die?" Then I'd watch them trip all over themselves trying to explain.

I would getup early on Saturday mornings, before the cartoons came on (remember, I was still ten) to watch the nonagenarian Herbert Armstrong’s telecast for a little more than a year until his death. It wasn't long before I also spotted a listing for an identically surnamed evangelist whose program aired Sunday mornings. Soon I was a regular viewer of Garner Ted Armstrong as well. So through my teenage years -- even as I continued in the Baptist church, the youth group, the church choir, etc. -- I was building a small library of literature from both the Worldwide Church of God and the Church of God, International. From these sources I learned much about the Bible and numerous other subjects as well. (Alas, a good percentage of what I learned I have had to unlearn, but that’s life.)

I tried to figure out the relationship between the two Armstrongs and their respective organizations. The WCG's communications on this matter tended to be glib and unsatisfying, but I gathered that there had been some sort of falling out.


THE PLAIN TRUTH INSPIRED ME in a number of ways, but especially in getting me interested in journalism: a great way, I reasoned, to be a vessel for spreading the truth. As a high school junior, I watched a classmate of mine make and distribute crudely photocopied "comix" zines featuring his and others' artwork. So I tried making my own pamphlets, usually two or four typewritten pages, with articles on subjects such as evolution vs. creation and the meaning of life. At the bottom I would recommend further reading from the WCG: "Just call 1-800-423-4444 and request the booklet 'A World Held Captive'!" I'd use storebought stencils to create big, bold titles. Then I would then copy the pamphlets and stick them into random lockers at school. Thankfully, I did not distribute many of those.

By the summer of 1991, I was out of high school at age 17 and finally made it to a WCG "evangelistic" meeting held just minutes away from my home. The preaching itself was unremarkable and covered familiar ground (which, alas, would become a recurring theme during my CoG sojourn). But there were some free booklets and articles available that I hadn't read.

I was struck by the fact that everyone carried a Bible -- usually a huge one, marked up in a rainbow of colors, margins filled with notes. A lot of the men seemed to carry their Bibles and other paraphernalia in briefcases, an accessory I had never associated with church at all. (At First Baptist of Park Forest, which I was still attending, there was no need to bring your Bible; you could go through an entire service and hear only a few scriptures cited. The most-used book, by far, was the hymnal.)

But I was noticing something strange going on with WCG literature. When I requested additional copies of older booklets to give away, I was told that many -- especially, it seems, those bearing Herbert Armstrong's name -- had either been extensively revised, "suspended pending further review," or discontinued altogether.

The Plain Truth, too, seemed to be strategically watering down its doctrine and presentation. This became especially obvious in the summer of 1992 with a John Halford article on evolution that took a very wishy-washy, muddled tone. It seemed to say: Well, maybe evolution really is true, and maybe it isn't; does it really matter? Since the scientific case for creation and against evolution was an issue of special interest to me, this raised my eyebrows and prompted me to cancel my subscription not long thereafter. The magazine just wasn't the same any more.

At the same time I was gleaning from Garner Ted Armstrong's sermon tapes that WCG remained a cultlike, authoritarian group. CGI seemed to be a kinder, gentler version of WCG but with essentially the same truths. So I began attending CGI in June, 1992 and was rebaptized August 30, at the age of 18.


DURING MY FOUR YEARS THERE I met some great, beautiful, generous people. But from the very first service on, I was a bit disappointed. I had imagined that I would discover a place of joyous worship and celebration -- after all, these people "knew the truth"; they were real Christians! However, I found CGI services to be no more alive than those at First Baptist. Which was to say: dead. There was more flipping through scriptures, to be sure. But what was missing was a spirit of joyous worship.

Also, some of Armstrong's messages and his tone began to rub me the wrong way. For example, in a 1993 sermon about angels, he went off into a long aside in which he indulged in some very racist speculation. Specifically, he claimed to know that Yahweh brought the Flood upon the earth because the non-white sons of Cain were lusting after and marrying the lily-white, blonde-haired daughters of Seth. As he put it, all men can't help lusting after a "six-foot Swedish blonde." (Knowing what I now know, I'm pretty sure this was a classic case of what Freud called "projection.") I dashed off an irate letter to Armstrong. However, I'm pretty sure that I never sent it.

That same summer some brethren introduced me to The World Ahead, from the newly formed Global Church of God, and Ambassador Report, which revealed some of the very serious -- and sometimes shocking -- stains upon the CoG organizations and their founders. But AR also informed me of the existence of a cornucopia of WCG splinter groups, and I began to think of it as my mission to help bridge the gaps between them. To some extent this was for "selfish" purposes: the other church groups contained other young adults, who were potential friends (or dates). But also, it was just the principle of the thing: Why should potential brothers and sisters who believe essentially the same things be separated by organizational walls?

When Rod Meredith put on a Chicago appearance (don't you love that term? It's the language used for entertainers: "Barry Manilow, appearing LIVE in Chicago -- one night only!") I met him, shook hands with him, and invited him to come visit our CGI service that afternoon. For a moment he and the men around him looked at me as if I had just invited him to Mars. Then he declined politely, saying he had other plans.

While pursuing my college education in Chicago, I faithfully continued with the CGI, albeit with a sense that I was settling for less than the best; that the church was lacking something.

I still find the events of 1995 amazing in their timing, as if some unseen hand had lit a fuse set to blow everything up within a few short months. That spring saw the large exodus from the WCG that formed the UCG-AIA; later summer and early autumn saw the breakup of the Chicago CGI congregation, the CGI’s largest (ostensibly over disagreements between the pastor and "Headquarters" over the need for a local church building, and other issues as well). The pastor took about half the congregation with him. I started attending with them in the mornings and with CGI in the afternoon.

Then came the Feast, and then we were hearing that #2 man Ron Dart was leaving the church for health reasons (but also, somewhat incongruously, to start a new ministry to independent believers). Then we were hearing something about Armstrong getting in trouble with a masseuse.

These revelations did not come as a surprise to me, as they evidently did to many CGI members, since I had been keeping tabs on the overall Church of God situation through Ambassador Report and other ministry publications. AR, the premiere outlet for actual investigative reporting on the CoG movement (truly a foreign concept in the cultlike WCG environment), was "salacious," "vicious," "scandalous," "slanderous" -- and unfortunately, in all too many instances, correct.

By spring 1996, it became clear that Armstrong and his Headquarters supporters were stonewalling the members' questions and concerns. A CGI official who is now a very prominent name with the CGI was sent to Chicago to blatantly lie to us about the severity of GTA's infraction. His supporters in the home office circled the wagons around him and refused to demand that he step down from his very public position as the leader and "face" of the church on television.

The result was that the best ministers left the CGI, and with them many members, forming a new wave of independent churches. These churches would later serve many refugees from the disintegrating WCG -- and later, some who left or were "shown the door" of UCG as well.

A local church elder, Mike Linacre, announced he would be holding independent Spring Holy Day services at the University of Chicago, where he was an adjunct professor. This group became the Active Bible Church of God, my home church for most of the last nine years.

IT WAS CURIOUS ENOUGH to attend an urban congregation composed mostly of black folks and led by an Englishman married to an Aussie. It was also nice that Mike (if we wanted to get formal, Pastor Mike) dropped all the pretension and elitism that had previously existed between ministers and "laity." Mike and his wife Maureen ("Mo") were not haughty holders of some office or title, nor did they wish to even appear as such; they were not out to use religion to profit or to control others. They were simply out to serve.

ABCOG was, and still is for the most part, small and family-like. At first it was run like a living-room fellowship. More recently, since Mike and Mo left for Australia, it has evolved a bit more toward a "churchy" format, which in my opinion, is regrettable.

Concurrently with the above events, I continued to learn via various sources: first of all the information-packed Ambassador Report, the primary source of information about the greater COG world. As new organizations were founded I quickly got on their mailing lists or ordered sample literature if it seemed interesting. I benefited early on from literature or personal correspondence with an array of independent ministries who were ahead of their time, such as Ken Westby & co. (ACD) and a maverick minister then operating out of Las Vegas, John Allen. Later, the ministries of Ron Dart, Jim Rector, Norman Edwards (of Servants' News and Port Austin Bible Campus), and the Likeminds internet forum would help clarify what I already instinctively felt: that the sectarianism, hierarchy, exclusivism, and the clergy/laity system of the WCG and its splinter groups were wrong and unbiblical.

In addition to learning all that, I was studying on my own and learning a lot of deeper things about faith, prayer, and so forth -- things that were largely neglected in CGI teaching. Some of those issues I'll be writing about in this very space. As I said above, I am still learning the truth, and I suppose I will be until my last day on this earth.

I will refer a lot to the CoG movement in this blog. However, these days I don't consider myself part of any movement other than the one founded by Messiah. "Movement," anyway, is not the term to use for a group of people who are all about coalescing and coagulating around a certain leader or set-in-stone set of dogmas. The word movement implies, well, movement. So I keep moving. As I have said before in Internet debates (often with second- or third-generation CoGers who were born "in the church"), I didn't get into this by being a conformist, so why start now?

Well that's more than enough to get the party started. If I think of anything else you need to know, I'll throw it in later. I can't guarantee this blog will be updated every day, or even every two or five. But it will be worth your while to check every now and then.