I just got an email about the proposed bylaw change, increasing the Council of 18 to 24. The rationale is, basically, since the COG has gotten bigger, the Council needs to be bigger. My first reaction is this isn’t really necessary. How often does the Executive Council meet now?What say yo________________
Would that happen or would they fill it with 2 or more international choices. Maybe an overseas overseer. I think that is the plan. I want international pastors to have more of a voice but the cog has to decide if we are global church with USA interests or a usa church with global interests. I want people to have an actual voice from overseas but us giving them token seat on a council dominated by Americans is not the way to do it. They need a field of there own to make decisions. Just like the church of God in america needs to take pastoral voices more seriously.
I would like to see…
There was a brief statement saying that equitable consideration in the selection process for ethnic and generational representation on the Executive Council.
Re: I would like to see…
How hard would this be…
Have a World church of God fellowship that debates doctrine and steers missions and development of different regions of the church of God (north/ South America- Asia- Africa – Europe). We also need to have people elected by folks from that region to foster ownership in the worldwide cog. Just make the council of 18 deal with America issues. The a/g has done this for years with the world ag fellowship. worldagfellowship.org.It makes the ag a global group this extension of the council to 24 is just a shift in policy to cover up bigger issues at hand. It is a shuffling of the deck because of future fears. They can provide a seat to those outside the USA without dismantling the current council of 18. Also check this out the ag voted there first female general secretary.news.ag.org/news/donna-barrett-elected-general-secretary
I think that is too broad. I would say a cog state side cog and a world wide cog. Still have the stateside cog as the authoritative power in America. To many issues for one board to handle. We definitely need to think younger or loosen the reigns on some of the churches. Maybe say the worldwide cog would be everyone outside of the USA. Make a prerequisite that they have to pastor a church outside of the USA. Then make the current council of 18 just for those who are state side
For several decades now, the AG world missions philosophy has been to develop indigenous leadership and eventually, autonomous national fellowships wherever new mission fields have been pioneered. The USA AG leadership still has a lot of influence on these non-USA AG fellowships, but there is no overarching patriarchal system, such as one finds in the Roman Catholic Church or in the CoG, for that matter.
What Clint means is that one of those seats be filled by OTCP. I didn’t picture you as being that big________________
I wasn’t aware of this. I do not think it is the case in Indonesia. Gereja Bethel existed in Indonesia before it’s partnership with the COG. It’s the largest national conference, but I don’t think there are people in Cleveland calling the shots. I suppose they could exert some influence if there were a lot of missions funds involved. With some of the megachurches in Indonesia, it would take a lot of money to compete for influence. But I don’t know the inner workings of either denomination. It is my understanding here, that the sinode here is not under the GA________________
System