I wish to thank Charles Page for creating this forum. I think it helps many people who have remained in the CoG and also those great numbers of ministers and members who have withdrawn from the CoG to express themselves. Personally, if I was an official in the CoG hierarchy, (I say “hierarchy” meaning no offense), I would really like to know exactly why people resigned from the CoG and see if something could be changed in order to close the back door?
Do you think the denomination owning the building and having, at least potentially, the power to remove a pastor might have something to do with people leaving, or does that just deter people from joining?
Back when folks still had a bit of that belief that the denomination was THE church of God, were they less likely to leave?
The way I see it Link Hudson do we want property that is owned and controlled by church trustees that often are carnal or do we want property that is owned and controlled by a pastor or his association that has no one to answer to or do we want property that is owned and controlled by a church organization that has checks and balances. I have been pastor of two congregations both held in trust and ultimately controlled by the organization and even though in my first church I came to odds with my bishop / superintendent / overseer those checks and balances worked for right. I have also been in the snares of powerful leading church bosses and those same checks and balances have worked to protect me. There is corruption in high level leadership but the COG and in my case the IPHC is so designed to protect both the minister and the church property. Though it is not a perfect system I have been happy with the way it works and can’t imagine the other two systems being better. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Often these churches owned and controlled by the local leadership takes on cult like attributes (not always but often).
Melvin Harter the Pentecostal Holiness provided a church for me to pastor and after much prayer I felt God calling me there. I started a relationship with them that has grown and I am now fully vested in the IPHC. I still love the COG and support it and miss it and I still think it has produced the greatest preachers the past century has ever known.
As a member who was sitting in the pews, most of what I kept seeing in the last ten years was worsening hypocrisy. There were desperate needs in those pews, but the pastor was asking for another offering week after week, for this mission or that, the nursery needed new carpet, the kids in Clay County needed school supplies and new bookbags, clothes and bikes. The COG is mainly now a business and it’s mouth is opened wide and hungry. When you overlook the needs of your own, it’s time to take another look. I just couldn’t take it anymore…the constant “guilting” me into giving more and more, while I sat with some whose needs were horrific! …but, you know, pastor and his wife had prayed diligently about the brand new car they were ‘blessed with’. I left and haven’t been led to return.