Once they had apostatized they set about establishing United Church of God. Articles of incorporation were established, bylaws written and vision statements made.
UCG saw its self as a corporate church as
3.1 PURPOSE FOR THE CHURCH
God’s purpose for His Church is to prepare those willing to live His way of righteousness and self-control to function as His instruments in the administration of salvation to humanity, and to demonstrate His wisdom to His spiritual creation.
Apparently Melvin Rhodes was not happy with this statement and sought to change it. He could only garner two present council members to support a change causing it to be shelved.
The Council then shifted to the proposed amendment about the purpose statement for the Church (Article 3.1). Several Council members expressed the need for amending its wording. To advance the amendment to the annual conference ballot requires the support of at least four Council members, but it received only two. This amendment will now be sent to the GCE where it will need at least 25 percent support to be placed on the annual conference ballot.
Now, in 2013, Melvin Rhodes has been banished in disgrace and the measure is up for consideration to change again.
Proposal for Council Response to a Proposed Amendment
In reference to a recently submitted, proposed amendment to Article 3.1 of the Constitution, some on the Council thought that a statement of concern was needed. On behalf of the Roles and Rules Committee Roc Corbett presented for Council’s consideration a proposed “statement of concern” as worded below.
Statement of Concern
Article 3.1 as currently worded does deserve some amending, and the Council agrees with the authors in this regard. We would like to thank the authors for bringing this to the attention of the Council and of the GCE. However, the wording in the proposed amendment is not a solution to the problem in the view of the Council. The proposal mixes concepts that are from the mission of the church rather than concisely defining the purpose for the church, therefore drifting from the intent of the Article as implied in the title.
The Council feels that the “Purpose of the Church” is such an important subject that it should be very well defined, and that the proposed amendment does not add clarity to this understanding.
You would think that with UCG being just a few years away from it's 20 anniversary of apostasy that they would have figured out the reason for their existence by now.
7 comments:
Article 3. 2
The purpose of the Church is to keep the income stream flowing to fund ministerial salary and ultimately retirement intact and viable. "And this Gospel of the Kingdom of God shall go to all the world and then shall the income."
I have an idea!
How about this little statement that in my opinion is pretty interesting:
To create a corporation where ministers can get a salaried paycheck, to ensure members send us their tithes out of money and not agriculture (we have walmart now), to produce a television program and magazines where we can recruit new tithepayers so we can increase our income (they must be theologically naive and gullible), thereby getting new television stations to further increase our income, thereby getting new members and more tithes (so we can buy our expensive suits). Since these members pay our salaries (bless their hearts), we will give them a place to grow friendships on our terms, have relationships on terms, children can watch a blue puppet sing, we can all sing songs, they can listen to us preach, and they must attend conventions where they can give us special offerings. They also must agree to every doctrine we teach and not complain and thus they may qualify for the grand prize.
I don't know, I think my version could possibly be well, in my opinion, seemingly more accurate according to some? LOL I think they'd disagree. :P
I truly believe UCG has always and will always continue to be about one organizing factor: to make sure there is adequate funding for the ministry and their pensions. Everything else they do serves to service this crucial yet unstated end.
I totally agree. It's not like any of these guys don't know what the true purpose of UCG has always been, it's just that they can't admit it publicly.
What they are debating is the proper cunning psychological tactics that will most successfully convert the droves of mainstream christian people (with which they are trying to refill their ranks) into regular income, while not alienating their current revenue stream. They're searching for the right ideological emulsifier that will allow them to mix oil and water.
Saying that UCG still can't figure out why their church exists in the first place makes it sound like this is something that should be easy. If they were honest, then it would be. But then where would the fun be in that?
This is actually a very sophisticated, high-level thing they're trying to accomplish here. By one set of theories, what they're trying to do should be impossible. However, the fact that classified CIA psy-ops projects successfully accomplish just these sorts of things demonstrates that such things are possible after all. These guys already have one round of experience under their belts. Don't try this at home.
"It's 2013 and UCG Still Cannot Figure Out the Purpose of the Church"
One of the most perfectly worded headlines, ever.
Kudos.
"It's 2013 and UCG Still Cannot Figure Out the Purpose of the Church"
That is ok. The important thing is that I have it all figured out. The PURPOSE of the United Church of Godlessness (UCG) is to provide paychecks for the leaders while they try once again--for the second time now--to lead the people back into the world.
The current UCG leaders would still be in the WCG under Joseph Tkach--still helping to bring in heresy and kick out true believers--except that the sudden, total doctrinal changes caused the income to plummet and their paychecks to disappear. This time around they will probably take it a bit slower and be even sneakier.
Like someone said, they are more cunning and deceitful than most could imagine.
Why don't they just go with "To spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to make disciples."? That's pretty straight ahead, and encompasses the great commission.
Unfortunately, these groups all want to Armstrongize their mission statement.
BB
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