From the Chairman...
As a follow-up to my earlier video, I wanted to share a short update about the Council of Elders and Church administration meetings held last week in Atlanta, Georgia. The purpose of our meetings was to begin a refresh of the Church’s Strategic Plan for the years 2026–2029.
Our specific purpose in gathering was simple but vital: to clearly define our goals, objectives and strategies so we can continue fulfilling the mission Christ has given His Church. While our mission remains unwavering—to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God, and to prepare a people to serve in God’s Kingdom—the world around us continues to change. Therefore, every three years, we take a fresh look at how to best carry out that mission in a shifting landscape of new technologies, evolving societal norms and emerging opportunities.
One of the highlights for me personally was meeting and working with our facilitator, Michael Wilkinson, who is the founder of Leadership Strategies based in Atlanta. Seventeen years ago he facilitated an earlier planning meeting with the Council. Only two of our current Council members, Victor Kubik and Aaron Dean, were part of that original session, yet Michael remembered the experience well.
Michael began our meetings with training on understanding the dynamics of working together to form long-term plans. We discussed how disagreements arise and the three levels at which they tend to occur: differences in information, differences in values, and conflicts rooted in unrelated issues. Exploring how to resolve each type was eye-opening and deeply beneficial.
We then spent most of our time doing the actual work of developing the Strategic Plan. We reviewed the distinctions between goals and objectives, and we examined the critical success factors and barriers that can influence our ability to achieve what we’ve set out to do.
Over the course of three days, we made great progress and will continue the momentum with follow-up meetings in December. From there, the president and administration will develop action plans and monitoring systems to ensure our strategies are carried out effectively. Ultimately the Plan will be sent to the General Conference of Elders for review and approval in May.
The meetings themselves were productive and energizing. Meals served in the adjacent room kept us moving efficiently, and a warm invitation from Jonathan and Bridgette (Sexton) Beam to dine at their home nearby added a much-appreciated personal touch. A few Council members who remained in the area through the Sabbath were also able to visit and speak in nearby congregations before heading home.
Overall, these days together were deeply encouraging. I’m grateful for the unity, dedication and thoughtful collaboration shown by everyone involved. With God’s guidance, I believe the plans we’re shaping will strengthen our efforts to carry the gospel forward and continue caring for those He calls.
In Christ’s service,
Tim Pebworth, Chairman
44 comments:
‘Road to nowhere’ by Talking Heads came to mind straight away on seeing this post. Still trying to work out where what who they are? Well lads, there’s plenty of Armstrong groups to pick from now. But so few ‘sheep’ left to go around to fill empty seats. Of which you probably have a few. Why not pack it in, go home and embrace Christ. There’s real freedom in that. And a future. But not with the old recycled regurgitation of a deeply divided and discredited Armstrongism.
The breakup of the WCG has been nothing like the many successes which resulted from the breakup of the Bell Telephone System (AT&T) in 1984. Many of the Baby Bells grew, have been reabsorbed by AT&T, and the company is more powerful than ever today.
The breakup of Armstrongism left not a single good or even right choice for members. The power of the message, which some would argue was the most important aspect of the WCG, was lost and is virtually non-existent. Not a single one of the ACOGs has risen above the status of nostalgia club, and it is unlikely that any ever will. The Latin Club in High School, based on a well known "dead language" comes to mind for purpose of a more direct comparison. These clubs have been present for decades, but they have in no way been able to revive the language.
What's the feeling in the field? Do ACOG members expect a reunification and finishing of the work with a newly powerful message, or is everyone flying below the radar and just anticipating dying in the faith? I ask this because we outsiders can't really tell. You guys or your message aren't in the news.
Searingly negative against UCG, and biased against the truth of the 90"s NO2HWA. Most pro-Tkach post ever!!
If that's how you really feel... why go in UCG in the first place? Did you fool yourselves into thinking 1995 could be achieved again? I think you did.
Is this Michael Wilkinson a ucg member? Or an outsider?
Tkach? This post explains a lot. UCG was founded as a reaction against Joe Tkach, who died 30 years ago. The rest of the world has moved on, but UCG is stuck in 1995, with no positive reason to exist, just a negative reaction against Tkach.
Society has changed alot since HWA started the," Radio Church of God " which became the," Worldwide Church of God". The internet and the much wider sources of information that can be accessed by the many make it hard for many fringe religions to keep the sheep from straying from the flock. Also the only religions that are growing are the generic churches that tend to not promote strict adherence to rules and doctrines but emphasize the love of Jesus and the need to simply accept him as our savior. The splinters of the WCG don't do this and will continue to decline. Also Armstrongism is not a mainstream set of beliefs. It is an odd collection of Old Testament beliefs that most reject as strange and far outdated.
Where they are headed, is where they are now. What are the milestones? It’s harder to produce something significant that started in 1995 that was inferior to that of say 1955. In a splinter things aren’t being reproduced as much: people, money, influence. A splinter is not greater than the plank.
Bingo 5:21, and also when many of the fringe religions (like the UCG) are proven wrong in their predictions and prophecies, with many people looking back at their failed predictions as well as their internal splits and schisms throughout the decades from a simple internet search, well the common man will put two and two together. All that strictness shouldn't be the case if people know their God and are within a covenant relationship with God through Christ (Jer. 31:34). You grow your church with young people, At least HWA had the right idea with those colleges, but now the situation is much different.
Tank
I'm 99.9% sure he's an outsider. Not mentioned on the UCG website at all beyond his facilitation work.
So you say. Many people in UCG would disagree.
But God is greater than all these depressing attitudes expressed on here combined. Attack away UCG continues.
I like to use musical metaphors in searching for answers to life's problems. Music is a universal language which, like religion, speaks to the soul. How can we use it to explain the dilemmas of those still participating in what I call "the Armstrong Problem"? Why are they not able to effectively preserve and propagate the scam?
I'm thinking that a philosophy (as my Mom who died in that faith termed it) is not unlike a musical genre which has peaked, and perhaps still has a loyal core, but everything, every instrumental variation, beat, and tempo possible within that genre has been attempted, experimented with, and used used up, so that it is no longer fresh and exciting. Genres such as "Jazz", a term coined in the early 1900s, based on the slang words "jism" or later, "jasm" (you can deduce the obvious etymology!) at one time captured the Zeitgeist of the eras known as the roaring twenties, the great depression, and World War II.
College age young people were still avidly listening to it in the early 1950s, and ballroom dancing which was very much its physical corollary, was still very popular. In "Rebel Without a Cause" it is heard in the radio of James Dean's '49 Mercury. It is also present in "The Wild One". In one of the bar scenes, two of Marlon Brando's motorcycle club members are tapping out a beat on the counter to a jazz selection and one of them says to an old man behind the counter, "Hey Pops, can you dig to the rebop?"
But, younger kids, teenagers, were looking for more exciting music, new, and emerging. They often listened to what was called "race" music. (Once again, you can guess the etymology). The late, great Bo Diddley once quipped, "When my record came out in 1955, all the young white teenagers threw Beethoven in the garbage!" (Heh heh!) In addition to classical music, Jazz never really recovered.
Armstrongism did not remain nervously silent about the first global existential threat! (da bomb) In fact it exploited it, celebrated it, and claimed to present a perfect solution to it, in "safety for you and your family". It was able to utilize this "safety" as a carrot on steroids, in such a way as to rewrite or rewire its participants psyches, and induce them to adapt all manner of new beliefs, and to make many bizarre modifications to their behavior. GTA was still able to be very successful in this during the 1970s with his "America Listen" campaign.
What is so different today? First, existential threats are now so plentiful that most people no longer take them seriously, and will not make behavioral modifications based upon them. (can you say "carbon footprint"?) Secondly, many of the contentions upon which Armstrongism is based have been refuted and dispelled, and this information is readily available on the internet. Thirdly, "in the next 3-5 years" has been reset dozens of times already, and nobody takes it seriously. Membership and the collective voice of Armstrongism has therefore contracted, and will continue to contract regardless of such groups as UCG and their focus meetings. The public has tuned into new genres, ones which offer greater hope, and capture the essence of the current times!
BB
Particularly when the plank was full of knotholes.
All That Matters
The problem with the Worldwide Church of God under the apostate Joseph W. Tkach, Sr. was that the WCG's income declined so fast and so far after the open Great Apostasy of January 1995 that many of the “ministers” lost their jobs and their paychecks.
With the start of the so-called United Church of God splinter group a little bit later in 1995 the “ministers” were able to continue to collect paychecks. This seems to be all that matters to them. There is no need to do anything greater than that.
In my apparent life as a UCG ministurd (of all things, really?), I get to be a big ol bully, hang out with church hoez, post on this blog as twelve different people, try to pursue litigation... and everyone somehow knows but is too scared to identify me publically.
Its the good life, man!
Yet in UCG there your all to be found. Laurence Oliviers acting away...
Great comparisons as usual BB, with music in the 20th century in America there are many lessons to draw from and compare with religion. I like how you mention jazz, which by the time of the 1940s, jazz was the popular music. But by the time of the late 50s and early 60s the guitar sales and popularity of the instrument replaced that of the horn instruments as Rock and R&B . Although the greatest year in Jazz being 1959 produced Davis’s Kind of Blue, Coltrane’s Giant Steps (recorded that year), Brubeck’s Time Out, Mingus’s Ah Um and more were masterpieces, it wasn’t enough to overtake the promotion of the music you could dance and sing to. Jazz (although it should have been termed American classical music) had one more renaissance when they went fusion and the jazz artist started to use electronic instruments under the banner of jazz fusion in the late 60s and 70s. They implemented the improvisation of jazz within rock themes within their compositions. There became universal mixed groups because music is universal. Those artists were ridiculed and scoffed as being not purist or sellouts by the jazz community. It was an opportunity to put jazz back near the top and sell a lot more records. The promotion could have been better.
With religion Christ kept some of the old traditions and brought in the new, but the purist (pharisees, scribes, sadducees) didn’t like it. Christ was making His religion universal (like music) with every tongue, tribe and race having access. Within Armstrongism the old guard will not adapt. They have fractured and weakened themselves. They did this to themselves. Your comment “The public has tuned into new genres, ones which offer greater hope, and capture the essence of the current times!” is right on the money. And in reality it’s the same hope that’s in the new testament gospel that transcends time. It’s through the blood of Jesus Christ (Eph 2:12), the hope is not about a place of safety, throne of david/british crown, sea gates, birthright blessings……
Even Rock n Roll had its updates throughout the decades, rock n Roll of the 50s sounded different than the Rock of the 60s with more guitar solos with the latter, Rock n Roll of the 80s was different than the 60s. Even in the 90s rock morphed into alternative Rock from the Seattle and the Vancouver area.
Take the Elvis who integrated rock, he had the boldness to go against the older generation that was in power. He had the courage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U07zchTVAyI
Oh how times have changed. And when you look at what he was singing, it wasn’t so bad compared to say like grunge music or heavy metal. Maybe the ACOG can update or at least come up with their version of rock, call it White Sabbath.
Tank
In fact it exploited it, celebrated it, and claimed to present a perfect solution to it, in "safety for you and your family". It was able to utilize this "safety" as a carrot on steroids
In 1984 with only a few years to go on this earth the bombastic apostle was still referring to the place of safety and extolling the benefits of his contacts in Jordan and elsewhere to facilitate this flight by the true followers in his church.
So....back to the original text of this blog post. I had a similar thought when I first read this letter from Pebworth. Guys you are 30 years into this and yet you still can't figure out how to execute your mission without loads of discussion and pontification? By now you should have a pretty good idea how to preach the gospel and look after your flock. THAT is your strategic plan. You don't need a facilitator for this, or a special offsite, or a boondoggle in another city to escape the dreary clouds of Cincinnati for a few days.
Instead you need to focus on the EXECUTION of that plan. This doesn't require a facilitator. You need capable and innovative department heads with strong managerial acumen in their respective areas of expertise, and you need to give them space to run their departments. You need to define key performance indicators, put in place a system of measurement to monitor the performance of plan execution, and HOLD ACCOUNTABLE the managers in the organization for hitting their assigned objectives.
This is Management 101.....duh, duh, and duh. Yet here we are, 30 years on, and need a facilitator to lead us through the basics of organizational management?
This kind of aimless wandering is classic UCG. It's what I've witnessed over and over again for the past 3 decades. Lots of big, broad, fuzzy words that sound great ("a shifting landscape of new technologies, evolving societal norms and emerging opportunities") that nobody really knows what they mean (or cares to even make an attempt at defining them).
Thirty years from now I bet we see nothing has changed. Which, from my perspective, is a good thing, as it will keep UCG irrelevant. I stand in awe at the way UCG's leadership so dependably wanders in circles while accomplishing nothing.
Wandering in the Wilderness Church of God
All the management and proper execution in the world is not going to help in the least if you have a crap message as your product!
Each splinter's "group think" posits it as the right splinter, the good one. Yet they are all inflicting damage of some type, whether it involves failing prophecies, totalitarian management techniques, doctrinal error, financial malfeasance, or an egomaniacal leader. Much of this is fully engrained and not capable of being corrected. Take doctrinal error as an example. David Hulme proved, using his own ACOG as a guinea pig, that if the British Israel nonsense is corrected by a splinter, there will be mass exodus of ministers and members.
Even if one splinter were the correct one, the remaining ones are now doing so much damage to the brand that it would make it impossible for the one correct one to overcome the negative stereotype and thus attract growth. I have a very good friend who is a rcovering alcoholic. He comes from a large alcoholic family. For the sake of his sobriety, he had to cut himself off from his family,, and it was a very difficult thing to do. There is a lesson in that! If a Christian finds himself or herself in a toxic, dysfunctional system, for the sake of their salvation, they will need to leave that system! Remaining in it, hoping things will change, ends up contaminating you in ways you may not even realize!
Anon 4:20:09 ‘I stand in awe at the way UCGs leadership so dependably wanders in circles while accomplishing nothing’. Lol.
Great comments and we can point the finger at all of Armstrongism. The same old same, and an inability to think outside the box denotes them all. The only thing they have mastered is division. But they don’t have a message. That pony has bolted especially their prophetic vision for the future, and been debunked soundly. Yet they continue to limp on with a dwindling base of supporters and their financial support.
Please share fake name 'Tank' the failed predictions of UCG ?
Knotholes = Tkachites causing internal problems to destroy UCG.
When the church splintered, the worst people in my congregation joined UCG.
I bet the other splinters are aware of this, and carefully screen any former UCG members who try to join them.
Yep 7:55, say if you have 4 splinter groups: Restored, Living, Philadelphia, and Bob's group,. And say someone says Living is the proper one or the correct one. Well, first of all they are come from armstrongism and the other three are giving the religion a bad name. And even if you said Living was the correct one, look at how many have split from that: Munson, Bob, Bryce, Raymond.....
Like you said, one has to leave the system.
Well listen 11:45, everybody has a right to identify themselves. The name tank is a nickname, and it was given to me by a family member since I was a lad. It's no more dangerous than someone who is not ethnically a jew but one who religiously identifies themselves as one. I have a right to keep my nickname.
The failed prediction of UCG is self inflicting. See since the UCG came from WCG, and didn't start from scratch, those ministers and loyal members at one point in time though that they were the true church of God when they were in the WCG. Therefore their prediction of themselves pre 1995 was a failed prediction. Now if their organization came out of nowhere and had no association from Armstrongism, well then I would have to go digging through their sermons and publications. Although I can name a few off the top that have failed (that's the lesser). But nothing is more incriminating than a failed prediction about yourself.
Have a nice day.
A COG reaching out to the world [at leadstrat.com] for guidance......huh?
4:20, some good comments in your first paragraph up to the matter of facilitation. They DO need a facilitator, and that is Christ, and the power of the holy Spirit. That is what has been given to us, unless we choose not to use it. How often they consult with unbelievers to show them how to work effectively! (This suggests to me that they are glorying in administrative/office systems if they are using outside consultants. They don't need unbelievers to teach them how to preach the gospel effectively, do they? Otherwise they would be glorying in carnal men, not in God)
We see this all the time, year after year, meeting after meeting -- a kind of emotional, superficial high -- but the non-growth continues, sins and grievances are not addressed, and repentance is ignored (What do we have to repent of? Look at how happy we are!)
They should sober up because too much drinking, frolicking and back-slapping will set you up for a fall, i.e. reality will sink in, you will come down from the artifical high, you will be provoked, and commit a great sin (because you failed to measure the gravity of a situation adequately due to your drunkenness. When the drunkards get sober, that is when they are at their worst).
I see this all the time.
Ahhh a lot of waffle and zero evidence that UCG have failed predictions. I thought so.
I have no idea what you are blabbering on about with your warpish wannabe insults. Ha!
What I wrote wasn’t gibberish, the establishment of the UCG came from Worldwide and when they were adults in worldwide, they claimed to be the “true church of god”, and that prediction became false after 1995.
Now if you want to get into specifics, failed predictions and prophecies can come from erroneous or false doctrines. A false doctrine is the premise to a failed prediction that leads to a failed resolution. Let’s take for instance the BI doctrine within the throne of David, that pretty much all the ACOG adheres to. So what I will do is unlift the lens of Armstrongism in this short bible study on the Throne of David that I did many years ago. Please if you can, follow along.
The Throne of David to Christ
Genesis 49:10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes; (THIS IS NOT BROKEN)
Jeremiah 33:14-16 ‘Behold, the days are coming, ’ says the Lord, ‘that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah: ‘In those days and at that time I will cause to grow up to David A Branch of righteousness; He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. In those days Judah will be saved, And Jerusalem will dwell safely. And this is the name by which she will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.’
Jeremiah 36:30-31 Therefore thus says the Lord concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah: “He shall have no one to sit on the throne of David, and his dead body shall be cast out to the heat of the day and the frost of the night. I will punish him, his family, and his servants for their iniquity; and I will bring on them, on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and on the men of Judah all the doom that I have pronounced against them; but they did not heed. ”
Ezekiel 21:25-27 ‘Now to you, O profane, wicked prince of Israel, whose day has come, whose iniquity shall end, thus says the Lord God: “Remove the turban, and take off the crown; Nothing shall remain the same. Exalt the humble, and humble the exalted. Overthrown, overthrown, I will make it overthrown! It shall be no longer, Until HE comes whose right it is, And I will give it to HIM.” (even here at the end of this verse, it's talking about Christ would eventually get on this throne)
Isaiah 9:7 Of the increase of His government and peace There will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, To order it and establish it with judgment and justice From that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.
Luke 1:32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.
Acts 2:29-30 “Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne.
So lastly, here we have Peter who is a jew who understands that the scepter shall not depart from Judah (the jewish people). His ministry and focus isn’t on “where is the throne of David was at in 31 AD. Even before His human birth in (Luke 1:32), they sought the Christ that would be on the throne, they weren’t trying to find where it had gone geographically unlike armstrongism.
Within Armstrongism, UCG and their ilk try to break the scriptures with the “ scepter shall not depart from Judah” with it being transferred to the British crown and the british peoples (who are not jewish). Overturn overturn doesn’t mean a change of the throne to a different group or tribe of people, it meant that Judah would not have any more kings after Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah when/after they would go into captivity. It would be done away, or make ruin.
Continued
True christians look toward Jesus Christ to be on that throne, and not some other people (Irish/British). So BI is a doctrine that will cause many within UCG to focus on the wrong thing, making bad prediction after bad prediction within their BI teachings. The false doctrines lead to false predictions. Maybe you’ll see it one day, maybe you won’t.
Tank
For those who would like a soundtrack to accompany their UCG experience, might I suggest Freddy King's "Goin Down"?
BB
Where is Timothy Leary when the ACOGs need they type of consultant who could really cure their ills?
Where is Timothy Leary when the ACOGs need they type of consultant who could really cure their ills?
Tune out (dissidents).
Turn on (your brethren)
Tithe up!
"Ahhh a lot of waffle and zero evidence.."
You are the last person who should be pointing fingers in that department.
Dem UCG bitchez betta have mah money.
I don't see Joe Tkach as being an apostate! He was actually a repostate. He took a toxic cult and restored it to classic Christianity, getting rid of heresies, extrabiblical teachings and conspiracy theoies along the way. The stiff-necked, rebellious people who became UCG and the other spllinters have missed out on all the blessings!
Mercurial Church of God.
The funny thing is, Tank, back in the early '70s, I thought that GTA would succeed HWA, and Mark would succeed GTA, and when that happened, Mark, who was a rock n roller, would also be in charge of the Ambassador International Cultural Foundation, and would be following in his grandfathers' footsteps in bringing the finer music into the House for God, only in accordance with his own tastes. Like, you know, Led Zep and Deep Purple!
Never saw the GTA fall from grace coming, but found it quite appalling at the time. He had had many admirable qualities.
BB
I much prefer 'Rise up'.
Why Pastor Rsk ????
That's the toxic Tkach hype, the reality is GCI have run out of money and openly admitted they close more congregations in 2024 than open them.
The re-surgance of Christianity in milleniums and Generation Z is that surfacing a re-surgance in GCI?
Tkach died leaving them stranded as neither one thing nor the other.
As the 'supporters' for Tkach ways on here, you never fully openly supported him, when the chips were down you all stayed with UCG and some of you became the worst strict 'church snobs' looking down on non pure UCG members. What a farce, whilst your hearts always belonged to Tkach beliefs.
Case in point.
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