From the United Church of God Council of Elders Strategic Plan Report:
UCG Positioning Statement:
Respect for One Another
Recognizing Jesus’ command to always treat each other in a godly manner, we believe we have sometimes not treated each other in a godly manner. Therefore, we will dedicate ourselves to:
- Respect each other.
- Recognize our different personalities and strive to understand one another.
- Reconcile and restore/rebuild relationships in the love that God the Father and Jesus Christ have shown us.
These are the critical success and barriers UCG say they face:
Successes:
Good messages, fellowship, encouraging and
uplifting.
• Good meeting facility.
• Being allowed to serve/opportunities to serve.
• Good sermons on doctrine.
• Setting a culture of love and intentional care by
leadership.
Barriers
• Poorly skilled speakers.
• Not passing the baton/lack of trust.
• Lack of focus on doctrine.
• Tired, stressed over pastors.
Distinctions/time management, lack of
willingness to commit.
• Lack of speaking and preparation skills.
• Regional pastors/mentors not having time to mentor.
• Not knowing where resources are (disorganized list).
• Older men not conversant with technology.
• Unresolved issues from the past.
• Lack of communicating improvements to stakeholders.
• Resistance to change internally.
• Reticence to collaborate.
• Ineffective internal processes.
• Misconceptions about Church finances.
UCG’s Council of Elders starts with a positioning statement about respect. They quote Jesus, talk about treating each other in a “godly manner,” and promise to reconcile relationships in the love of the Father and Son. It’s all very New Covenant-sounding on paper. Their track record says otherwise. UCG had no respect when they plotted and schemed their breakaway from the Mother church. They had no respect when their actions led to the huge breakaway group COGWA losing a lot of their ministers and members.
Then they list their “barriers.”And suddenly the mask slips. What they’ve actually admitted is a church struggling with trust, skills, exhaustion, resistance to change, unresolved grudges, tech illiteracy among leaders, disorganized everything, and financial suspicions. These aren’t random glitches. They’re the predictable fruit of trying to run a New Testament church while still operating under Old Covenant assumptions.
Let’s look at the list.
The Trust and Leadership Crisis“Not passing the baton / lack of trust.”“Tired, stressed over pastors.”“Regional pastors/mentors not having time to mentor.”“Older men not conversant with technology.”
This is what happens when you build a top-down hierarchy modeled more on Levitical gatekeepers than on the New Covenant reality that every believer is a priest (1 Peter 2:9) and the Spirit distributes gifts to the whole body. When power is treated as something a small group of approved men must tightly control, of course you don’t “pass the baton.” Of course the few official pastors burn out. Of course nobody else gets properly trained or trusted. It’s not a bug. It’s the system working as designed. In the New Covenant, the Spirit equips the saints for the work of ministry. In the UCG model, ministry is largely reserved for the ordained class. The results speak for themselves.
Skills, Preparation, and “Doctrine”“Poorly skilled speakers.”“Lack of speaking and preparation skills.”“Lack of focus on doctrine.”
They simultaneously brag about “good sermons on doctrine” as a success and list “lack of focus on doctrine” as a barrier. Make it make sense.
When your primary preaching emphasis is proving that certain Old Covenant shadows (Sabbath, Holy Days, dietary laws, etc.) are still binding requirements rather than fulfilled in Christ, you tend to produce speakers who are very good at proof-texting and not necessarily good at actual Spirit-empowered communication. Training people to preach the freedom of the gospel takes a back seat to training them to defend the system. The New Covenant doesn’t need an endless supply of lawyers arguing about which parts of the law still apply. It needs witnesses who know the power of grace.
Resistance, Grudges, and Organizational Paralysis“Unresolved issues from the past.”“Resistance to change internally.”“Reticence to collaborate.”“Ineffective internal processes.”“Lack of communicating improvements to stakeholders.”
This is the greatest hits album of what legalism produces. When your identity is wrapped up in “we have the truth” and that truth includes a heavy dose of Old Covenant observances and a particular view of church government, change feels like betrayal. Collaboration with outsiders feels dangerous. Past splits and hurts (and this group has plenty of both) never get truly resolved because grace and genuine reconciliation threaten the narrative.
You end up with a church that can’t adapt, can’t communicate clearly, and can’t let go of old offenses. That’s not a failure of implementation. That’s what happens when you prefer the ministry of condemnation to the ministry of the Spirit.
The practical stuff nobody wants to admit:
"Ministers not knowing where resources are (disorganized list).”“Distinctions/time management, lack of willingness to commit.”“Misconceptions about Church finances.”“Older men not conversant with technology.”
An aging leadership base that struggles with basic technology while younger people quietly check out? Classic symptom of a movement more focused on preserving a 20th-century restorationist system than on being a living, Spirit-led body in the 21st century. Disorganized resources and finance confusion? That’s what you get when transparency takes a back seat to centralized control. People sense the opacity and fill in the blanks with suspicion. “Misconceptions” usually means “people are asking questions we don’t want to answer clearly.”
All of these barriers flow from the same source: refusing to fully live under the New Covenant.
The New Covenant isn’t just “the Old Covenant with better promises.” It’s fundamentally different. The law written on stone is replaced by the Spirit writing on hearts. The old priesthood is replaced by the priesthood of all believers. Condemnation is replaced by grace. Shadow is replaced by Substance. Control and suspicion are replaced by love, trust, and freedom.
When a church keeps trying to mix the two — insisting the ceremonial and governmental shadows are still binding while claiming to follow Jesus — it produces exactly this kind of dysfunction: exhausted leaders, distrustful members, resistance to change, unresolved conflicts, and practical incompetence dressed up as doctrinal faithfulness.
The UCG’s own barrier list is an unintentional confession. They want the fruit of the New Covenant (respect, love, reconciliation, effective ministry) while refusing to let go of the Old Covenant operating system that makes those things nearly impossible.
It’s almost impressive how consistent the results are across groups that take this approach. The barriers aren’t coming from outside enemies or “the end times.” They’re coming from inside the system they’ve chosen to maintain.
Maybe one day they’ll stop trying to patch the old wineskin and just embrace the new one Christ actually gave us. Until then, the list of barriers will keep growing — and the irony will remain delicious.
3 comments:
Here we go again! Ministers pretending they are on the outside looking in, seeking to embarrass the church. They are the ones that are poor preachers and never inspire anyone.
The biggest problem all ACOG groups have is they're weighted down with the rotting corpse of Hebert W Armstrong. The man was a corrupt, evil, false prophet from the word go. There can never be a way to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear Herbert left behind. The system was morally and spiritually bankrupt from the very beginning. The smart thing to do would be to admit the truth and walk away from this train wreck, but these Armstrong lifers are too vain and stubborn to do so. So they will keep plugging away until the last man dies.
When has church leadership ever respected us as members? It is the "good old boys" network always looking out for themselves first and foremost. Look at how little change there really is with the men at the top. They never leave and assert their power over every decision.
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