The F Word

The Epic Fail Pastors Conference

You have to wonder looking at this site what would have happened if the Worldwide Church of God had been courageously humble and had held conferences like this for the ministry instead of the heavy handed "edicts from above" conferences the Church was known for.   What if our ministers had had a chance to get together and share stories of failures, heartache, disillusionment, anger and frustration?  Done in a safe environment where when it was over, no heavy hand would come raining down from above with vile punishments.  Where would we be today if such courageous things had happened?  Would we have 650 some splinter groups roaming the earth today?

You have to admit that there was no support for the ministry in the WCG.  We know this because there was no support for the members! Counseling and therapy was frowned upon as tools of Satan. Admitting failure was a sign of weakness and all men in Armstrongism were to be hyper-masculine and strong.  Can you imagine Rod Meredith, Dave Pack, Gerald Flurry, David Hulme, et al., ever doing such a thing?


 

You might be wondering: Should I participate in an event like this?

Yes. Yes, you should.

We are convinced this is significant enough that - regardless of your position, role, track record, past experience (or lack thereof), failures, wounds, gaffes, hurts, hiccups and screw-ups - you belong at a space like this. We have kept the price low ($89) because we know that ‘Super Pastors' don't always have a lot of money or resources or budgets to come to something like this.

We are dreaming of a place that is unique from other events. It's a risk, we know, but it is one we believe is worth taking (So what if it is an epic failure?). We long to have purposeful spaces to listen & share stories, not of our successes, but of our failures. Seeking to understand how God works through the failures. We'll be having our ‘experts on failure' share their stories and God's faithfulness.

In our time together:
We'll share stories.
We'll reflect and process.
We'll have space to just be.
We'll connect with other pastors and leaders who are experiencing the ache that we feel in ministry.
We'll pray. A lot.
We'll laugh (and probably cry).
And we'll take communion together - celebrating the work of Christ and how He is enough for us. Even failures like us.

We're not promising everything will be perfect or that you'll be impressed or blown away. We're not after that. We want to create a space where you can experience something deep within you that can't possibly happen simply by mere external circumstances.

To be honest, we're not exactly sure what will result from our time together - and we're okay with that. The last thing we want to do is over-program such a sacred space. We will facilitate a space where the Spirit can speak to us, affirm us, remind us of His no-strings-attached love - then we will get out of the way.  We anticipate that God may stir something in us - to begin to talk about our identity, our temptations to be important and powerful and charismatic and significant and notices and praised.

We anticipate it will be messy.
We're convinced that while nobody is talking about this stuff, somebody needs to.
Why not us?
Why not here?
Why not now?

 The Idea

The idea for this conference came from two sources: A blog post from J.R. Briggs, a pastor at Renew Community in Lansdale, Pa and the wildly popular site www.epicfail.com.
A few dangerous questions were asked:

• What if we offered a space that is gutsy, hopeful, courageously vulnerable for pastors to let go of the burden to be a Super Pastor?

• What if we could hold an event that was free from the thrills and frills of other pastors conferences?

• What if we came together as epic failures and sought not successful models or how-do's but instead celebrated faithfulness in ministry because of the reality of Jesus?

•What if we were reminded that we're not responsible for being ‘successful' in ministry, but we are responsible for being faithful to the calling that God has laid out for us - regardless of the outcome?

•What if we had a conference that was led not by famous pastors who are household names, but by scandalously ordinary ministers and leaders who are faithfully attempting to join with God - even in the midst of glaring obscurity and anonymity?


That post attracted more hits than any other post that J.R. had written in seven years. People from all over the world began contacting J.R. through the blog, email, phone and text messages saying, ‘I'm in! Where do I sign up?” We knew we had struck a nerve. We were on to something significant.
This excited us and freaked us out.

One can only dream of what could have been.

LCG Makes An Astounding Discovery: The Universe Is Full of Planets!!! Shocking, I Know!!!!!!

One of the banner headlines on their weekly email summery of LCG prophecy news was this headline:

The universe is full of planets!
For thousands of years, mankind has known the universe is full of stars. When the Hubble space-telescope was launched in 1990, scientists began to number the stars in our Milky Way galaxy alone at more than 100 billion. But the assumption, based on Hubble data, was that there were very few planets outside our own solar system. Now, NASA's new and more powerful Kepler space-telescope is sending back evidence of planets outside our solar system--thousands of them. Based on the newly arriving data, scientists now think that the galaxy has "at least" one planet per star and likely more. This means hundreds of billions of planets! One Harvard University astronomer commented, "We're awash in planets where 17 years ago we weren't even sure there were planets outside our solar system." An astronomer from San Diego State University wrote, "Nature must like to form planets because it's forming them in places that are kind of difficult to do." 

As Homer says:

Reading the above I bet you can guess where the story is headed.  That's right, you will be ruling over the worlds and planets!

Meredith goes on to write:

Then, on the night just before His death, Jesus promised the Apostles: "And I bestow upon you a kingdom, just as My Father bestowed one upon Me, that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Luke 22:29–30). If we believe that Jesus meant what He said, then we know that the Son of God specifically promised that "overcoming" Christians will join Him at His Second Coming in ruling over the cities and nations on this earth!

Notice these direct statements by Jesus, the Christ, as recorded in the book of Revelation: "And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations— 'He shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the potter's vessels shall be broken to pieces'—as I also have received from My Father" (Revelation 2:26–27). "To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne" (Revelation 3:21). Then note the prayer of the saints as recorded in Revelation 5:10, "[You] have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth."

As usual the part that stands out for Meredith and a lot of Armstrongites is this, "...shall RULE them with a rod of iron.  Armstrongism has taken great pleasure in stating that church members would be rulers over vast worlds and galaxies where they would rule with rods of iron.  It's like they are giddy with delight at the prospect of beating people into submission.  All I can say is that having seen many of these people in action and seen how their own lives are horrible messes, there is no way in hell I would want to live in a world they were ruling over!  I don't know which would be worse, being thrown in the lake of fire or suffering a thousands years under the heavy brutish hands of ruling Armstrongites!