You actually taught ”
“Around here, you vote with your feet”.

How did they let you get away with that?

I’ve shed some tears over SGM…for myself and for those who have become more hard hearted than when I first knew them…

‘The mere fact that a church or ministry fits into a business model so easily, is disturbing.’
It is disturbing, and it is beyond my comprehension WHY in the world someone like Dever or Duncan don’t get that SGM has become nothing else than a mainstream business-church-model on doctrinal steroids.

Throughout the NT where we are instructed to “obey” leadership the term used is a plural vs. singular.  I am not aware of passages that say to submit to your leader (singlular).  Of course even the Greek work that is  translated “obey” has a different meaning then what what one would assume with the word “obey.” 

Ironically early  (late 1970′s) in SGM’s history, the leadership of what was called Gathering of Believers (later to become Covenant Life Church) indicated that they felt there should be no senior position.  I remember Mahaney saying that they felt that there should not be one senior position but rather an equal group of men. 

Later the group departed from this belief.  Tomczak originally was the Sr. Pastor of CLC and then later Mahaney became the Sr. Pastor. 

Does anyone know if CLC/SGM has ever explained their change in actions on what they said they believed at one time?

Very well said.  Right on the nail.

Perhaps this is an oversimplification;

Any business exist for its customers.  A company that forgets that will soon die.  I think that Enron is a good, albeit catastrophic example, where a chosen few had the positions, and power, to exercise a form of self preservation that left the rest of it’s membership out in the cold.

In the SGM model, the person is secondary, as the primary purpose seems to be the growth and health of the institution.  This, in turn, ensures the position and status of those chosen to lead, own, and operate.  (I would agree that the polity is the root.)

The mere fact that a church or ministry fits into a business model so easily, is disturbing.  Add to that the Polity document, which at best is a square peg trying to fit into the round hole of scripture, (perhaps also trying to convince us that the hole is, nor ever really was round), and you have a catastrophe waiting to happen.

I too have heard the statement, “People vote with  their feet.”  Seems that this is a nice way of saying “We won’t change, if you don’t like our terms, find someone else”

To me this is so far off from the self sacrificing example of our savior it makes me want to cry. 

yes indeed;) My hyperbole came back like a boomerang… glad you the point though: what SGM works on is a business model geared for effectiveness, similar to a franchise company, couched in terms from the buffet of church building pragmatism, conservative evangelicalism and out-of-context biblicism.

Famagusta, I hear what you’re saying, but I have to say you are being much too generous to SGM by saying that “to every business manager used to suburban economical structures in America, the SGM model would sound just perfect.”  From some of the things I know/knew, if anyone ran my business like SGM is run, I would fire their butts so quickly.  They THINK they run things efficiently and like big business, but if they had to run on efficienct business the company wouldn’t last long.  I was time and again shocked at the inept business practices and decisions I saw carried out.  If these same poor decisions would have been applied to a business it would have folded quickly.  Fortunately in many ways it is a good ministry, helps many people and teaches tithing.

You said in your post: “My first thought would be that since this statement is “only introductory”, perhaps 4 1/2 years after the publication of this introduction, it might be a good time for SGM to further define their form of government. But I digress…”

You couldn’t digress enough about this, because technically TAG/People of Destiny/PDI/SGM has had three decades to work on this one.

Keep digressing…

…pk

“to every business manager used to suburban economical structures in America, the SGM model would sound just perfect.”

…Except that even corporations have boards of directors voted in by the shareholders. The point is well taken, though.

That, though, does not change the strange fact that SGM, in many ways, is only thinkeable as an American organisations: as I have pointed out above, the business-leader-market-based model of polity would not only have been unthinkeable to the Reformers SGM claims to stand upon, it is also unthinkeable in denominations that have endured the tests of time.

Efficiency, not faithfulness, is what dictates SGM’s practice on this issue, however little they are aware of it, and however decoratively they use biblical terms.

Ain’t that the truth!

Keep,

I’ve noticed the democracy thing as well.  We would never allow our government to tell us where to live, how to pray, not to have prayer meetings without supervision, take our money and not give us a say in how it is handled (oh wait, that’s the IRS).  We wouldn’t tolerate being told we can’t hold a job if we’re women, we can’t use our gifts if we’re women, we can’t speak to an official with our opinion on how he is running things, and we certainly would vote that official out of office if we felt he was inept!  Man, this could go on and on.  Yet, we willingly give all this up and more when we sign a membership form from SGM or any other authoritarian church.  We submit to men our dearest freedoms in Christ.

In PDI, there was no America outside our church walls.  During the first gulf war, we arrived at our HG leader’s house a little early and watched the news with a few others.  There was a reporter on who wore a helmet.  At one point he ducked because he heard bombing.  My HG leader shook his head as though the whole thing was pathetic, and turned off the TV.  Yet, that war effected all of us!  So yes, Keep, what you said is right on:

This SGM system, which concentrates total leadership authority in a few, self-chosen people, is totally against the American expression of representative democracy…

This SGM system, which concentrates total leadership authority in a few, self-chosen people, is totally against the American expression of representative democracy, or the New England tradition of direct, town-meeting democracy. But then, SGM has always been rather proud of its churches not being democracies. Back in the 80s – when Christianity Today ran an article that attempted to link PDI with the Dominion Theology of Rushdoony et al – CLC pastors never noted American patriotic holidays as anything worthy of discussion from the pulpit. There were never any teachings that discussed the Christian roots of America – certainly none that described how American civil government was influenced by English-Puritan attempts to restrain the monarch (who “stood in the very stead of God,” remember) and unelected officials. When the CLC building was opened in 1993, there was no American flag on the platform. (Is there one, in 2008?)

“Around here, you vote with your feet”.

This really nails the issue, which is the church version of what the colonists faced in the 1770s. When trusted leaders become leaders who no longer accept or accommodate outside input or counsel – particularly from others who have better first-hand experience with issues under discussion – then leadership tends toward tyranny.

SGM churches are set up, from the start, as an organization that self-selects its leaders, and limits church leadership to those leaders. I would guess that the typical SGM church has no, or very few, all-members meetings at which issues can be aired/discussed. I’m sure I can say no SGM church allows all-member voting on issues! So from the outset, there is an inordinant amount of trust that members must extend to leaders, and very few avenues of discussion available – certainly no church-sanctioned public avenues of discussion.

Perhaps this was done at the beginning because of the Shepherding Movement, or perhaps because of the desire to circumvent the tendency in American churches to have paralysis-by-committee, and having leaders held hostage to laity control (often unconverted lay members, in particular). But the system they set up concentrates power solely in a few people, and there is no way to work within their system to challenge those few people from outside their own leadership circle.

I really wonder how clearly any of this is explained in the prospective-members classes. I would think many people would go elsewhere, if they were told clearly that they truly would have no means to speak into the system, no means of voting or changing direction of the church, no means of determining/assessing the uses to which tithes and offerings are put, no means of becoming a “leader” other than as a pastor, and no means (again, outside of the leadership) to eject an abusive leader.

As others have pointed out, SGM’s own emphasis on the supposed ongoing corruption of the fallen nature itself argues against establishing such a system, and against that system’s chance of success.

Their model could be applied, in many ways, to any other sect or esoteric program, and to many branches of businesses and franchises without having to be changed much at all. That limits their witness to the world to mere words out of their mouths, and forsakes the calling to live together in a way that is odd according to the world: to every business manager used to suburban economical structures in America, the SGM model would sound just perfect.

I see what you are saying, and I do agree.  My question refers to the quenching of the Holy Spirit that I saw in leadership at PDI/SGM.  The whole problem even in having a few leaders was that, if we felt one way about a personal decision and they felt another, we were not supported.  God does speak to the individual.  In discussing church government, we have to protect that freedom.  I think it is also important that the Body is allowed to pray over and make decisions with the Elders on certain matters.  Also, if Christ is the Head of the the church, then those who are Elders should be hearing Him, correct?  There is a way for the Body to be unified on even difficult decisions if all members are taught to seek God’s heart on the matter.  This is unity.  In SGM, decisions that were large, involving great financial commitment on the part of its members, were made by only one or two men.  Certainly there has to be a balance, a seeking of the Holy Spirit by the whole group so that all may be in unity.  In teaching plurality of Elders, we have to also protect our individual freedom in Christ.  Many of us gave up that freedom in SGM, and will never do that again.

Just some thoughts.  Sorry to interrupt the flow.  Carry on!