Fly

Ummmm….I wouldn’t do that…..

:O

NOOOOOOOOO!  Oh my gosh, how did you respond?  Were they saying that because they thought you had changed or were they saying they still thought that.  Ouch!  I don’t know how I would handle it if they were being serious.  Would I agree with them?  Or just burst in to tears?  (I’m guessing you didn’t do the latter.) 

Now I am curious about the word that was used instead of jerk.  I hadn’t been keeping score, but now I will.  Two points for changing it.  I expect a negative point for using “wanker”.  It means the same thing as jerk but it just might shock someone as jerk is more common here in the states. 

Stunned, who is now thinking of changing her moniker to wanker

Just in case anyone’s keeping score….

“Voting with your feet” would be used in response to a question during a journey class about congregational participation in decision making. I would make the statement in a joking manner, but felt that I was serving prospective members by telling them the truth.

You telling me I’ve always been a jerk? 

Stunned, who prefers to think of herself as a wanker-ette

I don’t know if I was a good cgl. I worked really hard and I tried (as did Carole), but it’s hard to evaluate at this point.

Now that we’re gone and have this blog (although the blog may not have anything to do with it), the general consensus is that I was always a jerk.

that’s interesting…what biblical reason did they give for CGLs then, if not slapping the deacon title on? Because if they’re not elders, and they’re not deacons, are they *gasp*… an unbiblical office created solely from the imagination of the leadership team?! No, that can’t be…

In St. Pete they were definitely not an extension of pastoral care, but an extension of pastoral medling. Ok, before I get in trouble, lemme esplain’…by “medling” I mean that any and everything that I said which I thought was in confidence to a CGL was immediately reported upstairs. And frankly, where I was in my life at the time, there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t have told to “the guys”, and they would swear up and down this is to “care for people’s souls”. But if you have all sorts of private info on people in your church without the relationship to justify knowing it, that’s medling IMO. It’s one thing if I’m commiting an unrepentant sin that needs to be brought before the church, but it’s quite another if I’m being spied upon.

The amount of “care” I received from the care group leaders during my entire tenure at SGM was minimal at best. Most of them in St. Pete couldn’t care their way out of a paper bag. Actually, the most care I ever received from a CGL wasn’t even from my a guy in my church…there’s a guy named Jose in Miami (I’m sure you know him, Jim) who actually cares for people and actually holds his pastors accountable from what I see. And getting to know you Jim, I’m sure you were that way too…but guys like you were extremely rare in my SGM experience.

Well, I should pay attention here in class….I’m in contracts, and I love 4 out of my 5 classes, but contracts is painful.

We were never defined as deacons in Titusville.

I knew a guy whose main issue before becoming a member was the lack of elders (we had a sr p and a very young intern at the time). He told me that his concerns were satisfied when he realized that the cgl’s were elders. I have no idea where he got this idea, because I don’t know of anyone who would communicate this to him. It was probably a case of your “casual observer” comment. I told him directly that we were not elders, but were “an extention of pastoral ministry” (from “why Small Groups”).

My experiance was different than yours, as our primary responsabilty was to provide care. “Tim can’t be everywhere at once, so I’m here on his behalf”. I understand how funny that sounds.

If our primary purpose was to be an “official spy” I was unaware of it. We could certainly be used for that purpose, as everyone knew that if he asked, the sr p would “be in the loop” on anything that was going on.

Most of us would send a summary of the cg meeting to the sr p, including any prayer requests or life issues that people had shared-sick relative, etc. I would include a “quote of the week” or something along those lines, if anyone shared anything paticularly insightful. This was to give the sr p a chance to commend the person if he wanted to.

There may be a standardized report form in place now, as I know that some sgm churches employ these, but we didn’t have one when I was a cgl.

This statement…

“They have no authority or ability to hold the pastors accountable in any way, and do not influence the direction or teaching of the church at all, with the possible exception of men who are being “tested” for pastoral ministry.”

…is 100% correct, and played a major part in my leaving the church. The concept of pastors only being accountable to other pastors who live an hour away is not only unbiblical, but laughable.

SGM would define care group leaders as deacons. You won’t find this anywhere (to my knowledge) in any polity statements the group makes, but at least in FL the pastors will tell you this if asked directly. Why isn’t this communicated through mass media channels? My guess is that they are well aware of the fact, and are perhaps embarassed by it, that what they have CGLs do doesn’t even come close to resembling the role that the Bible describes for deacons. At least in my experience, the main function CGLs have is keeping tabs on everybody for the pastors…kinda like official spies…and enforcing and reinforcing pastoral decrees and messages. I think too that they purposely don’t publicly define them as deacons so as to give the casual observer the impression that CGLs comprise a board of elders, which they decidedly do not. They have no authority or ability to hold the pastors accountable in any way, and do not influence the direction or teaching of the church at all, with the possible exception of men who are being “tested” for pastoral ministry.   

Then there are all the bjillion (ok, 100+) care group leaders and ministry team leaders.  Would SGM include these men (yes, men only) among the elders? Is there ever a time when these men can speak into a pastor’s life or reason together about how to spend money or how to reach the lost or how to care for the widows and orphans in their midst?

So, in the ideal world, in the ideal church, in order to best fit the scriptural principles outlined above, who are the elders? are they selected or elected? male and female? 

Mac

I remember that, too.  In Fairfax, before that church became part of PDI, we had two well-loved and well-respected Elders to support our Pastor.  When Brent came in, the Elders were forced out.  They eventually disappeared from the church, no explanations.