Editorial


JAMES E. COSSEY EDITOR IN CHIEF


A PRAYER 73 FOR THErd


THE CHURCH OF GOD IS A MOVEMENT IN TRANSITION. ISN’T THAT WHAT THE TERM MOVEMENT IMPLIES? MOVEMENTS ARE NOT STATIC. CHANGE IS INEVITABLE.


GENERAL ASSEMBLY


T WAS A BITTERSWEET morning as the children of Israel met in front of the ruins of Solomon’s Temple. On the one hand, they were delighted to be home. Seventy years earlier, they had been dragged away captive to a strange land. On the other hand, they had returned to find their once-glorious temple in ruins.


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This was history’s most magnificent place of worship. It took 183,000 work- ers 7 years to build, and it was deco- rated with 600,000 pounds of silver and 560,000 pounds of gold. But all that remained was a heap of rubble. Ezra 3:12 says that while the younger people shout- ed for joy at the promise of the temple’s reconstruction, the older men wept with a loud voice when they remembered how it was during the days of the temple’s “first glory.”


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As we approach the 73rd Internation- al General Assembly, the Church of God is a movement in transition. Isn’t that what the term movement implies? Move- ments are not static. Change is inevita- ble. The realities of today’s economy and denominational realignment mandate change. Properly managed, transition is a natural, healthy progression. Allow me to be transparent. I began ministry as a teenager in 1965. That was an eventful year! Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music were the popular flicks; the Rolling Stones recorded “Satisfaction,” and Willie Mays hit his 512th homerun. A loaf of bread cost 31 cents then, and a new car could be bought for $2,650. What a year! And if 1965 ever returns, I will be ready! This, however, is 2010. Julie Andrews


(Mary Poppins) will soon be 75, baseball stars are now screened for illegal drugs, and a well-equipped Chevy Impala will set you back almost $30,000! Our parents in the ’60s thought our music was straight from the bottomless pit, but today’s lyrics make those seem like a kindergartner’s tune! Everything has changed. What about the church? Now in my fourth decade of ministry, I see it much like Ezra did some 2,500 years ago. I see some folks weeping over what used to be, and others shouting over new possibili- ties. The more things change, the more they stay the same! Today’s vernacular says we must accept a new paradigm. Our Lord says “new wine” cannot be contained in “old wineskins” (Matthew 9:17). It seems that both are saying the same thing.


The message has not changed; it is immutable. But transition is a fact of life in any movement. Some will mourn the past; others will shout over the future. That is normal. Unity comes when those who are shouting learn to weep with those who weep, and those who are weeping learn to shout over new possibil- ities (see Romans 12:15). An unchanged message of divine transformation passed to the next generation—even with struc- tural and/or stylistic differences—is a torch-pass worth celebrating! When the exiles returned to Jeru- salem, the weepers and the shouters blended together so harmoniously that “the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping” (Ezra 3:13 NKJV). That is unity; unity with diversity. That is what I pray for at this General Assembly.


EVANGEL • JULY 2010 3


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