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THE PHENOMENON Called Church of God

Acts-celerate Owner Posts: 6957 **7/20/12 1:47 am**

Face-To-Face With Decline

For nearly 110 years, wonderful things have continuously happened in the COG. Every day, Church of God ministers and members have awakened to honor the Lord Jesus with their love, prayer, praise and testimony of His goodness.

In more than 120 nations around the world, in a list of languages many times longer than were represented on the Day of Pentecost, our ministers and members preach and pray and do all they possibly can, sometimes in dangerous circumstances and at great personal sacrifice, to do their very best in preaching, teaching, praying, singing praises to God and encouraging the hopeless, helpless and hapless around them.

Millions are either in heaven now or are headed in that direction because a COG minister or member told them about the love of Christ and prayed with them to accept Him as their Lord and Savior.

50 EXTRA YEARS

The incredible impact of the Church of God was brought home to me when I once conducted the funeral of an elderly woman. Her grand daughter attended our church but I had never met the grandmother prior to the funeral. In her young years and long before anti-biotics, she had been sent home by doctors to die from what was then called “The consumption.” Mucus from unstoppable infection spread throughout the body until the person couldn't breathe. It was a horrible way to die.

THIS WOMAN'S FAMILY had heard of a Church of God preacher who lived in that small town. They sent for him and he came immediately still in his dusty bib-overalls from where he had been plowing a field with a mule. He came to their home, got down on his knees by the dying woman's bed and with tears beseeched the Lord to heal her. He got up and went back to plowing but by the next morning she was sitting up in bed and asked for food.

When I preached her funeral, she was around 70 years old and had lived an EXTRA 50 years because a Church of God preacher had prayed. It's understood that when we talk about our organization's impact in the world, we may think of buildings, large crowds at some official meetings or even the millions our church now receives in income each year from thousands of local churches. But our most important impact is still how God uses our people who reach out in compassion to the lost and the least.

We used to sing:
“To be used of God, to preach to sing to pray.
To be used of God to show someone the way.
I long so much to feel the touch of His consuming fire.
To be used of God, that's my desire.”

NOBODIES FROM NOWHERE WITH NOTHING

From a group of about 10 mountain folk in 1903 who were meeting in the most humble of ramshackle mountain cabins, considered by the world to be “Nobodies from nowhere with nothing,” has risen an international fellowship of faith and fire that is a strong voice for Christ around the world.

Incredibly, under the leadership of an Indiana man from a Quaker family, a man who prayed and raised missions money so he and his new wife Mary could be missionaries to Appalachia, A. J. Tomlinson, selling Bibles door-to-door from a horse and buggy to supplement his income, inspired that tiny handful of 10 forward to become one of the most phenomenal church growth stories in American history.

WITHOUT, radio, television, telephone, internet, or even the basics of electricity, indoor plumbing and not one hard-surfaced road within 500 miles, that poverty-stricken group of 10, mostly riding mules or walking, surged in 20 years to around 20,000 members by 1923.

One thing that had a dramatic effect on that growth surge was an unparalleled and to them, massive change. Had there not been the courage for that dramatic change, possibly none of us would have ever heard of the Church of God and those millions now in heaven from it's ministries, may not have heard of Christ.

In 1904, A. J. Tomlinson ( The "A. J." stands for Ambrose Jessup ) had moved the 60 miles from backwoods and isolated Cherokee County, NC where our Church began, to Cleveland, TN which was the nearest railroad station. If the new organization was to survive, bold and decisive action had to be taken. It had to get near transportation and factories where people could work which would give the new organization a financial base.

Today, 60 miles can be done in an hour or less by car but in 1904, traveling 10 or 15 miles on foot in a day was viewed as making excellent time. With women and children along for the trip, the journey out of the famine-seized hill country of Western North Carolina to Cleveland, may have taken a week with the need to camp nightly along the trail.

Surrounded by nearly total darkness and the night sounds of the deep forest, they gathered around their camp fires and probably sang hymns and talked hopefully about the future. No doubt there was trepidation and uncertainty in leaving the mountains that were so familiar to them, but they knew they had to move forward.

Somewhere in my files is a tape with a recording of an interview with A. J. Tomlinson in 1943 a few months before he died. He was asked, “Bishop Tomlinson, back in those early days when our Church began, were you aware that what the Church was doing then would someday reach around the world?”

I expected to hear how God had shined such great light on their pathway until they rose up in courage and power to reach around the world. Surprisingly, Tomlinson gave one of the most humble answers possible. He said, “Back then we weren't sure we could reach the neighborhood but we had to try.”

So, even in it's earliest days, major new changes had to be made if our Church was to survive. Change didn't hinder the Church of God. Change gave it life and made it stronger as leadership then was actively looking for new ways to be more effective. To continue where they were and how they were, could have meant certain death for the tender new organization.

MAN, MOVEMENT, MONUMENT

Religious history seems to reveal an established pattern for church organizations. Whether it's Martin Luther and the Lutherans, John Wesley and the Methodists, George Mason and the Church of God in Christ or A. J. Tomlinson and the Church of God & Church of God of Prophecy, two organizations he helped start, seem to go through three basic stages; Man, Movement, Monument.

The same could also be said for secular endeavors such as Thomas Edison and Con-Edison, Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company, Steve Jobs and Apple, Bill Gates and Microsoft etc.

KEEPING THE “MOVE” IN MOVEMENT

The dynamic and sometimes almost Herculean efforts of a powerful individual, helps create the inertia that can launch an organization forward until it becomes a “Movement.” But unless that Movement can adjust to the times and actively seek out new ways to reach each new generation, it begins to decline until it becomes mostly a “Monument” to what used to be and what could have been.

Keeping the “Move” in Movement becomes a war, the clashing of ideas and the overwhelming, gut-wrenching natural resistance to break with the comfort of established and familiar traditions.

THE PRECIPICE

Amazingly, it is not until most such organizations go through a crisis WAKE-UP-CALL, the shocking realization they are standing on the precipice of decline, that alarms begin to go off. Some never do wake up and because they continue to do what they have always done in the way they have always done it, they slide quietly into decline like a stricken ship that slips under the waves and disappears from sight.

The Highway of History is littered with organizations that used to be leaders in their particular field but declined when the “Movement” stopped; Studebaker Cars, Packert Cars, Woolworths, Montgomery Wards, Singer Sewing Machines, Typewriter companies, Comp-USA, K-Mart, Sears, AOL, the Quakers, the Shaker Movement, Presbyterians etc.

Oh yes, some of these are still breathing but they can no longer be called a “Movement.” If they have not died completely, they have become Monuments to “the good ole days” when they soared above the rest.

THE PHENOMENON CALLED CHURCH OF GOD

FROM 1903 until the late 1970's, the Church of God with headquarters in Cleveland, TN., was absolutely one of the world's church growth phenomenons. Hated in some cases, often persecuted and slandered, comprised mostly of uneducated lower income factory and agricultural workers, nonetheless, there was such a strong identity with each other until at times, relationships with other members was as strong as family.

People hungry for that kind of fellowship and wanting to feel part of something special and dynamic, caused the organization to grow and grow. According to Gene D. Rice, who I think has been one of the most creative preachers in our Church, once said, "In the early years, Church growth was not a goal. It was a response."

Up Next: THE FIRST PERSON to sound the alarm that our Church of God “Movement” was slowing...

Continued in PART II[/size]
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