UCG put out a blog article on Inside United: Realtime that wasn’t on the site last time I looked yesterday. In “Chairman and President Post More Detailed Explanations”, an announcement is made of two new papers.
One is a paper on “Was Proposing or Acting on the 2008 GCE Rescind Resolution a Breach of Ethics?” It shows how rescinding a previous decision is not unethical nor is it a violation of UCG’s bylaws. In fact, it has been used in the past. Technically, the proposed move to Denton, Texas even would be a “rescind” of the previous decision to move to Cincinnati in the first place.
I suppose that some feel that once a Church goes into a particular direction, it should never change its mind, as though the Church is now perfect and led by perfect leaders. Those with the one-rule government mindset certainly will believe that their particular flavor of pope should be infallible, just as the Catholic Church’s Pope is supposed to be.
However, United Church of God runs on the philosophy that “in a multitude of counselors there is safety”. What the critics of UCG will conveniently overlook time and time again is that this is a direct quote from the Bible, Pr 11;14 to be exact.
Sometimes it can be a messy affair because you don’t have one person running the entire show. That means you have to pray, fast and actually discuss things.
UCG also posted an explanation of “The Resolution to Rescind”. It points out how only half of the ministry supported the move to Texas. Obviously, it is unwise to undertake such a major project without a clear majority on board.
However, the paper also points out that God works things out in unexpected ways. With the “deteriorating financial situation” is something I’ve pointed out before. As the paper says, “What can be said is that the passing of the rescind resolution in 2008 enabled an unspent amount budgeted for the relocation to be used to avoid painful cuts in operations and personnel in the subsequent fiscal year. Did God see what we could not and saved us through the passage of both ballots?”
I think the answer is an obvious, “Yes.” God was guiding events even when the leadership was unaware of the outcome.
Rather than proof that UCG does not have the mythical “biblical governance” (lowercased because it is obvious the most vocal proponents of one-man rule are using a different “bible”), it is proof that God is working in UCG to save it from undue financial hardship.
It could even be that the dissention and disunity would have been much greater had the move taken place. It was rushed through, full of zeal but not well thought-out, and time has shown it would not have been wise. Not many things strain relationships greater than financial hardship. Financial hardship would have been a virtual certainty had the move taken place.
The question should be whether or not we trust the same God to take the organization forward in the direction He desires, in spite of ourselves.
That’s what happened in the time of the Judges, after all. No one man was the clear leader at any given time. In fact, at least 2 were contemporaries, and one was even a woman! However, it was the people who wanted to set up one man to rule over them. It is the same with some of these churches today. They want to reject Jesus Christ and set up a physical man to follow because of their idolatry of men.
Israel did not trust God to lead them. Neither do some that call themselves “Church of God”.
Yet how many times under the "one-man rule" of Herbert Armstrong did he change his mind about women wearing makeup, or having speaking clubs?
And we should remember God changes His instructions at times. First Moses was told to break a rock to obtain water. Then he was told to speak to it.
Trouble was, Moses followed the old instructions — and he paid a price for that.