UCG General Conference of Elders Report on Inside United

Yesterday evening, UCG posted its report of the Sunday opening session of the General Conference of Elders for 2011 on Inside United: Realtime blog article “GCE Report: Sunday Afternoon”.

Gary Antion is filling the empty council seat, while Roy Holladay, Darris McNeely, Don Ward and Robin Webber will stay on the Council.

One interesting item is that Brian Shaw gave a presentation that UCG needs to cut through the media clutter and distinguish themselves and what they do.  This is a sharp contrast to recent discussions about the new About Us page on UCG’s new website layout, which appears to be rather bland and takes the edge off of certain distinctive COG doctrines rather than stating them in a manner that “distinguishes who we are”.

In my personal opinion, UCG is still struggling with how to present itself and its message.  On the one hand, there are sharp differences between COG theology and mainstream Christianity, yet there seems to be a very real desire to not overwhelm newcomers with too much too fast.

While it is admirable that people would give thought to such things, I would like to contrast this approach to that of Herbert W Armstrong (HWA).  People often complain that his methods would not work in today’s world, but I’m not so sure about that.  HWA was a salesman, after all, and he realized that if you are going up against the competition, you have to stand out.  You have to be different.  So, what did he do?  He highlighted those differences on the airwaves and in print.  What was the result?  The church grew!

This approach seemed to work in the early Church as well.  Peter and John went up to the Temple and proclaimed the Gospel from Solomon’s Porch.  They were boldly proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah.

It’s something to think about, at any rate.

0 Comments

  1. * UCG’s About Us text has not changed since at least 1997, except in 2005 when the History was added. Using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, this is amazing easy to verify.

    * As long as God allows us, we in UCG will continue to boldly highlight the differences between God’s teachings and man’s traditions, both on the airwaves and in print. Yes, both on the airwaves and in print.

  2. @clintporter: In that case, after all that effort to revamp the entire website, they are missing a golden opportunity to rectify past mistakes, don’t you think?

    For the record, they are not “ancient Hebrew Holy Day seasons”. That’s very misleading at best. They are God’s holy days. At very least, they could have called them “biblical holy days”. They are not just for the Hebrews.

    What company revamps their entire website and doesn’t have another look at rewording portions of their About Us page?

  3. @John D “[Who] revamps their entire website and doesn’t have another look at rewording portions of their About Us page?”

    That’s us, apparently. I apologize if this wording caused you offense. I agree it’s probably not the best wording, and I’ll talk to Aaron or Peter about it this week.