new church life: march/april 2015
[email protected].)
In these talks he focused on the underlying ideas or “strategies” of
the General Church. These are not the strategic planning strategies the
Administration, Consistory and Board deal with, but the underlying attitudes
that form the Church. Principal among these guiding principles is that the
Church is always about love and charity.
The General Church came into being in response to perceived fatally
flawed strategies of the New Church in the 1880s, with a whole new set of
strategies.
Jeremy posed six questions “to help us make sense of what is happening in
the General Church today”:
1. What were the reasons why the General Church came into existence?
What were its founding strategies? Do we agree with them today?
2. What are the reasons behind, and the implications of, the General
Church focus on New Church education? Has this been a good strategy?
Is it still?
3. What has historically been the General Church view of the international
church? How has this changed over time? What is our current strategy
and what should it be?
4. How has the General Church approach to evangelization changed
overtime? What is our current strategy?
5. How have populations where the Church exists changed over the
past 100 years? What challenges do we face with young people and
membership? What new opportunities are opening up?
6. What is our strategy with marriage and gender issues? Wha t are the
challenges for conjugial love in different church populations?
The General Church grew directly out of the theoretical framework of the
Academy Movement within Convention, with two primary postulates:
1. The Writings are the Word and our supreme authority in matters of
doctrine.
2. The Christian Church has come to an end; we live in a post-Christian
society.
The emerging General Church strategy was “to promote the survival and
growth of the organized church in a resistant culture.”
There was opposition to these “Academy” ideas within Convention,
led by such men as the Rev. Thomas Worcester, a prominent New Church
clergyman in Boston. One of the first to articulate the ideas that later formed
the Academy Movement was the Rev. Richard de Charms, who wrote in the
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