With all the recent excitement over Calvin Robinson and WO, something has come to my attention: the existence of another Church of God related site that has been using my material. Back in the day (2000-2010) we could speak of an “Anglican Blogosphere” which was instrumental in forming the ACNA. The Church of God was a little late to the party but in the last years of the decade we had the “Missional Movement” which resulted in the “tithe on tithe” cuts that ended my career in the International Offices. We also had sites like Actscelerate, which contributed greatly to that event as well.
Since then most of our “voices” have migrated to social media, something which I’ve always been wary of since once you put something on social media it’s really theirs to copy and/or dispose of. But there are a few holdouts (like this one) in the open internet. In the past I’ve noted ourCOG, which not only has used my material but also had posted things that I’ve commented on. This post, with its strange title, is indicative of this place: cogleaks. So just what are these people leaking?
Let me state at the outset that the Church of God isn’t the most transparent organisation I’ve ever been associated with. It is centralised in a way that rivals Roman Catholicism, and has a long heritage of pastors being the “boss man” of their churches. (Their members, many of which worked in the mills, mines and factories that were a part of our once-great industrial base, were to a point congenial to that kind of hierarchy.) That ethic works up the “food chain” through the state offices to the International Office and the Executive Committee. The result of this is twofold. The first is that it engenders distrust between the “layers” of the system, something that was documented twenty years ago in the “Bowers Report,” and that distrust certainly hindered the efforts of my department–Lay Ministries–to disseminate and promote men’s ministries and personal evangelism. The second is that it encourages, intentionally or not, holding back information about the business of the church. Hence, anything that comes out is assumed to have been “leaked,” whether that be a fair characterisation or not.
It is in that context that we need to understand sites such as ourCOG and now cogleaks. The latter first posted in 2007, so it’s been out there for a long time. Most of the time it takes material from other places and reposts it. This site has been a source for a long time; the first “repost” from this site was in 2016. Many of the posts are without attribution of any kind, which (as I also pointed out to ourCOG) is a violation of the Terms and Conditions of this Website, Privacy Policy and Information About Endorsements. Nevertheless it tells me that this site has some admirers out there; considering the Church of God has never been the central focus of this site, that’s gratifying.
So what kind of site is cogleaks? Like this one and our COG, it’s a WordPress blog. It’s theme is like nothing else I’ve seen; it has a black background with green, fixed-pitch font Letter Gothic typeset. I think that’s supposed to mean that it comes from a very “dark web” type of source, but for someone who actually got work done with that kind of screen in front of him, in its own way it’s very cool and retro. The downside is that it’s hard to find anything on the site; there is no search box, no category list, no timeline list, nothing. I suppose that the author figures people will find this site via the search engines, but my experience here is that search engines are an on again, off again proposition. The articles come from a wide variety of sources and cover a wide variety of topics, most of which centre on our church’s hierarchy.
So who is behind this long-term effort? The posts themselves drop a few bread crumbs, and even though the site is technically anonymous there are two things which point to a possible author, or at least to where he or she comes from. The first is that many of the posts concern things in South Florida, so I’m thinking the person behind cogleaks is a South Floridian. That’s congenial for me because I’m one too and so is Travis Johnson, a major mover behind the “Missional Revolt” and currently embroiled in a dispute with a Lee University faculty member (who has brought charges of conduct unbecoming of a minister against him.) South Floridians are a unique bunch; whether it’s Glenn Greenwald or Travis or the webmaster of cogleaks or myself, we’re not much on “playing up” to the leadership.
The second thing can be seen in many of the posts on cogleaks but for me one thing stands out: the reposting of my 2015 piece What Working for the Church of God Taught Me About Race. I’ve reposted this on social media (and elsewhere) many times and the universal response from our church people is…crickets. The Scots-Irish “core” of this church–left, right and centre–doesn’t really want to deal with the issues I bring up in this post. This and other things lead me to believe that the person behind cogleaks is outside of this “core,” which would be a refreshing addition to our church’s conversation.
If there’s one thing that bothers me about cogleaks, it’s the “axe-grinding” I read on the site. That’s not unique to cogleaks, but I’ve tried to avoid that in my years online. Some would say that cogleaks’ anonymity makes that possible, but I’ve seen plenty of that with people who are quite open about who they are and were they’ve been. Generally speaking it’s indicative of a lack of due process (perceived or actual) in whatever system they’ve found themselves in, be that the Church of God, Catholic Charismatic covenant communities, or what not. A more open, transparent system would mute a great deal of that.
This year is going to be a crucial one for our church. We have three Executive Committee positions open and of course our ministers can certainly not nominate the other two. The last General Assembly saw a great deal of online organisation which drove our discussions. We have the shadowy “Atlanta Group” with their idea of who should run the church and how it should be done. (Declaration to same group: if you’re a successor to the “Think Younger” movement of the last decade, you need to take heed to what I told them back then in my post My Response to “Think Younger” and the Church of God General Assembly.) We are in a culture whose lurch to the left is not leaving us unaffected. Traditionally the doctrinal and practical homogeneity of our church has made many of our clashes personal disputes played out on a grand stage, but the possibility of the substantive issues being thrown in with personality clashes isn’t an encouraging one.
Our church needs “voices” who love our church (I do, but sometimes it drives me crazy) and who want to advance the mission that God put it on the earth to fulfil. Let us move forward to speak the truth in love, not just as an expression but as a reality. I welcome cogleaks as another one of those and hope to interact on a fruitful basis.
Positive Infinity 
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