Grace Communion International has recently uploaded the following two interviews:
1. Paul Molnar talking about the importance of keeping Christ at the center of our thoughts about God.
2. Douglas Campbell talks about our participation with Christ and with each other in communion with God.
jasongoroncy.com 
I’ve got no dog in the hunt vis a vis Campbell (I don’t even know who he is), but more information on the Worldwide Church of God (which has changed its name to Grace Communion International, can be found here. The group still has an unelected hierarchy, with 100% control of both the finances (which are unaccounted for) and the doctrines (which are directly contradicted by the actual congregants of the church, some of whom are anecdotally reported as “holding fast to all things once delivered”, i.e., Armstrongism).
More information on Grace Communion International/Worldwide Church of God can be found on WordPress.
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That is very interesting Purple Hymnal. I do know Doug Campbell and have great respect for him. I have heard of the aforementioned church and recently met a guy who is part of the ‘new’ order there. I am interested that they are promoting theology like that of Doug’s but concerned about the ongoing structural issues that your link highlights and the apparent gap between the converted heirarchy and their congregants. Fascinating stuff. I should read further.
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Thanks, Bruce, it is good to hear from Christians who are willing to investigate further, instead of just assuming the church is “kosher” now (hahaha) just because they say (or think they say) what the evangelicals want to hear, which keeps the cult-watch groups off their backs.
In the meantime, there are members of Grace Communion International/the Worldwide Church of God (please bear in mind this is anecdotal hearsay, but I implicitly trust my sources’ allegations as being correct — I was born and raised in the Worldwide Church of God) who openly deny the trinity (which, as far as I understand it, is pretty much a deal-breaker for the whole professing Christianity game), who still keep the Sabbath and the “seven annual Sabbaths” (the church’s anti-Semitic version of the Jewish holy days), although they end up keeping those holy days with splinter groups who do “hold fast to the truth” — or they do it on their own, at home. (There is also one prominent commenter on most of the blogs that mention Grace Communion International/Worldwide Church of God, who unabashedly promotes Christian Identity on the Internet, on blogs such as these.) Congregations themselves are a mix between Sabbatarian or Sunday-keeping, or in a number of schizophrenic cases, both at the same time!
Another thing to keep in mind, is that the Sunday-keeping congregations, by and large, do NOT have either “Worldwide Church of God” NOR “Grace Communion International” in their names, so any average professing Christians walking into Sunday services at these Sunday-keeping congregations (some of which meet in buildings with crosses on them), have completely innocuous names like “Good News Christian Fellowship”, etc., and one pastor has even admitted to me that at least 1/4 of his congregations have no idea what “denomination” their church actually is, or what cultic practices the church they have now joined, still actively engages in.
So the average Christians may check out “the church on the corner” on any given Sunday, that looks friendly, welcoming, etcetera, and the whitewashing (in the continental US; other areas of the world are more circumspect) is complete enough to the point that they may get sucked in, and end up giving the church their money. Which is where the crux of the problem lies.
According to a current pastor with “the denomination”, 15% of all “donations” go directly to Glendora, California, with zero financial accountability. Some members do still tithe religiously, even though it isn’t required — church service sheets indicate they take up far more “special offerings” than they used to, however — this is likely to offset the lack of revenue from the non-observance of “the seven annual sabbaths”, each of which required a special offering (money). The church has 900 congregations, which follows this 15%-of-all-donations-directly-to-the-denomination-with-no-accountability-whatsoever policy strictly.
For more information on the regime change that really wasn’t, I also refer the discerning reader to Ambassador Reports, which follows the splinter groups as well, and there is a lot of historical information (as well as tons of info on the major splinter groups) over at the Ambassador Watch archives. The scanned copies of the postal magazine, Ambassador Reports (no relation to the blog linked previously), also sheds a lot of light, on both the WCG, and the hypocrisy of the “new” leadership’s not-so-transformed-after-all sea change. Scroll halfway down the page, with the links starting circa 1986.
Joseph Tkach Jr thought the 2008 name change of “the denomination” would make all his troubles (and the church’s abusiveness) just mysteriously vanish — but it has made bloggers like myself, and the others I have mentioned, even more insistent in raising the alarm bells, that this is a group that must be avoided, even though they speak all the right Christian theology.
It is quite likely that a fairly significant portion of the membership still doesn’t believe in the new theology, even though it’s almost two decades since the changes; that’s if they can even understand the new theology at all. Church leadership often sounds, in their videos and blogs, as if they have absolutely no clue what they’re talking about; it sounds as though they are just saying what the Christians told them is “the right thing” to say, and is usually less-than-coherent.
Thanks for letting me provide this information. Any congregation affiliated with Grace Communion International (ou may have to either look up the congregation on the GCI’s website, or press the pastor insistently, to find out if they are), is to be avoided at all costs. There are just too many red flags, and way too many still-unanswered questions.
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