Dear Bill:
I heard the announcement you made in Medina this past
Sabbath (11/1/2025) regarding your decision to depart ways with the Church of
God International and starting a new organization. In your announcement, you
made some comments on some of the reasons for the decision. Since your
statements were public, I’m making this an open response. It has already come
to our attention that some of the church members appear to be quite concerned
after hearing you say that the CGI Board of Directors issued three “ultimatums”
to you and the Medina church. I want to take a few moments to address this.
The letter wherein the three options were mentioned was
written by me and sent to other members of the Board of Directors the same day
I sent it to you (August 6, 2025). So they did not read what I wrote regarding
the three options before you did. And since I wrote it, I can tell you for
certain that it never occurred to me that the three options I mentioned might
have even remotely resembled “ultimatums.”
Bill, I was merely bringing up the options you already had. Those were options available to you whether I
mentioned them or not. I was certainly not issuing ultimatums or mandates or
demands of any kind; I was merely stating what was! I even began my statement
with “It seems to me….” That’s just not the way one issues an ultimatum!
Ultimatum is
defined as “a final demand or statement
of terms, the rejection of which will result in retaliation or a breakdown in
relations.”
With that definition in mind, let’s look at what I said.
Here’s the paragraph mentioning the three options:
It
seems to me that if our policies
mean anything at all, you have three paths you could take: 1) You could
do what any CGI elder “in good standing” is expected to do—abide by the
policies for elders and chartered churches. 2) You could request of the MC to reclassify you and the Medina
congregation as an “independent affiliate.” 3) You could simply declare your independence and go your way. [Emphasis
added.]
I
was referring to the fact that you are presently operating outside the parameters
of the policies set forth for chartered churches in our Manual for Field Churches. Since you are not in compliance with
these policies, you automatically (not by “decree” from me or the Board) have
the option of bringing yourself into compliance—i.e., correcting the situation.
But you can, if you so choose, declare your independence from the Church of God
International. That’s another option you already had before I mentioned it. And
finally, should your choice be independence from the Church of God
International, you have the option of requesting that the Ministerial Council give
you the “independent affiliate” classification. Again, all those options were
already there before I made mention of them. They were not ultimatums!
You
will note that I said, “It seems to me….” I put it like that because there may
be other options, but as best I can tell (i.e., “It seems to me”) the only
viable ones are the three mentioned here. Again, neither I, as Chairman of the
Board, nor the Board of Directors collectively were giving you or establishing
options; I was merely stating that these are options you have.
You will recall that in the email I sent to you on July 8,
2025, I asked you to clarify for me your intentions. This is what the options
are about. I was asking you for clarity on what you wanted to do. We exchanged emails and letters, but you never
answered the question. Finally you sent an email stating you would give me an
answer after the Feast. About two weeks after the Feast, you gave me only a
partial answer. You said that the Medina Board agreed to change the name. I
then told you that this presumably means that option #1 was ruled out. I then
asked you if the Board expressed a preference for one of the other two options,
and you never answered…until you announced it last Sabbath.
You also stated in your announcement that “the Medina Board had been led to believe…that
our name, Church of God International, Medina, could be used in
perpetuity. That is, without expiration nor any stipulations. However, the
Texas Board made it clear to us the last few months…that this was not true,
despite their written statement of affirmation awarding Medina to use their
name.”
This is another
misunderstanding. Here is the written statement of affirmation I sent to you on
July 1, 2024:
This is to affirm that the Board of Directors of the Church
of God International has, for the sole
purpose of the purchase of a building, approved the use of the name “Church
of God International, Medina” by the Medina, Ohio congregation of the Church of
God International. [Emphasis added.]
You can see that the affirmation I sent to you was not unconditional.
As I explained to you in an email (around August 20, 2025), the part in bold
allows us to withdraw approval should the Medina church go independent. Of
course it goes without saying that as long as you’re officially a Church of God
International congregation, we not only approve your use of the name, we prefer
and encourage it. The name-change requirement applies only if you decide you
want to operate independently of the Church of God International. That seems
like a reasonable requirement to me. It also seems to me that any group parting
ways with an organization would want
a different name so as to avoid confusion. However, I must add that if the
Medina Board had not agreed to the name change, we would have just left it
alone. It’s not something worth arguing over.
You also stated that there had been “years of…growing
tensions between the boards of Texas and Medina.” I was completely unaware of
any kind of “growing tensions” between these two boards; this is news to me.
The tensions I am aware of have been between you and the Board and/or home
office and have concerned primarily organizational and procedural matters. In
more recent times, the tensions have revolved around your non-compliance with
the policies established by the organization that issued your credentials and
paid your salary and expenses, though you once endorsed and upheld these
policies. I’ve gone over the specifics with you, and will not repeat them here.
In the end, we were unable to come to agreement on the matters I brought up to
you, and your recollection of history as it pertains to these matters is quite
different from my recollection or that of the Board of Directors or home-office
personnel.
Nevertheless, I would like to apologize to you on one
point—something I mentioned in my letter to you but would later realize was
inaccurate. You briefly mentioned it in your announcement but did not
elaborate. I had stated in my letter to you that your policy violations
included soliciting donations from outside your area by posting a “donation
tab” on your previous website. I had my “facts” wrong. It was not a donation
tab (like the one on your new website); it was this:
Our address for written correspondence and donations:
Church of God Intl, Medina
PO Box 1162
Medina, Ohio 44258
Please specify on check where you would like the donation
to go.
Example: Helping Hands, Tithe, Etc.
I would call the above (which was posted on the front page
of your old website) a policy violation, but I was in error when I referred to
it as a “donation tab.” So I apologize for that.
My initial email to you was for the purpose of getting
clarity on where you stood with us and what your intentions were going forward.
Follow up communications were for the same purpose and to openly and honestly
set before you the issues and concerns that have contributed to the tensions
between us and led us to the present situation. I initially believed the best
option for you would have been the first one of the three, but because of our
inability to come to terms on the issues and the history surrounding them, I have
to say, sadly, that your decision to part ways was probably best for all
parties concerned.
I wish you and the Medina brethren the best.
Sincerely,
Vance A. Stinson
