Norm Teigen on Christian Life Resources

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Why is Norman Teigen blogging about Christian Life Resources?

I am a member of a congregation in the Evangelical Lutheran Synod. The ELS lists Christian Life Resources on its web page which I take as an endorsement. I am not a spokesperson for my congregation or for my synod. I am writing my own opinions in my blog.

I see the Christian Life Resources as a self-perpetuating organization without any control from a responsible church body. Christian Life Resources endorses an organization called Church and Change.

A pastor in my synod was accused of false doctrine for his stated intention of attending the Church and Chanage conference. The objectee also, apparently, said that the Wisconsin Synod has a false doctrine in its synod in Church and Change.

My suggestion is for the ELS to put Christian Life Resources and Church and Change under the microscope and advise the membership of its results.

Posted by Norman Teigen at 6:25 PM 0 comments Links to this post



Christian Life Resources schedule in focus

The Church and Change Conference has made a big stir within the Wisconsin Synod. Christian Life Resources is endorsed by the synod, the ELS, of which I am a member, and I have previously written about this.

The Real Womens' Voices 2007 Conference is a political action conference. This conference "will combine cutting-edge, elections-oriented political activist training and advanced grassroots lobbying training on Capitol Hill. We know you have the passion to make a difference. Real Women's Voices 2007 will transform that zeal
into action with the practical nuts and bolts skills necessary to help pro-life candidates win. In this way, you as a woman activist can learn the practical skills to impact the 2008 elections for Life."

Attendees will learn how to be politically active in the secular realm, but they will continue to be vote-less when they return to their individual congregations.

The Alzheimer's Disease Workshop looks very interesting and worth-while.

The Christian Life Resources' National Convention is November 2-4. The host congregation is St. Paul's of Slinger WI. A visit to this congregation's web site indicates that worshippers may choose a traditional service or a contemporary service. The contemporary service is described:

"Our contemporary service features a blend of elements from historic Christian worship and modern music. The very "user-friendly" service features a single theme for the day. It offers opportunity for confession and forgiveness, for prayer, for a scriptural devotion, and for praise. In addition, electroinc media, such as Powerpoint and video, are included to add impact and meaning to the worship experience.

"Many of the services feature our full praise band called "The Breath of Life Band". It consists of guitars, keyboards, drums and vocalist(s). We pray this new worship opportunity will not only serve our members, but be a wonderful new door into the congregation for newcomers. Praise the Lord with us!"

On November 10th the WELS Prayer Institute Conference will be held in Sussex WI. "This conference offers information on prayer ministry. Featured speaker is WLS President Rev. Paul Wendland. Workshops include "Building your prayer team," "Training your people to pray", "Sample Pack of prayer ministry ideas in use today," information on intercessory prayer, prayer idea sharing, praying for our WELS synod as well as various ministries and leaders."

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Norm Teigen has made many good points about this group, which used to be WELS Lutherans for Life. We all know that Lutheran is a bad name for anything. The initial idea in starting WELS Lutherans for Life was to avoid the evil LCMS Lutherans in Lutherans for Life. Now the original WELS Lutherans for Life is pan-Christian and ecumenical to a fault.

CLR illustrates the problem with parachurch organizations. Synods are bad enough, but the semi-independent organizations can be a nightmare. CLR uses its WELS-ELS contacts to raise money and probably gets Thrivent funds, foundation money, and government grants. Who is really in charge?

Various ELS officials told me that Thoughts of Faith was not ELS. I asked, "Why were three ELS pastors commissioned for Thoughts of Faith at the ELS convention?"