ICHABOD, THE GLORY HAS DEPARTED - explores the Age of Apostasy, predicted in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, to attack Objective Faithless Justification, Church Growth Clowns, and their ringmasters. The antidote to these poisons is trusting the efficacious Word in the Means of Grace. John 16:8. Isaiah 55:8ff. Romans 10. Most readers are WELS, LCMS, ELS, or ELCA. This blog also covers the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Left-wing, National Council of Churches denominations.
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Sunday, July 8, 2007
Is Everything Church Growth?
An anonymous person has asked if everything is Church Growth. The same person seems to favor CCM, sometimes called Charismatic Church Music.
Two trends are happening at the same time. ELCA has led the way in working with Roman Catholics. My favorite ELCA photo is one with a Roman Catholic priest who was sharing a building with a very attractive ELCA female pastor. He was beaming at the prospects of the working relationship. The LCA, then ELCA pursued the Church of Rome, only to be declared defective by the Antichrist.
The ELS had its Lutheran/Roman Catholic religious service at Bethany, Mankato. WELS had its lectureship by priests and Archbishop Weakland at Wisconsin Lutheran College. Weakland, in deep trouble for pursuing a young man, was quoted as saying children initiated sex with adults. Rome could not wait to dump him, but WELS said, "Now there is the keynote speaker we need!" Damage Central later claimed that he only spoke at a private luncheon at WLC. Ha. The college heavily promoted this as a community-wide event. I had the brochure at one time. Several priests were also on the schedule.
In the next 20 years a surprising number of Lutheran-trained pastors will either be Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. One mini-micro bishop is already calling himself The Right Reverend So-and-So.
WELS is the most heavily invested in Church Growth. They are so besotted with Fuller doctrine that no clergy can escape being injected with all the marketing hooplah of the Devil's Playground. Some of this has slopped over into the ELS.
Missouri and ELCA have their Church Growth factions and those who resist Fuller Seminary.
Lutherans ought to learn their own confessional hymns before they start aping the Evangelical/Pentecostal wing of Christianity. Mequon and Bethany both celebrated Paul Gerhardt recently, but both seminaries spit on his memory with their adoration of unionistic doctrine, compromise with the Reformed. Gerhardt paid a heavy price for refusal to go along with any form of union.
Starbuck's
- Facing the Awful Truth
From time to time I order a mocha at Starbuck's (Barnes and Noble) while checking on some new book titles. They used to ask, "Do you want whipped cream?" Several times I have answered with a smile, "That is not whipped cream. That is white stuff." They had to agree each time. Now they do not ask me.
Today I was drinking a mocha straight up when I heard the manager ask a customer, "Do you want whipped topping?" I thought, "Finally, truth in packaging."
This morning I learned that Reddi-Whip was originally owned by the Capone gang. It was the first aerosol food product. I have similar feelings about Reddi-Whip, coffee creamers that make my stomach flip, and margarine slopped on the table as "butter." More than once I have said, "I ordered real butter." More than one young waitress has has shot back, "That is butter." Butter glistens with little specks of water, but margarine has the complexion of Glidden paint: plastic, solid, deadly. Someday people will realize that the factory oil industry (shortening, margarine, etc.) was a massive and dangerous fraud.
All this is directly related to the fake Lutheran doctrine that has been marketed for the last three decades or so. Every step has taken various Lutheran bodies farther away from their confessional roots. Now they are so lost that the apostate leaders act with impugnity while insulting the intelligence and faith of their members.
I wonder how proud the founders of the ELS would be to realize that the entire Bethany Lutheran Seminary faculty marched in a religious procession with a Roman Catholic ex-bishop. Apparently Erling Teigen arranged this disgusting display. The local newspaper bragged about the ex-bishop's creditentials but the Bethany yearbook hid them. At the time, Rolf Preus (briefly in the ELS) announced, "Erling doesn't have an ecumenical bone in his body, and Greg Jackson knows it."
I always wonder how these ELS pastors mind-read from a distance. This must be a power given to them when they enter the sacred precincts of Rivendell. Rolf was able to discern my brain-waves from a distance and report them infallibly on SpenerQuest. Did Erling defend Rolf so publicly? I must have missed that pronouncement.
The brave ELS leaders went into damage-control mode, a skill they have improved through practice. The ex-bishop was married, as if that made him a Lutheran. He was no longer a bishop. Was he no longer a Roman Catholic? As any student of Roman doctrine knows, the bishop could repent, dump his wife, and become an active priest again. The priesthood is an indelible character - a priest forever.
I had a reliable witness at that tragic service at Bethany. The seminary faculty marched in with the ex-bishop. The service was religious, dedicating the Ylvisaker building. (Wouldn't he be honored! He was just about the only theologian in the ELS and they associate his name with a Roman Catholic speaker.) Oh yes, the Roman Catholic was the featured speaker that day. Damange Control Central said that the religious service stopped being religious when he spoke. Perhaps an altar boy rang the mass bells, creating a miraculous transubstantiation. The appearance of a unionistic religious service remained, but the substance (ding-a-ling) was changed into a secular gathering.
Thus we have the Lutheran Church today. They call it Lutheran orthodoxy but it is really whipped topping - full of air and heaven knows what ingredients.