The Betrayers Betrayed - MLS

Closing the schools in WELS is clearly a Church Growth program. Not that the Church Growth leaders cause any real growth in the Kingdom. They just yak about it all the time. Church Growth is an ideology, a set of shallow doctrines, and an agenda.

President-in-waiting Wayne Mueller has always been a Church Growth advocate, even while denying it. How delicious it must be to deny Church Growth in The Northwestern Lutheran while promoting Church Growth in the synod.

I remember John Brug covering for David Valleskey on the subject of Church Growth. Now he wants the preps to stay open.

Paul Kuske started a Church Growth operation in Columbus, Ohio, in his capacity as VP of the district. To run this destructive cause he had Floyd Luther Stolzenburg, recently forced to resign from the LCMS ministerium (and never a member of WELS, by the way).

Now Brug and Kuske want to snatch MLS from the jaws of the Church Growth gurus!

WELS is a genius at management, I must say. They have been Management-By-Objective-zombies for at least 20 years, but Drucker wanted to encourage leadership wisdom, not synodical stupidity. The Brug report listed the large sums of money recently borrowed for MLS and Luther Prep. Wayne Mueller would close both schools, making them worthless, while still owing for such things as new boilers, science rooms, and dorms. The college would close, too, so that would make all the money spent on Martin Luther College another rat-hole. They recently reworked the heating system, perhaps in conjunction with New Ulm's steam tunnel project.

Now everyone is tongue-clucking. WELS wanted to move from small potatoes to the Big Time with Church Growth. All those who studied at Fuller, who bowed their heads at Willow Creek, who agreed by being silent, who shunned pastors that knew better - all those betrayers of the Gospel are being betrayed now. WELS will not be small potatoes. WELS will be tater tots.

The Catholic Momentum

I enjoy the encouraging messages sent. I mean the positive messages from normal people, but also the insanely angry messages sent under various false names. The second group motivates me the most, because, as my Grandpappy used to say, "When the arrow hits the mark, feathers will fly."

Various people pretend to be offended that I had a Catholic education, just like Martin Luther and the faculty of Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne. Look at the faculty list at Ft. Wayne. They live close to Notre Dame so they finished their Ph.D. work there. John Johnson, once the buddy of Herman Otten while serving as president of Concordia, St. Louis, had a doctorate from the Jesuits at St. Louis University. What the complainers miss is my lack of obedience to His Holiness, the Antichrist.

Faithful Lutheran pastors owe it to their congregations to be well read in heterodoxy without falling prey to it. That requires constant study while ignoring Holy Mother Synod most of the time.

The marginally literate have trouble distinguishing between hearing someone and following someone. Thus it is easy to find out who has studied at Fuller Seminary and Willow Creek because they blab about the same things with the same vocabulary. Waldo Werning had "Church Growth Eyes" in the subtitle of one of his moronic books. Did he study at Fuller? Yes, he admitted it and also denied it. Those who defend Fuller doctrine are predictably alumni (Frosty Bivens, David Valleskey, Lawrence Otto Olson, Wally Oelhaven, Fred Adrian, Kent Hunter). Those who follow have previously heard that new gospel, preached by angels of marketing (Galatians 1:8).

How Roman Catholic are the synods today? The best measure is to look at what they are doing. ELCA and the old Synodical Conference synods (WELS-ELS-LCMS) have:
1. Adopted the three-year lectionary from Rome.
2. Killed the traditional names of Sundays wherever possible.
3. Changed the liturgical colors to be more gay-friendly.
4. Competed to see which Roman Catholic customs they can incorporate.
5. Obsessed over the title bishop and Rome's claim to apostolic succession.
6. Longed for acceptance by Rome, even while called defective and wounded.

Many pastors have followed these trends because their peers were running off the cliff ahead of them. The Gadarene swine episode was not meant to be prescriptive, I might add. One pastor asked me to make my sermons fit the Roman cycle. I said, "Why not switch back to the historic pericopes?" The publishing houses make it easy to follow the worn path.

Lutheran worship can be solemn and liturgical without genuflecting toward Rome.

WELS Seminary Professor John Brug Supports MLS

WELS Seminary Professor John Brug, who grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, has published a report in favor of Michigan Lutheran Seminary.

The PDF file can be found here:

Michigan Lutheran Seminary
along with additional material on the topic.

So far the synod's (Wayne Mueller's) answer has been that there is only one solution for the incompentence shown at the leadership levels - close the preps.

Everyone else seems to think otherwise. The district presidents and various assemblies oppose the closing of the preps, which will also close the college.

The booby-hatch pronouncements of the synod leaders have gutted the system, forcing tuition up by 30%, thus reducing the students and the tuition income. Now the whole system is tottering toward collapse while the booby-hatch leaders tell them - Have another Junk for Jesus Rummage Sale. Flogging will continue until morale improves.

ELCA Membership Tanking

ELCA NEWS SERVICE

July 19, 2007

ELCA Membership Drops 1.6 Percent to 4.8 Million in 2006 07-130-FI/LA*

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) had 4,774,203 baptized members in 10,470 congregations at the end of 2006, according to the Rev. Lowell G. Almen, ELCA secretary. Those figures represent decreases of 76,573 baptized members and 79 congregations since 2005.

The secretary's comparison of congregational statistics for 2005 and 2006 noted that confirmed membership in the ELCA declined in 2006 by 56,546 to 3,580,402.

In the past 16 years the ELCA lost approximately 466,000 baptized members from the 5,240,739 members reported in 1990, Almen said. More than two-thirds of the decline occurred between 2002 and 2006, with a combined decrease of 325,674 baptized
members, according to annual reports from congregations compiled by the ELCA Office of the Secretary.

Parochial reports showed the loss was because of a decrease in the number of new members, the disbanding of 40 congregations, and "roll cleaning" in many remaining congregations, Almen said. Roll cleaning resulted in a loss of 202,246 members in 2006 and a loss of 208,436 members in 2005. Those reductions occur when
long-inactive members, who indicate no interest in continued participation, are removed from the rolls of congregations, he explained.

Nineteen congregations with a combined baptized membership of 7,196 withdrew from the ELCA in 2006. One congregation with membership of 104 was removed.

The average number of people in worship on Sundays decreased slightly in 2006. A total 1,408,682 or 29.50 percent of all baptized ELCA members participated in worship each week. That percentage fluctuated in the ELCA between 30 and 31 percent in recent years.

The last time a gain of ELCA membership occurred was in 1991, with a net gain of 4,438 baptized members that year, Almen reported.

Baptisms, affirmations of faith and transfers from other Lutheran congregations accounted for fewer new members in 2006 than they did in 2005. There were 66,166 baptisms of children in 2006 -- down 1,486 from 67,652 in 2005. There were 52,357
affirmations of faith in 2006, compared to 53,961 in 2005. There were 71,110 transfers from Lutheran congregations in 2006 -- down 5,408 from 76,518 in 2005.

Adult baptisms decreased by 359 -- from 6,764 in 2005 to 6,405 in 2006. accessions from non-Lutheran congregations declined 1,003 -- from 17,794 in 2005 to 16,791 in 2006.

There were 1,513 fewer deaths of ELCA members -- 47,210 in 2005 to 45,697 in 2006. There were 3,176 fewer transfers to other Lutheran congregations -- from 53,429 in 2005 to 50,253 in 2006.

The average number of baptized members per congregation decreased in 2006 by four people to 459, and the average confirmed membership decreased by three people to 345.

For 2006, 3.15 percent of ELCA baptized members were identified as persons of color or persons whose primary language is not English, essentially unchanged from 2005, according to Almen.

-- -- --
A table summarizing annual statistics compiled by the ELCA Office of the Secretary is at http://www.ELCA.org/news/table.html on the Web.

* The Rev. Lowell G. Almen is secretary of the ELCA.

Synod Minders

Every event has synod minders. They are the loyalists who show up uninvited to snoop around whenever Lutherans might think on their own.

I attended a conservative Lutheran meeting with Al Barry shortly after he was elected. He made it sound as if it was a hardship to address the people who worked so hard to get him elected. In the back row were about 10 minders. Synod minders pounce on people for getting to close to the real issues. They report who is at the meeting.

The late Jack Preus said WELS had a regular KGB operation. Missouri was and is no different. The same is true of the smaller sects. Family ties make it easy to meddle with other congregations. The temptation is seldom resisted now.

There are many "secret" email lists. I explored one ELS pastor's website and got into the main directory, with a page not linked on the website. The page gave directions for getting the key to encrypted emails at the next ELS gathering.

If an email list is large enough, synod minders populate it. They pretend to be friendly to the cause so they can forward mail to the bosses at the Love Shack (WELS), the Little Sect on the Prairie (ELS), or Almost-ELCA (Missouri Synod).

Sometimes people cannot figure out whether a minder is deliberately gumming up everything or just felony stupid. Either way, the minder is helping out the synod. He may have to unbutton the last few buttons of his shirt to let his gut precede him into the room, but he is close with the bosses. Abused and neglected children, when they grow up, need that kind of attention.

Why Are Lutherans Poping, Semi-Poping, and Demi-Semi-Poping?

One reader wonders why Catholicism is so attractive to Lutheran pastors?

1. Poping means joining Rome, even becoming a priest, as Richard Neuhaus did.
2. Semi-poping means joining Eastern Orthodoxy: tastes great, less fulfilling.
3. Demi-semi-poping is my term for walking the tightrope between the Lutheran Church and popery.

The cause is three-fold.
A. Lutherans have lost their nerve. The leaders no longer believe in Luther's doctrine and the Book of Concord, the efficacy of the Word in the Means of Grace. Many leaders bow to Fuller Seminary and Willow Creek, leaving others to think the answer is becoming a lapdog for the Antichrist.
B. Seminary faculty members delight in promoting their cause among their students, watching with pride when their students make the switch they are afraid to make.
C. Rome never stops its massive propaganda efforts.

Worship training centers at Notre Dame, so the football school has influenced as many denominations to obey Rome as Fuller has in the opposite direction. This is a real life example of Wayne Mueller's quotation from Luther (which he distorted and abused for his nefarious purpose). The crypto-papists stab their church in the back to save it from the Fuller monster. In fact, Fuller and Rome are two versions of the same false doctrine.

The new fever about Apostolic Succession is a good example of the Roman yeast at work. The crypto-papists can talk about Apostolic Succession and publish their papers without being too obvious about their longing to return to Holy Mother Rome. Some of the other discussions, such as the term bishop, are excellent ways to promote the agenda. They can point members toward Rome without naming the Holy Father, their leader. If everyone can keep yakking about non-essentials, the lack of doctrinal education can do its damage in time.

Peeking Through the Window - Lutheran Animal Farm

Orwell's Animal Farm is an allegorical satire of Stalinism, and the book describes other totalitarian regimes as well - the ELS, WELS, ELCA, and the micro-mini sects.

Readers may remember the climax of the book, where a farm animal peeks through the window and cannot distinguish the farm animals from the people who have been declared the enemy.

I call one Lutheran pastor Snowball because he was driven away by the WELS Stalinists and pilloried for leaving WELS.

Back to the main point - the various Lutheran sects run each other down while working with one another. ELCA represents the evil human population in the book. Sermons and resolutions address ELCA's apostasy. The typical WELS members and pastors think ELCA is profoundly inferior to WELS. They would be shocked at how much WELS works with ELCA on religious projects and then lies about it.

The apostate leaders in each synod look out for one another, defend one another, and promote one another into positions of influence. They necessarily look up to ELCA as the ideal in apostasy. That is how ELCA pulls Missouri, WELS, and the rest down along its trajectory.

What do the Big Four have in common?
1. They attend Fuller Seminary together.
2. They promote Church Growth together.
3. They favor women's ordination, with varying degrees of advocacy.
4. They want Roman Catholic leaders to teach them.
5. They work on religious projects together.

Incest Meant Nothing To These Pastors

I know a number of pastors who managed to overlook a case of incest. A prominent layman got his own daughter pregnant. She was committed to a series of facilities. Like Chinatown, the father/grandfather took over the care of his daughter/granddaughter.

The facts enrage the pastors who cover up these crimes. They are so blinded by guilt disguised as rage that they will say anything.

Before we throw stones at the conduct of the Church of Rome, we need to backwash our own Lutheran sewers.

Watch for continued coverage in the Lutheran press about the Los Angeles settlement, continued silence about Lutheran crimes.

Discussion about Roman Catholic doctrine? That would impede their cooperative efforts with the Antichrist, the Chief Apostate.

Typical Good, Faithful Pastors

I am not talking about the pastors who spend all their time and energy in politics, playing the game of their Father Below.

There are many faithful Lutheran pastors, trying to teach God's Word and shepherd their flocks in the midst of apostasy around them. There is no good solution since other groups are similar or worse. ELCA, of course, is beyond the beyond, as the Irish-American author Frank McCourt says.

These pastors are not well paid. They may be appreciated in their congregations. Probably everyone hears the prosperity gospel of this age, so the congregation feels God has abandoned them. Their synods take them for granted until another once-in-a-lifetime-giving-opportunity comes along.

Many labor in those areas where Lutherans are not as dense as at headquarters. Perhaps most of the population is indifferent, Roman Catholic, Jewish, or Baptist. In the South, a Lutheran is just another Roman Catholic, a wine-bibber or worse. The politician-pastors grab for the easy calls, the prestige positions.

I met one of these truly humble pastors the other day. I just want to salute him and all those like him. God knows who they are. Walther said something like this - They were scorned in their lifetime, but now they shine like the sun.

Bad Boy, Bad Boy Trouble in Paradise

My favorite ELS Blog went silent since May and now is gone. Only the URL remains:

Whatcha Gonna Do When They Come for You?

I was tempted to write another parody, but the original lyrics by The Inner Circle are beyond parody:

Why did you have to act so mean?
Don't you know you're a human being,
Born of a mother with the love of a father,
Reflections come and reflections go
I know sometimes - you want to let go, hey, hey, hey
I know sometimes - you want to let go, wohh!

Bad boys bad boys
Watcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do
when they come for you
Bad boys, bad boys
Watcha gonna do, watcha gonna do
when they come for you.

I am not sure who ELS Bad Boy is. I have no contact with the blogger and he has no contact with me. My guess is: The new group is forming so they want something less fun and more serious.

Meanwhile, the LCMS has declared fellowship with the AALC. Ergo, the AALC is now in fellowship with WELS, ELCA, and the ELS. Oh yes, they all work together on becoming more apostate according to the example set by Archbishop Hanson of the ELCA. The other Lutheran groups will follow his cloven hoof-prints anywhere.

Sounds Familiar to Me

The big news today is the Los Angeles clergy abuse case. The current sum to be awarded to victims of homosexual priests will be about $660 million. Mrs. Ichabod suggested that $666 million would be more appropriate. Most of these cases are not pedophile or heterosexual crimes. The vast majority involve teen-aged boys, the gay ideal since classical Greek times.

Here is a snippet from one news story:

Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating in 2003 resigned from the US Catholic Bishops' National Review Board after describing Mahony and other bishops as behaving like a "criminal enterprise" following a "code of silence."

"To resist grand jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization, not my church," Keating stated in his resignation letter to Bishop Wilton Gregory, the head of the US bishops' conference.

Sound familiar? The Code of Silence goes far beyond the Catholic Church and the Mafia. Ask a WELS district pope about the murder in Milwaukee or Phoenix, the abusive vicar in Grand Rapids, the known criminal courted by WELS. Ask the DP about WELS denying any knowledge of these matters when asked in court. The denial was perjury, a felony. Wait until he denounces the Catholic Church as a criminal enterprise and he thanks God (once again) for keeping WELS so pure, so orthodox, and so honest. Ask about the WELS cover-ups. He will say: "Where did you get this from?" or "I don't know anything about what you are saying."

Did you read about the WELS vicar and the DP in state prison in your favorite tabloid? No? Perhaps the synodical officials lean on the editor to suppress bad news in their own backyard. Watch for the LA story to appear while nothing is said about the fetid swamp called "conservative Lutheranism."

If you dare to move from asking about these criminal cover-ups to demanding action, you will be well and thoroughly beaten up. While the rapists and murderers are defended by official silence, you will be slandered from pillar to post - by the same officials. Consider it a compliment.

Ditto: all the synods, big and small.

ELCA does expose heterosexual offenders and even wrote about their massive $40 million case of homosexual clergy abuse (one man). The same cover-up process is at work. When one LCA pastor told me about the previous minister being found in the parsonage with another woman (in flagrante delicto, if you went to a prep), I told him, "In the future, they will celebrate if it was a woman." He roared with laughter. Now it's true.

One WELS pastor walked out on his wife and five children, Sunday morning, to leave with his mistress. Later he was welcomed back into fellowship and a call. (It's not like he criticized the synod, which is really serious.) When a neighboring pastor asked how this could happen, he was told sharply, "It's none of your business." The Ten Commandments are the Nine Suggestions. The glory has departed.

By the Time I Get to Phoenix - Composed During LCMS Vote

We were flying back from North Carolina to Phoenix, during the LCMS vote for synodical president. I composed this parody during the flight, with apologies to Glenn Campbell.

By the Time I Get to Phoenix

By the time I get to Phoenix they’ll be voting
They’ll start the vote Kieschnick winning on the floor
He laughed when he read the news
which had him losing
Cause he’s fixed so many votes like this before. (voice cracking)

By the time I make Albuquerque he’ll be winking
He’ll prob’ly stop for prayer and give God a call
But He'll just hear that prayer keep on nagging
Jesus is not First in Jerry's call.

By the time I make Oklahoma they’ll be drinking
They’ll lift their beer and curse CN out loud
And they’ll cry just to think God’d really leave them
Tho’ time and time He tried to tell them so.
Mo. just didn’t know God would really go.