Apostasy: While McCain Fiddled, Missouri Burned

LCMS President Al Barry and his assistant Paul McCain did nothing about this congregation for nine years, just as they did nothing about Al Benke. St. John's in Ellisville is a stone's throw from the Purple Palace. St. John's was already a union church during the McCain-Barry administration, belonging to the Missouri Synod and the Willow Creek Association at the same time. Now DoLittle McCain postures about Ellisville.

The Video From Hell

Click on the link to YouTube

or go to St. John's CuzChristmasIsNotMyBirthday,

or pick up the link from St. John's.

to watch the blasphemous video.

The senior pastor of St. John's, Steve Hower, posing as Jesus, stars in the video. He has been a Church Growth icon in the LCMS for many years. Here are some highlights of the video, in case you cannot view it or you click it off in disgust:

1. Jesus begins by peering into the lens and asking if the camera is on.
   
2. Jesus appears a bit fuddled, like a pot-head.
   
3. Jesus reads cards addressed to Him, asking for presents. Does anyone do this? Hower seems to have confused Christmas cards (where no one asks for gifts) with letters to Santa.
   
4. Jesus drinks some wine and says, "Take and drink," mocking Holy Communion.
   
5. Jesus licks off some icing from a cake and says, "Take and eat," making the mockery abundantly clear.
   
6. Jesus seems to be demanding that everyone show up for His birthday. There is nothing about Christmas in this video, no hint of the Gospel.
   
7. The video pretends to be clever and funny, but it is embarrassing, unfunny, and truly disgusting.

Hower is embedded in the Parish Leadership Initiative, the attempt to train all LCMS pastors in Church Growth apostasy. PLI's reading list is heavy with Management by Objective, Peter Drucker, that gasbag John Maxwell (a Robert Schuller mime), Barna (Fuller favorite), Covey (Mormon), Luecke, and Hower. I like Hower's book title: Sharpening the Sword. Is it not amazing that all the CG puppets end up saying they can improve on the Word? Olson, Huebner, Valleskey, and Kelm are just as clever.

On his St. John website, Hower lists seminary training as graduate school. No one considers seminary graduate school. I do know some blokes who portray a D.Min. as a doctorate and call themselves Dr! Typically they earn their D.Min. at Fuller (Larry Olson) or St. Louis (Paul Kelm).

Hower's assistant pastor went to Fuller Seminary. Now that was a surprise! I am guessing that both men are familiar with Fuller and Willow Creek training.

McCain makes a big deal about St. John's not using Lutheran on their new signs. The term Lutheran is meaningless today, so it is re-assuring that Hower will not add to our shame, pain, and discomfort by identifying himself with Luther. I fought that battle and lost 20 years ago. Paul Kuske, Floyd Stolzenburg, and Roger Zehms founded Pilgrim Community Church in Columbus, Ohio. They wanted no identification with the name Lutheran, with Lutheran worship or music. They eventually had three in attendance.

Soon after, when I urged McCain (as Barry's ghost writer) to be tougher on CG, as he appeared to be pre-appointment, he became hostile. McCain has discovered that three steps to the Left and one step to the Right will fool most folks.

Reaction to Dissent in Holy Mother Synod

Holy Mother Synod - The Golden Calf

1. "You have criticized the synod."
2. "We will not publish the book until your attitude changes about the synod."
3. "You have shown contempt for synod resolutions."

Number Three is just not so. I tried hard to hide my contempt for synod resolutions.

By studying organizational methods, the synods have devised a clever way for a tiny minority to rule and rake in the loot for themselves. World trips, perks, jobs for useless relatives. Felonious cover-ups of criminal activities for pals. The Left Foot of Fellowship for conservatives. Hoo-rah.

Holy Mother Synod is the golden calf. No, it does not matter which synod. Each synod is. There is a certain amount of posing about each synod being better than all the others combined, but the actual attitude is - "We hate dissent." The synod popes identify with each other, confer with each other, help each other.

By making Holy Mother Synod the object of worship, the apostate leaders have solved all problems. Anyone who disagrees with them is really attacking the synod. Anyone attacking the synod must be dis-membered, in more ways than one. When they are done with the loathsome beast who has disagreed, no one decent will talk to him. The worst accusation is then, "Are you his disciple?"

Apostasy

Leonard Sweet (Methodist) is near the top, just below the Fuller Seminary mascot. Reggie McNeal is in the middle. The founder of Church Growth in the Synodical Conference is on the bottom - Donald McGavran, Disciples of Christ. Their theology glorifies man and disparages Lutheran doctrine. All three get better press (among Lutherans) than Luther, Chemnitz, Melanchthon, and Gerhard combined.

Someone who never gets anything right asked about apostasy. His straw-man response was: "Are you accusing all the pastors and professors of WELS of being non-Christians?"

My answer is - No, just the leaders of WELS, the Little Sect on the Prairie, and the LCMS.

The term apostasy comes from the New Testament, which is why A. Nony Mouse knows so little about it.

KJV 2 Thessalonians 2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away (apostasia) first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. 5 Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? 6 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. 7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. 8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

The term in Greek literally means "falling away." An atheist cannot be an apostate. A Hindu cannot be an apostate. Someone must have saving faith and then lose that faith. The prime objective of all mainline seminaries has been to turn believing students into apostates. One seminary chaplain (former LCMS, then ELCA, now Roman Catholic) published an article bragging about that goal.

The genius of the old Synodical Conference leaders (LCMS, ELS, WELS) has been their ability to posture as conservatives (in contrast to ELCA, as they work with ELCA) while bowing and scraping to McGavran, McNeal, and Sweet. ELCA venerates the Baptist-Pentecostal wing too, but they generally prefer the Church of Rome.

Many of these leaders have lost all faith in Christian doctrine. Proof is their constant measuring of material results (which God denies them in His wrath or His humor) and their disparaging of spiritual treasures. Moreover, the passage from Fuller Fever to outright apostasy is impossible to measure. Who knows exactly when a man decides that Christianity is a joke but his training suits him for no other vocation? We can only measure them by what they say they believe. That is where the claw and fangs emerge from the fleece.

Apostates lie about their beliefs, unless questioned closely. I know of three Mequon seminary professors who were trained at Fuller facilities; only one admitted it consistently. Someone who studies at Fuller and either denies it or brags about it (depending on the audience) is far along the road to apostasy. The brother professors who know and yet pretend not to know are just as bad.

By now most people realize that Concordia Seminary St. Louis went slowly apostate, with the old conservatives saying nothing for decades. Rehwinkel tried to stir the faculty up about false doctrine, but the only result was his exile to foreign seminaries. (How original!) The end result was the explosion and a repetition of the same debacle.

WELS is apostate because the synod allows Church and Change to organize its conference, even worse when registration takes place through the official WELS website. The ELS is apostate for saying and doing nothing, not that they are pure otherwise. Missouri is simply retro-ELCA, a few years behind their big sister.

The Good News is - this was all predicted long ago in the New Testament.