Sausage Factory Wisdom

God in the Hands of an Angry Sinner

No one can mangle a question faster than Frosty Bivens, the Waldo Werning Professor of Church Growth at the Mequon Sausage Factory. He was asked about masculine and feminine in the Holy Trinity.

One part of his answer had to do with the gender of the words in Hebrew, Greek, etc. Someone with only a slight knowledge of foreign language realizes that the gender of the word does not indicate the gender of the thing itself. Does parthenos (virgin) in Greek indicate the person is male because the noun is masculine? Utterly ridiculous.

Here is a pronouncement from the Oracle of Mequon:

Most adequate approach

Christians understand that the Father and the Spirit don’t have gender in the same way humans do; God is neither male nor female. Yet we maintain that masculine terminology be normative with reference to God because that is how God has revealed himself in Scripture. Of greater importance is the creating, redeeming, and sanctifying work of God for all humanity. We rejoice in that above all else.

I think Frosty is still trying to justify the absurd feminist Creeds they foisted upon WELS in Charismatic Worship. "Creating, redeeming, and sanctifying" are the new words used by feminists for work of the Holy Trinity. As always, WELS is up to date, 20 years late. The words themselves are not wrong. They have been ill used so often by so many opponents of the Holy Trinity that a Lutheran should avoid them. Many ELCA baptisms today are conducted "In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier." A Hindu could use the same words. The specific Biblical formula is the actual name of the Holy Trinity - The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Fuller Seminary would be proud. They have a special committee to deal with students who do not accept the ordination of women and feminist theology. I trust that Frosty and his WELS kindred did not fall into the clutches of those harpies.

PS - The WELS hymnal turned "and became man" into "fully human," a rendition offered by Wisconsin's favorite group of unionistic, non-Lutheran, apostates. The synod was forced to use this version, they claim. I can imagine that. A bunch of committe members from this pan-denominational study committee walked into the Love Shack, their leather pants perfectly matching their Calvin Klein glasses. They stomped their Guccis and declared, "Use fully human or we will cancel your retreat at Fire Island."

WELS Would Appoint Him to be a Church Growth Consultant

Jefferts-Schori: We are all about the rainbow.

Convicted Pedophile Episcopal Priest to Host Spiritual Retreats with Presiding Bishop's Blessing

by David W. Virtue
May 14, 2008

A convicted and defrocked pedophile Episcopal priest is being allowed to conduct spiritual retreats - two of them in an Episcopal facility with the blessing of Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, TEC's Presiding Bishop.

In an exchange of correspondence with David Clohessy, National Director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), Mrs. Jefferts Schori, through her Pastoral Development Officer Bishop F. Clayton Matthews, said that Mr. Lynn C. Baumann could function as a spiritual retreat master on the understanding that "Mr. Baumann's contact (is) to adults only".

Buffer Space Helps Bethany Lutheran Worship

From one of our readers, Grey Goose:

Anyway, the buffering on the recording came along about every two sentences. (I hadn't experienced that at all earlier.) So I right-clicked on the picture and got a box with a Settings choice for the Adobe Flash Player on my machine that Ustream must use.

Clicking on Settings, I learned that the buffer space was very small. I set it for Unlimited. From then on, everything was fine again.

I mention this in case others comment on too frequent buffering. Resetting the Adobe FP buffer space might give them a helping hand. But one has to leave the BLW site and return to it for the new setting to take effect.

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GJ - Ichabodians - try this to get rid of the hiccups. There are things on my side to improve and also variables from home to home and along the Internet path. This is so new that college students look at me with awe and wonder when I describe it to them. It is gratifying to be ahead of the 20 to 30 year-olds in something technological. I remember when we had only two TV channels to watch. I had to walk all the way cross the room to change the knob from 4 to 6. I was the family remote control.

California and the Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes, 1968, Starring Charleton Heston, RIP

George Taylor: "You Maniacs! You blew it up!"

Poor George Taylor got back home to Earth, only to find that the nuclear holocaust had buried the Statue of Liberty.

Earthlings today, especially Baby Boomers, are busy with their demolition efforts. They dismantled the Lutheran Church years ago. Now synodical leaders can pretend to be conservative while running off to Fuller Seminary and promoting gay lib. According to Fuller alumnus Frosty Bivens, one should not suggest that a homosexual orientation is wrong. However, he does think it is a lie to tell the truth about his Church Growth education. As Luther opined, "When right is wrong and wrong is right, nothing can help anymore."

The California Supreme Court decision (4 to 3) to bless homosexual marriage is one more non-surprise in a long series of ethical retreats initiated by the churches of America. Like their mainline counterparts, the conservative synods paved the way for the California decision decades ago when they abandoned sound doctrine for the fads of the day.

The problem does not center on the issue of the moment, but the foundation for making decisions. Our country was founded on the principles of natural law, that right and wrong are derived from divine Creation. Once that concept was removed from Christianity and Judaism, anything could be decided. The turning point was not Roe versus Wade, but much earlier, when evolution became the accepted stance of most denominations.

Fuller Seminary succeeded in attracting all synod leaders (ELCA, ELS, WELS, LCMS) precisely because those synods were already apostate. The Fuller education drive began in the 1970s. No one really objected at the time. Dr. Robert Preus and the Concordia, Ft. Wayne faculty endorsed Church Growth principles. Preus offered a Church Growth degree at The Fort. Kincaid Smith said his Ft. Wayne D.Min. was all Church Growth.

When there was some chance to follow through and fight Church Growth ecumemnism along doctrinal lines, the conservative Lutheran pastors and laity ducked into their rabbit warrens and shivered, hoping to escape synodical wrath. However, the pan-Lutheran Church Growth Mafia was not so passive. They hammered every critic until he was declared legally dead. Werning, Hunter, Valleskey, Olson, Koenig, Tiefel 1, Tiefel 2, Bivens, Oelhaven, Sweet, and Adrian were One in the Spirit, One in the Lord.

Stay tuned for "Tch tch" sermons this Sunday. Woe is us. The California court decision shows how bad things are. Thank God we are so conservative. We are so conservative we never admit having pastors who have died of AIDS. Etc. Etc.