Wintery Blast In Chicago

It is so cold in Chicago, the politicians have their hands in their own pockets.

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GJ - My Webster's also includes wintery, but the Teigen proof-reading team demurs.

Obama Delivers Fierce Blow to Homosexuals By Picking Warren for the Invocation

Rick Warren, practicing to be porpoise-driven.

Pam's House Blend:

Dear President-elect Obama -
Let me get right to the point. Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans. Our loss in California over the passage of Proposition 8 which stripped loving, committed same-sex couples of their given legal right to marry is the greatest loss our community has faced in 40 years. And by inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.

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According to the NYT as reported in SJ Mercury(12/18/08), Rick Warren has been chosen by Obama to give the invocation at his inaugural. The article says it is "a role that positions Warren to succeed Billy Graham as the nation's pre-eminent minister and reflects the generational changes in the evangelical Christian movement.

....."The choice of Warren, pastor of a megachurch in Orange County, is an olive branch to conservative Christian evangelicals. He is an opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage---litmus-test issues for Christian conservatives. His selection set off criticism by gay rights groups angered by his support for California's ban on same-sex marriages.

But Warren has also been one of the most prominent evangelical leaders calling for Christians to expand their agenda and confront global problems like poverty, AIDS, climate change and genocide in Darfur. He has sometimes angered the older generattion of conservative evangelical leaders aligned with the Republican Party, as when he invited Obama to speak abut AIDS at an earlier event at his church"

The Third Martin? No, The Third LCMS Seminary

Fuller is Third LCMS Seminary

Here's an interesting quote attributed to Richard John Neuhaus (then ELCA, now Roman Catholic) in regard to the Church Growth Movement:

"Then there is the church growth movement, which has made more devastating headway in LCMS than in ELCA (although it is evident enough in the latter). Today, it is said, Missouri has three seminaries -- St Louis, Ft Wayne and Fuller Seminary in California, the hothouse of church growth enthusiasms. The synodical and district mission offices are frequently controlled by church growth technocrats ... But the idea that Word and Sacrament ministry is somehow validated by calculable results is utterly alien to the Lutheran Reformation ... The triumph of style over substance, however, is all too evident in LCMS congregations that look like Baptists with vestments. As we have noted before, second-rate Lutherans make fourth-rate Baptists."

As quoted by Rev G. L. Jackson, "Truth on the Scaffold: The Fuller Influence on ELCA, WELS and LCMS" (New Ulm, MN: Martin Chemnitz Press, 1996): pp. 23-24.

Larry Oh! (Our Staff Infection) crowed about the same thing in WELS.

Jeske Video Rerun

WELS Pastor Mark Jeske is one of the kingpins of the synod within the synod: Church and Chicanery.

Check out the octopus.

Still no word on Brother Stetzer from the main page of Church and Change. When Joe Krohn asked them on their list-serve, they refused to answer. Correction - their answer was to pile on poor, little me.

Here is Page One of Church and Chicanery:

MARK YOUR CALENDARS

Conference 09
Nov 5th - 7th
Wyndham Milwaukee Airport Hotel and Convention Center

C&C events are a great place to network with people who have similar ministries, situations and problems. Come, learn and benefit from everyone's experience!

More information is coming soon!

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GJ - This video got people excited. I find Mark Jeske entertaining. He is so Saussage Factory-ish in his solemn declarations. One reader commented on the importance of having a captive ministerial wing in politics.

I keep thinking how far we are from the ideals of our Republic. Gibbons' The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published in 1776 and profoundly influenced our Founders, warning them against the dangers of imperial, corrupt, sodomite Rome. American has become the Roman Empire.