Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Are You Going To Believe Me
Or Your Lying Eyes?



Rev. Kristen communing in the new WELS way - gourmet coffee, an evangelism tool never previously revealed to the faithful.


Real Spin has left a new comment on your post "Is the WELS Magazine FIC the Xerox Room for Church...":

Kristin is the "staff minister of worship" not the pastor of the congregation. The Saint Andrews website clearly shows that there is a pastor and vicar (males) as well as a board of elders (all males) presiding over the congregation. www.st-andrew-online.org

The website clearly states that she is "an instrument in ‘administering God’s grace’ in the form of worship gatherings" most likely referring to her help behind the scenes not that she is the one actually administering the means of grace.

If you go further to the sermon downloads you can clearly see that the Pastors preside over the worship service and sermons are delivered by the pastors not the female staff minister.

In the Q&A section of the WELS website there are questions regarding the roles of female staff minister. The answer to one such question is "The specific duties of staff ministers, male or female, will vary with the call extended to them by the calling body. In the case of female staff ministers, of course, the duties may not involve the exercise of authority over men." please see here for context http://www.wels.net/cgi-bin/site.pl?1518&cuTopic_topicID=69&cuItem_itemID=7331 additional information on the staff ministry program is available on the MLC website.

Sorry, no female pastor in the WELS just many woman using their God-given abilities in church in a way that is pleasing to God.

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GJ - Short answer: ordained pastors "administer the Means of Grace."

Brief Statement, 2009: The head of Staff Ministry in WELS is Larry Olson, who obtained his drive-by D.Min. from Fuller Seminary, Cloaca Maxima, where anyone questioning women's ordination is disciplined. He also studied at that stealth WELS training center - Trinity, Deerfield. But Larry is known as the Harmless Heretic with only 75 staff ministers trained so far.