WELS is looking at various solutions for the budget crisis. Bailing Water had some new comments:
Anonymous said...
Training of the headquarters staff has already been outsourced to Trinity in Deerfield, Fuller Seminary, and Willow Creek Community Church. Has that saved money?Bespoke
February 9, 2009 10:02 AM
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Anonymous said...
Some of you who freqent (sic) this blog are spiritually very sick. To the others, thank you for words that are meant to build up and not tear down. I ask those who are making cynical and sarcastic and blatantly coarse comments to check their sinful attitudes. To make light of and delight in the Lord's work being damaged alongside a faltering economy? (To throw crass charges on ministries based not on the Word but on personal feelings? That's the ultimate scwaermer (sic) modus operendi (sic)). May God forgive you for such a spirit.Say what you will about the WELS, but it is a place where Law and Gospel are proclaimed. Through our pulpits and altars the Holy Spirit is at work. I thought it was only the devil that cackled when Christ's message is lessened in any manner. If you have such hardened hearts about the WELS either find another church body or start your own. If not, then pray for God's work to go forward among those who are your brothers and sisters inside your congregation and synod. This tearing down of the Lord's work needs to stop. And those who are tearing down need to ask for forgiveness, and the wonder is that it is always there for those who ask. May God continue to share his Word through the WELS, as he has in the past, for many years to come.
February 9, 2009 6:19 PM
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Anonymous said...
WELS rule #1.Never criticize the synod.
February 9, 2009 9:19 PM
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GJ - Obamessiah mentioned The Lost Decade in Japan, but he failed to discern that their government tried to spend its way out of a recession, deepening the downturn for 10 years.
Some of the global disaster is based on China's irrational expansion in every area, producing a temporary shortage of various commodities and a mirage of debt-fueled growth. Everyone is looking at ways to reduce spending. I recently helped friends switch to blogging after they realized how expensive corporate promotions were.
The angry WELS poster above has confused people, altars, and the synod with the Means of Grace. The Holy Spirit works through the Word alone, not through people, altars, and synds. I recall one pastor saying, "I cannot disagree with the Circuit Pastor because the Holy Spirit put him in that office." The Church of Rome also confuses its role with that of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is at work whenever the Word is at work. True, some benefits occur when truth is mixed with falsehood, but the power of the Word is based on its purity. Institutions rely on money and boast of their buildings. They should read their F. Pieper, since he was raised in the Wisconsin Synod.
Franz was not ga-ga over the apparent prosperity of the sects:
"Some time ago, a respected Presbyterian preacher in St. Louis confessed that if he in his congregation would try to have God's Word rule as it does with us, in four weeks his whole congregation would scatter. The sects owe their outward size mostly to this, that they play church instead of actually conducting themselves as God's Church. Neither do they rightly bear witness of the Law of God to man, nor do they act as true witnesses of God's grace. But, this is what the Lutheran Church does."
Francis Pieper, The Difference between Orthodox and Heterodox Churches, and Supplement, Coos Bay, Oregon: St. Paul's Lutheran Church, 1981, p. 46.
