Twitter is a way to send very short messages to people. One feature is the ability to follow someone, receiving his or her Tweets (messages) - as they are called.
Some of us were speculating that Ski and other nominal Lutherans were down at the Orlando CG Lollapalooza called Exponential. A trip to Disney World is not in my budget so I looked up the parsons being followed by Ski and matched them up with their bios for Exponential.
A pattern emerges as one meditates on the people being followed by Ski:
Mark Batterson - Mark serves as lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC. NCC was recognized as one of the 25 Most Innovative Churches in America by Outreach Magazine in 2008. One church with eight services in four locations, NCC is focused on reaching emerging generations. 73% of NCCers are single twenty-somethings and 70% come from an unchurched or dechurched background. The vision of NCC is to meet in movie theaters at metro stops throughout the metro DC area. NCC also owns and operates the largest coffeehouse on Capitol Hill. In 2008, Ebenezers was recognized as the #1 coffeehouse in the metro DC area by AOL CityGuide. Mark has two Masters Degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of a best-selling book, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. And he is a daily blogger @ www.markbatterson.com. Mark is married to Lora and they live on Capitol Hill with their three children: Parker, Summer, and Josiah.
Andy Stanley - On Ski's list but not at Orlando? Are they nuts?
Mark Jeske - He will soon be at Orlando: count on it. Mark is one of the kingpins of Church and Change.
Brittney Spears - She is not speaking. Most of the exceptions are sports figures while Brittney is a sporting figure.
The Indicators - They are the group brought up for the website party. They do not follow many people but they do follow Ski and Katie.
Groeschel via Swerve - Craig is the founding and senior pastor of LifeChurch.tv. Craig, his wife, Amy, and their six children live in the Edmond, Oklahoma, area where LifeChurch.tv began in 1996. Craig's creative leadership skills are changing the way church is done worldwide. Under his leadership, LifeChurch.tv has become one of the country's first multi-campus churches, with over fifty weekend worship experiences at thirteen different locations throughout the United States. Craig and Bobby Gruenewald write daily blog posts. You can participate in this blogging community at swerve.lifechurch.tv.
Catalyst Leader - Catalyst is the joint event hosted by Groeschel and Stanley.
Mark Driscoll - Not at Orlando? Maybe he has his own AmWay conferences going. Most of the participants at Orlando have their own gatherings, so Orlando is a great way for the wolves to network.
Jon Ruddat - He is a WELS pastor in Appleton and utterly devoted to Church and Change.
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Here is Katie's Tweet on something inspirational from Granger Community Church:
read this post from @MarkLWaltz.-some good toughts on the usefulness of twitter. how can we leverage it 4 the Kingdom? http://bit.ly/2lIW4U
about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
Mark is at Granger Community Church, where Ski and Katie studied/worshiped to get The CORE going.
Granger offers a two-day training event with its management team. The cost is a mere $1500.
Does anyone wonder how many millions have been squandered training WELS church workers at schools of Enthusiasm and synagogues of Satan? The BHM used to send pastors to Willow Creek - your offering dollars at work.
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Twitter Tattle-Tale: Ski and the Orlando Speakers":
Correction: John Ruddat is not a pastor. He is a staff minister at St. Matthew, Appleton. St. Matthew is, however, deeply in love with Ski.
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GJ - Mea maxima culpa. Thanks to Larry Olson (DMin, Fuller) no one knows the difference anymore. Everyone is a minister at Martin Luther College, too. And the male teachers are still ordained?
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Drill Down with the Senior Management Team at Gran...":
Pastors would straighten up and fly right very quickly if they had to really work a real job for a living. Sheltered from the realities of life they make no mistakes. They shift the responsibility to church members time and again. Instilling business acumen in them at a two day conference is sheer fantasy.
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GJ - Here is a comment from a retiring bishop who believed in the efficacy of the Word - "Those who enter the ministry late in life often leave again because of the way ministers are treated."
Members of a church can get away with worse behavior in their congregation than they can in higher education or work. As one funeral director mentioned to me, "Men who are miserable at work and miserable at home can take it out on the pastor, because he is a safe target."
I believe most ministers start out wanting to work hard, do well, and be faithful. However, members have a way of giving 1.5% and asking why the bills are not paid, overlooking the 8-10% giving by the pastor's family. And - if a pastor is active in doing those things people say are important, the bills actually increase, so they are picked over at each council meeting. I heard a group of men discuss how much chicken to order for 45 minutes straight.
The CG conference addicts are another story. WELS starts to brainwash the men in college, if not before. All the wrong people are held up as examples at the annual Church and Change bash at MLC. Faithful pastors and laity have been pilloried for decades by the loving Church Shrinkers.
The Sausage Factory is even worse, completely dominated by Fuller, Willow Creek, and Trinity Deerfield alumni. An ambitious young pastor is going to continue in the path set by his teachers for 8 years. Those suspected of conservatism have not been given vicars. Three WELS boards are 100% trained in Enthusiasm, so a significant chunk of pastors, officials, and professors point the new pastors in the wrong direction and get them money for addition career-enhancing brainwashing at Granger, Exponential, Church and Change, Willow Creek, Fuller, and Trinity Deerfield.
Ski is no different from a lot of WELS pastors. He is just too candid about it. The Shrinkers do blame all their problems on methods because trust in the Word has been trained out of them. Can anyone imagine going to Stanley's Baptist Church, Granger Community Church, and Catalyst (Stanley-Groeschel) and having a single Biblical thought left? Those guys are all show-biz, a topic I know nothing about, according to Katie.
