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"The staff minister who did a brief stint at my mother's church ran the WELS chapel services at her senior citizens' residence, complete with Holy Communion."

This is a major problem that is developing in the WELS "staff ministry" program. Staff ministers are not trained for this level of soul care, but to an increasing extent they are being asked to provide it anyway. This is disorderly. Examining would-be communicants, and admitting them (or declining to admit them) to the Lord's altar, is a distinctive act of pastoral oversight. It is a very weighty matter. One gets the impression, though, that those congregations that authorize men who are not trained or called to be pastors to do this pastoral work are not appreciating the full seriousness of what is happening, when communicants are guided in their preparation for the sacrament, and when the Lord's Supper is then administered to them.

David Jay Webber (Djw)
Member
Username: Djw

Post Number: 157
Registered: 12-2004

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Posted on Saturday, July 25, 2009 - 11:08 am:
Jay, it is not primarily a question of training. It is a question of office. There is a simple response to the staff minister who presumed to administer the Lord's Supper at WELS chapel services.

1. God instituted the pastoral office.
2. Pastors are to administer the Lord's Supper.
3. A staff minister is not a pastor.

That's quite simple and easy to understand.

Pr Rolf David Preus (Rolf)
Senior Member
Username: Rolf

Post Number: 3738
Registered: 5-2001

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GJ - No one is going to admit that WELS/ELS "staff ministers" come from the fertile copying efforts of the Shrinkers who went to Fuller Seminary. Everyone graduating from Mary Lou College is a minister. It is the WELS School of Ministry. For a time they ordained male teachers too, because male teachers wanted to be ordained. Are they still? Does anyone care?

The ELS is deservedly famous for communing ELCA members, which Jay Webber advocated himself, because it was "easier." Therefore, three years of seminary training and a vicarage are not sufficient to teach someone the basics of historical Holy Communion practice. I know The Surrendered Fort is fabled for its obsession with Eastern Orthodoxy. Real EO priests would choke at open communion.

I never communed anyone outside of WELS/ELS when I was confined to those sects. My mother and father (y'all know that argument) did not receive WELS communion until they were members. One prospect said he was going to commune with his ELCA relatives only once a year, so the infrequency made that OK. I countered with committing only one murder a year. I also said that would convince his extended family there was nothing wrong with ELCA. In fact, he had retained that idea himself since he communed without problem in Florida - at an ELS church.

The prospect joined and convinced his entire family to leave ELCA. We still communicate.

Debating doctrine on LutherQuest (sic) is like going to court to solve family conflicts - an admission of defeat, a hopeless task.