Applying the Efficacious Word - At Every Level

I'm singing in the rain
Just singing in the rain
What a glorious feelin'
I'm happy again.
I'm laughing at clouds
So dark up above
The sun's in my heart
And I'm ready for love.
Let the stormy clouds chase
Everyone from the place
Come on with the rain.
I've a smile on my face
I walk down the lane
With a happy refrain
Just singin'...

What? He's canned?

The UOJ Stormtroopers are in a foul mood, now that the standard bearers of Church Shrinkage through Unionism are disappearing. They have a safe haven at St. Marcus/Time of Gath. Bruce Becker went there after hiring Paul Calvin Kelm. Roger Zehms moved up from Texas. Perhaps the only WELS pastor to have started an ELCA mission (Kelm) can find a slot there. Jeske is fond of apostasy and stealth.

Jeske is so full of himself that he calls his parish youth event the WELS Teen Rally 2010. Their featured speaker will talk about herself and her out-of-wedlock baby. That reminds me of another approach  - why do drug addicts always speak to teens about the dangers of drug addiction. Why not invite someone who never took illegal drugs?

Church Shrinkage, women's ordination, and all the other church issues are addressed by the efficacy and clarity of the Word. It is foolish to start with issues and trace how the Synodical Conference and Uncle Heinrich dealt with them. Those discussions end up as the Quest for the Historical Heinrich (or fill in the name). Side issues involve various unspoken canonical traditions, no matter how ridiculous they are.

B. Teigen's book on Holy Communion was dangerous to the ELS precisely because he attacked their weakest point - the efficacy of the Word. The Synodical Conference lived and died because of Enthusiasm - the Pietistic notion of grace without the Means of Grace. Walther's bizarre kelming of Knappe's double-justification meant that everything else was off-key. Why? Walther implicitly denied the efficacy of the Word in his Easter absolution sermon, a tradition carried on by F. Pieper and other disciples.

The Scriptures teach the efficacy of the Word alone. Without marketing surveys and soil testing, God created the universe through His Word. "Let there be light. And there was light." Genesis 1, exegesis found in John 1.

The Reformed have a different spirit. Luther refused to shake Zwingli's hand because of that spirit. Lutherans who do not comprehend the difference are bound to follow Zwingli, either in agreement or in compromise.

The Reformed separate the Holy Spirit from the Word, in a mocking way by Zwingli, elegantly  by Calvin. Either form is Enthusiasm, the root of all false religion (Smalcald Articles, Book of Concord).

Sig Becker correctly pointed out that the Reformed place reason above the Word (magisterial use of reason), unlike Luther, who made reason subordinate to the Word (ministerial use). Although his insights about that one issue were good, Becker published grave errors in defense of Receptionism and Universal Objective Justification. Both errors revealed the blindspot of the Synodical Conference - the efficacy of the Word alone.

We need to turn Midwestern Lutherans into Jews to grasp this. Jews have no trouble with appointed Scripture lessons, liturgy, ancient hymns, and the efficacy of the Word. They have tales of rabbis who said something casually and it happened at once, because the word of a rabbi is like the Word of God.

Once Zwingli and Calvin taught their disciples to place their reason above the Word of God, this concept of the efficacy of the Word was lost. As I argued before, the Reformed Pietism of the Synodical Conference made it vulnerable to Biblical errancy, unionism, Receptionism, open communion, women's ordination, and the Church Growth Movement.

I can hardly find an ELS/WELS/LCMS leader who thinks God works through the Word alone. They all think God needs Drucker's Management by Objective, Barna's surveys, and the slick Pentecostal programs of C. Peter Wagner. Even by compromising and trying to assume a safe semi-Lutheran position, these men are maladroitly serving Zwingli and Calvin, providing a Lutheran veneer for Enthusiasm. At least classical Reformed theology was religious; the Fuller/Willow Creek/Emerging Church model is secular veering toward the occult.

All three synods have studied Church Growth, discovered a few minor problems, yet found it delightful, wholesome and good for everyone.

The Wisconsin Synod was more ga-ga about Fuller than the other synods, so WELS suffered the most and built up the most loathing for the Pasadena pestilence. Missouri has found the solution in Romanism and Eastern Orthodoxy. They may not pope as dramatically as the Church of England priests, but the exodus has been steady and well publicized.

If Lutherans want to defeat Enthusiasm, they will have to study the efficacy of the Word at all levels. Weak congregations create weak circuits and even sloppier districts. Look at the Fox Valley apostates as examples, led astray by Kelm-Parlow-Witte, but not united in error. Congregations and individual members can demand a public study of the issues and refuse to accept another quisling yes-but approach to New Age Nazism.

What are the failings of the ELS/WELS/LCMS?

1. The NIV,
   
2. unionism with ELCA,
   
3. women teaching men and usurping authority,
   
4. Church Growth,
   
5. open communion.

All these errors came from the influence of Reformed doctrine, an influence made possible by the lack of teaching about the efficacy of the Word alone, a doctrine hated by the Reformed.

Oh yes, that is the next stage, already indicated by the Wizard of Ooze, Mark Jeske, calling on "the Powers of the Universe to help us in our personal and business concerns." (Time of Gath broadcast) Paul Y. Cho taught this occultic nonsense decades ago, and the Evangelical/Pentecostals lapped it up.

As one pastor told me, before he was kicked out of WELS, "There have been many fads in WELS, but Church Growth is the first one forced on us from the top down."

The clergy, as a group, have failed their flocks. True, some tried to do something and found themselves jobless and friendless, but that was also the fault of their so-called friends. If the laity do not take this study on themselves and force the circuits and districts into action, Jeske's Church and Changers will rule the roost, Kieschnick will merge Missouri with ELCA, and Pope John the Malefactor will get his DMin at Fuller.

Use the Force!