WELS Pastor Mike Borgwardt went to a Leonard Sweet performance
and loved it. Who paid for that? WELS?
Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Beauty and Value of the Wedge Issue":
The primary wedge issue in the false gospel of Universal Objective Justification. It is a New Age doctrine that has been driven into the Lutheran Synods, hearts and minds. Most do not seem to mind the cold blade on their shoulders. By the grace of God some do.
The continued dabbling in the New Age, Emergent church, doctrines by the Church and Change folks continues to feed the problem. Compare the UOJ doctrine taught in the best selling New Age book The Shack with the WELS UOJ doctrine. They are exactly the same. Here are the C&C quotes on this issue:
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"Thanks for the hint. I heard _____(Leonard Sweet) speak at an "emerging church" conference
this year and he didn't disappoint. Great choice!"
Michael Borgwardt [GJ - WELS Stealth Congregation, Chicago]
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"Full disclosure - this is Joel Kluender speaking - not Jennifer, my wife. I've been following the thread on Leonard Sweet and his being invited by some WELS congregations to the Church and Change conference. I have taken a look at his book online and I must say that what I have found is extremely disturbing.
****Here is a direct quote from his book Quantum Spirituality.
"What tradition supposes Wesley to have discovered at Aldersgate is that Logos is an energy-releasing event. Energy flows are absolutely indispensable to the emergence of life, whether biological or
spiritual.ý Just as farmers are said to provide only 5 percent of the energy necessary to produce crops--the energy of nature provides the other 95 percent--so general reason or logos provides only the energy of receptivity in the divine-human encounter that leads to Logos . God provides the rest by other means." (p. 68)
***And here is another quote:
"But the energy of divine love was assembled in matter in the human form of the Logos-Christ. Jesus is God's most sublime manifestation of energy matter" (p.64)
And here is my (Joel's) response:
THESE ARE NOT JUST THE INERT, BENIGN MUSINGS ABOUT GOD BY A PHILOSOPHER FASCINATED WITH PHYSICS. THESE ARE FALSE DOCTRINE! IN THESE QUOTES SWEET HAS TAKEN THE CLEAR AND CONCRETE TEACHING OF THE INCARNATE CHRIST, AND COUCHED IT IN NEW-AGE THEOLOGY MASQUERADING AS "NEW LIGHT".
TO TEACH THAT WE HAV ANY PART IN OUR CONVERSION GOES AGAINST THE
CLEAR TEACHING OF SCRIPTURE. THAT IS WHAT THE FIRST QUOTE DOES -
SUGGESTING THAT OUR logos OR REASON PROVIDES 5% AND THE OTHER 95% COMES FROM GOD. BLASPHEMY!
THE SECOND QUOTE THAT JESUS IS "GOD'S MOST SUBLIME MANIFESTATION OF ENERGY MATTER" IS TANTAMOUNT TO DENYING THE ETERNAL DIVINITY OF CHRIST. JESUS IS NOT A "MANIFESTATION" OF GOD. JESUS IS GOD. IN SUMMARY, IF A SPEAKER WHO ESPOUSES THESE VIEWS IS BEING WELCOMED INTO WELS CIRCLES, THERE IS A MAJOR PROBLEM IN THE WELS. FOR THE RECORD, I AM AN ELECTRICAL ENGINEER, WITH A MASTERS DEGREE IN MICROELECTRONICS, AND I HAVE TAKEN GRADUATE COURSES IN QUANTUM PHYSICS. WHAT THIS GUY IS TEACHING IS NOT QUANTUM PHYSICS, IT IS BIBLICAL HERESY. ROMANS 6:23 AND JOHN 3:16 SAY MORE OF WORTH TO US AS CHRISTIANS THAN ALL OF THE QUANTUM PSYCHO-BABBLE IN THE WORLD. WE IN WELS SHOULD WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH IT."
Joel Kluender
***
GJ - Once again I have to ask, "Why spend Lutheran money to spread something decidedly anti-Lutheran and anti-Christian?"
I cannot bear to reprint Sweet's self-worshiping bio, so I will link it here. (If you are a Church and Change member, left click the blue line. If you went to Fuller, ask someone to help you.)
Paul Calvin Kelm backed the Sweet Church and Change conference, but he refused to discuss it with his own fellow pastors. Nothing was ever done about Kelm's doctrine or his union membership in Willow Creek - with John Parlow and St. Mark Depere.
Meanwhile, ELCA members are looking for a genuine Lutheran church, not a cheap imitation of a circus founded upon New Age Eastern Polytheism.
