Concerned Laity in WELS Cannot Get a Break

Irrelevant, but funny.


rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "Podpeople Point and Hiss When They Hear a Good Ide...":

The Kool-aid drinking WELS laity are a pathetic lot. On the other hand, I have seen many concerned laity who act in Christian love get treated quite harshly. They are darned if they do and darned if they don't. When laity have a concern, they get flogged with the 8 and 18 switch for even coming forward. When they follow the protocol, they still get flogged. Most of them quietly retreat like a dog with their tail between their legs. Some just leave quietly. Naturally, it is always their fault. When it is happening, it is hard to understand. The double standard is distressing to those who guard their tongues and actions but still get into trouble. That is why it is crucial that Ichabod publish any historical documents that the leaders thought were flushed down the memory hole. Before the Internet, it often took a long time for those who were not WELS-connected to put the pieces together. I feel that it is important for all of us to see that what is presently happening within American Lutheranism is not a recent development, but is a long time in the making.

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GJ - This 2009 convention will be the great divide. The laity will have to do their share--and more than their share--to move toward sound doctrine. The C and C people are parasites who live by bleeding the synod dry. Once they are exposed and de-funded, the thrill of the Emerging Church will dissipate faster than a July frost.

Twenty Sub-Woofers Behind That Screen!

Click here for Ski at his leased movie theatre.

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APPLETON - It still has the feel of a big picture theater.

"We just got in here about a week ago," said Jim Skorzewski. But now showing is, Pastor Jim Skorzewski.

"We think the opportunity to do church in an IMAX will just be phenomenal," said Skorzewski.

He's starting up The Core, an outreach ministry of St. Peter Lutheran Church in Freedom in the former home of the Big Picture Theater in downtown Appleton. The targeted audience is a young crowd.

"If we're going to go after the 19-35 year olds, and they're downtown, they'll hit the bar scene. We believe we need to be downtown," said Skorzewski.

Skorzewski says the church will utilize the big screen and offer live music.

"We're going to put a 30 by 90 foot performance platform," said Skorzewski.

The concession area will be transformed into a lobby with coffee, couches and free WiFi for the public to use. The building, opened in 2005, has been vacant since October 2006.

"To see it close down was a big disappointment for us," said Jennifer Stephany, the executive director of Appleton Downtown Inc. "Just to see activity and to get people utilizing that space again is a benefit to downtown."

Pastor Skorzewski says his ministry has a one-year lease on the building, but it's still on the market, with a near $2 million price tag. But he says if the church is successful, and they can fill all 300 seats on a regular basis.

"Maybe God willing we look to purchase," said Skorzewski.

While the official opening is April 19, services have already started; 5:30 Sunday nights.

"I'd love to have you, it'll be great," said Skorzewski.

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GJ - Thirty-year mortgage on $2 million at 6.5% = $14,725 per month.

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Wisc. Movie Theater to Become Church – Permanently

02/12/2009

The former home of the Big Picture movie theater in downtown Appleton, Wisc., is the new branch home of Freedom, Wisc.-based St. Peter Lutheran Church.
Pastor Jim Skorzewski is starting up The Core, a new ministry of the church aimed at 19-to-35 year olds. The movie theater they have purchased has an IMAX screen, which Skorzewski can’t wait to use. In that room, the church will construct a 30-foot by 90-foot performance platform.
The former concession stands will be turned into coffee lounges and cafes with free WiFi.
The official opening is April 19, but the services have started already, meeting at 5:30 p.m. Sunday evenings.
Source:
WWLP.com: Big movie theater to turn into church

Does This Rate for the Convention Packet?

This parable teaches the effectiveness of the Word alone.

Someone sent me this link:

http://www.charis.wlc.edu/publications/charis5-1/Braun.pdf

I am posting it for your amusement. I am not inclined to read it.

It is from Mark Braun, a certified Church Growth apostate. He follows the Yes, But line of thinking promoted by Paul Kelm. In The Northwestern Lutheran, Braun managed to mangle the Parable of the Sower and the Seed. First Braun quoted Luther, then he did an Amen Chorus for studying the soil, right out of Fuller Seminary bag of tricks - very Kelm-isch. The point of the Sower and the Seed is that we broadcast the Word and God does His work through the efficacious Word. But Braun and his marketing apostates twist that into helping God by demographic studies.

"What do people mean when they talk about effective church growth principles? Do we make God's kingdom come? 'God's kingdom certainly comes by itself,' Luther wrote. Ours is to sow the seed. We hamper the kingdom if we sow carelessly or if we do not sow at all. But we do not make it grow."
Mark Braun, The Growing Seed, What Do People Mean When They Talk about Effective Church Growth Principles? The Northwestern Lutheran, September 1, 1991, p. 300. Mark 4:26-29.

The whole Church Shrinker gang in WELS uses the same coy language: Kelm, Bruce Becker, Larry Olson, James Huebner, Valleskey. They give themselves away in a few words. One Doctrinal Pussycat said these people are difficult to pin down. That is an admission of being "not apt to teach."

I wonder, "Has FIC or anyone repudiated this anti-Biblical article?" The current editor dropped a stink bomb on everyone with a slobbering article about Latte Lutheran. I would not expect him to repudiate false doctrine.

Did the ELS object? Never mind. I remember someone giving an Amen paper in answer to Valleskey's Figs From Thistles paper. No wait - that was my own title when I answered him. His theme was Spoiling the Egyptians: Stealing the Garbage from Fuller's Dumpster.

Charles Darwin's 200th Birthday - February 12th

Charles Darwin was born February 12, 1809.

Ichaslang Pictionary

Pigsty.

http://www.churchandchange.org = Websty, where nominal Lutherans roll in the mud of false doctrine and squeal with delight.

Kieschnick Threatens Issues, Etc with Lawsuit

Apostates demand tolerance until they gain control; then they demand obedience and complete submission. In America, we elect dictators.


Extreme Theology

Kieschnick Threatening Lawsuit Agaist Todd Wilken and Jeff Schwarz
Sorry for the inside the LCMS baseball post. However, this information needs to get out.

Last march the LCMS cancelled the Issues, Etc. radio program. It created a huge brouhaha and ultimately the Issues, Etc. radio program was resurrected and their audience is larger and stronger than ever.

Apparently, this isn't sitting well with LCMS President Gerry Kieschnick who is now threatening a lawsuit against Todd Wilken and Jeff Schwarz over the Issues, Etc. trademark (a trademark that the LCMS abandoned in 1999 and a trademark that the LCMS has no intention of ever utilizing again)

What is the real reason why Kieschnick wants to sue Todd and Jeff? He wants to silence them.

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Is the LCMS Threatening "Issues, Etc." with a Lawsuit?

Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at 03:18PM

Just got this with a request for immediate posting. It is from Chris Rosebrough's Extreme Theology blog. Here's the link (Click here: Extreme Theology: Kieschnick Threatening Lawsuit Agaist Todd Wilken and Jeff Schwarz).

According to Chris:


"Last march the LCMS cancelled the Issues, Etc. radio program. It created a huge brouhaha and ultimately the Issues, Etc. radio program was resurrected and their audience is larger and stronger than ever.

Apparently, this isn't sitting well with LCMS President Gerry Kieschnick who is now threatening a lawsuit against Todd Wilken and Jeff Schwarz over the Issues, Etc. trademark (a trademark that the LCMS abandoned in 1999 and a trademark that the LCMS has no intention of ever utilizing again)

What is the real reason why Kieschnick wants to sue Todd and Jeff? He wants to silence them."

Don't you just love church bureaucrats? I wonder how Ablaze is working, and if its "growing" the church?

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GJ - I knew Don Matzat, the LCMS pastor who began the radio show and left it. He is an unrepentant Pentecostal and advocate for DP Benke. But then, Paul McCain is another advocate for Benke.

When Kieschnick was District Pope in Texas, he altered a woman's will to benefit his organization. He argued in court that he was too dumb to know what he was doing. And they elected and re-elected him as Synod Pope anyway.

Podpeople Point and Hiss When They Hear a Good Idea

Point and hiss when someone brings up a good idea.

Bruce Church has left a new comment on your post "Budget Discussed on Bailing Water":

Hi Anonymous, I'm glad you admit to being a kool-aid drinker because I was about to point out how many times in this short discussion you talked of blindly trusting WELS leaders, and denigrate anyone who would voice his own opinion and lay out the facts as he knows it. You think that using a blog to advocate for streamlining the synodical schools and trying to improve their instruction is being holier-than-thou. You are apparently unconcerned about how short-changed students with go through life with diminished opportunities because they can't speak another language fluently, spell well, or do high-level math. (Believe me, I've seen the product that synodical schools produce.) The WELS students also have strange attitudes inculcated into them by the synod (one of them you exhibit here), along with the UOJ doctrine which is not found in the Lutheran confessional documents before the 1932 Brief Statement.

It doesn't seem as though you know how the leaders are chosen or come up with their decisions. They aren't just accountants looking at spreadsheets. They talk to people to see if there is support for such and such, and hopefully they see a wide range of blogs as being a barometer of what the WELS public thinks, wants and is willing to support. At least they'll talk to people who have read the blogs.

People should voice their opinions without shame even if they get some facts wrong, because that would likely indicate the synodical leadership's failure to communicate properly more than anything else, and the synodical leaders need to see that and correct it. For instance, I read the glossy magazines that come out of synod, and instead of giving me real news and facts about the synodical schools programs, they mainly are filled with feel-good human interest stories with pictures of smiling students, all designed to recruit students and have people donate money. Don't confuse them with the facts!

If everyone had Anonymous's attitude about people voicing their opinion, the WELS leadership would surely fail since they make decisions on behalf of the people. They would know little about what the layman actually want or are willing to support, that is, until the laymen walk away or pull the plug on the synod. Not sending in money is a message, too. In fact, one could say that the root cause of a lot of the synod's past failures is there were too many WELS members like Anonymous.

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GJ - When the shoe is on the other hoof, Bruce, the Church and Chicaneries violate all the rules they impose on everyone else. Item:

Perish Services was told by the Synod President not to hire another person for budgetary reasons. When Bruce Becker (C and C board member; topdog BPS) insisted they were going to issue a call anyway, the Synod President asked them not to hire a polarizing figure. So they broke the bank with a new/old hire, and they picked Paul Kelm, the most polarizing figure of all.

How is that for doing things in a decent and orderly manner?

And, to top it off, they did not tell the elected president, but let him find out in the posting of calls.

How is that for honoring those in authority?

SP Schroeder could have appointed a First VP to replace Wayne Mueller, who quit in a huff. Schroeder did not have to refrain from appointing, to save money for the synod. He would have had an instant ally, so he had every excuse to do what was convenient for him, expensive for the synod.

In contrast, C and C thumbed its snout at the elected president to serve the carnal desires of their doctrinal buddies, and they did it in the most obnoxious way possible. Oh, the lessons learned in GA and Bonecrusher.

And here is the kicker - the C and C gang began howling that Schroeder knew about the call early, not from reading about it in the call report that everyone sees. Nothing is too base for them. They let their Rock and Roll layman do their lying for them. But when he asked about Babtist Stetzer on their listserve, they refused to answer.

So the Church and Chicaneries are always preaching the Law and distributing Kool-Aid to the troops, but they are completely lawless and scornful of authority themselves.

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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Podpeople Point and Hiss When They Hear a Good Ide...":

Oh, the lessons learned in GA and Bonecrusher.

Lessons that started in prep, that is, if you were a male dorm student....

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GJ - That is why area Lutheran high school students were sneeringly called "public school students." They did not experience the joys of prep hazing, such as cross-dressing and being held out of a window and dropped. Oops. "Only the best graduate," they are told. They even think they are tough, but many impress me as masochists waiting to be ordered around by the bullies. However, there are some fine pastors who want to preserve the Word, teach the Gospel, and live the Gospel.

UOJ and WELS Mission Vision Idol

UOJ Stormtroopers are losing their armor.

Hey Professor Jackson

Thanks-- the useful paper box will be extremely helpful.

Do you think that MOV author, was officially chastised for his harsh (and legitimate) criticism?

Could you comment if (or how) UOJ is responsible for the manifest destinyesque tone of the MOV itself?

I myself am really trying to nail down how UOJ has led to current problems in the WELS. (beyond the obvious enthusiasm of the stealth churches)

Thanks

Keep up the great work.

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GJ - You are welcome. I hope someone sends me a Word file of the Bartz paper. No has told me that Manthey was in trouble for his paper, but I know Gurgel frowned upon Issues in WELS.

UOJ is responsible for a lot of WELS problems because a false view of justification always leads to numerous errors.

The double-justification found in the German Pietist Knapp (published in German, translated and used extensively in America) paved the way for the mainline denominations to take the final step into Unitarianism. Likewise, Missouri and WELS have become increasingly anti-BOC while promoting business planning, marketing, and entertainment evangelism.

WELS, Missouri, and the ELS have all spent a lot of energy disciplining critics of their apostasy while rewarding the apostates. UOJ is behind it all. If someone separates God's work from God's Word, he is an Enthusiast. Every manner of foul errors follow.

Church and Chichanery's Ski Applies Lessons Learned from Babtist Andy Stanley

Sky and Babtist Andy Stanley, his mentor. See this post.

"If they could see me now,
that Babtist gang of mine,
renting fancy digs
and drinking kosher wine..."

Thanks to all my Emerging Church friends in WELS.

And he said to me, "If you but bow down to me, all these seats will be filled."
Outreach ministry to take over Big Picture Theater in Appleton

APPLETON — There will be a new focus for the former Big Picture Theater of Adventure and Discovery

A one-year lease was signed Feb. 3 to turn the large format theater, which has been closed for more than two years, into The Core, an outreach ministry of St. Peter Lutheran Church in Freedom.

The daughter congregation will target the 18-to-35-year-old demographic, said the Rev. Jim "Ski" Skorzewski, who will pastor the 300-seat (plus handicapped seating) church.

The Core's vision is to become a city within the city, Skorzewski said.

"In the same way we've been transformed by Jesus, then our responsibility and opportunity is to share that Gospel message that transforms lives," he said. "We're going to start very small like a township and our goal is to grow into a city that affects the city for our Savior Jesus."

More than 100 people turned out for an impromptu service and Bible study Sunday.

The $5.1 million Big Picture opened in March 2005. It closed in October 2006 and has remained vacant since.

In August, Skorzewski, formerly with St. Marcus Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, received a call from St. Peter's pastor, the Rev. Tim Glende, to start the new ministry. Skorzewski and a friend had began working on a new model for starting a church a year ago targeting two areas in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod: Oconomowoc and Appleton.

"A year later I got a call from both places the same night four minutes apart to do almost the exact same thing," Skorzewski said. "My philosophy has been if we're going to go after and target the 18-to-35-year-old age group you need to be downtown."

Once interior modifications are made to the theater — such as shrinking the size of the 80-by-60-foot screen using curtains and installing a performance platform, The Core hopes to launch its first service April 19. A Web site launching party is planned Feb. 22.

"It's an exciting time for our congregation and also for this daughter congregation," Glende said.

"Our tag line is real, relevant, relational," said Skorzewski. "We're going to be a pretty non-churchy church. It will be the more reverent irreverent service you've been to. … We're going to do something I haven't seen done in the Valley, so to speak. …So often churches become 'I have to,' not 'I get to.'"

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GJ - In 1985, Floyd Luther Stolzenburg got the Church Growth Movement going at St. Paul German Village, Columbus, Ohio, when Tim Glende was growing up. No one had a problem with Stolzenburg teaching his heresies there and around WELS. In fact, District VP Paul Kuske helped Floyd get his current pastoral job. The retired pastor of the church sponsoring Ski is the chairman of Church and Chicanery. Ski is on the board, but invisible with no photo and no bio (C and C websty).

Is anyone in the ELS going to object?

What does the local Doctrinal Pussycat say about this?

Latte Lutheran must be ordering double shots to celebrate.

Convention Packet Published - Without a Dime of Grant Money, Without Kissing Up to Thrivent

Ichabod makes disappearing papers reappear.

I started a new feature because several people wanted some older papers made available again. Searching Ichabod for one of 2050+ posts is rather tedious, even for the blogmeister, so I created a box where useful papers are linked. The list will grow with a little cooperation. Just send me a Word file and I will publish the paper.

The first three papers listed came from the Michigan District. In case someone wonders or would like to accuse, the authors did not stealthily send the papers to me. WELS laymen provided the copies. Others have asked how to find the earlier papers, so I knew the locations were becoming obscured by time.

Comments on 15 Years Under MOV
I am quite sure Manthey wrote the paper. I can almost hear him reading it. He married a Brenner, so that makes him part of that clan: John, son of John, son of John, ad infin. Reading between the lines of his exquisitely polite prose will reveal a very harsh criticism of WELS direction under the Church Growth gurus, whose names I highlighted in red. He has excellent comments about Strategic Planning as well (part of the same toxic waste dump). I know one woman who was extended the Left Foot of Fellowship for daring to criticize SP in WELS.

I thought of putting Gurgel's name in red, but he never was a leader of any kind. He was (don't laugh) the conservative dream candidate when he was elected upon Mischke's retirement. Conservatives were soon praying for Mischke to come back from retirement. Gurgel's team wasted the MilCraft estate when he was District Pope, then ran WELS into the ground after getting the Marvin Schwan money pot - enormous annual grants.

The original author may wince at my format enhancements, even the paragraph breaks, but I tried to break it up in an eye-appealing way, without changing any words. I was happy to see how he eviscerated "making disciples," which is the favored motto of the Church Growth fiends.

I was anonymousely accused of lying, because I wrote that I forgot the name of the WELS pastor who recently thanked me for my work. Soon, an anonymous comment was posted, claiming to be the author. I have Michigan DP memory. I immediately forget something when it is convenient for me to do so. In fact, I can no longer remember that Frosty Bivens bragged about studying at Fuller Seminary.