ICHABOD, THE GLORY HAS DEPARTED - explores the Age of Apostasy, predicted in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, to attack Objective Faithless Justification, Church Growth Clowns, and their ringmasters. The antidote to these poisons is trusting the efficacious Word in the Means of Grace. John 16:8. Isaiah 55:8ff. Romans 10. Most readers are WELS, LCMS, ELS, or ELCA. This blog also covers the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Left-wing, National Council of Churches denominations.
Friday, March 13, 2009
What If the Babtist Church
Has Better Coffee?
Crown of Life, Corona, California
Goes Latte and Pop
I ran into this WELS congregation by Googling "WELS, Leonard Sweet." I saw that he was drooling over the latest Sweet book and publishing his weekly offerings. The offerings were catastrophically bad, gushing red ink. Overnight he was warned and the Sweet reference disappeared with the offerings. I was scolded (not by name) for mentioning his offerings, which he listed for everyone to see. That was not classy, he claimed.
I could tell there was a network of Church and Change informants, and now I know a number of them. They all squawk in a raucous chorus, a cacophony of bad manners, worse doctrine, and disgraceful spelling.
Before I get into Corona aping the Babtists - there used to be a tradition among Lutheran congregations. They did not try out something new unless the others were informed and in agreement. The idea was to show respect for worship and not undercut others by going freaky for the sake of attendance bumps. Someone might be able to cite a source for that. I remember reading it, but of course that was just a joke in Columbus.
Here is the new Crown of Life, verbatim from their webpages:
Worship
Crown of Life is now meeting in two places for worship. We would love to meet you and to have you as part of our community.
Sunday Mornings at our Corona Campus
8:30 a.m. ~ Traditional Worship called Heritage of Faith where Pastor Rick wears vestments, we make use of the liturgy, and a pianist leads our worship with hymns.
9:30 a.m. ~ Adult Bible Study led by Pastor Rick.
10:30 a.m. ~ Contemporary Worship called Faith for Today. The service is led by Pastor Rick and our own COL Adoration Band, using video projection, and singing the best of today's Christian music. Children's education and nursery are offered foloowing (sic) the children's message. Pastor dresses more casually at this service--no gown or vestments.
Sunday Mornings at our Beaumont Campus
9:00 a.m. - Sunday morning worship begins in Beaumont on March 15, 2009. Style of music is contemporary/coffee house -- today's best Christian music with an acoustic sound and light percussion. Service also include video projection. Children's education and nursery are offered following the children's message.
What to wear? You will find people dressed in shirt & tie and dresses. You will find people wearing jeans and polo shirts, shorts and tee shirts. Come dressed in whatever way you find comfortable and appropriate for worship. The Bible doesn't prescribe a dress code for worship and neither do we.
After the Service please stay for coffee and a snack. In Corona, that takes place on our shaded patio where you'll also find the CommUNITY Center with booklets, magazines and a place to plug in and sign up for activities. In Beaumont, the coffee is close by, along the side buffet in the Oak Valley Room.
***
GJ - Going multi-site means going Mars Hill. The Church and Chicaneries cannot admit that their guiding lights are Leonard Sweet, Mark Driscoll, Craig Groeschel, Andy Stanley, and other peddlers of spiritual Spam. Their idols plagiarize each other and the motivational circuit, and the C and C followers plagiarize them. Lutheran worship services glorify God by offering Christ crucified through Word and Sacrament. The Church and Chicaneries offer:
And:
St. Marcus School in Top 50 for Funding
No wonder Bruce Becker high-tailed it to St. Marcus.
In 2001, the school ranked in the top 50 of grant recipients in Milwaukee, coming in at $360,000 from only two grants.
So Your Organist Kills and Burns Up a Church Member.
Next Job? Wheatridge Foundation!
Long-time readers remember when a homosexual organist, Eric Henstenberg, murdered a female church member and burned the house, hoping to hide the crime. When they tied the crime to him, he accused the dead saint of trying sexually assault him. No one believed him.
The congregation was LCMS, Texas. The organist was working on the next LMCS convention (2004). The pastor was John Nunes, who fled the scene and showed up next as the head of the liberal Wheatridge Foundation.
Nunes was a featured speaker at some event recently. Apostates take care of their own.
St Marcus received a $25,000 grant from Wheat Ridge in late 2008:
http://www.wheatridge.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=khLSKZPDLoF&b=3891075&ct=6347545
Affiliation
Wheat Ridge is a recognized service organization of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod and an affiliated social ministry organization of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
On the Board of Directors is:
Ms. Wendy Greenfield
Vice President of Development & Communications
HOPE Christian Schools
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
wendylgreenfield@yahoo.com
Look for Jeske, Inc. to leave WELS when SP Schroeder wins re-election. I expect a small part of Church and Chicanery to leave with him, but only if they have congregations--like St. Mark Depere--large enough for Kieschnick or Mark Hanson to covet.
New Vicar?
Karl Gurgel Re-Ups at Holy Word, Austin:
Be Sure To Audit the Books
From: Pastor Patterson
Date: Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 9:24 AM
Subject: [Holy_Word] Pastor Gurgel responds to call
To: holy_word@yahoogroups.com
Dear Saints,
Last Sunday in our quarterly voter's meeting we issued a call to Rev. Karl Gurgel to come and serve us in a "one year part time call" to help us continue our mission to reach the lost for Christ in the North Austin and surrounding areas.
Below is his letter of acknowledgement. Please keep Pastor Gurgel and his wife Barb in your prayers as they deliberate what God would have them do. It would be a wonderful blessing to have them among us for a year or more - but we know that God in his wisdom will make them a blessing wherever he sends them.
In Him,
Pastor Patterson
P.S. If you would like to send him an encouraging email just reply to me and I will give you his address.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Members of Holy Word,
It's a privilege to serve the Lord, recognizing in the Call of God's people, the Call of the Lord himself. It's encouraging to recognize in the Call you've extended to me, the pleasure God may still grant me to serve his people.
Your commitment to extend the reach of God's Kingdom beyond yourselves is obvious in your adoption of your ten-year plan. The growth in the Word of God you envision for yourselves continues to provide the foundation for all your future plans. If the Lord leads me to accept His Call administered through you, it would be a privilege and pleasure to serve the Lord among you.
I would ask you to continue to remember my wife, Barbara and me, in your prayers. God-willing we will arrive at a decision before the end of March. May God's blessings also rest upon you.
In His Service with You,
Karl R. Gurgel
***
GJ - Some of you did not realize I was on this email list, too. Church and Change is leakier than a meeting of GOP conservatives.
I wonder if Kudu Don Patterson got a grant for this special call. My intuition says, "Yes!"
The opposition is loading up their ammo for the 2009 WELS convention.
Consider this: Gurgel was Doctrinal Pussycat when his district was given the MilCraft estate (Golf) and they managed to run that into the ground. The widow was cheated out of a lot of money so she sued WELS in court and won. Gurgel had no trouble going to court to oppose a widow who lost everything. She won a million dollars.
Gurgel's next triumph was getting the Schwan money, the largest charitable gift ever, and running the synod into total insolvency. When the synod treasurer informed Gurgel that they could not spend designated gifts, Gurgel fired the treasurer and blamed the treasurer for the disappeared funds. That is the essence of the synod owing money to the synod. Some call it skimming. I call it the typical stewardship of the Church and Change crowd: spend Other People's Money on your own wild hare projects.
Read the Kuske Report, linked at the top left side of the page. Kuske failed to note that his Church Growth buddies were the ones who devastated the finances of WELS.
Gurgel once wrote that "denying I have the spiritual gifts of leadership would be false modesty." I have to commend someone who can do so much damage and still get a vicarage call.
the ones marked Wauwatosa Charities.
There they are in the back seat!
I'm afraid you'll have to go into town and talk to Interpol."
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GJ - One of my many sources says that the Ichabod exposure of free vicars has shut that spigot off. There are only 1,437 to go.
Remember, Ichabodians, the Church and Changers run on Other's People Money, not on the Word, so keep tightening those spigots.
Women Liturgists in WELS?
Why Not?
Apparently, this is the Before photo for Lorial makeup.
Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Mouse Remains A Daily Communicant at Ichabod":
The idea of taking your neighbors words in the kindest possible way has, in the Lutheran Churches, become a belief that there is Doctrine and then there's Application of Doctrine. This is how they can destroy what it means to be Justified In Christ changing the Holy Spirit's faith into their man made faith (the withered outstretched and empty hand) with the Doctrine of UOJ and then defer to Subjective Justification to exclaim that it still takes faith.
With this duo they're able to say that growing the Church is purely a work of the Holy Ghost through the Means of Grace and then with the application of that doctrine contradict God and list the ways in which we can remove the barriers that keep the gospel from being effective.
The Northwest District of the WELS used this same approach when dealing with using women in the congregation to read the liturgy.
Here's a quote from District President Jon Buchholz [Arizona-Las Vegas-California District] promoting this understanding when he was included in a discussion coming from my contention that Pastor Schewe, WELS Des Moines Washington, was wrong to have the women in the congregation read the Liturgy. Pastor Schewe began the reading and then had all the women read the next section of the liturgy then all the men in a round robin style.
Pastor Buchholz:
"Second, to the specific issue of women in the church, remember that there are principles and there are applications of principles. The principles are always inviolate. Some applications of principles are always inviolate. Other applications of principles may vary depending upon a whole passel of factors, including but not limited to: strength or weakness of faith; cultural sensitivities; customs of the people, and church etc. (An example might be the way Luther dealt with the radicals at Wittenberg who wanted to take the Reformation too quickly. He backed off and moved slowly, allowing the word to do its work in people’s hearts before he instituted things like Communion in both kinds—certainly a biblical practic e.)
In asserting that Pastor Schewe was wrong to allow women to read sections of Scripture antiphonally, you want to be careful that you don’t turn the application of a principle into the principle itself. The principle that women are not to teach or have authority over a man is inviolate. Some applications of that principle, e.g., women pastors, women teaching men in Bible study, etc., are inviolate. However there is quite a stretch between women teaching (i.e., expounding, explaining, clarifying and elucidating Scripture) and reading Scripture antiphonally and collectively without giving instruction. (This doesn’t mean that Scripture itself is not instructive; that power to instruct inheres in the word. And, as you well know, the power and efficacy of the word to instruct is n ot made more or less effective whether it’s read by a woman or a man.)
Another question that may well be raised is whether a practice is wrong (i.e. inherently sinful) or merely ill-advised under the circumstances. Since in this case in point you’re dealing with an application—not the principle itself—there are a number of criteria that are to be evaluated to ascertain the benefit or detriment of an application. Does it pander to or foster a particular false belief? Is it an accommodation to worldly practice and mindset? Is it edifying? And so forth ."
WELS has fostered an understanding of doctrine which allows their practice to be detached from their doctrine.
In Christ,
Brett Meyer
***
GJ - Missouri has done the same while bragging about it. When I knew seminarians at Our Lady of Sorrows in St. Louis, about 15 years ago, they said, "We are orthodox in doctrine but loose in application."
Mequon has had women leading the worship service. The Little Sect on the Prairie did the same at their copper-top chapel. When some in the ELS objected, the response was, "Maybe it was a mistake if some of you have a problem with it."
Once I told John Lawrenz about St. Paul in German Village having members who phoned my women members, saying, "Transfer to our church so you can vote." That upset him the first time. A little later he was on the opposite side of the issue and said, "I didn't know you were sensitive about that issue." He made it sound like a medical condition.
Paul Kuske was openly sarcastic about adiaphora, saying maybe it hurt the "weak in faith," so that could be a problem. His adiaphora at Pilgrim Community Church included the name Lutheran, their deliberately deceiving people about its identification when phoning to invite them, the Creeds, hymns, and the liturgy.
---
Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Women Liturgists in WELS? Why Not?":
As proof that false doctrine grows like a weed:
August 18, 2006
From: HTLC Board of Elders
Stan Bauer
Tad Doviak
Monte Ewald
Dave Fulton
Kevin Nack
Dan Smith
Mark Tacke
To: Brett Meyer
Dear Brett,
You originally e-mailed the Board of Elders regarding the question of antiphonal worship at Holy Trinity.
After prayerful consideration and study of the Word in this matter we believe that antiphonal worship is a proclamation or reading of God's inspired word and is not considered to be 'teaching' the congregation.
***
KJV 1 Timothy 2:12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
WELS Constantly Being Revised Version - But I do not suffer anyone to question how we are changing things, but the man must be in silence.
A Simple Test
anyone who opposed his beloved Church Growth Movement was a "legalist."
His journal article, he told Guy Purdue,
was aimed at "that legalist in Ohio, Greg Jackson."
I find the products of Church and Change congregations (beehives) appallingly ingnorant. They are not only ignorant of the Confessions but also of the Scriptures. They like to say, "Lord, Lord," but never imagine they are simply fulfilling the warning of Matthew 7:21 -
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
They like to attack the Book of Concord and brush it aside, or say, with great smugness, "We worship Jesus, not Luther." But their glib assertions, which I have heard from many a Babtist and many more ELCA Lutherans, are really a rejection of the Word of God.
There is a simple test for every doctrinal assertion. If it can be proved from Scripture alone, it is valid. If it rests on the authority of a human author alone, it is unScriptural and most likely anti-Scriptural.
Church of Rome
I will start with the obvious, since some readers have already watched the fall of the cheap statue of Mary, carried about as an idol. The extra-Biblical claims about the Virgin Mary are false doctrine because the Word of God says nothing and implies nothing about the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the Assumption of Mary, and Mary as Queen of Purgatory. Those claims are supported by post-Biblical authors and much later worship traditions, which grew until they became a cult of Mary displacing the grace and mercy of her Son.
Likewise, Purgatory is derived from Greek and Latin authors, not from the Word of God. There is no passage in the Bible, not even in the Apocrypha, which commends prayers, sacrifices, and masses for the dead.
Lutheran Issues
The Enthusiasts always want to eject the liturgy from their beehives with some kind of false justification. I tried their excuses out on a Jewish Lutheran who knew Jewish worship as much as he knew Lutheran worship. I asked, "Do you agree that the liturgy is a Medieval invention, not from Biblical Old Testament worship?" He laughed and said the claim was ridiculous. Jewish worship today is still built around appointed lessons, hymns, chants, and seasons. Pentecost is still celebrated by Jews, although with a different emphasis. Modern Pentecostals never observe the Day of Pentecost, as one Baptist professor of worship noted, with some wit, with only two in the audience wildly applauding his speech.*
Church and Changers are ashamed of the Sacraments. They would like to hide them so no one is offended. Willow Creek hides their Lord's Supper too. How Biblical is it to claim the Scriptures and hide what the Word of God offers for our spiritual benefit? The Sacraments are easily provens from dozens if not hundreds of passages. Those who doubt infant baptism, baptismal regeneration, and the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion also reject the efficacy of the Word. Therefore it is no shock that those who water down, explain away, and adulterate the efficacy of the Word also join their Enthusiasts officially after years of serving as the Amen! chorus.
The Church Shrinkers want to import everything from the Enthusiasts so they can enjoy the luxurious lifestyles of televangelists. But the Shrinkers only want to do this with Other People's Money: government tax revenue, the synodical offerings, Thrivent, Schwan, and the foundations. They talk missions while soaking up as much loot as they can. Look at Kudu Don Patterson. He and his buddies have enough money to hunt in Africa on a regular basis, but he goes to the synod to pay for his vicars.
Sacrifice a little, VP Patterson. Pay your own vicars and hunt at the nearest petting zoo. Shoot those animals with a Canon.
Universal Objective Justification
Readers will note that all the literature supporting UOJ is built around a few recent sources. One is E. Preuss, who became a Roman Catholic after he saw a brilliant sunset. Nevertheless, his idiotic comments are often cited as proof of UOJ.
My favorite is "Hottentots are justified." Without faith or the Word, of course.
The other sources claimed are Walther, Pieper, and their disciples. No Biblical passage says that "God justified the entire world when Jesus rose from the dead," but they cite many passages without explanation. They have to skip the Book of Concord and Luther. Recently, Otten supported UOJ by citing the Brief Statement of the LCMS. His closest ally in Missouri, Robert Preus, rejected UOJ in his last book. The UOJ Stormtroopers ignore that simple fact.
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*The place was Wheaton College. The only two who appreciated the lecture were the author and Mrs. Ichabod.
Sinuflect Toward Rome And This Is What Happens
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Comments posted below the video:
"Hello, Statue Warehouse."
"Hi Doris."
"You need another MA-12? That's the second one this month!"
"Who was it this time?"
"OOOOH, you know Rupert's not suppose to carry anything over 10 lbs."
"Well, I'll send it express, you'll have it Wednesday morning."
"We'll talk to you in a few weeks."
"Bye-bye."
---
"the customs of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter.
Like a scarecrow in a melon patch their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good." Jer10:3-5
"They are all senseless and foolish; they are taught by worthless wooden idols." Jer10:8
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Information on the video:
Maybe you shouldn't assign the frail elderly men the task of carrying a giant heavy church statue to the alter (sic).
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