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.
"This is just a little video i (sic) put together showqin (sic) me recording sum (sic) tracks in my bedroom" [GJ - After spelling lessons from Ski? The absence of a period is in the original.]
Lil Mike in MySpace
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Lil Mike at The CORE":
A preppie pretending to be urban,
in a movie theater pretending to be a church,
in front of Babtists pretending to be Lutherans.
+Diet O. Worms
Thanks to Bishop Katie's Tweet, we know that four unnamed WELS pastors joined Ski, Glenda, Buske and her at Drive 09. Sfunny how those four names never came up in the Tweets. A staff member at Northpoint/Buckhead--Carlos Whittaker--was and is a constant on their Tweets, but those mysterious four WELS pastors are not even mentioned in the chatter.
The Drive Conferencess are primarily worship/entertainment events. At 09 they had a communionn service. At 08 Ski said he worshiped with the Babtists and loved it. In fact, it was more of "we worshiped with them." -
"The final Main Session with Andy Stanley was just phenomenal. We began with awesome worship."
Like the fabled Don Patterson pilgrimage to Exponential last year (with a bevy of WELS workers) this trip looked carefully organized, down to their cover stories. Tim Glende was going to a "pastor conference" without any details in the church bulletin about where it was or what denomination led the confab.
Some think the Anything Goes Northern Wisconsin District is loose, but Patterson-Glaeske are no different in the Southern Central Babtist District (aka The Safari Subsidy District).
Exactly how long can WELS preserve the illusion that it is a Lutheran church body?
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Wisdom of Drive 09: Orchestrated Spontaneous Danci...":
This is nothing new really. WELS let 3 missionaries go in the Tiawan field back in about 1992 because they became Petecostal/Charismatic. And how did that start you ask? By flirting around with them in the first place and not clearly maintaining a distance and avoiding them.
Does anyone remember the place in the Bible where God told Lot and his family to flee from Sodom and Gomorrah? Don't even look back they were told, but guess what, it was too aluring for Lot's wife. Just one look, is all it took.
Keep sneaking a peek straying friends and get swept away with all of the rest who are falling to seducing spirits.
Tico
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GJ - The Sausage Factory faculty was asked about tongue-speaking when this was developing. Wobbly to a man, they responded that tongue-speaking was OK. I was told never to mention Taiwan - that was a forbidden subject - in the ELS too.
Benny has left a new comment on your post "Wisdom of Drive 09: Orchestrated Spontaneous Danci...":
Wanted: bean counter at St. Marcus
http://epic.cuir.uwm.edu/entech/jobs/index.php?cmd=viewposting&id=3632
Donor Records Coordinator
Posted by: St. Marcus
Date Posted: 04/21/09
Deadline to Apply: May 8, 2009
Job Description:
The position first and foremost serves as a member of development and finance teams for the overall purpose of cultivation, solicitation and recognition of St. Marcus’ various constituencies. The role of this position is to provide information, support, and services to advance the fundraising and community support building mission of the organization.
The position administers the St. Marcus constituent database, to maintain detailed records, and to process donations and gift acknowledgments in a timely manner. Supports COO, Financial Services Manager and Director of Development by generating constituent reports to support all department operations/fundraising programs and reconciliation with finance department.
Location: Milwaukee, WI
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| Gay Activist Andy Stanley and Ski, who was recently given lavish funds from WELS, 2012. |
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| WELS bought a twice-failed bar in downtown Appleton for Ski and Glende. The latest version of the bar was The Pulse. So now it is The CORE. |
Baroque sacred architecture
The Frauenkirche is regarded as the symbol of protestant church construction. The evangelical concept of faith and church service has been translated here into architectural form. The Frauenkirche is a remarkable example of sacred baroque architecture both due to its overall outer appearance as well as to its interior arrangement with the centrally located pulpit, baptismal font, altar and organ. When the bells again ring out, signalling that the church is open to visitors, free access is available to both the nave and the lower church everyone.
About 30 years ago, I needed to buy basic church supplies in a small town, so I went to the nearest Bible book and gift store. They always had prominently displayed such recent Evangelical best-sellers as Fascinating Woman (if that was the title). One book caught on, perhaps by that name.
We called the genre - Fundies In Their Undies.
They bowdlerized such current classics as Everything You Wanted To Know about Sex But Were Afraid To Ask, which would have been deemed NSFW - Not Safe For WELS.
Fireproof is simply a new version of the old genre, and another neat way to get the congregation into Babtist theology.
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Fundies In Their Undies":
Am I missing something? How does this book grow my faith? Does fireproofing my marriage prepare me for the next life?
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GJ - The Book of Concord will fireproof your soul for the next life.
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Fundies In Their Undies":
"The Book of Concord will fireproof your soul for the next life."
You do mean Scripture, of course. It's nice to see you placing man's writing over God's.
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GJ - I wrote it that way to elicit another dollop of sanctimony. Nothing in my statement put the Book of Concord above the Scriptures. Anyone who appreciates the Confessions can grasp that. The Pietists jump at every opportunity to scorn anything that might get in the way of their ecumenical Enthusiasm.
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Kenneth Schmidt has left a new comment on your post "Fundies In Their Undies":
I saw that awful "Fireproof" movie in an LCMS church I later left. "Fireproof" shows the concept of female headship in the home that is a cornerstone of American Evangelicalism. A Christian husband's sole duty is to follow all the orders and instructions of his wife at all times. If he violates this precept he is a manifest and impenetent sinner headed to hell.
Pastor Tim will be gone from Monday – Wednesday, May 4-6th. If an emergency arises, please contact Pastor Christenson @ 733-7225 or his cell 585-6998.
Absent is any mention of Drive 09. An innocent reader would think the "pastor conference" was Wisconsin Synod.
From the Twittering of Glende, Ski, Buske and Katy, we know that all four were in Atlanta at the Drive 09 Babtist conference with Andy Stanley, that they are such buds with the Babtist staff that the four invited Carlos Whittaker out to lunch even before they got there.
We also know from Katie that a total of seven WELS pastors (see below) were there in Atlanta, including four WELS pastors never mentioned in the Tweets of the A-town Musketeers-plus-Buske. Ichabod readers, I warned you more WELS workers were there. The blabbering Tweets came from the cubs, who know they are protected by the stealthy senior wolves of Church and Change.
Background
The recently retired pastor of St. Peter in Freedom, Ron Ash, has been chairman of Church and Change, the folks who ran the synod into the ground before Gurgel beat a hasty exit to a secure and undisclosed location.
Tim Glende grew up at St. Paul, German Village (Columbus, Ohio), where Floyd Luther Stolzenburg introduced the loathsome Church Growth Movement. Pastors Mike Nitz and Robert Schumann both promoted CG at St. Paul. Needless to say, the congregation shrank from the work of the Church Shrinkers. Schumann is openly allergic to religion these days, like many CG burn-outs.
As Wayne Mueller claimed in FIC The Northwestern Lutheran, the Church Growth Movement never existed in WELS. But no one was allowed to question the Church Growth Movement in WELS, especially in Columbus. VP Kuske worked closely with Stolzenburg and promoted Floyd for a church job after Floyd and Roger Zehms wore out their welcome as leaders of the "first Church Growth agency in WELS." Of course, The Love Shack was first Church Growth agency of WELS, with predictable results.
Dishonesty breeds even more dishonesty, stealth, sneaking around, dissembling. I do not blame the young cubbies of Church and Change as much as the senior wolves who have abused them with bad training in the WELS school system, horrible examples at so-called evangelism days at MLC, and easy money from synod subsidies, grants, and Thrivent bail-outs.
Katie Tweeted: "Grateful for the last 3 days I spent with 7 kingdom minded WELS pastors. Love their hearts for lost ppl." But Ski spoke to the alleged evangelism conference for the Anything Goes District (Northern Wisconsin) this year and last. The delight of Katie seems to contrast the Babtist WELS pastors, "who have hearts for lost people," with the traditional WELS pastors who implicitly rely on the efficacious Gospel in the Means of Grace.
The Shrinkers of Church and Change get their power from the gullibility of members and pastors, but also from their proven history as liars, bullies, and slanderers.
One pastor said that he is like many others, afraid to lose his position by speaking out. Why is that? Read a few nasty-grams from the Shrinkers. They never disclose their names, but they are busy on the legendary WELS grapevine spreading stories about anyone who dares to question them while covering up for their pals.
Some may imagine that Ski, Glende, Buske, and Katy are the only WELS workers coming back from Drive 09, the Babtist conference in Atlanta. Since Parlow went to the last one, we can assume plenty of the Chicanery leaders were there as well. They identify with the Babtists. They read Babtist books (when they read), listen to Babtist tapes and podcasts, and buy Babtist programs.
The Shrinkers are Pietists, not the Biblical Lutherans they pretend to be. They cannot abide being examined by someone who knows comparative dogmatics. (Nota bene: they cannot spell comparative on their own website. They cannot do what they cannot spell.)
If a Doctrinal Pussycat cannot expose the doctrinal errors of the Shrinkers, he could leave the ministry because he is not "apt to teach," a requirement for pastoral ministry.
I have yet to see a single refutation from a Shrinker sent to this blog. The Church and Chicanery comments boil down to:
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Cover Story versus The Facts":
Who is Brett Meyer? And what qualifies him more than anyone else to judge what the Bible has to say about justification and women participating in the worship service? It's not enough to say "I'm right and you're wrong." Show us your credentials, Brett.
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GJ - This is funnier than Anonymous saying, "You are a gutless coward." All the nasty, vindictive, and obscene comments come from Anonymous. I am sure there are a few of them with that pen name. What qualifies them? I post the comments to show what Church and Change has done for WELS.
I also get long, Scripture-filled statements on my need to repent, signed Anonymous.
When I quote the false teachers verbatim, Anonymous tells me this is a violation of the Eighth Commandment and Matthew 18. However, Anonymous knows exactly what is going on in my mind, reading my evil thoughts, and denouncing me for those imagined thoughts, feelings, and motivations.
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More toxic waste from--you guessed it--Anonymous:
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Question of the Year, From Anonymous":
My guess is, GJ, that those who don't sign their name have known you in the past. They know what kind of person you are, they know how twisted your reasoning can be, and they know how you have ruined reputations first in Christian News and now on your blog. Can you blame them for not signing their name? Everyone who has known you realizes exactly what you would do to their reputation. Don't act so naive.
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GJ - Several things drive these people wild:
A Latvian Bars Ordaining Women
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY,
Published: Wednesday, August 3, 1994
The oldest working pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia is 93. The youngest, ordained this year, is 18. The Archbishop of Latvia says the shortage of pastors in his country is so extreme that he has to take anyone he can get.
Except women.
In defiance of his predecessor in Latvia and almost all the larger Lutheran churches around the world, Archbishop Janis Vanags refuses to ordain women.
"It is true we need pastors very much," the Archbishop said, "but it is better to do without them than to do something against the will of God."
The rock-hard views of the 35-year-old Archbishop, who was elected six months ago, have bitterly divided Latvia's largest denomination. Deeper Than Usual Rift
Many other Protestant denominations are divided over the ordination of women. The Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, one of the largest in America, still refuses. But the rift seems deeper here, where the Lutheran Church is so closely identified with Latvian nationalism.
Mostly, the battle reflects a trend throughout the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: Even after the collapse of Communism, faiths forged in persecution remain far more conservative than those nurtured in the West.
The issue of ordination of women is not just an internal dispute in Latvia. The issue has also alienated the Latvian-based church from branches in Europe and the Americas that were established by Latvians who fled the Communists in 1940.
This is particularly true of the American branch, a church that grew large and prosperous in exile. Talk of reuniting the Latvian church and its exile branch has stopped, and instead, some Western church leaders are quietly planning to cut back on money sent to Riga. Dispute in Estonia
The same dispute simmers in neighboring Estonia, where only 4 of the country's 100 pastors are women. But there, the Archbishop does not openly oppose ordination. In Lithuania, too, women can be ordained.
"I know of no other place where the ordination of women was started, and then stopped," said Archbishop Elmar Ernst Rozitis, who from Germany heads the Latvian Lutheran Church abroad. "At this time I see no real possibility of a resolution."
Sarmite Fisere, who became a pastor in 1989, the day the Synod in Latvia voted to ordain women, is particularly frustrated.
"It makes no sense," said Ms. Fisere, one of nine women who were ordained before Archbishop Vanags took office. He has not interfered with their work.
Latvia, with 2 million inhabitants, has about 300,000 Lutherans and only 89 ministers and 39 lay preachers to guide them. Ms. Fisere, for instance, is the only Lutheran minister in the village of Ogre (population 28,000). "The need is so deep, and the people have accepted us women completely," she said. Infecting Young Pastors
She said Archbishop Vanags's views were infecting many young pastors, who, she said, were increasingly conservative.
She said, "In my opinion, Vanags is too young and inexperienced."
Ms. Fisere and the Archbishop were seminarians together at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Latvia in the mid-1980's, in the early days of perestroika, when the authorities gingerly began relaxing the strictures against religious activity but still punished those who pursued the new freedom too eagerly.
The Archbishop, who was a chemist, said he lost his job and apartment when he began working as a lay preacher. Ms. Fisere said she was accused of anti-Soviet agitation in the seminary and was almost kicked out. They both took part in the nonviolent revolution that led to Baltic independence in 1991. At Odds With West
The Archbishop is also at odds with his male counterparts in the Western branch of the Latvian church, who have been working alongside women pastors since 1970.
"We in the exile church have put quite a bit of pressure on the Archbishop over this," said Vilis Varsbergs, a Chicago-based church leader who in August will become dean of the theological department of the University of Latvia, which is where the Lutheran seminary is situated. "But it has been resented."
Archbishop Vanags's position on the ordination of women was known before he was elected by the Latvian Synod of Bishops, and most Western church leaders favored the candidacy of Archbishop Rozitis. But most Latvians, including even liberal church leaders, preferred a lifelong resident of Latvia. Many Women in Seminary
More than a third of the students in the Lutheran seminary in Riga are women, and no one is quite certain what will happen when the first women come up as candidates for ordination.
Some could stay in academia, teaching theology. Archbishop Rozitis said he would ordain Latvian women if they came to Germany with the intention of working outside Latvia, but he said he was not ready to defy Archbishop Vanags's authority and ordain women to return and work as pastors in Latvia.
"That would start off a very tense time between our churches," he said. "It is hard to do something, and just as hard to do nothing."
Archbishop Rozitis said there was another, more drastic step.
The World Lutheran Federation, the Lutheran umbrella group in Geneva, could vote to suspend the Latvian Church, in an echo of steps taken in 1984 against two white South African churches that refused to reject their nation's apartheid system. Federation 'Not Our Pope'
But even that prospect did not seem to shake Archbishop Vanags. "I hope they will not go that far," he said calmly. "But they cannot tell us what to do. The president of the World Lutheran Federation is not our pope."
Seated beneath a portrait of Martin Luther in his office in the church consistory, an elegantly renovated building that was used as a Soviet Army barracks during the Soviet occupation, the Archbishop explained his stance.
"It's not that I don't think women are just as capable as men -- they often get better marks than men in the theological faculty," he said. "But we have to follow what the Bible tells us, we can't impose our ideas of human rights or equal rights."
The Archbishop declined to cite specific passages in the Bible that prohibit the ordination of women. "If I cite a specific passage, others would react and say it can be interpreted differently. It would not be serious." Mr. Varsbergs argued that whatever biblical strictures could be found against women as members of the clergy were the word of men -- not God. "Prohibitions against women reflected the cultural situation in Greece at that time," he said. To the conservative argument that Jesus did not have female apostles, Mr. Varsbergs replied, "If you apply that standard, then gentiles shouldn't be ordained, either."
Calling the dispute "the most divisive issue in the history of our church," Archbishop Vanags called on the other side to give in. "If I were a woman and my wish to become a pastor was dividing the church," he said, "then I would give up this demand."
Photo: The Lutheran Archbishop of Latvia, Janis Vargas, has reversed his predecessor's stand and refuses to ordain women as pastors, dividing his denomination. Recently the Archbishop said although the church needed pastors, "it was better to do without them than to do something against the will of God." (Chuck Nacke for The New York Times) Map of shows the location of Riga, Latvia.
Correction: August 9, 1994, Tuesday An article last Wednesday about the refusal of the Lutheran Archbishop of Latvia to ordain women misstated the name of the church's world body. It is the Lutheran World Federation. A picture caption with the article misstated the Archbishop's name. It is Janis Vanags, not Vargas.
