Prank Call Gets $50,000 Damage Done To Holiday Inn Express

It's hard to get good help today.

Now I understand how McCain got nominated and Obama got elected.

Miss California

Not my blooper. Should be: You're fired.

TMZ

Carrie Prejean: They Asked Me to do Playboy
Posted Jun 10th 2009 6:00PM by TMZ Staff

We just got off the phone with deposed Miss California USA Carrie Prejean -- and she says the pageant was trying to whore her out to Playboy.

Prejean claims pageant honcho Keith Lewis actually asked her last month if she would take two gigs -- appearing on "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!" and Playboy. Prejean says Lewis told her Playboy offered $140,000 for her to pose semi-nude. She rejected both offers.

A few minutes ago we talked to Lewis who said he was not pushing her to take either gig -- but merely passing the offers along. Lewis said Prejean had insisted they not turn anything down without running it by her.

Prejean -- who told us she was "shocked" at the news she was fired and learned about it only after we broke the story -- tells us she has been more than cooperative with pageant officials.

Prejean says, "What's behind this I think is a political debate. They don't agree with the stance that I took [on Prop 8]. Shanna [Moakler] is trying to bash me. They don't like me. From day one they wanted me out and they got what they wanted."

How Delicious - To Post Anonymously While Lobbing a Few More Stinkbombs

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Anonymous Name-calling":

I still have to wonder how tearing down others is beneficial to anything or anyone except the ego of the one doing the insulting.

Your response was pretty much what I should have expected I suppose... "My sin? But look at what THEY did! What about them?" And you're right. There is a great deal of sinfulness in the WELS and it's leaders. Turns out its a pretty universal problem.

In no way do I intend to have an air of superiority in my comments (in fact the very accusation seems to me to be the epitome of irony). Just trying to understand the benefits of this blog besides the tearing down of others. Based on your response I take it there are none. And apparently now I've become one of your "anonymous" targets.

***

GJ - Why labor at satire when people write it for me?

Alter Call: The Evangelical Agenda

Someone asked me about altars and the Evangelicals, reminding me how often that word is misspelled in my religion classes.

The apostates of 19th century Lutheranism featured altar calls, following the Evangelicals. Those Lutherans also looked down on the liturgy. The first Lutheran to teach at Yale Divinity came from the General Synod, where that was common.

Billy Graham featured altar calls in his crusades, but he did not have an altar.

A Roman Catholic Church is often all altar with almost no pulpit. They have little preaching, very weak preaching if they do.

Traditional Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians have prominent pulpits and altars reduced to card tables in some instances. They do not like the words Holy Communion so they have the Lord's Supper as infrequently as possible (another hallmark of Lutheran Pietists - three times a year).

A traditional Lutheran church has a balance between the altar and the pulpit, emphasizing the Means of Grace: the invisible Word of preaching and teaching, the visible Word of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.

The Shrinker churches of Lutheran apostasy do not have a pulpit and also lack an altar. They have movies screens (The CORE, Victory) and performance stages (The CORE).

Church and Chicanery franchises--like all the followers of Driscoll, Stanley, Beeson, Groeschel, and Sweet--promise to alter lives, to transform people by being real, relational, and relevant. Ski is saying that all the WELS congregations in Fox Valley are unreal, not relational, and irrelevant. Perhaps St. Peter in Freedom is not, because Glende "gets it" and goes to Stanley and Driscoll conferences.

The Evangelicals are touchy about altars because they reject the Sacraments. When Lutherans are ashamed of the Sacraments, they also put away the altar. Someone who goes regularly to conferences led by an anti-infant baptism preacher would hardly feature a baptismal font in his movie theater.

One's theology of worship informs the architecture of the congregation.

Our family loves the old WELS churches with the ornate altars and prominent pulpits.

The glory has departed.

Shockeroo from James Radloff, Classmate of David Valleskey: Close Both Preps

MLS, before it had Harvard tuition (thanks to Gurgel and Wayne Mueller).

The Shrinkers have closed two preps out of four, but that is not enough. James Radloff, classmate of David Valleskey, has memorialized the synod to close the surviving preps.

You could have knocked me over with a pixel - that's how surprised I was.

Radloff edited the official mission counselors' newsletter for WELS, which always featured the worst false teachers and the most obnoxious false doctrine. I connected him with Valleskey because David did the same thing, a little more secretly - like a freight train going through a convent. But no one noticed.

Radloff is connected to the Patterson network. No surprise, again.

When I was first looking at WELS, John Lawrenz was president of MLS. He told me that the LCMS deliberately de-funded their preps until they were gone, in the name of missions.

Only a few years later, when WELS was trying hard to close MLS, Lawrenz said on the floor of the Michigan District convention, "We are willing to accept any role the synod gives us." People were shocked that the head of a school would be so willing to pull the rug, but DP Mueller did the same about closing NWC.

The Shrinkers have a demonic hatred for schools and an inordinate love for missions that promote Fuller doctrine.

Radloff's memorial makes sense, for those who know the players.



Lawrenz surfaced in a recent Church and Chicanery discussion. After he delivered his delphic comments, Patterson chimed in: "Pure gold, John. Thanks."

Dr. Luther Has Spoken, Seconded by Hoenecke

Adolph Hoenecke was a product of Halle University, so he was well aware of Pietism but did not escape its influence. Most Lutheran thought was filtered through Pietism in the 19th century. Its impact remains in UOJ, Church Shrinkage, and Whoopee Worship.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Anonymous Name-calling":

Permit me a clarification on my phrase "heavy lifting of dealing with sin..." We add these burdens to ourselves, perhaps to provide ourselves the satisfaction of adding to what He has already done. I stand corrected by the good doctor.


Luther's Table Talk, CCXXV:

... How could we perform a more easy service of God, without all labor or charge? There is no work on earth easier than the true service of God: he loads us with no heavy burdens, but only asks that we believe in him and preach of him. True, thou mayest be sure thou shalt be persecuted for this, but our sweet Saviour gives us a comfortable promise: "I will be with you in the time of trouble, and will help you out," etc., Luke xii. 7. I make no such promise to my servant when I set him to work, either to plough or to cart, as Christ to me, that he will help me in my need. We only fail in belief: if I had faith according as the Scripture requires of me, I alone would drive the Turk out of Constantinople, and the pope out of Rome; but it comes far short; I must rest satisfied with that which Christ spake to St Paul: "My grace is sufficient for thee, for my power is strong in weakness."

+Diet O. Worms

***

GJ - Hoenecke said it well in his Dogmatics, not available in English from Northwestern Publishing House: Pietism confuses justification with sanctification and makes sanctification the cause of justification (my paraphrase from memory).

Ichabodians can look at all the errant congregations and programs in WELS, Missouri, the Little Sect, and the micro-mini synods. They will find the basics of Pietism enshrined.

"Aha! say the Smells-and-Bells pastors, "We emphasize pure worship."

Exactly so. They also avoid the pure Word and glory in their works as they sinuflect toward Rome.

Church and Change Doesn't Get Enough Funds

WELS Church and Change Doesn't Get Enough Funds from Joseph Schmidt on Vimeo.