Church and Chicaneries Might Try This - To Be Real, Relevant, Relational

Church skateboarding evangelism.

WELS - Stop Lying about Kokomo

LutherRocks has left a new comment on your post "Joe Krohn's Free Blog":

One more thing...

http://www.wels.net/cgi-bin/site.pl?1518&cuTopic_topicID=45&cuItem_itemID=2835

Click on it or copy and paste.

Someone else needs to do some homework.

Joe Krohn



Q: What is the WELS teaching on objective justification? My friend and I have had a discussion, and he pointed me to the Kokomo articles, or theses, as an example of what WELS teaches. Being just a layman I was wondering if I should use these to teach others who may have the same question, as he did for me.
A: The teaching of objective justification is that God the Father declared the sins of the whole world forgiven because Christ had paid for all sin. To benefit from that payment and that declaration it is necessary that a person be brought to faith in Christ as his Savior (subjective justification) (2 Corinthians 5:18-21).

The so-called Kokomo Statements should not be taken as representative of WELS teaching. Much that has been put out and circulated about the Kokomo Statements has been a misrepresentation of the WELS position. The Kokomo Statements were not drawn up by anyone in WELS as a presentation of our position. They were drawn up by opponents of the WELS position. Three of the statements are taken from WELS sources, but taken out of context, they caricature the WELS position and should not be taken as as an adequate presentation of WELS teaching. Anyone circulating the Kokomo Statements as a representation of the WELS position is not giving a fair and balanced presentation of WELS teaching.

A brief evaluation of the so-called Kokomo Statements is contained in a 1982 paper by Siegbert Becker, "Objective Justification," which is available from the Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary library. Papers on objective justification also appear in Vol. III of Our Great Heritage, available from Northwestern Publishing House.

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GJ - I traveled to Kokomo and talked to both families who were kicked out of WELS for rejecting the Kokomo Statements, three of which were almost verbatim from J. P. Meyer's Ministers of Christ, NPH.

I reproduced the letter in Thy Strong Word.

Sig Becker endorsed the Kokomo Statements. Sausage Factory President Panning was in charge of the appeal process, and he supported the Kokomo Statements.

Whenever convenient, WELS denies the Kokomo Statements, but they are official policy. As one Lutheran said, "Didn't they bind the conscience of people who did not agree?"

Someone is obviously feeding Joe Krohn the official, deceitful line about UOJ in WELS. Would that be a stealth member of Church and Chicanery?

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dk, in plain spoken fashion, addressed Joe. This is what he has left a new comment on your post "WELS - Stop Lying about Kokomo":

Hey Joe,

I have to ask you to think about this: If the WELS do not accept the Kokomo statements as official doctrine (as the WELS Q&A claims) how much more despicable are they for kicking out those two families!

"Um, hey... we don't believe these statements but since you're laymen and acting with authority we're going to kick you to the curb"

Howdy Joe: What do you make of that? Isn't that a pretty blaring contradiction? I'm not thumbing my nose at you, but you have to agree at the inconsistency, right?

What is the best construction that we (as Christian people) can put on this collection of facts?

Ignorance Explained

The kiddies learn to love Rock N Roll in the nursery department.

rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "Let's Hear It for the Eighth Commandment...And Lov...":

I have a theory concerning the ignorance of WELS laity. There are several aspects which come into play here. I have known only a couple of WELS members who have read anything in the Lutheran Confessions beyond the Small Catechism. Most pastors will not take on the Book of Concord in an adult bible study setting. The active and involved members are often engaged in busy work. The congregational activities have become the new monasticism. Boards and committees suck up a lot of time and energy, like a powerful vacuum cleaner. Similar to the mainstream media, the information about the synod which reaches the laity is heavily filtered, spun, redacted, and edited.

Like the Mueller statement that there is no CG in the WELS, we should never believe anything until it has been officially denied. When non-official sources offer information which is both contrary and enlightening, such sources are instantly scorned and spat upon. There are also cultural factors. Many adults today have a short attention span. They may not read much and also may have a hard time with deductive reasoning. A lifetime of TV viewing tends to produce this. WELS leaders often have a fixation with authority, their authority. Many of them have a difficult time admitting to their errors and the errors of their peers. This has produced the stealth infallibility that is rampant in the WELS. I honestly believe that most of the WELS laity are trapped.

They are now being told that the financial problems in the synod are just the unfortunate consequence of a sour economy. It would be difficult for them to fathom the idea that this is nothing more than the chickens coming home to roost. The solution that is being given to them is to sacrifice and open up their wallets. After all, just look at all of the cutbacks that the synod is making. As has been stated so many times on this blog, the problem is false doctrine and the solution is biblical doctrine. Those who look to men and money are barking up the wrong trees.

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GJ - We learn better what we teach. Pastors avoid teaching the Book of Concord so they do not know their own Confessions. They do not engage themselves in doctrinal discussions, so their intellectual tools grow rusty.

Laity - try asking for a study of the Formula of Concord in your congregation. The pastoral response will be educational. Some congregations do study the Confessions and that study bears fruit.

Church Growth produces more weed seeds.

Joe Krohn's Free Blog

Ichabod is Joe Krohn's free blog. For those who are new to this blog, Joe is a WELS member, a buddy of Kudu Don Patterson, and a promoter of The Church From Scratch in Round Rock, Texas, where Doebler channels Driscoll. Joe used to belong to CrossWalk in Phoenix, the non-WELS congregation from which Church and Chicanery Pastor Jeff Gunn is trying to escape. Gunn hopes to flee to Wisconsin Lutheran College, the nursing mother of Church and Change. We all know the birth father of C and C - Old Scratch hisself.

Joe had a Rock N Roll blog to promote his agenda, but he erased it. His Ichabod comments are entertaining and instructive, because they betray the thoughts of Church and Chicaneries everywhere. Sometimes he even signs them.

Like all Church Shrinkers, Joe is a UOJ Stormtrooper, always trying to justify the erroneous opinion that God declared the whole world forgiven of its sin, without the Word, the Means of Grace, or faith.

He asked about my use of OJ in the first edition of Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant. That has been explained many times before, and the new edition is available for free as a PDF download - either from Lulu.com or from gljackson.com. He can buy the book from his own publishing house, Northwestern Publishing House in Milwaukee.

I publish for everyone, not secretly or on secretive listserves. The issue is not what I think, but what the Word of God teaches and the Book of Concord confesses.

Many people still believe, as I did once, that OJ was a peculiar synonym for the Atonement. Various WELS laity pressed me to study the issue, so I learned otherwise. OJ, called UOJ in WELS, or General Justification in Hoenecke - means that every single person in the world has been forgiven by God: Hottentots (E. Preuss), Hitler, the people who died in the Flood. Everyone in Hell is a guilt-free saint (WELS Kokomo Statements).

The Atonement means Christ died for the sins of the world. The Atonement is not justification, as Robert Preus stated in his last book, Justification and Rome.

Some well established Christian doctrines clash with the weirdness of UOJ: Original Sin, the efficacy of the Word, the Means of Grace, Law and Gospel, justification by faith.

UOJ goes well with Universalism and Church Growthism.

The Sacraments
Joe reminds me of students who phone me without reading the syllabus. That just happened as we drove to the Hoover Dam. I got two phone calls from the same student about the upcoming assignment. "Have you read the syllabus?" No. I parked the van and explained the assignment to the student.

Really Joe. I have all my books linked to Lulu and my domain. Everything is there for free. I have 2,700 posts, which have covered the Word and Sacraments many times. Doing a little homework before posting would be a good idea. The Google search window on the blog works very well. It is the only way I find some material from the past.

Sacrament, like the word Trinity, is a non-Biblical word used to encapsulate the content of many different passages. Ordination is called a sacrament in the Apology - "the best work of Melanchthon," as one Lutheran said recently.

I find it odd that some Lutheran pastors declare, "Ordination is not a sacrament." I dealt with that topic a bit in my last sermon, which I saved as a videotape file (free) and in the printed version on two (2) blogs. I collect Lutheran quotations to help everyone in their sermon preparation.

The Church and Chicanery pastors should do the same - post the printed version of their sermons. They should also offer a link to the original from Driscoll, Groeschel, or their other favorite false teachers.