Applying the Efficacious Word - At Every Level

I'm singing in the rain
Just singing in the rain
What a glorious feelin'
I'm happy again.
I'm laughing at clouds
So dark up above
The sun's in my heart
And I'm ready for love.
Let the stormy clouds chase
Everyone from the place
Come on with the rain.
I've a smile on my face
I walk down the lane
With a happy refrain
Just singin'...

What? He's canned?

The UOJ Stormtroopers are in a foul mood, now that the standard bearers of Church Shrinkage through Unionism are disappearing. They have a safe haven at St. Marcus/Time of Gath. Bruce Becker went there after hiring Paul Calvin Kelm. Roger Zehms moved up from Texas. Perhaps the only WELS pastor to have started an ELCA mission (Kelm) can find a slot there. Jeske is fond of apostasy and stealth.

Jeske is so full of himself that he calls his parish youth event the WELS Teen Rally 2010. Their featured speaker will talk about herself and her out-of-wedlock baby. That reminds me of another approach  - why do drug addicts always speak to teens about the dangers of drug addiction. Why not invite someone who never took illegal drugs?

Church Shrinkage, women's ordination, and all the other church issues are addressed by the efficacy and clarity of the Word. It is foolish to start with issues and trace how the Synodical Conference and Uncle Heinrich dealt with them. Those discussions end up as the Quest for the Historical Heinrich (or fill in the name). Side issues involve various unspoken canonical traditions, no matter how ridiculous they are.

B. Teigen's book on Holy Communion was dangerous to the ELS precisely because he attacked their weakest point - the efficacy of the Word. The Synodical Conference lived and died because of Enthusiasm - the Pietistic notion of grace without the Means of Grace. Walther's bizarre kelming of Knappe's double-justification meant that everything else was off-key. Why? Walther implicitly denied the efficacy of the Word in his Easter absolution sermon, a tradition carried on by F. Pieper and other disciples.

The Scriptures teach the efficacy of the Word alone. Without marketing surveys and soil testing, God created the universe through His Word. "Let there be light. And there was light." Genesis 1, exegesis found in John 1.

The Reformed have a different spirit. Luther refused to shake Zwingli's hand because of that spirit. Lutherans who do not comprehend the difference are bound to follow Zwingli, either in agreement or in compromise.

The Reformed separate the Holy Spirit from the Word, in a mocking way by Zwingli, elegantly  by Calvin. Either form is Enthusiasm, the root of all false religion (Smalcald Articles, Book of Concord).

Sig Becker correctly pointed out that the Reformed place reason above the Word (magisterial use of reason), unlike Luther, who made reason subordinate to the Word (ministerial use). Although his insights about that one issue were good, Becker published grave errors in defense of Receptionism and Universal Objective Justification. Both errors revealed the blindspot of the Synodical Conference - the efficacy of the Word alone.

We need to turn Midwestern Lutherans into Jews to grasp this. Jews have no trouble with appointed Scripture lessons, liturgy, ancient hymns, and the efficacy of the Word. They have tales of rabbis who said something casually and it happened at once, because the word of a rabbi is like the Word of God.

Once Zwingli and Calvin taught their disciples to place their reason above the Word of God, this concept of the efficacy of the Word was lost. As I argued before, the Reformed Pietism of the Synodical Conference made it vulnerable to Biblical errancy, unionism, Receptionism, open communion, women's ordination, and the Church Growth Movement.

I can hardly find an ELS/WELS/LCMS leader who thinks God works through the Word alone. They all think God needs Drucker's Management by Objective, Barna's surveys, and the slick Pentecostal programs of C. Peter Wagner. Even by compromising and trying to assume a safe semi-Lutheran position, these men are maladroitly serving Zwingli and Calvin, providing a Lutheran veneer for Enthusiasm. At least classical Reformed theology was religious; the Fuller/Willow Creek/Emerging Church model is secular veering toward the occult.

All three synods have studied Church Growth, discovered a few minor problems, yet found it delightful, wholesome and good for everyone.

The Wisconsin Synod was more ga-ga about Fuller than the other synods, so WELS suffered the most and built up the most loathing for the Pasadena pestilence. Missouri has found the solution in Romanism and Eastern Orthodoxy. They may not pope as dramatically as the Church of England priests, but the exodus has been steady and well publicized.

If Lutherans want to defeat Enthusiasm, they will have to study the efficacy of the Word at all levels. Weak congregations create weak circuits and even sloppier districts. Look at the Fox Valley apostates as examples, led astray by Kelm-Parlow-Witte, but not united in error. Congregations and individual members can demand a public study of the issues and refuse to accept another quisling yes-but approach to New Age Nazism.

What are the failings of the ELS/WELS/LCMS?

1. The NIV,
   
2. unionism with ELCA,
   
3. women teaching men and usurping authority,
   
4. Church Growth,
   
5. open communion.

All these errors came from the influence of Reformed doctrine, an influence made possible by the lack of teaching about the efficacy of the Word alone, a doctrine hated by the Reformed.

Oh yes, that is the next stage, already indicated by the Wizard of Ooze, Mark Jeske, calling on "the Powers of the Universe to help us in our personal and business concerns." (Time of Gath broadcast) Paul Y. Cho taught this occultic nonsense decades ago, and the Evangelical/Pentecostals lapped it up.

As one pastor told me, before he was kicked out of WELS, "There have been many fads in WELS, but Church Growth is the first one forced on us from the top down."

The clergy, as a group, have failed their flocks. True, some tried to do something and found themselves jobless and friendless, but that was also the fault of their so-called friends. If the laity do not take this study on themselves and force the circuits and districts into action, Jeske's Church and Changers will rule the roost, Kieschnick will merge Missouri with ELCA, and Pope John the Malefactor will get his DMin at Fuller.

Use the Force!

Official Word from WELS on Changes: Kelm/Stroh No Longer Helping Congregations Perish

 

Where have you gone, Babtist Ed Stetzer,
Wisconsin turns its lonely eyes to you (Woo, woo, woo)
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson
Paul Calvin Kelm has left and gone away
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey). 

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A WELS layman wrote: "Chicaneries: Don't think you're going unnoticed by those of us who  pay our churches' bills."

 

From the office of President Mark Schroeder

In its meeting last week, the Conference of Presidents (COP) took action to reconfigure the former Parish Services units into a new Congregation and Ministry Support Group (CMSG). The move comes after representatives of the various units of Parish Services and the COP developed a proposal that was in keeping with the intent of a 2009 synod convention resolution.

The convention spent considerable time discussing the role of the synod in helping to strengthen congregations and their members as they carry out their ministries. The convention recognized that the units of Parish Services provide valuable help to congregations, and it wanted to ensure that those resources are more widely accessible and utilized. Since the district presidents are called to supervise doctrine and practice in congregations, the convention eliminated the Board for Parish Services and the position of BPS administrator and placed the units of Parish Services under the responsibility of the Conference of Presidents (COP). The intent of this decision was to create a closer and more direct cooperative relationship between the district presidents and the resources available to them and the congregations in their districts.

The new CMSG offers some new and more targeted approaches to helping congregations. It will operate as an arm of the district presidents primarily to provide resources and training to called workers and congregational leaders. Familiar programs of direct ministry to laypeople such as youth rallies and various retreats, publications, and Web sites will continue to be offered and coordinated as possible. The CMSG will be responsible to the COP through the synod president. It will work closely with Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary and Martin Luther College to deliver continuing education to called workers. It will develop networks of district pastors and teachers who will work with the CMSG to deliver assistance to congregations. With its various areas of expertise, it will provide a unified team approach to identifying the needs of congregations and their leaders.

CMSG composition
The units of the former Parish Services, along with their grassroots commissions, remain in place, with the following changes:

• The administrators for all of the entities are now called "directors."
• Adult and Youth Discipleship retain separate commissions but are served, at least temporarily, by a single director.
• The Commission for Parish Schools will now be called the "Commission for Lutheran Schools" to reflect its broader work of serving Lutheran high schools and early childhood education programs. The unit will be headed by a director and an associate director, with the possibility of adding a second associate director in the future to provide assistance to struggling schools and to congregations seeking to begin or improve early childhood programs.
• Since the COP has replaced the Board for Parish Services as the calling body and because of some changed responsibilities, the COP issued the following calls: Rev. Mike Hintz (Evangelism), Rev. Bryan Gerlach (Worship), Rev. Carl Ziemer (Special Ministries), Rev. Dave Kehl (Adult and Youth Discipleship), Greg Schmill (interim director of Lutheran Schools), and Jeff Inniger (associate director of Lutheran Schools).
• Each unit will be responsible for its own program and budgeting, but all units will also work in close cooperation with each other in areas where cooperation is beneficial.
• A new "Congregation and Ministry Support Council," comprised of CMSG directors, COP members, and representatives from WLS and MLC, will coordinate the work within the CMSG and the work of the CMSG with the COP and the synodical schools.
• One of the directors of the CMSG will serve as a coordinator of the CMSG units. This position will be filled by COP appointment on an annually rotating basis. Rev. Bryan Gerlach has been asked to serve in this capacity.
• In the interest of gaining better and more consistent distribution of CMSG resources, the COP will consider in the coming months whether the commissions should be comprised of the district coordinators of each unit.

Parish Assistance program discontinued
The Parish Assistance program will no longer exist in its current form. The COP eliminated the positions of Rev. Paul Kelm (effective Dec. 31, 2009) and Rev. Elton Stroh (effective June 30, 2010). The Forward with Lutheran Schools program (which had been a part of Parish Assistance) was placed under the responsibility of the Commission for Lutheran Schools. Should Greg Schmill accept the call as the interim director of Lutheran Schools, he will oversee a continuation of the Forward with Lutheran Schools program as time allows.

Parish Assistance is currently working with a number of congregations. In order to avoid a sudden discontinuation of services, congregations may choose to engage directly Kelm or the part-time consultants now serving them. These direct arrangements would be made between congregations and consultants and would not be a part of a synodical program. Stroh will work with other congregations now being served by Parish Assistance to determine how they will best be served.
The COP recognized that some form of consultative services to support congregations and their ministries should continue. It envisioned an entity with its own commission and director (as a part of the CMSG) that would provide short-term assessment of congregational needs and advice as to how those needs could best be met. The COP directed the synod president to appoint a committee to outline the scope and function of this new entity and to bring recommendations to the COP by its April 2010 meeting.

The importance of congregational health
These efforts to reconfigure the ministries of Parish Services underline the importance of congregational health. We have also recognized the valuable role that the ministries of the new Congregation and Ministry Support Group can play in helping congregations and called workers to address the challenges facing them. Please join us in the prayer that God will bless this new entity and that it will receive the full support and encouragement of our entire synod.
Serving in Christ,
Mark Schroeder

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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Official Word from WELS on Changes: Kelm/Stroh No ...":

The point about C&C and Lutheran Schools seems valid. Notice that in the 80's up to now when our schools under Perish Services & Perish Schools started focusing on licensing, accreditation, competing, marketing, charging more tuition, leadership, etc., and Perish Assistance pushed many "ministries"and other programs in the church (outreach,small groups, etc.) and less emphasis on our Lutheran schools - our churches along with our schools began to shrink.

Krauth on Anglicanism

C. P. Krauth pegged the Anglicans in one witty sentence.

"Its Articles, Homilies, and Liturgy have been a great bulwark of Protestantism; and yet, seemingly, out of the very stones of that bulwark has been framed, in our day, a bridge on which many have passed over into Rome...It harbors a skepticism which takes infidelity  by the hand, and a revised medievalism which longs to throw itself, with tears, on the neck of the Pope and the Patriarch, to beseech them to be gentle and not to make the terms of restored fellowship too difficult."
Charles P. Krauth,
The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology,
Philadelphia:
The United Lutheran Publication House,
1913 (first edition, 1871),
p. x.

Pope Sucker-Punches Church of England

Pope's gambit could see 1,000 quit Church of England

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent, and Richard Owen in Rome 

 

 

(Paul Rogers/The Times)

Dr Rowan Williams: the plans were a serious blow to his attempts to stop the Church of England fragmenting further

As many as 1,000 priests could quit the Church of England and thousands more may leave churches in America and Australia under bold proposals to welcome Anglicans to Rome.

Entire parishes and even dioceses could be tempted to defect after Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to offer a legal structure to Anglicans joining the Roman Catholic Church.

His decree, issued yesterday, is a serious blow to attempts by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, to save the Anglican Communion from further fragmentation and threatens to wreck decades of ecumenical dialogue.

Dr Williams was notified formally only last weekend by the Vatican and looked uncomfortable at a joint press conference with the Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, to announce the plan.

Related Links

• Rome parks tanks on Archbishop’s lawn

• Move to unite church looks further away

• Q&A: what now for Church of England?

Multimedia

• BLOG: is this an act of aggression?

Anglicans privately accused Rome of poaching and attacked Dr Williams for capitulating to the Vatican. Some called for his resignation. Although there was little he could have done to forestall the move, many were dismayed at his joint statement with the Archbishop of Westminster in which they spoke of Anglicans “willing to declare that they share a common Catholic faith and accept the Petrine ministry as willed by Christ for his Church”.

In a letter to bishops and clergy, Dr Williams made clear his own discomfiture. He wrote: “I am sorry that there has been no opportunity to alert you earlier to this. I was informed of the planned announcement at a very late stage.”

The Bishop of Fulham, the Right Rev John Broadhurst, chairman of Forward in Faith, which opposes women bishops, hailed it as a “decisive moment” and predicted that, based on his group’s membership, up to 1,000 Church of England clergy could go.
Christina Rees, of the pro-women group Watch, described the Vatican’s move as poaching. She said:

“It is one thing to offer a welcome, but this seems to be a particularly effusive welcome where people are almost being encouraged. In the Anglican Church we like to operate with transparency. If this has not been done here that will add to the sense of this being a predatory move.”
Pope Benedict wants to make Christian unity an enduring legacy of his papacy. He is due to visit Britain next year; Dr Williams will visit Rome next month. The Pope has already shown his determination to reunite Christendom at almost any price, welcoming back the traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X despite a Holocaust-denying bishop in its ranks.

Under the plan, the Pope will issue an apostolic constitution, a form of papal decree, that will lead to the creation of “personal ordinariates” for Anglicans who convert to Rome.
These will provide a legal framework to allow Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving distinctive elements of their Anglican identity, such as liturgy. Clergy will have to be retrained and re-ordained, since Rome regards Anglican orders as “absolutely null and utterly void”, but they will be granted their own seminaries to train future priests for the new ordinariate.

This deal was done with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the Holy Inquisition that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger himself headed before he became Pope.

The Council for Christian Unity was not represented at simultaneous press conferences in Rome and London, suggesting that the Pope has had enough of dialogue focusing on canonical moves towards unity. Dr Williams was briefed formally only when Cardinal William Levada, of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, flew to London at the weekend to tell Anglican and Catholic leaders of the plans. It is understood that leading members of the council and other senior Anglican and Catholic figures tried desperately to block the decree.

One result of the Vatican’s move is that women bishops are likely to be consecrated sooner rather than later in the Church of England. This is because Parliament and the General Synod will not sanction legal structures to “safeguard” opponents of women priests within the Church if Rome is offering an open door with the Archbishop of Canterbury’s blessing.

Dr Williams said that the announcement did not disrupt “business as usual” in relations between the two churches. It would be a serious mistake to view the development as a response to the difficulties within the Anglican Communion, he said. It was aimed at people who had reached a “conscientious conviction that visible unity with the Holy See was now what God was calling them to”, he said. “It is not a secret that in this country the ordination of women as bishops is one of those test issues.”

You don't want American style bishops, you sexist pig limey cretins?