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.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Giving Up in WELS
Congregation Mission Offerings
Our congregations have been expressing their thanks to God through their gifts of love and faith in support of the mission of the synod to proclaim the gospel to more and more people. Congregation Mission Offerings for November were 26% higher than November offerings the previous year. Even in a time when the economic climate is still filled with uncertainty, when many of our members are experiencing unemployment, and when congregations are facing their own financial struggles, Congregation Mission Offerings received through November are at 99% of year-to-date commitments made last January. We thank God for moving his people to express their thanks to him in this way. We thank congregational leaders for keeping the synod's work before our people. And we thank you for your faithful support of our mission to proclaim God's grace in Jesus.
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Sprung From ELCA
Many secular organizations have come from congregational involvement in various issues.
This is expanding as semi-demi-quasi-church organizations like Bethel New Life in Chicago claim corporate, governmental, and church funds.
The original Inner Missions of the Lutheran Church sought to combine ministry with providing for various needs (nursing homes, orphanages, soldiers' and sailors' missions, hospitals). The political activists moved in and Lutheran Social Services became one of these Non-Governmental Organizations where vast amounts of money was gathered because the government matched church funds.
Lutheran Social Services has been known for working with Missouri and ELCA at the same time. There were efforts to un-splice this relationship, but I doubt whether that lasted.
Long ago, Lutheran Social Services provided abortion counseling (not pro-life) and adoption services for people who vacation at Fire Island Pines.
ELCA Congregations Begin To Boycott ELCA Benevolence: Stories Ripped from the Pages of the ELCA Archives
What took so long?
Non-WELS readers know it should read "You're fired."
Non-WELS readers know it should read "You're fired."
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CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) acted Nov. 15 to reduce the 2010 churchwide current fund spending authorization by nearly $7.7 million, 10 percent less than the budget authorized by the 2009 Churchwide Assembly. The council's action eliminated 40.75 full-time equivalent positions, of which six were vacant.
The Church Council is the ELCA's board of directors and serves as the legislative authority of the church between churchwide assemblies. It met here Nov. 13-15.
The action reduced the current fund spending authorization for 2010 to $69,022,800. The 2009 assembly authorized $18.7 million in World Hunger spending for 2010, which was unchanged.
Nearly all churchwide units were affected by staff reductions or reassignments of staff, said the Rev. M. Wyvetta Bullock, ELCA executive for administration, in a report to the council. She said 23 executive staff positions and 18 support staff positions were eliminated. To respect their privacy, the names of people affected by the reductions will not be made public by the churchwide organization, Bullock said.
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Party in the ELCA
CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) adopted a revision to the reinstatement process for former clergy and other professional leaders who were removed from the church's official rosters for disciplinary reasons or resigned in lieu of discipline -- solely because they were in a lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationship.
The change, adopted Nov. 15, applies to former ELCA associates in ministry, deaconesses, diaconal ministers and ordained ministers.
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In Fargo, N.D., the Rev. Ronald Bock, senior pastor of St. John Lutheran Church, and Dr. Joel Kangas, a local dentist and member, gave interviews to a television news crew about their congregation. They wanted people in the Fargo-Moorhead area to know their congregation is open to everyone. They wanted to say that St. John "seeks to encourage, reflect and grow community in Christ" -- as its mission statement says.
They also wanted residents to know there's another side to the news reports they've been reading and hearing about in Fargo in the past month. At least three other large ELCA congregations in town have declared they will redirect mission support funds away from the ELCA: Hope Lutheran Church, First Lutheran Church and Pontoppidan Lutheran Church.
But don't count St. John among them. The congregation intends to increase its giving to the ELCA.
Why? Because members have always had a "high view" of mission support, Bock said in an interview. And it was painful when the congregation had to reduce its giving a few years ago to meet mortgage costs, he said. Since then, they've been working their way back up.
For 2010 Bock said St. John's budget proposal will likely be about $510,000. Overall benevolence, which includes mission support, could be set at $48,000. If so, that would represent an increase of $13,000 over 2009.
That doesn't mean that all of the congregation's 1,100 baptized members agree with the assembly's decisions, Bock said. Members have many opinions. But what binds them together is not whether they always agree -- it is that have been called by Christ in baptism to be together, Bock said.
"We're hanging together. That's what the church ought to be about," he said.
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CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Two former presiding bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have appealed to members to pray for unity of the church and its mission, and to contribute financial gifts to support the ELCA.
"Our troubled world needs the Good News of the Gospel and all that flows from it," wrote the Rev. Herbert W. Chilstrom and the Rev. H. George Anderson, in a Dec. 3 e-mail message. "Our differences must not divide us at a time like this. We are absolutely certain that we can continue to live together and serve as one family in the ELCA."
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Missed Opportunities To Stop the CG Juggernaut
The Word and the Confessions can rescue Lutherans from the Slough of Despond, but nothing else will.
Below are some missed opportunities in WELS, when hordes of pastors and laity should have rioted, waving pitchforks and torches:
- Ron Roth and others began their TELL newsletter in 1977, to promote CG.
- David Valleskey was hired at the Sausage Factory.
- Paul Calvin Kelm went from editing TELL to heading Evangelism at the Love Shack.
- All the Mission Vision fiction.
- Every new hire at the Love Shack.
- Perish Services expanding under Wayne Mueller.
- Wayne Mueller denying in print that there was any CG in WELS, but also claiming the CG in WELS was confessional. GA grad? You betcha.
- Perish Assistants.
- Wayne Mueller voted out of the VP slot, the VP-elect getting the vapors, and Mueller voted back in. Groundhog Day.
- Lutheran Parish Resources starting in Columbus, thanks to DP Mueller and VP Kuske, with Stolzenburg and Zehms in charge.
- Pilgrim Community Church, Columbus, started by Kuske, Zehms, Stolzenburg.
- CrossRoads in South Lyons, also started by DP Mueller, with help from Rick Miller, Mark Freier, Kelly Voigt.
- CrossWalk in Phoenix, Jeff Gunn.
- Cross-Something in Chicago.
- Latte Lutheran, with Randy Hunter.
- Rock and Roll, with Doebler.
- African safaris and free vicars with Don Patterson.
- Taking Lutheran out of various names, such as the hymnal, the magazine, the emerging churches above, WELS Lutherans for Life.
- Time of Generic Grace, with Jeske.
- Charis, Church and Change.
- The CORE.
- Steve Witte on the Asian board.
- Jim Huenbner, First VP.
*** GJ - I got the nickname from Jay Webber. He told me the ELS calls Mequon "The Sausage Factory" because they all come out the same. That GA-induced conformity has been useful in conforming everyone to Church Growth doctrine - false doctrine. Back in the old days, if they did not get enough from Valleskey, they got a dose a week after graduation, when a seminary was forced upon all graduates. If that was not enough torture, they will ordered back a year later for another dose - from Paul Calvin Kelm, Larry Oh!, and future first VP Huebner. So you missed the point, again.
--- mjleyrer has left a new comment on your post "Missed Opportunities To Stop the CG Juggernaut": Okay... but the nickname is still totally off because I know plenty of WELS pastors who are anti Church Growth. I don't think Jay was in all seriousness when he said that. Maybe just a joke. *** GJ - I would like a list of the articles or papers they have published against Church Growth, starting with Jay's list.
--- Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Missed Opportunities To Stop the CG Juggernaut": In the Peoples Bible Teachings, Church-Mission-Ministry, Prof. Armin Shuetze Has a few things to say concerning church growth: "By its emphasis on addressing the "felt needs" in a society, it shifts away from the inportance of proclaiming forgiveness in Christ by a proper use of law and gospel with ultimate goal of eternal life in heaven. "In the felt needs approach ... sanctification becomes the means to fulfill the prospect's need for acceptance, fulfillment, and a better life through the victory over sin." "God has not promised that everyone who hears the good news will come to faith. The church cannot expect more success than its Lord." "How do we measure succeess ? And growth? Even one sinner who repents and turns in aith to the Lord Jesus causes rejoicing in heaven." "In the 1950's a missionary in India for the Disciples of Christ, Donald McGavran, was troubled by the lack of numerical growth. His concerns began what has become known as the Church Growth Movement." There is much more I could quote. I recomend you read the book for yourself. Schuetze echoes the same thing that Pastor Jackson has been saying. The CG pastors could learn from this book. In Christ, from WELS church lady *** GJ - John D. Schuetze has published a Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly article where he emphasizes the Means of Grace. I hope he has good connections, because a lot of WELSians are allergic to that message.
--- mjleyrer has left a new comment on your post "Missed Opportunities To Stop the CG Juggernaut": First I would like to say that there are probably papers written against it and secondly, even if there WEREN'T papers that doesn't mean you can just write off every pastor in the synod. There are those in the WELS that are against C&G. It just isn't fair to put a giant black mark on the entire synod just because there's no one writing papers. I'm not trying to defend C&G, I dislike it as much as you do but I do have to defend a sister synod. Yeah papers are a good way to oppose something in your synod but there is leading by example. I think that's what most of them do. *** GJ - It is indeed comforting to know that there are "probably papers written against" Church Growth. If I wrote off every pastor in WELS or put a black mark on the entire synod, I would not bother posting. I spend little time on the LCMS and even less on the ELCA, because both are far gone. Perhaps someone could write a paper about the Appleton Dumbling gang. Or, they could lead by example and kick the Enthusiasts out.
WELS Appleton (Fox Valley) Demonstrates Dangers of Unsafe Sects
If so, you belong in Church and Change.
Ron Ash chairs C and C - Ski was on the board.
Ski, Glende, and Bishop Katie went to Seattle for a "pastor conference" with...?
Ski taking in members from another WELS CG church? That is just the beginning.
The problem with aping the worst of the Reformed is this - Whatever WELS tries to do, the pure Enthusiasts have done better.
All the work of Ron Roth, Paul Calvin Kelm, David Valleskey, Fuller Bivens, David Hartmann, James Hueber, Larry Oh! Olson, and the spineless DPs has gone toward training people to be Enthusiasts. Missouri, the ELS, and the CLC (sic) are doing the same thing.
Once the Half-Way Enthusiasts find out where the good stuff is, they will bolt for greener pastures.
In a decade, the Fox Valley WELS CG congregations will either be empty of members or in fellowship with Unitarian-Universalists. Sure, it may take a little longer than that, but it will happen.
Anti-Confessionalism is inherently anti-Biblical.
"The modern radical spirit which would sweep away the Formula of Concord as a Confession of the Church, will not, in the end, be curbed, until it has swept away the Augsburg Confession, and the ancient Confessions of the Church--yea, not until it has crossed the borders of Scripture itself, and swept out of the Word whatsoever is not in accord with its own critical mode of thinking. The far-sighted rationalist theologian and Dresden court preacher, Ammon, grasped the logic of a mere spirit of progress, when he said: 'Experience teaches us that those who reject a Creed, will speedily reject the Scriptures themselves.'"
Theodore E. Schmauk and C. Theodore Benze, The Confessional Principle and the Confessions, as Embodying the Evangelical Confession of the Christian Church, Philadelphia: General Council Publication Board, 1911, p. 685.
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