The LCMS in Her Own Words – Comfort Dog Installed as Staff Member in Northern Illinois Parish, by Pr. Rossow
In addition to my editor’s blog, when I have time, I make an entry in the “The LCMS in Her Own Words” column. The Northern Illinois District recently publicized the following:
Dedication Service at St. John Algonquin for LCC Comfort Dog ButterWe have poked fun at the comfort dogs before. As we said in the past, we are not opposed to animals bringing comfort to people. What we question is using church resources (time and money) for such things and more importantly, associating canine comfort with “the compassion and care of Christ.” This is simply further evidence that the institutional church is drifting away from its Augsburg VII life in word and sacrament. Comfort dogs are not the work of the church. They are the work of any other non-profit but are not the work of the church.
Sunday, January 10th, LCC Comfort Dog Butter was dedicated as a staff member at St. John Lutheran Church, Algonquin by Pastor William Stroup. Pete Imlah also spoke. St. John will continue to use Butter as a Bridge into the community to share the Compassion and Care of Jesus Christ. Butter has served for the last six months as an LCC K-9 Parish Comfort Dog with St. John, visiting shut-ins, hospitals, school kids, community and youth group events. Butter has been certified to work at Good Shepherd Hospital and is close to certification at Sherman Hospital.
By the way, there were no details released on the installation liturgy. One wonders if it may have gone as follows:
P: Do you accept the canonical books of the Old and New Testament to be the inspired and inerrant word of God?
B: (”Butter”) “Woof.”
P: Do you accept the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, The Apology to the Augsburg Confession and the other confessions in the Book of Concord to be the true exposition of the word of God?
B: “Woof.”
And so forth and so on…
11 comments:
Doesn't the WELS teach that Christ did not institute any specific forms of the Public Ministry? I disagree with their doctrine and it now gives me great comfort to know the WELS Pastors and teachers can be replaced by a divine call to Scruffy.
It will finally give a legitimate meaning to the WELS' Shepherds of the flock. The current ones run from the wolves leaving the sheep to fend for themselves.
Simply consecrate the dog as you would a ramp or railing.
LCMS DP Gilbert is about as astute as DP Engelbrecht-- too much drinking out of the Willow Creek.
"Doesn't the WELS teach that Christ did not institute any specific forms of the Public Ministry?"
Only "apostle" -- which, in the NT, is (of course) not equivalent to "pastor," since they are listed separately in Eph. 4.
Brilliant! The WELS is filling with contaminated Willow Creek water.
Anonymous at 6:16PM, WELS' Adolph Hoenecke rejected your view of Ephesians 4.
WELS' own Adolf Hoenecke made the following statements rejecting the WELS doctrine of the Ministry in his thesis “The Teaching Office, Das Lehramt: (http://www.ntslibrary.com/Christian-Doctrine-Teaching-Office.htm)
"Remark: The preaching office (Predigtamt) can be spoken of abstracte (in abstract), that is, so as to mean the means of grace. The preaching office, however, can be spoken of concretely, by which one includes those who bear the office, that is, those who administer the office in abstracto." Page 1,
second paragraph
"We are dealing here with the preaching office considered concretely, that is, the office of ministering with the word(Dienstamt am Wort)." Page 1, fourth paragraph
"The antithesis to the scriptural doctrine of the divine institution of the office in the concrete sense can be seen in part in the antithesis to the scriptural doctrine of the call. Still, those theories which claim that the concrete office of ministry in the word (Dienstamt am Wort) rests upon a human institution can here be called antitheses." Page 2, Part 2, second paragraph
"The scripture also makes the bishops and elders equal. Quenstedt: We retain in our churches an order among the ministers so that some are bishops, some are presbyters, others deacons, because also in the apostolic and primitive church there were distinct grades of ministers and indeed were divinely constituted, 1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 4:1. However, we say that to every minister of the church pertains the same power of the ministry consisting in preaching the word and administering the sacraments and the power of jurisdiction in the use of the keys." Page 23, Doctrinal Thesis 5, second paragraph
"In this antithesis also stand the so-called romanizing Lutherans, who hold that church government
(Kirchenregiment), whereby persons are ordered above and below one another, is divinely ordained
and has a supposedly divinely ordained hierarchy." Page 25, section 2, first paragraph "The Breslauers continuously call upon Eph. 4:11 (compare 1 Cor. 12:28ff) like the papists for here a divine institution of distinct offices with their churchly duties is supposedly taught." Page 25, fourth paragraph
WELS has perverted the Office of Public Ministry as Christ instituted it and as such it is no longer Christ's instituted office.
WELS and ELS has historically pointed to Ephesians 4:11 to claim Christ instituted multiple divine
offices. Hoenecke also had this to say, by quoting Chemnitz, in the same thesis regarding this passage:
Chemnitz finishes his explanation with the clarification that the enumerations of Eph. 4:11 and 1 Cor. 12:28 only show which grades the obligations and duties of the one and the same office of the church or preaching office was distributed. Finally he sets forth the following fundamental principles:
a. That the Word of God does not establish any particular number of grades.
b. From the scripture it is clear that at the time of the apostles the same grades were not present in all congregations.
c. Even so it is clear from the scripture that the separation into grades was not a necessity such that not often all the functions were unified in one person. And furthermore, the entire order was a matter of freedom and was implemented according to need and for the good of the church.
d. All grades were not offices in addition to the preaching office but were themselves true offices of
the ministry of the word and sacraments
Page 27
We need to dump all this counterfeit Christianity and get back to apostolic Christianity.
Would you do a post on WELS' doctrine of the ministry?
Hello Brett, thank you for the Hoenecke thesis. The information and doctrine that you provide is priceless. Luther said that even as Christians, we are always fighting the devil.
In Christ,
from WELS church lady
Other than Anonymous at 5:58pm, nobody else seemed to notice that it was an LC-MS congregation installing a dog into office, not a WELS congregation.
I can't see that there's any difference today
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