The Shrinkers despise any congregation doing well because of its traditional Lutheran message and worship.
Their loathing of real outreach is revealed in their mockery of congregations doing what they cannot, even though the others lack the funds greedily absorbed by the Church and Money Changers. How much loot does a congregation like Patterson's need? The parish is affluent and well established. Why it is being subsidized at the expense of others?
The alleged growthers hate their brother ministers. Ski announced that A-Town was finally going to have a church that made Jesus real and relevant. He moved in with the big bucks, almost next door to another WELS congregation, in spite of protests and hard feelings engendered by his arrogance.
They hate the Lutheran name, doing everything possible to get rid of it. That is not because the name is an adiaphoron. The hatred comes from the Fuller/Willow Creek dogma. They hate Lutheran doctrine and loathe Lutheran worship, so they reject the Lutheran name. One WELS pastor conceded, "I will use the liturgy, once a month, but I will go outside and puke afterwards."
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wildcard (http://wildcard.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "What the Shrinkers Hate, Part II":
WELS pastors who despise preaching and teaching like to blame membership shrinkage on the word Lutheran. It must be the word Lutheran because it certainly cannot be them. At least they will never own up to it.
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GJ - Pastors? The synod leaders got rid of Lutheran on the magazine title page (now reversed), the main hymnal title, Lutherans For Life, and as many missions as possible. Try to find Lutheran on Time of Grace.
9 comments:
WELS pastors who despise preaching and teaching like to blame membership shrinkage on the word Lutheran. It must be the word Lutheran because it certainly cannot be them. At least they will never own up to it.
The easiest vote a layman can cast to stop the Shrinker crowd is called the dollar bill. I don't send any of my offering money to WELS headquarters.
I know from certain blogs where CGers comment that they sneer at the idea of handing out flyers in the neighborhood, even if congregation members do it. They know that it's best not to have anyone do that since then the members might get the idea that the pastor should join in, and that's way waaaay beneath them, and old-fashioned to boot. If a congregation can't afford to do more than that, it's better than nothing, I say. Then when the CGers get defunded and booted out of the ministry for the inevitable poor results, they end up being door to door salesmen. It's better to be a door-to-door salesman for Christ!
Bruce - give us some links when you have the time. I will be glad to post the comments verbatim. You are right than many missions have been started and expanded with shoe-leather. Planning is not evangelism! I would also advocate using all the media for outreach as well. I have noticed that the Shrinker lazybones, all added together, cannot get much blogging done. I probably do more solo (without grants) than all of them put together. But that makes sense - they have nothing to say. If they copy their mentors at Fuller and Mars Hill, everyone can tell.
Joseph - you are right. Why feed the beast that bites and devours? ELCA calls 80% of its budget "missions." They define everything they do as missions, so the rest is overhead. ELCA is all overhead. The denominations are the same. Paying a Shrinker a full-time salary at the Love Shack is not evangelism. It is a sinecure.
The enthusiasm of the (W)ELS would not have grown such deep and wide spread roots if they hadn't rejected the efficacy of Christ's Word.
From a UOJ/Pietistic [BM - my opinion] sermon given by a WELS Pastor on June 6, 2010 "I can go from door to door
throughout the Seattle area telling everyone I meet about
Jesus but it wouldn’t do even a fraction of the good that
you are able to do by sharing your faith with your family
and friends."
Sermon
http://www.htlc-wa.org/ministryinc/filedownload.aspx?master_sec_id=140004986&sec_id=140004986&libfolder=140047070&filename=Microsoft Word - 060610 Sermon.pdf
Sermon Website location
http://www.htlc-wa.org/site/cpage.asp?sec_id=140004986&cpage_id=140014787&secure=&dlyear=0&dlcat=0
Want another example?
I was once told that the name Lutheran was avoided because the unchurched would get confused and think that the church is ELCA. Now that is a strange irony. You become like ELCA to avoid giving the impression to the unchurched that you are ELCA. St. Andrews Latte church of Waunakee has a school that is called Westside Christian School. They claim that their success is the avoidance of Lutheran in the name.
cont'd from previous post:
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UP said...
Also, I am not against a church advertising or canvassing, but I don't understand why you are so focused on those.
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Anonymous said...
Actually canvassing really doesn't work. Think about it--who canvasses? Annoying salespeople and Mormons. I don't want my church being associated with either of those groups. In my experience there's only one thing that really works: members talking to their friends and coworkers and neighbors about the good news. Everything else is a far, far second. Oh, and by the way, I wouldn't be so quick to pit church growth against canvassing. Canvassing was popularized by the church growthers.
November 11, 2007 10:04 PM
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Anonymous said...
Bruce Church has no idea what he's talking about!
November 11, 2007 10:21 PM
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Anonymous said...
"Funny. That´s what the last pastor said before we got rid of him--about this very issue. Our new pastor canvases in addition to other activities, and he`s doing well."
Pastor as lackey? That's a problem with the WELS doctrine of church and ministry. If I'm in the Madison area I will definitely avoid your congregation.
November 12, 2007 6:49 AM
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Anonymous said...
As someone who has been on Travel-Canvas-Witness trips from MLC, I agree that canvassing does not work. After leaving thousands of fliers and talking to hundreds of people in a week for some mission congregation, you know how many new people showed up for worship on Sunday? None. Ever. A lot of money and time went into sending us to "help" the pastors of these missions and not one new person ever set foot in the church because of it.
At the congregation of which I'm currently a member, they do not do canvassing but are growing. Many of the Lutheran churches in the area have chosen to act like Methodists, Baptists, and Pentecostals. New converts are not stupid and see through the shallowness. Many, especially young families, have joined our congregation BECAUSE they can hear the Gospel preached and receive the Sacrament of the Altar every Sunday in a high liturgical setting.
November 12, 2007 9:21 AM
Hi Dr. Jackson, You asked for links about the shrinkers making comments against canvassing and handing out fliers in the comments section. It's been a while since I had these conversations, so they are hard to find (if they even exist anymore online). But here's a good example from Bailing Water in 2007 (below). I just said that our pastor refused to do any evangelism citing money problems, but then he refused to hand out flyers or even have the members hand out flyers because it wasn't a recommended CG method, probably because going door to door isn't "cool." Anyway, one CG guy sneered that I should have just handed out leaflets rather than bother the pastor about doing evangelism, and another said I was fixated on it. I guess that's the CG way of saying anyone who wants to do evangelism the old-fashioned way has a psychiatric problem (or is lazy or cheap or whatever smear their Old Man can think of off the cuff):
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http://bailingwater.blogspot.com/2007/11/what-now.html
excerpts:
Anonymous aaid...
Your difficulties with talking about new approaches to ministry simply does not recognize that methods can change, while the Word we proclaim remains unchanged. (For example, door to door canvassing in outreach simply doesn't work anymore in many communtities. We can reach so many more today via the Internet and other media with Law and Gospel. But to even discuss such newer methods is evidence of the infiltration of false doctrine in our midst, according to you and your blog.)
Anonymous said...
Hey Bruce--
Just think of how much precious canvassing you could have done on your own with the time you spent jerking your pastor around by the pocketbook. Just imagine what it would be like if laypeople spent their time talking about the Savior with their friends and coworkers instead of griping about how the pastor isn't doing any evangelism.
November 12, 2007 5:35 PM
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