bored has left a new comment on your post "Bored Advice":
Pastor Jackson
Point taken. I didn’t really want to go on record giving advice to “leave the WELS”. I guess I did, and I should be more careful.
To correct that I’ll say that we desperately need every person willing to ask the hard questions AND provide the right answers: the Word. Laymen need to encourage their pastors in this. It’s really difficult to be beholden to the WELS in the way that so many pastors are, and laymen should not abandon their pastors in this fight. That would be as bad as withholding our tithes, and requiring our pastors to live in poverty.
Let’s each encourage those men given spiritual authority in the WELS who wish to see the synod rebuke and correct it’s errant members. Let’s pray for them to have the raw guts it’ll take to accept the risk, to speak with the audacity and clarity of Martin Luther. Prayer is the next best step.
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GJ -
KJV 2 Timothy 4:1 I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; 2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. 5 But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.
I am not saying "Stay" or "Leave" but "Rebuke false doctrine." Everyone who is ordained pledges to obey these verses posted above. The verses do not say, "Keeping in mind the PR of the synod..." or "Deceive people so no one knows who the criminal clergy are."
WELS is especially vulnerable to protecting the synod's image first, which has led it far deeper into the Slough of False Doctrine than most people realize. One can trade on a reputation only so long. If hundreds of people see the links and the photos, month after month, they will realize that the PR is more than a smoke screen - it is a fog bank.
Someone could say as much about the Little Sect on the Prairie. They were running Thoughts of Faith as a carnival of wasted money and corruption. But the synod leaders act as if their feet never touch the ground, and the sick are healed, whenever they raise their predestined and predestinating arms in blessing.
