2010
ELS Pastor Jay Webber (also Board of Doctrine) has been busy contacting the Intrepid Lutherans about my low opinion of his work. He is claiming he explained everything to me - wrong. Using someone else as a go-between is a typical WELS/ELS tactic and does not speak well anyone going along with the tactic. Matthew 18 applies to the manipulator and the manipulatee.
Readers know I am in constant contact with the laity and pastors of the ELS, WELS, and LCMS. That means they know how to reach me directly - and do so with frequency. Various WELS leaders use WELS Pastor Steve Spencer as my social secretary, which says a lot about the leaders, all that Matthew 18 stuff they love to apply to others.
WELS Pastor Tim Glende has provided a surprising amount of fodder for this blog. He grew up at St. Paul German Village, where Stolzenburg planted himself and began promoting himself as a Church Growth expert. Stolzenburg and Zehms, both divorced, did their best to ruin Columbus--protected by WELS officials--before Zehms was given a job at WELS Lutherans for Life and Floyd was promoted to a Masonic, independent church.
I contend that St. Peter Freedom, Wisconsin, and The SORE are the direct results of WELS/ELS promoting false doctrine and clergy adultery in Columbus. Credit also goes to the Shrinkers at Mequon, The Love Shack, and Church and Change.
I could discuss many more details and name people. One woman was so terrified that the family moved to another location. That is all I need to say.
Thrown out of LCMS, Adopted by WELS
Stolzenburg was the senior pastor at Salem in Black Jack (Northern St. Louis) when the DP forced him to resign on Saturday and preached for him on Sunday. Floyd's first wife sued him for divorce and his girlfriend's husband sued everyone. Both lawsuits are public documents. Various other revolting details have been provided by the pastor who worked with Floyd at Salem, the DP who canned him, and some LCMS pastors.
The WELS members were told Floyd had a "Scriptural divorce," that anything said against him was persecution.
Floyd's first wife moved to Columbus and Floyd followed. He could not get a job in education so he drummed up the idea of a Church Growth agency, which was named Lutheran Parish Resources. The board did not want to hire him at all, so they hired another divorced Shrinker, Roger Zehms (now with Mark Jeske). The loot was doubled so Floyd could have his job. He attended all Columbus WELS meetings - the circuit never met for years until I mentioned that fact. That was a constitutional requirement but VP Kuske had his own rules from the GA Handbook of Malice and Deceit.
Floyd never worked with the Columbus WELS Lutherans For Life chapter. He assumed he was in charge of everything else, every parish as well. He butted into everything, even phoning prospects and warning them against joining my congregation. He promoted himself to give a paper at a WELS conference and claimed he was invited to do so.
Circuit Pastor John Seifert knew all the details and did nothing. He urged me to put DP Mueller on trial, but refused to help in any way. That is how DPs get elected. The District Mission Board (Wally Oelhafen, Fred Adrian) also knew. Wally said, "I am so glad you are there in Columbus, Greg. I hate to think what it would be like otherwise." He had a different story at meetings, joining Kuske in the Sisera method of counseling.
Thoughts of Faith, ELS
I mailed plenty of material to the ELS as well - George Orvick, Gaylin Schmeling, Jay Webber. I told future WELS VP Huebner that I had "Ministry of Xeroxing," which made him turn pale.
Shep was running TOF at that point, with money from St. Marvin Schwan. As I recall, Kovaciny was called to the Ukraine first. Somewhere around that time Shep contacted me, but my wife was already disabled. WELS pastors, subservient to the Eighth Commandment, said she was not sick at all. A weirder story came from Seifert's own daughter. I wonder where she heard it.
Zehms was invited to the Ukraine but Shep said his divorce and Church Growth fanaticism made him ineligible. There was some sort of dust-up and Zehms was very unhappy, according to Shep (who is now an ELCA pastor).
The last straw for me was WELS promoting Stolzenburg into a parish, knowing full well about his past and his false doctrine. After a few years of pounding by me, the officials finally admitted some of it, with a modified limited hang-out.
I resigned from WELS but DP Mueller/VP Kuske tried to ban me from preaching the last few Sundays. These were the same thugs who could not do enough to get Floyd back into the ministry. Of course, Seifert and all the capons of the Michigan District were silent.
Webber and TOF
ELS Pastor Jay Webber was outraged that Stolzenburg was working with Thoughts of Faith through Roger Kovaciny. He demanded to know if I placed the item in Christian News about this. He was going to oppose it. Pretty soon he was talking about going there himself. Later he had no problems with loot coming from Stolzenburg.
Kovaciny would travel back to the States and raise money for his own salary, preaching and teaching at Floyd's Masonic church while going around to WELS congregations.
Former members of that church (Emmanuel) were disgusted with Floyd being forced upon them, so they mailed me all his newsletters, quoted in the other post. Obviously Kovaciny was their pet missionary. The Little Sect on the Prairie was apparently hankering to add another church to their quiver. ELS SP Orvick had no problem with Masons. His Madison congregation grew by his welcoming of Masons. St. Paul German Village also communed Masons, one secretly.
Stolzenburg featured Thoughts of Faith all the time on his website, as if they had joined the ELS and were members in good standing.
Obviously something official was happening. St. Marvin Schwan gave Stolzenburg a matching grant for raising money to build a church in the Ukraine. According to Shep, that was about $35,000. They named the new church Emmanuel, after the Masonic one. Doesn't that make tears well up in your eyes? Mine too.
I heavily promoted Stolzenburg's connections with the ELS and TOF. Eventually his website went silent and no more photos were published about the Ukraine. That did not mean the relationship changed. The ELS and WELS are all about perception, not reality.
Kovaciny left the Ukraine for a time and came back. There was a concerted effort to toss Shep out, so he became an ELCA pastor.
Some people worry that I am a Shep fan. He sent my of my contacts an email asking what she knew about me, did she think I was normal. At the same time he sent an email to one of his generous financial supporters, praising me to the sky. I emailed the negative email to the supporter, who forwarded it to Shep and asked about it. He never replied.
Conclusion
Jay Webber belongs to that long parade of ELS/WELS clergy enablers who did nothing to stop Stolzenburg - who did everything possible to place him in another pulpit and parade him around as a good example, a pastor in their fellowship (without joining). They shut their eyes to his infidelity to his wife, his false doctrine, and his ineligibility to serve as a pastor. "Apt to teach" and "husband of one wife" are requirements, not suggestions.
KJV 1 Peter 4:17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
When people cluck their tongues about sexual abuse in the Church of Rome, I say, "But I saw the same cover-ups going on in the Lutheran church, and the clergy get married there."
