Anti-Anti-CG Blogs in Epic Fail Mode

Left-click the picture for visual clarity
and doctrinal confusion.

The anti-anti-Church Growth blogs have stalled out again. The fake blogger probably went back into rehab or violated parole. Tim Felt-needs has returned to his favorite subject, writing about himself. Joe Krohn has one post - boycott Ichabod - and he is a daily communicant.

I am waiting for the Church Growth people to write a positive witness for their peculiar alloy of nominal Lutheran membership and febrile Reformed doctrine. Valleskey tried and failed, producing a worse book than Werning's worst. But Valleskey had Kelm's help, so that explains the leaden quality of his prose and the stubbly quality of his theology.

The anti-anti-CG bloggers simply copy me and rant. I hope that is therapeutic for them.

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brett-meyer (http://brett-meyer.myopenid.com) has left a new comment on your post "Anti-Anti-CG Blogs in Epic Fail Mode":

They're a whiny bunch. I had to laugh out loud at one point when they were discussing whether or not your lack of attention to their posturing was an admission that they were right.

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GJ - That is especially funny. I do check on them from time to time, to check for exploding heads and new rants. The fake claims it is a horrible lie that WELS has women ministers.

However, the ELS/WELS boards of doctrine met about WELS women staff ministers (Larry Oh's program) consecrating and distributing Holy Communion. The most the timid boards could do was issue a moratorium, a delay, on the practice.

Here is a new riddle - What do you call a book with no spine? This We Believe!

WELS is now in the same position as ELCA was when the larger sect began mincing around about homosexual ordination. It was only a matter of time before the Lavender Mafia got what it wanted, in a flamboyant display of power politics.

Given the lack of confessional integrity in WELS and the ELS, there is no stopping women's ordination. They could not say no to a Fuller program headed by Larry Oh!, so why would they cringe at women's ordination in 2012? They already have women ministers and women acting as ordained pastors.

Getting Straight about Sources

 

One of the lesser lights in blogdom is obviously influenced by his sub-standard training in WELS. He wigs out over the fact that I linked Schmid as a favor to people who might want a compilation of orthodox Lutheran quotations. Schmid was a favorite in WELS and the ALC.

More wigging out - I have said nice things about Deutschlander's book on the theology of the cross.

The Lenski wig out - Every graduate of the Sausage Factory (WLS, Mequon) feels compelled to jump all over Lenski about justification by faith. My intuition was that these graduates have never read Lenski.

I was checking Lenski on Romans 1:17 and that proved me right. He is fairly close to the WELS position, at least in wording, in that passage. Lenski could be very Iowa Synod, in the middle about everything, even though he was Ohio Synod (ALC).

A well trained and ordained Sausage from The Sausage Factory will always start with a rebuke when the Book of Concord is mentioned. "It is only a book!" Or, "It is old fashioned. Nobody reads it." (Nobody he knows!)

But when a doctrinal dispute comes up, the same Sausage will direct the other person to...The Essay File at The Sausage Factory! That is not just the ruled norm of WELS, the norma normata. It is the ruling norm, the norma normans.

Is double-justification correct? Check the essay file.

Is Church Growth cool and wonderful to behold? Check the essay file.

Some of the wise men who have contributed are - Curt Peterson, the WELS pastor who is now publishing as an atheist; Mark Jeske, the WELS DNA pastor who is sinuflecting to Quiche-nik's Missouri; etc. etc. etc.

Most people would remove an atheist's support for Church Growth from contention, but not WELS. Curt wrote the right stuff, and he is a hero, by gum.

Illiterate Lutherans (the Shrinkers) play games with the books cited. They want to say that quoting one author is an endorsement of all he has ever written - not that they would bother reading it.

Walther has many good things to cite, but he was dead wrong about justification, welded to the Pietism which he brought to the New World. Melanchthon was one of the most gifted theologians of all time, but he also had a wobbly character and tried too hard to please everyone, leading to doctrinal confusion.

I like Luther best of all, but he admitted that he emerged slowly from the Medieval Romanism of his past.

That is why we have and esteem the Book of Concord, because the most able theologians of the time (Chemnitz, Chytraeus, Selnecker) gathered together the best confessional works to unify the Lutheran Church. No other denomination is so unified in doctrine and so rooted to the Scriptures and faithful fathers.

We do not have a quia subscription to all of Luther, just the Book of Concord Luther; not to all of Chemnitz, just the Formula of Concord Chemnitz; not to all of Augustine, who planted the seeds of Purgatory, but to those passages cited in the Book of Concord.

WELS and Missouri suffer terribly from their compulsion to defend their founders as infallible. They even deify the next generation, whether August or Franz Pieper. WELS and Missouri are more encased in the mummy-shrouds of infallibility than the papacy.

The results are in - the old Synodical Conference has yet to denounce and repudiate the Church Growth Movement. Instead, they continue to protect and promote the worst of the CG leaders.

That is the payoff for synodical infallibility, and a measure of God's wrath in punishing the Lutherans for their slatternly ways.

PS - I should mention that Joe Krohn enthuses about CG with Church and Change, like his pal Don Patterson, but distances himself from CG, like Don Patterson. However, Joe started the Rock N Roll blog to defend Doebler's Rock N Roll Church.

Joe defends his UOJ position with the dictionary, the 67th book of the Bible.

I Cannot Print the Headline This Information Requires

The ELCA has multiplied the popes.

Lutheran Core - No, not the lazy-bones in A-Town:

A Jan. 19 memo from ELCA Secretary David Swartling to synod bishops and vice presidents suggests that congregations could be disciplined and removed from the ELCA if they do not fully and financially support the churchwide organization.

“If it fails to live up to the commitments contained in the governing documents of this church, the congregation necessarily breaches the partnership relationships that are foundational in this church. It thus jeopardizes its standing on the roster of ELCA congregations,” Swartling states. “A congregation that repudiates its constitutional commitments to this church is subject to discipline.”

Some ELCA officials have said that congregations that choose the recipients of their giving beyond their congregation and have redirected some of their benevolence giving to ministries other than the ELCA churchwide organization are “withholding” financial support that the ELCA is entitled to receive. Congregations determine their budgets and the amounts to be sent for ministry beyond their congregation.

A January “Q & A” being used by several synods says, “Is it permissible for congregations to withhold mission support? No. Withholding mission support is unconstitutional and violates the governing documents of the church.”

The “Q & A” document also insists that a synod bishop is entitled to determine all aspects of a required consultation period between a congregation considering ending its ELCA affiliation and its synod bishop. “The bishop leads and is responsible for all aspects of the consultation. . . . The bishop determines how the consultation will be conducted, who participates, how many meetings or forums are necessary, whether mailings are sent, etc.” It also states that the bishop will involve ELCA lawyers in the process “to ensure legality and good order.”

Some bishops have required extensive consultation processes with congregations considering changing their church affiliation. They have approached the process in an adversarial fashion rather than in a pastoral and consultative manner seeking to help a congregation make the best decision given its realities.

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GJ - You will have to figure out the headline. ELCA is busy re-certifying the clergy and congregations they mildly punished over being openly homosexual rather than covertly homosexual. They did not punish congregations in the Reconciling in Christ lobby, which advocated no standards at all. They punished the congregations that acted on the principles of the RIC network. To calm the waters of ELCA, the denomination highlighting the most damaging thing they have ever done in a convention.

On the other hand, they are using brass knuckles on the congregations re-directing their money. Hence, the imaginary headline, the difference between kissing and kicking. I dasn't say more.

I am pleased as punch, as VP Hubert Humphrey used to say. ELCA should enforce its actual standards instead of pretending to be nice and Evangelical. WELS and Missouri should take note - this is how to do real discipline.

ELCA's Mark Hanson and The Episcopal Church's Katy Jefferts-Schori should entwine their arms and jump into the lake of brimstone together, taking their denominations with them.

ELCA is still trying to say, "But only a few are leaving." The few leaving are the largest congregations everywhere, encouraged by two former ELCA bishops.

I hope John Brug and John Brenner will grow a pair, of spines, and begin tackling the Reformed doctrine taught with such Enthusiasm at the Sausage Factory. Pietism soon becomes Unitarianism, whether high church (ELCA) or low church (UCC).

It is never to late to trust the Word and study the Confessions.

The Anonymice Have Scattered

Typical Church and Changer - crying baby girl.

I started OpenID and shut down that silly box thing. Identifying the weird letters in the box stopped spam, but it was annoying. OpenID stops spam and scatters the mice. OpenID is the equivalent of turning on the lights and stomping one foot in a prep school kitchen. The vermin head for cover.

I used to get a stream of nasty, abusive comments on a daily basis. Their limited vocabulary, bad spelling, and crippled emotional development pointed to the same few people. They are gone now, those useful idiots who proved to the readers what Church and Change was really like. It is fairly sad when such people can only spell four-letter words correctly.

If someone is unable to express himself in good English, should we kneel at his feet and listen to his stumbling opinions? Funniest of all - these thugs are deeply hurt that I point out their bad spelling with (sic). That seems to be the wooden stake in their flinty hearts.

Why Friday Was Meredith Willson Day

 

My favorite musical is "The Music Man" because it reminds me of my hometown area. I grew up on the border of Illinois and Iowa, and many of my relatives lived in Iowa.

Meredith Willson grew up in Mason City, Iowa, and he created this musical as a tribute to the people he knew. Many characters and names are from Mason City. The song "Lyda Rose" includes the name of his favorite aunt Lyda and his mother (Rose). In the musical, Lyda Rose hailed from Moline.

Willson, played the flute, like me, but much better than I. He joined Sousa's band and played in Toscanini's New York Philharmonic. He was far more than a song writer, composing symphonies and leading orchestras in Hollywood for the music industry. 

Willson's big moment in TV history was a flop, so he had the time to write his first musical, which went through 32 revisions before opening as a smash hit. Robert Preston created the character of Harold Hill, whose real name was Greg, on stage and on film, making any other interpretation seem amateurish.

In small town America, which still exists, people trust each other and help each other out. Recently my car went belly up at a Shell after an earlier jump start and a quick fix at a Goodyear store. A man stopping at the gas station drove us to his house, grabbed his tools, drafted his son, and drove back with us to diagnose and fix the battery. They installed it faster than AutoZone could check me out. He zoomed away in his truck, stopped, jumped out and came back. "Pray for me. I am starting a new business." 

Moline was like that. I developed a flat at midnight, working at Melo Cream. The Shell station across the street was closed and I was a new driver. One customer came out, changed the tire in a few minutes, and was back drinking coffee at the counter. He was uncomfortable about being thanked.

I am having a great time blogging about Moline. I keep looking up websites and pictures, learning more about those memories, hearing from classmates about their similar experiences. 

I remember two Moline girls who were good friends in the flute section in Moline. One is follower on the Moline blog now. The other one lives in...Mason City. They recently got in contact on Facebook.

By coincidence my wife Chris was a librarian in South Bend, and later went to library school in Columbus. I often called her Marian the Librarian. She went to my family reunion in Iowa once, and we laughed about how the musical described them all so well:

Iowa Stubborn

Townspeople:

Oh, there's nothing halfway
About the Iowa way to treat you,
When we treat you
Which we may not do at all.
There's an Iowa kind of special
Chip-on-the-shoulder attitude.
We've never been without.
That we recall.
We can be cold
As our falling thermometers in December
If you ask about our weather in July.
And we're so gosh darn stubborn
We could stand touchin' noses
For a week at a time
And never see eye-to-eye.
But what the heck, you're welcome,
Join us at the picnic.
You can eat your fill
Of all the food you bring yourself.
You really ought to give Iowa a try.
Provided you are contrary,
We can be cold
As our falling thermometer in December
If you ask about our weather in July.
And we're so gosh darn stubborn
We can stand touchin' noses
For a week at a time
And never see eye-to-eye.
But we'll give you our shirt
And a back to go with it
If your crops should happen to die.

Farmer:
So, what the heck, you're welcome,
Glad to have you with us.

Farmer and Wife:
Even though we may not ever mention it again.

Townspeople:
You really ought to give Iowa
Hawkeye Iowa
Dubuque, Des
Moines, Davenport, Marshalltown,
Mason City, Keokuk, Ames,
Clear Lake
Ought to give Iowa a try!

I read some blog and Facebook comments about Moline Memories to my wife the other day. She said wistfully, "You Moliners really stick together."