Get Out Your Hankies: Ski Can Empathize with Welfare Recipients - He Is One Too

Kelm joined the aging jobless in December, but grabbed two calls at once by walking Plank Road with this clever sign.


Cheryl Anderson

One Sunday about three months ago, a homeless man went up to the teen manning the after-worship snack table at The Core in downtown Appleton and asked for a Ziploc bag. She obliged then watched the man dump a bowl of cookies in the bag, as well as grab a box of tea.

When the teen told the Rev. Jim "Ski" Skorzewski about what had happened, the pastor knew there had to be a story behind it. The story continued three weeks after that incident with three guys who waited after Sunday worship to talk to Skorzewski.

"They just kind of poured their heart out to me about bad choices they made in their lives … and one of the guys who was crying says, 'We love being here, but we have dinner at the shelter at 5:30 on Sundays. So we have to decide, 'Are we going to eat dinner or are we going to come here?' I said, 'I would eat dinner.' He said, 'What you don't understand is this is the one place we hear hope and are treated like real people.'"

Skorzewski said he cried all the way home that night, and soon gathered the leaders at The Core, who came up with a plan to serve dinners at 4 p.m. before worship.

"When you're in ministry, you usually want to help with the physical needs first and then apply the spiritual," said Tom Medema, who serves on the executive board at The Core and is a member of Mount Olive Lutheran Church in Appleton.

"These people were foregoing their meals to come to church. Where have you heard that happen before? That just touched all of us, including myself. It makes you want to do something, and we did."

"We don't do dinners because of the homeless people," Skorzewski said. "We do dinners because it's a great way to bring people together and it just happens there's a need."

Skorzewski said those who attend the meal also are expected to stay for the service.

What began as small-group ministries at The Core rotating to fund and prepare a meal has grown to include members who want to pitch in to feed the 150 to 160 people who attend, which includes 30 to 40 people from the Fox Valley Warming Shelter and the Emergency Shelter of the Fox Valley who come for dinner and stay for worship.

***

GJ - It takes a strong man to read this without bursting into laughter.

---

Sent via anonymous email:

Regarding your infantile comment after the Core Dinner article you posted this morning, I can only respond in the words of Buzz Lightyear: "You are a sad, strange little man and you have my pity."

***

GJ - That sounds like one of Buzz Lightyear's fans.

Three Infinitives

LCMS Preacher Marva Dawn

KJV 1 Timothy 2:11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. 12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. 13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. 15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

This passage is clear, with Paul using two infinitives to explain what he does not allow, one to show what he does allow.

12 But I suffer not a woman
to teach,
nor to usurp authority over the man,
but to be in silence.

This passage is more encompassing than women reading the Scriptures in church or other examples where WELS/ELS/LCMS feminists take baby steps toward women's ordination.

The apostates like to fuzz up the discussion by introducing all kinds of phony exceptions, such as women teaching children in Sunday School (men? where?) and women playing the organ (does that usurp authority?).

I saw where Missouri was going in the 1980s, before Al Barry was elected. At the Trinity (ELCA) seminary library, the women students bragged in their vicarage reports about working in LCMS congregations, preaching and baptizing and consecrating Holy Communion. Paul McCain almost had a cow denying this was going on and did not want to hear another word about it.

Missouri has made a lot of progress since then. So has WELS.

It will not stop there.

WELS has women pastors already.

We Are Measured by What Offends Us

I heard from a cheerful reader that this blog offends some people. He is not offended, but his friends are.

I set up the Bethany blog for sermons and quotations alone. I created it at the same time as Ichabod.

Ichabod has 500 to 1000 readers per day.

The Bethany blog has about 100 readers per day.

I began Ichabod for one purpose only, to expose and denounce the corruption in the Lutheran Church and to reveal the same rampant apostasy in other church bodies. I am not sure how to soft-pedal the news. Perhaps I should keep everyone in the same drowsy, summer on the back porch, almost asleep in a rocking chair mode they have enjoyed the last few decades.

I am quite deliberately provocative, in the hopes of waking a few people up. One WELS leader called it "his morning entertainment."

There are precedents for humor in the Lutheran Church. I have quoted Luther in papers, watching people burst into laughter because of the truth of what he wrote. Chemnitz had a delightful way of deriding the folly of Romanism and distilling a few jokes in the process. No wonder Chemnitz was dubbed the Most Villainous Lutheran.

The sourpuss Pietists who are so careful to guard the fastness of their synodical sinecures are not amused. I simply propose that

When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace: but when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils. (KJV Luke 11:21-22)

To take away the armor and spoils of the Evil One, believers will need to trust in the Sword of the Spirit, the Word, rather than the gimmicks of Church Shrinkers.

Lutheran clergy and laity alike should be offended by:

1. Whoopee entertainment supplanting liturgical worship.
   
2. Pastors who are not man enough to conduct a worship service themselves, letting a woman or women do their work.
   
3. Lutherans running off to be trained by people who despise and mock Lutheran doctrine and worship.
   
4. Open communion, semi-open communion, and demi-semi open communion.
   
5. Hiding communion because it might hurt attendance by non-Lutherans. Wake up chickee-poo. If you feel that way, you are all non-Lutherans anyway.
   
6. Gutless Doctrinal Pussycats who exercise discipline against faithful Lutherans while letting apostates run wild.
   
7. Gutless Doctrinal Pussycats who pretend they are going to do something against apostates while doing nothing except talk.
   
8. Dmins from whack-job schools deserving an axe, a torch, or a set of Luther's Works.
   
9. Pastors who cheat on their mistresses.
   
10. Seminary professors who lead from the rear, sitting on their posteriors while their own synod rots away.
    

A conservative hates you for telling a lie.
A liberal hates you for telling the truth.

Now That WELS Has Women Pastors, Watch What Comes Next

GJ - First this Iowa district of ELCA questioned the August 2009 vote. Next the bishop got the district council to rescind that dissent from ELCA. Afterwards came this Final Solution for anyone who dared to join a straight lobbying group:

Source:

Resolution from the Upper Iowa River Conference Spring Assembly, February 14, 2010

Whereas the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is a constitutionally governed organization served by constitutionally elected leaders at both the synod and church wide levels, and

Whereas the stated purposes of the organization known as Lutheran CORE are to 1) bring forth a proposal for a new Lutheran church body governed by a new constitution for those who choose to leave the ELCA, and 2) to plan for the continuation of Lutheran CORE as a free-standing synod for all Lutherans, and

Whereas it is an inherent conflict of interest for individuals who are members of CORE to fully and wholeheartedly support the ELCA constitution,

Be it Resolved that: 1) all rostered and lay leaders who are members of CORE and are currently serving in elected positions in the NE Iowa Synod be required to resign from those positions, and that 2) all rostered and lay individuals currently holding membership in CORE be disqualified from election to positions of leadership within the NEIA Synod.

Submitted by the Upper Iowa River Conference of the NEIA Synod — ELCA Voted on at conference assembly, February 14, 2010.

***

GJ - In 1987, I spoke with a Reformed Church in America pastor who had been Presbyterian. When Presbyterians voted for women's ordination, they said the pastors who disagreed would be left alone. Later, this man privately expressed his doubts to the district executive, who immediately said, "I have to remove you from the ministry."

The Presby minister said, "I will never express my views in public."

The executive said, "That does not matter now. You are off the list."

Do not be shocked. Pope John the Malefactor (ELS) did the same. So did Dan Fleischer of the mini-micro Church of the Lutheran Confession (sic). Ditto, many others of small brain and large waist.

The point is that once a new apostate doctrine or application is adopted, all dissent must be liquidated.

ELCA is marching its straight clergy to the metaphorical gas chambers. Diversity is for dopes.

WELS will do the same with women's ordination. They already have women pastors. Ordination is not the issue because all true followers of Walther's Pietism know that ordination is an adiaphoron. How do we know? Because Walther said so.

The Biblical issue is "women usurping authority" and "women teaching men." WELS, the Little Sect on the Prairie, and Missouri have been violating those clear Biblical principles for decades now. All they need to do now is study the issue and publish a report confirming that they have a new revelation from Holy Spirit. They will ordain women as a matter of Biblical and Confessional principles - just you wait.

A few years later, Perez Hilton will be the anointed Prophet of WELS.

Does this hat make me look odd?