After reading the growing outcry against the rumored apostasy and fraud propagated by the CORE “church” in Appleton, Wisconsin, I was compelled to travel to the city this past Sunday, August 22, to see for myself just how bad the place really is.
We (another anonymous individual joined me on my venture) pulled up to the location about 10 minutes prior to the advertised start of the service. Upon arrival, I was immediately struck by the sheer size and grandeur of the building. A giant, fancy, protruding sign stuck out from the edifice with the words “CORE Real, Relevant, Relational.” Giant tinted windows also adorned the front wall. You can see in the picture provided for yourself.
After entering the building, I was no less impressed by what I saw. Flat screen TVs lined the walls; movie-like posters with Scriptural references hung around the lobby - there were even high-speed computers in one corner for public use. Engravings of bible passages and quotes were on the walls, and in the middle of the room was a giant snack bar, much like at a movie theatre (considering that’s what the place is, a renovated movie theatre, this was not surprising). At this snack bar were dozens of pre-packaged popcorn bags and pre-filled soft drinks. I chose raspberry iced tea for myself to enjoy during the show.
After getting our food, I noticed the pastor himself – the infamous “Ski.”
Officially titled Pastor James Skorzewski, “Ski” - as he likes to be called – is an ordained graduate of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary in Mequon. He began his career as a pastor by serving a brief term at a mission church in Florida before being called to work under Pastor Mark Jeske at St. Marcus in Milwaukee in the year 2001. There are many rumors and stories about Ski that float around the internet, but I don’t feel the need to promote hearsay. What I do want to focus on is his calling and work at the CORE. For a little background, the CORE was started as a “daughter Congregation” of St. Peter’s church in Freedom, Wisconsin, which is near Appleton. Another infamous Pastor, Timothy Glende, also ordained in the WELS ministry, runs St. Peter’s. Suffice it to say, Ski and Glende must have worked closely together to get CORE off the ground.
According to a blog that is run by a member of St. Peter’s church:
http://vdma.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/the-cores-encore
the CORE had its grand opening on April 19, 2009, with an expense fee of $250,000.00 (judging by the adornments throughout the facility, internal and external, I would not be surprised if millions more than this have been spent in total). At that time, the membership was about 15 people, however hundreds of other WELS members from local area congregations also attend the CORE.
Now that I have digressed a bit, I will get back to my story. So there I was in the lobby, looking at Ski himself. I snapped a picture before ducking into the theater . . . I mean sanctuary. Upon entering, there were two little kids handing out free pens with a CORE logo on them, as well as an adult handing out the “bulletin.” The bulletin had a survey attached, as well as a fill-in-the-blank outline for the sermon. Behind these greeters was a small altar ornamented with little crosses and candles. The theatre room itself was very large, having perhaps 15 or so rows with maybe 30 seats in each row, though admittedly I did not think to count. We sat about in the center of one such row, 2/3 of the way to the top row.
Looking down, I immediately made note of the looping PowerPoint presentation, designed to look like advertisements before a movie begins. I noticed also the worship band positioned in the lower left corner, with an audio/video specialist poised somewhere near central stage.
Although I had seen it coming in, my eyes finally refocused on the cross, which was positioned off to the right of the main stage so as not to interfere with the precious movie slides. It was elaborately designed, with faux bloodstains where Christ’s wounds would have been (i.e. head, hands, side, feet). There was also a spear propped up against it, as well as a crown of thorns. I have a few pictures (pardon the quality; the battery on my camera was dying so I had to turn the flash off):
After I had finally gotten my bearings, I began to briefly look over the bulletin when Ski made his grand entrance. There he was, in all his glory . . . wearing a wrinkled up “cool” collared shirt and “cool” jeans. He made a joke related to running and his physique, and proceeded to make a few general announcement-like comments before inviting us to fill out the surveys and then interact with our neighbors in a “meet and greet” fashion. After this forced fellowship time was over, we progressed into the first worship song, a tune entitled “Revelation Song,” by Phillips Craig and Dean. It is basically an expansion on the song sung by the saints and angels in the Revelation, i.e. “Holy Holy Holy is the Lord Almighty” and “worthy is the Lamb,” interspersed with pious references to how we and all creation should and will praise God. It wasn’t the worst song I have ever heard, though as I said I was giving the service the benefit of the doubt at the start.
We then proceeded to have a confession and absolution. In his favor, Ski did pay lip service to Holy Baptism and its relevance in the life of a Christian (i.e. as a means used by the Holy Spirit to work faith in the heart), and the fact that there was confession and absolution in Christ’s name was also a general plus. Following that portion of the service was a prayer, about halfway through which the muffled sounds of crunching popcorn finally ceased.
I didn’t mention this earlier, but about at this point in the service I made mental note of how nice it was to be surrounded by fellow young people for once. When I say young people, I include little kids, teenagers, and young adults. All three groups were in larger quantities than I had ever seen at another WELS institution; in the end, the vast majority of people in attendance were under the age of 20. In fact, the worship band was composed of mostly kids as well, save for the lead singer. While this seems nice in theory, in reality the truth of the matter is that most of these kids are simply attending the CORE in addition to – or worse, in lieu of – their home WELS congregation. Certainly, there may have been some guests and visitors from other areas, but more often than not these were just local WELSians. If there was any doubt of this analysis, it could be confirmed in the worship songs. It is funny to see WELS members trying to be the happy clappy type. There was no hand waving or emotion really in the congregation during the songs, but nonetheless most were making an attempt to sing. It was very forced, and like oil and water, trying to mix Lutherans with the happy-clappy worship style doesn’t work out.
Back to the service, though. Following the Confession, there was a reading of the Word, Romans 5:1-5. After another song entitled “You Deserve,” we finally got to the core of the CORE: The sermon (or the “Message” as it was called in the bulletin), entitled: “Elijah – The Making of a Man of God.” It is at this point that I stopped trying to give Ski the benefit of the doubt and became fully nauseated. I can count on one hand the words of the gospel contained in the sermon; in fact, I wrote them down:
“I know. Jesus does it for you.” Ski said that in about the middle of the sermon after a hypothetical response from God in reference to how we can’t keep the law perfectly. Other than that, the only other reference to the gospel or Christ was a BRIEF summation at the very end of the sermon regarding how we have a Lord, Christ, who died and is risen for us. But even after that, he recapitulated his main point, which was law-focused, man-centered. I will now provide you with the outline of the sermon.
Basically, he began with the story of Elijah, and with an explanation of the meaning of Elijah’s name (“The Lord is my God”). He then demonstrated what can be learned from Elijah’s example.
1. The making of the God Man means isolated pain.
2. The making of the God Man means total dependence.
3. The making of the God Man means unconditional obedience.
So basically, the point of the sermon was that hardships come from God to refine us like coal into diamonds, and if we are completely dependent upon and obedient to God, he will work our best interests out in the end. Huh. And here I thought the foundation of the Christian faith was JESUS’ blood and righteousness. If only I had known it was about getting blessings for being dependent and obedient! Boy, someone should revise that song . . . how does it go? “Jesus your blood and righteousness, my beauty are, my glorious dress . . . “
As you could imagine, I was NOT impressed. As if to make matters worse, after the sermon we had another prayer . . . and at this point he made prayer out to be some kind of third sacrament (or perhaps only sacrament), an all important means by which we commune with God (there was no reference to the Lord’s Supper at all, big shocker). What’s more, during the “prayer,” the pianist started playing this sappy music as if this were some Lifetime special.
After the final song, we made for the door opposite of the one we came in, as during the service I had seen this stone monument and wanted to inspect it closer. Turns out, it was an ornate baptismal font, chiseled out of stone and topped with a bronze basin (I assumed the connection was with the Old Testament bronze basin between the Holy Place and the altar). After exiting the “sanctuary,” we entered the little gift shop where CORE memorabilia was sold. Interestingly, and as a side note, there was an enormous stuffed giraffe in the gift shop. Seeing it was the highlight of my experience.
After coming home and doing a little research, I learned some more appalling facts about my experience at CORE. Firstly, the Elijah sermon series was
completely ripped off from a non-WELS, mega/online church.
See this lifechurch.tv site and related image:
http://open.lifechurch.tv/series/3683
The image of Elijah used by the CORE is EXACTLY the same as this one - see the CORE’s bulletin:
He made
no note of the fact that
he copied the series from the lifechurch.tv site, a website run by a pastor by the name of Craig Groeschel. Groeschel is a pastor with non-Lutheran theology, as you can tell from the sermon message propagated through Ski. Since he must be too busy to write his own material, perhaps Ski would like to copy a sermon series by Martin Luther next time? I have a volume full of his sermons if he’d like to borrow them.
Suffice it to say, although CORE claims to do everything short of sinning to reach sinners, they have (in my opinion) not only crossed the line into actual sin by means of false doctrine, but have also not reached very many sinners at all! The blatant apostasy of the CORE should not be allowed to go unchecked any further. Ski’s superior, Rev. Douglas Engelbrecht, President of the Northern Wisconsin District, needs to do something about this. But will he? Such remains to be seen.
One final point: As we were driving home, the symbolism of the cross finally struck me. As I said earlier, the entire message of the CORE when I visited was law-centered, man-focused, rather than Christ-centered, cross-focused as it should be. Looking back, the cross being pushed off to the side to make room for the screen is an appropriate symbolic testament to this fact.
At the spring gathering a capacity crowd enjoyed hearing
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