This just in - for Icha-peekers.
Someone has leaked a photo from the recent WELS COP meeting.
It is encrypted, so it will take until morning to post.
Stay tuned.
ICHABOD, THE GLORY HAS DEPARTED - explores the Age of Apostasy, predicted in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, to attack Objective Faithless Justification, Church Growth Clowns, and their ringmasters. The antidote to these poisons is trusting the efficacious Word in the Means of Grace. John 16:8. Isaiah 55:8ff. Romans 10. Most readers are WELS, LCMS, ELS, or ELCA. This blog also covers the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Left-wing, National Council of Churches denominations.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Lame Doctrine of Law-Salesman Savaged Again Tonight
for its comfortable couches and gourmet coffee.
rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "Church and Changers - Small Potatoes":
"It is with the utmost humility as a recovering pew potato that I make
the attempt to serve Jesus daily."
This is a veiled, reverse type of condescension. Think of BUSY as an acronym (not my original idea):
Busy
Under
Satan's
Yoke
Notice the innuendo about Christians who merely just go to church. The Law says Do. The Gospel says Done. Also, buried in this lame comment is a wrong understanding of the doctrine of vocation. I wish that I would have counted how many times that I witnessed members neglecting their families because they were allegedly doing the Lord's Work. I speak from my own experience also. Besides fulfilling one's vocation, wherever you may be put, there is stewardship of your blessings. Most important of all is the chance to let the Lord serve you with diligent study of His Word.
We will always be given opportunities to serve our neighbor through acts of charity. If you think that endless attendance of workshops, meetings, conferences, seminars, etc is serving the Lord, you have been misled. What better way to keep a Christian from the Means of Grace than by wearing them out.
***
GJ - The unceasing gift of Pietism is to emphasize works as the foundation for justification, as Hoenecke observed. Church and Change has spawned a completely false view of the ministry, which allows Lampe to promote himself as a minister to all denominations and to hapless Lutherans, too. Needless to say, he supports Ski.
Bragging about one's humility is not the mark of a humble man. Instead, the practice reminds us of the Dickens character, Uriah Heep. "I am an 'umble man."
If pew potatoes are so bad that they need converting to hyper-activity, why are the WELS savants creating coach potato churches, popcorn and soda congregations? There is no
Victory of the Movie Screen, Latte, and the portable Popcorn Cathedral of Rock will have to start some diet programs to meet the felt needs of their members.
They promised Church Growth but delivered Girth Growth - that will be their epitaph.
Rogue Lutheran and Brett Meyer on the LCMS DP Suing a Congregation in His Own District
J-641.1 "Sixth, our false apostles justly reward us by smiting us in the face. That is, they consider us inferior to dogs; they abuse us, and treat us as foot-rags." Sermons of Martin Luther, 8 vols., ed., John Nicholas Lenker, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983, VII, p. 112. Second Sunday in Lent. 2 Corinthians 11:19-33; 12:1-9. Luther quotes ripped off from Ichabod, link
Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "LCMS DP Escorted from Voters Meeting - A Heartwarm...":
(W)ELS laity should take a good hard look at what is happening in Oakland!
Is the so-called Conservative LCMS President Harrison stepping in to stop this fraudulent and violent abuse? Is anyone in the Synod Administration? Nearly everyone has stepped aside to allow this to happen.
Is the (W)ELS any different. Charis, Church and Change, clergy and laity worshiping and training with Baptists, Willow Creek membership, Satanic Fuller Seminary training, Satan's Sex Ed promotions, clergy photo's with porn stars, Thrivent money supporting the United Nations and called worker abortions, Jeske's Time of Grace holding membership in (W)ELS and simultaneously in the LCMS, Women Pastors, perversion of the central doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone, denegration of the Means of Grace and Confessions of the Lutheran Church - and WHAT? Nothing. Synod President, District Presidents, curcuit Pastors, clergy, church elders etc. are doing nothing to stop these heinous practices. Will they step in when Synod sues you and your congregation? I don't think so. In fact, I know they won't because even those with enough calcium in their systems to tie their shoes will not go against Holy Mother Synod when she announces her divine decrees, when her position is questioned or when her wrath is stirred.
LCMS DP Escorted from Voters Meeting - A Heartwarming Episode
bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Parochial Education Has Failed - Time To Admit Its...":
The district is suing the congregation, costing them a ton of money, and yet the district president insists on giving them a pastoral letter. Then some 7 foot tall guy has to escort him out:
YouTube Shows LCMS District President Removed From Oakland CA Voters
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/reclaimnews/message/215
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnQJRUEJNeE
***
GJ - This DP--who is suing this congregation in his own district, to take away their property--insists on being at the meeting. He is voted out of the meeting but stands up to talk and pass out his letter anyway.
This reminds me of Faith (formerly ELCA) in Moline, warning the bishop that the Moline Police would arrest him if he showed up on the property.
More congregations should stand up to these popes, who live off the offering money of faithful Christians and deliver false doctrine to them in return. The time has come to turn off the spigot on all of them and make them work again. Let them earn a living as a pastor and volunteer as DP.
Heard on the Trepidation Site, Where They Speak Softly Lest They Be Heard on the Streets of Gath
- To the Administrators of this site: Yes, you make a good point. But I don't understand why you do not point to specific examples. There are plenty of WELS churches who play mistress to the Church Growth Method. Why not expose them. Public sins need public rebuke, don't they? Pastors have been Called by God to the public ministry and are held to higher standard than the average layman, according to the pastoral Epistles. Paul made short work of condemning false teachers and if we think false teaching is happening in the WELS then I think we need to follow Paul's example. I don't want to see impeachments fly around for their own sake, but rather firstly for the laymen that are being led astray and secondly for those Called and Ordained men who are disowning the Efficacy of the Word. I would like to see this blog act as a positive force for warning laymen about Specific Pastors who offer the hollow and deceptive philosophies of Church Growth. I encourage the blog administrators to deal in specifics. Issue warning to laymen who might not understand or see what form such hollow and deceptive philosophy takes. I whole-heartedly believe that the folks running this blog have the Christian maturity to call the specific errant WELS Pastors to task. If there were no False Teachers in the WELS, why does this blog exist? Andy Groenwald
- October 26, 2010 8:46 PM
- Pastor Jeff Samelson said...
- Pastor Spencer: The fourth example from a church website that you quoted was: " . . . relevant sermons with real-life applications . . . " Shall I assume there was more on that site that caused you concern? Because what you quoted there sounds unobjectionable, on its face at least. Don't you preach relevant sermons and don't you make real-life applications? Law and gospel are always relevant, and specific law and specific gospel always have real-life application. So wouldn't we consider any good law and gospel sermon to be "relevant" and have "real-life application"? So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't get what you find objectionable or contrary to confessional Lutheranism in that website quote. What am I missing?
- October 26, 2010 9:24 PM
- LutherRocks said...
- I echo Andy's words. It all goes back to doctrine and if the doctrine is messed up it will affect how you approach ministry. There is a difference in approaching the sinful world from the perspective of the unbelievers are condemned and headed for hell, dead in their sin without hearing the Law and Gospel versus they are already forgiven, justified and righteous...they just don't know it yet. Joe Krohn
- October 27, 2010 4:53 AM
- Anonymous said...
- I too echo Andy's words. It's time to gather the evidence and bring to light all those who mix the teaching of God's pure Word with the dreck of human ideas. (Church Growth comes to mind). It is time to call to repentance those teaching false doctrine, discipline and remove from the WELS those who do not repent. If this means the end of the WELS as we know it, so be it. The remaining confessional Lutherans will be much better off. It is time to take a stand. That's another reason why I became an Intrepid Lutheran. Scott E. Jungen
- October 27, 2010 8:21 AM
- Anonymous said...
- If the WELS gets broken up and those Confessional Lutherans that are left there will be a church body of about 30 members. Bill Barley
Parochial Education Has Failed - Time To Admit Its Betrayal of Lutheran Doctrine
This misspelled, obnoxious ad is one example of Ski's copied work.
Ski, Glende, Parlow, Kelm, Lillo, and Deputy Doug Englebrecht
prove the failure of parochial education.
The closing of Martin Luther College, WELS, provides an excellent opportunity to start taking down a failed parochial system.
Ironically, Parlow is eager to build a big merged parochial school near his church, combining all the others and inviting all religions thereto. Can anyone name a bigger parochial school failure than Parlow? Ok, Don Patterson is close but Kudu Don did not list his church as part of the Willow Creek Association. Parlow and Kelm did. That qualified Kelm to be a perish consultant and to mislead poor, innocent college kids.
The original idea behind parochial schools was to provide a high quality education within the doctrinal norms of the denomination. Roman Catholics wanted their children praying to Mary and fretting about Purgatory, so they spent lavishly on parochial schools.
Lutherans wanted doctrinal loyalty and a foundation for church vocations within their synods. Many sacrificed to provide this, whether students or teachers or pastors.
WELS, Missouri, and the Little Sect cannot produce Lutherans from their own systems. I know there are genuine confessional Lutherans in those synods, because I hear from them. However, they are exceptions - not honored or respected, by harried and lacerated by their own synods.
Whatever I say about WELS is true of the other synods, with some variations. The WELS COP is just as much run by Church and Change as the Sausage Factory, two colleges, and preps are. The Changers I feature on Ichabod are paraded as heroes at Luther prep.
I tried to tell DP Bucholz how bad Mequon was for promoting Changers, but he went into instant denial. That reminded me of the elderly pastor who did not want to know how liberal the Canadian seminary was. Now that man's congregation is performing gay marriages. It only takes one generation of change.
Bucholz wanted to say the problem was with Boomers, laughing since I am one. I had to agree with that, but the deniers are the worst of all.
The very system which was set up to promote the Confessions, even if imperfect in execution, was also ideal in protecting the synod bloodlines - like Jeske and his fifth generation WELS claim.
Augustana Experience
I know how this can happen from another example. Augustana College in Rock Island grew out of the Swede's rejection of General Synod revivalism and unionism in the 19th century. The Swedish Pietists went along with it at first, and never gave it up entirely. When they chose to leave it behind, they chose the name Augustana to represent their loyalty to the Confessio Augustana, the Augsburg Confession.
There are many great experiences I can relate from those days, since being a member created an instant fellowship across the newly formed LCA. But it also meant that heretics were protected by their DNA.
Even in a large sect of 400,000, everyone seemed to be related. The man I studied for my dissertation was the brother of the seminary president, who was also related to Conrad Bergendoff, who lived past 100 and saw Mrs. Ichabod before he died. At Yale, we met a Youngdahl who was related to the other Youngdahls, including the former governor of Minnesota and the star of "A Time for Burning," who stopped by for a visit with his cuz.
WELS, LCMS, ELS
The Syn Conference sects have fallen into a state of paralysis because they no longer teach what they claim to believe. Their unity today comes from Fuller and Willow Creek, not the Book of Concord. They are more unified by their rejection of Lutheran doctrine than by their affinity for the Symbols.
What Might Have Been
The Lutherans could have provided a true classical education, where the students learned the foundational academic skills - writing, math, geography, science, Lutheran doctrine - along with Latin and Greek.
Some are trying to recreate this today, here and there. Meanwhile, the synods bleed off millions of dollars to prop up Fuller franchises on decaying campuses. If people took a realistic look at their seminaries, money would dry up altogether.
A genuinely Lutheran synod would make seminary education free of all tuition cost or provide a way of refunding costs for church work done. The Boomers take the money for "missions" and keep it for themselves...in the shoes of the fisherman.
WELS Church Lady Lady Drop Kicks Jeske and UOJ
Over the Goal Post
WELS church lady has left a new comment on your post "Church and Changers - Small Potatoes":
Poor Mark Jeske! I will bet that he has night terrors. He has to recognize that he is not in control. God is in control. During his Concordia Mequon speech, Jeske was mocking close communion. An anonymous Christaian from Bailing Water Blog, quietly provided the link to the said speech. This "anonymous" person provided no other commentary. Strange! I thought the link was long-lost.
Jeske came across as seeming to be desperate as opposed to having a mean streak. Brother Mark needs some serious Spiritual guidance. I spoke in person with a seasoned WELS pastor who has no use for Mark Jeske.(this seasoned pastor also had some less than kind words pertaining to John Parlow) Be ware, it is NOT just the blogosphere that is upset with these Church and Change guys. Church and Change wants to learn from the New age gurus and remove all roads to Orthodox Lutheranism. We can learn much from the Reformation fathers. Belief in spirit guides is only serving the devil. The Reformation fathers stood against ALL opposition to preserve "saving justification" against a justification that is fulfilled by the law. UOJ C&Cer's are worse! They want to be saved without faith. The ONLY true saving faith is Faith in Jesus Christ. Muslims,Buddhists,and Hottentots have no faith in Jesus Christ. They have a faith that is NOT a saving faith. Therefore these people are not justified. Heresies such as Kokomo Justification would have you to believe otherwise. These false Lutherans have basically rewritten the Formula of Concord.
In Christ,
from WELS church lady
Lutheran churches in region look to consolidate schools | greenbaypressgazette.com | Green Bay Press Gazette
All five locations being considered are near St Mark - DePere - John Parlow........
http://web.me.com/pastorski/Site/Drive_08_%26_Journal.html
Lutheran churches in region look to consolidate schools | greenbaypressgazette.com | Green Bay Press Gazette
Several local Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod congregations may close their current elementary schools to open a regional building.
The churches — Trinity Lutheran in Kaukauna, St. John's Lutheran Church in Wrightstown, St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Green Bay and St. Mark Lutheran Church in De Pere — have met with members to discuss the possibility of closing their church schools to open one that would serve pre-kindergarten to grade 8.
If the plan gets the go-ahead, Bock expects fundraising to take about a year with another year or so for engineering and construction. A new school could be open for the 2013-14 school year, he said, and the other schools would close.
"We want it to come across as a positive thing," said St. Mark school principal Jeremy Bock. "We can combine our resources to create a better school."
Combining resources could allow the school to hire a special education teacher or start music programs or programming for gifted and talented students, he said.
"Church schools are just too small to do some of those things, but that's what parents are looking for," Bock said.
The new regional school would sit on an independent campus and would not be tied to any congregation, nor would it be limited to just Wisconsin Synod, or WELS, families. Busing would be available.
Quips of the Day
Scott E. Jungen has left a new comment on your post "A Lampe Unto Their Stumbling Feet":
Ahhh, so the COP has expressed concern over Intrepid Lutherans. With their track record, Intrepid Lutherans is safe for a long time. Maybe they're "working on it".
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Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Bi-Sectsual Nominated For Ichaslang Lexicon: Synon...":
My wife would be thrilled if I was only Icha-peeking. I voluntarily admit that I'm guilty of I-champing. Pronounced [i-Camping].
In Some Synods - Grounds for Excommunication Too
Muslim claims Schneider trucking fired him for refusing to deliver Miller Lite.
Though the trucking firm and the beer are based in Wisconsin, the lawsuit was filed in Pennsylvania. The Philadephia Daily News explains the basic story, and some lawyer types offer commentary here at the Legal Blog Watch and at the Volokh Conspiracy.
As Volokh nicely explains, the two main questions will be how sincerely the trucker holds his religious beliefs, and how costly it would be for Schneider to accommodate those beliefs by, say, having him only deliver loads that do not contain alcohol or tobacco.
Most Popular Polling
Google Blogger has a widget that allows me to post the most popular post links for the last seven days, the last 30 days, and the period since June 1st of 2010, when this new statistical method began.
The left hand column has the last seven day list, which changes every day. The bottom of the blog has the most popular since June 1. Following the list will allow the reader to see what people are reading most.
One surprise is that people have made a post from 2007 one of the most popular. That means the readers are not bound by the first post at the moment, or even by the sticky posts I create on the left.
Ich-addicts have pushed the annual page reads to the 500,000 level. The only cost is coffee - grim news for those who spend a fortune to grind out a promotional piece for Fuller Seminary every month or so.
People have to open a page to count it in the statistics. The synodical magazines count as circulation those people who might actually take the periodical home because it was left in a pile at church, handed roughly to them as they left the pew, or stuffed in their mailbox.
Alone in the world (as the opponents claim about me), I took two long phone calls from laymen last night.
I said to one Ich-addict, "You are the reason I post multiple times during the day. You told me you look two or three times daily." He laughed about that.
The other layman always urges me to keep posting. He always adds, "Say hello to Mrs. Ichabod for me."
A Lampe Unto Their Stumbling Feet
Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Church and Changers - Small Potatoes":
Brian states, It's my personal opinion that Pastor Jeske isn't afraid of letting go of "control."
Based on what? Isn't it Pastor Jeske himself who willingly went through the process of becoming a Responsible Service Organization of the LCMS while still a member and listed as clergy of the (W)ELS? He purposefully broke fellowship with the (W)ELS in receiving RSO status with the LCMS in which he must submit to LCMS doctrine and practice. If that is not precise and exercised control then what is?
One example is the false doctrine and practice that is exercised in precise precision by the abhorent Church and Change group who are working to abolish and undermine the Lutheran Confessions and usher in the New Age Emergent religion into all (W)ELS churches.
http://ceo-ministries.com/home/brian-arthur-and-tracey-lampe-will-present-re-thinking-youth-ministry-at-the-2009-church-change-conference-regaining-momentum/
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GJ - Arrogance breeds arrogance, but the Conference of Pussycats is working on it:
"The Time of Grace board has stated that the LC-MS has given them exemptions from the things that are required of other RSOs. They have not yet produced any documentation showing that. They ask that those who have concerns about their RSO status to contact them. The SEW District Praesidium continues to work with TOG to resolve the issue."
"Q: Should staff ministry always involve the use of the Means of Grace? Are some situations more aptly described as Christian vocation than staff ministry? We need to clarify what staff ministry is so that it is understood my (sic) all."
October, 2010 meeting.
I am going to go way out on a limb and quote this for Rev. Brian:
Article XIV: Of Ecclesiastical Order.
Of Ecclesiastical Order they teach that no one should publicly teach in the Church or administer the Sacraments unless he be regularly called. (Augsburg Confession)
When WELS and Missouri began spoiling the Egyptians at Fuller Seminary and Willow Creek, they adopted the anti-Confessional attitude of their favorite school.
When Brother Bob or Sister Brunhilda get the urge to preach, they tell everyone God has called them, so others lay hands on them and call them Rev. An education means nothing when the Holy Spirit calls directly. Spelling does not count. The church organization has no business getting involved.
District VP Kuske played this game with Stolzenburg, who was removed from the ministry for cause and ineligible for a call in the LCMS. He and Zehms were allowed to play the role of pastors. Zehms--now with Jeske--told a meeting of LPR that no one had any say over what he and Floyd did, because "we are called directly by the Holy Spirit."
"The COP discussed the group calling themselves Intrepid Lutherans. A number of concerns were expressed."
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