I hope you will read excerpts from the Jeske rant, posted here. The rant is also linked at that post. Watch it and take notes. Jeske mocking closed communion is mild compared to the main content of his self-centered diatribe.
Secondly, read carefully the Ben Wink comments on Ski's pilgrimage to Andy Stanley-land, the Drive conference.
Did only one pastor go to Drive? Ski called it a "pastor's (sic) conference". Don't argue with Glende and Ski. They have 12 straight years of WELS education, the academic equivalent of flunking from an urban school after one semester, the social equivalent of one, long party.
Bishop Katie at The SORE got me interested in the Dirt Conference.
"What if we told you you could look under the hoods of these churches that are breaking the mold:
Lifechurch.tv
Church of the Highlands
Gateway Church
Seacoast Church
New Life Church
Healing Place Church
The Life Church of Memphis
C3 Church
Bayside Community ChurchCelebration Church, TX
Newspring Church"
I suggest watching Jeske's entire tape and looking for similar YouTube video efforts by Ed Stetzer, the Babtist whom Church and Change hired to teach Lutherans about evangelism.
Mark and Avoid Jeske and Ed Stetzer have a similar style - angry and arrogant. This gives the impression of earnestly engaging in the rescue of a fallen world, if they only had enough money to do it.
These are the danger signs given by Jeske, which show he is not a Christian leader in any sense of the word, but an embarrassment to any believer, especially to those who study the Word and the Confessions.
The numbers are time marks on the video:
"We started to change our brand, from gathering our people..." 37:45
"Consumer driven, thank God, that means they will force us to change, nobody ever wants to change, no business wants to change, dear God, no congregation or synod ever wants to change, we only change under pressure because we have to...and I'm glad that your generation is very demanding of what you want because you will force organizations to change if they want to stay in business and will generally, not in every respect, make us better." 47:26
Jeske thinks in terms of marketing, so much that his vocabulary has become the language of business motivational speakers.
"If you're trying to do transformational ministry...pay attention to their heart language... The very first thing any missionary needs to do is shut the heck up and listen...before you start yapping." 35:14
Jeske signaled his allegiance to Pietism many years ago. This statement places him firmly in the camp of Enthusiasm. All the Schwaermer conferences he has attended communicate the same way, and Pietism hates Lutheran orthodoxy, with its emphasis on the efficacy of the Word, its reliance on preaching, the sacraments, and the Confessions.
"And I also have gone to way too many pastoral conferences where some guy got an assignment to prepare an essay that he didn't know anything about, and he manfully struggled with the Greek or the Hebrew, and came up with some blather that was of utterly no practical use to me whatsoever, and you endure those things and move on, I've had, I'm sick of it, I'm done with that kind of stuff, I don't what to read anything about evangelism unless it's written by somebody who has at least 20 adult confirmation a year or more in his congregation, I don't want to read about discipleship programs unless somebody has got a gangbuster set of Bible studies lay and clergy led going on in his parish. I don't wanna, I have no time anymore for people who aren't doing it, that's the only one I want to listen to." 31:44
Here Jeske has abandoned the idea of brothers with the same confession of faith working together. Most of those he looks down upon are the real pastors, who visit the poor and needy in their own congregations, instead of draining money from two synods, Thrivent, the foundations, and the government. Jeske admits on the tape that he only preaches his appetizers twice a month or so. ("I'm just giving treats, like hopefully to spur people on to greater study." 8:57) Them treats are poison, Mark and Avoid.
The real work of transformational ministry must be raising money, setting goals, and flogging the staff to do more better faster.
The conceit revealed above is typical of the false teacher. He lines up those who pay him to glory in himself, because they feel that wonder reflected back onto themselves.
Luther said that Satan hates how an ordinary man, with all his weaknesses and failings, can be entrusted with the powerful Word. One of my favorite pastor-friends is an unassuming guy who cares deeply about his congregation, works faithfully, and gives way to others who have more need. He would be the first to say that the Gospel-Word transforms lives, not the law-salesmen. Additional details would unleash a torrent of abuse on him from the loving, liberal Church and Changers, who worship at the feet of Jeske: "Oh that Thy shadow might fall upon my poor wretched self and transform me, unworthy worm that I am."
"...vulnerable, at a very changeful point in their life, when they might really be interested in a sense of community, when their new and lonely we got everything they could want." 45:15
Felt needs and the receptivity axis have been long taught by Fuller Seminary, Valleskey, Olson, Huebner, Kelm, and other frauds. This concept could be just as true for a beauty salon as a church, except it destroys the concept of a Christian church being a place where people receive grace from the Means of Grace.
"The growth area in Christendom right now is in the non denominational churches because they can adapt faster." 48:40
"If your generation is very consumer driven, what's in it for me, is this giving me what I want? I think all the better because it will challenge denominations and congregations to adapt and change often in ways that they don't want to do."
49:34
Mark and Avoid Jeske's Enthusiasm combines with his infatuation about the non-denominational fad. Look at the list from the Dirt conference. Robert Schuller's bankrupt Crystal Cathedral began with the same wisdom. Denominational labels put people off. Lyle Schaller said the same thing. DP Robert Mueller and VP Kuske thought so, creating their own Pilgrim Community Church, Columbus (epic fail) and CrossRoads in S. Lyons, Michigan, which now belongs to another denomination.
Anti-confessional congregations turn Unitarian rather quickly. Schuller had no problem with featuring non-Christian speakers at his church, yet he stated that he was reaching people, transforming lives, and focusing on Jesus. The trajectory of Jeske and His disciples will be similar, perhaps more rapid. Schuller was unique in his time. Jeske is one of dozens doing exactly the same thing the same way with the same words, gestures, and third-rate music.
"Here's a few thoughts about change, my friend John Parlow up in St. Mark in DePere, he's got a very rapidly growing church, he says, when you find you are riding a dead horse what is the very first thing you ought to do next? Dismount." 51:51
WELS let Steve Witte (now running the portable Asian seminary) and Parlow (Willow Creek clergy member) get away with dispensing their poison. Now Jeske has leveraged the outreach of doctrinal toxins with his TV, radio, gift store.
"I heard Christian futurist Leonard Sweet, a Methodist guy teaches and does a lot of consulting, very provocative guy, wrote a bunch of books, Leonard Sweet says "whether you like it or not the future of the church is coming COD, Change or Die." And so I realized that in the early 1980's if we don't change this place is going to die. And so we started just trying stuff..." 52:25
Tim Glende uses the same scare tactics to argue for plagiarizing Groeschel (which he denies doing). St. Peter Freedom will die without Groeschel sermons. Perhaps it is dying from the combined efforts of Ron Ash (chairman, Church and Change) and Tim Glende (graduate of countless Schwaermer conferences).
That should do it. Anyone who takes Jeske seriously as a Lutheran leader should skim the Book of Concord or the Gospel of John. He is three fries short of a Happy Meal at the Golden Dreams Community Church food court. You laugh? Willow Creek has a food court and VP Huebner has a Soul Cafe.
The second time, at Mequon, Sweet was incarnate in the flesh of Mark Jeske.
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California wrote:
Having listened to the presentation about change or die, by Jeske, some observations came to mind. Speaking as one who is the genetic product of those mid 19th Century Lutheran German immigrants in the Midwest (since transplanted to the West), his history strikes me as insulting revisionist. In the German community of German heritage people in Michigan where I grew up starting in 1929, I never witnessed or experienced the attitude he describes as people considering themselves, "Germans in exile". By the time I was born, even my grandparents retained little of the German language.
My own parents' generation had begun to be confirmed in English (early 20th Century). German services were held perhaps once a month for the aged generation which younger Lutherans didn't attend because they didn't understand German.
The rationale he gives as to the growth of nondenominational being the only ones growing because they can adapt faster is laughable. The reason they may seem to be growing is because they don't have to stand for anything. When he charges that current Lutheran churches with German heritage aren't growing "because they've been doing things the same way". WRONG! They haven't been doing things the same way for 50 years or more...ever since they formally adopted management by objectives, jettisoned the KJV, accompanying hymnals, etc. People have been lost who either "walked" or were "escorted" from membership in resisting.
He brings out the tired old and false message that , methods are neutral when saying the "message is not negotiable, but the methods are". Not so, methods are not necessarily neutral. Which brings to focus the idea of adapting cultural manifestations of pagan societies for Christian worship. That idea has been honed to perfection by the Church of Rome for centuries. Re: worship music, it can be documented that pagan primitive cultures use percussive instruments void of melodic content. Drumming and percussive responses are physical, appealing to the flesh (body). Musical expression with melodic attributes appeals to the mind and spirit. To which should worship appeal?
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Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "More Proof of WELS Discipline:Plagiarism, False Do...":
More than a few similarities:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/new-testimony-sheds-light-on-mahonys-role-in-priest-abuse-case.html
2012: But instead of urging the Vatican (WELS) to remove Baker (Glende) from the priesthood, Mahony (WELS) moved him around to various parishes, where he molested more children (Souls).
(W)ELS is managed by the administrators at St. Marcus with Jeske at the helm. Church and Change is the illegitimate child of the New Age Emergent administration who dictate the structure of the Synodical school system (WLS, MLC etc). Every subsequent generation of "Called" workers is even more the product of the New Age Emergent curriculum in doctrine and practice. Jeske admitted that in the 1980's he bought into Leonard Sweet's satanic Change or Die mantra. Look at how the New Age leaders in the (W)ELS have networked throughout the WELS. The synod is but their temporary host, providing them nourishment and financial support until there is nothing left, no Confessional doctrine and no Confessional practice.
The same effect can be seen when spores invade an ants body:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCeyW9m0SXA
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GJ - Well managed corporations will make mistakes, enormous errors, in spite of doing everything right.
The true Christian church is not a business, but God's own creation, relying solely on His Word and Sacraments to convey the treasure of the Gospel to people.
Augustine said, "There are two cities. The City of Man is based upon love of self. The City of God is based upon love of God."
The Changers have merged the two, as if the City of God can be based upon the love of self.
