The video of photos, above, illustrates what happens when worship is turned into a performance, show, or gimmick of some type.
Thousands are clucking their tongues as they read about Jeske's Change or Die! conference, lavishly funded by Thrivent and the Siebert Foundation. Doubtless the speakers get paid to share their massive egos with the audience, but the hapless audience will have to fund their trips to Jeske-land.
But - take a bow, you let this happen. The person who gave me the link to the Jeske conference has not been afraid to oppose these matters. But many of you love to feed me information anonymously and stand back - to make it seem as if I am the only one who objects.
This behavior goes back decades. I can name prominent clergy who sent me things I used but acted dumb and synod-subservient when it mattered. In effect, they published in Christian News through me and let me take the blame. That does me no harm. I will not need synod honors, titles, committee chairmanships, or grants when I reach room temperature. I will not look back at a lifetime of being ashamed of the Gospel, as my peers were.
The Intrepids are measuring Rick Techlin for his martyr's robes. I am glad he finally went openly-public about his charges. I am also pleasantly surprised to see the Intrepids acknowledge this and back him up in public.
However, I also have to ask Rick, in public, "Why are all these developments at St. Peter's Freedom, Wisconsin, a surprise? Your pastor was chairman of Jeske's Church and Change lobby and still is. Parlow and Witte are also Church and Change leaders, from your own circuit? Why did you not resist the beginnings, ten and twenty years ago? When Ski was offered as a head-fake "separate pastor and church," why did you not call them on their deceitfulness? Glende was going multi-site under your noses, with his old football buddy as his finger-puppet. You say the rapid escape of the other pastor was a matter of deceitfulness, yet you have kept that a secret too. Isn't that deceit, to object and not offer the evidence? Ski was listed as a board member of Church and Change, until I pointed it out. Why were you not suspicious that your former pastor's false-doctrine lobby selected a certified leader of the same apostate group?"
I do not mind being blamed on another blog. It is shockingly funny to have someone allude to my blog without naming it or linking it--Touch not the unclean thing!--while laying out rules for ethical behavior. But it is a little too coy to send a 28-page letter to a dozen synod leaders and express outrage that I published something already public.
Synod-supplicants: if you do not like the fact that I do 99.9% of the work for you, including the research, then replace me by doing it yourself. I started this blog for roughly 20 people who might be interested. When there are 2,000 page-reads per day about your synod (not mine), the readers are agreeing that I am doing most of the work.
I have some experience in this field. In a special issue of Christian News, I published my objections to ELCA - alone - before the merger took place. One PhD shook his head and said, "I can't believe what you wrote, except you supported it with quotations and the sources." Twenty-four years later, the bishops I opposed have just formed a new synod, and hundreds of congregations are joining. But it was so comfortable for them in the meantime. The perks! The trips! The benefits!
WELS hated that I published my research about their secret bed-mate, ELCA. Later I wrote up all their joint ministry efforts (LCMS-WELS-ELCA) via LB/AAL, so the insurance companies began hiding the projects.
Summary
- The WELS-ELS-LCMS synod leaders are not doing their jobs.
- The seminary professors are collecting fat salaries for doing nothing.
- The DPs and CPs are enabling apostasy while posing as critics of ELCA.
- The laity are comatose, lazy, ignorant, or indifferent, but still funding this debacle with millions of offering dollars and Thrivent premium payments.
- The strong will defeat the weak.
4 comments:
This mantra of (W)ELS Church and Change, "Change or Die" carries multiple inferences.
"Change or Die", we can certainly see where it is self serving. C&C being quite generous by saying, "become like us 'Changers' or Die".
"Change or Die", proposes that unless you accept C&C's doctrine and practices which are copied from the Baptists, Evangelicals, Methodists, Catholics, Pentecostals etc... you will die. In view of the New Age Emergent church beliefs this is as blunt a warning as most men get. It is in perfect harmony with the C&C's promotion of New Age Emergent Leonard Sweet who worked with David Spangler on his New Light Leadership. David Spangler has stated, "Christ is the same force as Lucifer... Lucifer prepares man for the experience of Christhood. (He is) the great initiator.... Lucifer works within each of us to bring us to wholeness, and as we move into a New Age ... each of us in some way is brought to that point which I term the Luciferic Initiation ... for it is an invitation into the New Age.”
"No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian initiation..." (David Spangler, Reflections on the Christ p.44-45)
This teaching that Lutheran's must jettison their Confessions and adherence to strict Scriptural doctrine that the (W)ELS through Jeske promotes is very prevalent today.
"A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith is Dying & How a New Faith is Being Born" by John Shelby Spong
In his bestselling book Why Christianity Must Change or Die, Bishop John Shelby Spong described the toxins that are poisoning the Church. Now he offers the antidote, calling Christians everywhere into a new and radical reformation for a new age. Spong looks beyond traditional boundaries to open new avenues and a new vocabulary into the Holy, proposing a Christianity premised upon justice, love, and the rise of a new humanity — a vision of the power that might be.
http://johnshelbyspong.com/store/a-new-christianity-for-a-new-world-why-traditional-faith-is-dying-how-a-new-faith-is-being-born/
(W)ELS and the Lutheran Synods are playing with fire. And in a well orchestrated comatose state the laity are following blindly.
I do not know why Lutherans are so enamored with Rome as if it is a bastion of tradition.
Crikey, I did not learn about service as entertainment when I became a Pentecostal a long time ago, I learned about entertaining divine service when I was a Roman Catholic kid, and that is going back quite a number of years.
My dad wanted me to be loyal to Mother Church so to show me that the Roman Church was hip and relevant we went to a Jazz Mass. Yep, there was a band at the right side of the altar. I recall I felt weird cause I was in to Rock at that time.
LPC
But many of you love to feed me information anonymously and stand back - to make it seem as if I am the only one who objects
Absolutely, shame on them. They should come out and be counted, instead of working clandestine. What do they think? It is going to get better if they conceal their identity?
False teachers love to label those who oppose them as divisive and heretics. That is a school boy's bullying tactic. It won't work for those who have discernment.
Old folks who have seen much can not stuff around anymore. They have too little time left. That is my philosophy anyway.
LPC
After reading this all I could do was go sit on the couch with my racing thoughts.
"Cuz the Apostates Are Killing Your Church" was personally life changing.
You think you know it all, or you think you're doing what you can do, and then somebody says something and your purpose becomes clear to you. You think you've learned it all from the mainstream talk shows, then you hear Michael Savage for the first time. Or you think you've got morality down, and then a Dr. Laura comes along and you know you've only scratched the surface.
As a layman I have learned ten times more from this blog about what being a confessional Lutheran means than in the 20 years I've been hanging with pastors.
But today you could get a sense that a line's been drawn in the sand, (the heat's been turned up, things are going to the next level-whatever). The edification received from this blog is indeed uplifting and supportive. It's therapy. But it's not going to change anything by itself, and the high-fives will be heard by us alone. Whether you mark and avoid, as I did, or stay and kick ***, Dr. Jackson more than ever today laid out who the players will be, and it's not "somebody else."
It's not the bureaucrats in Milwaukee and St. Louis. God doesn't knock people off horses anymore to make them see the light, and our "leaders" are walking right by the burning bushes.
About 18 months ago a guy from my former congregation and I went to Michelle Bachmann's "Kill the (Obamacare) Bill" Rally on the steps of the US Capitol. (I don't know about you, but I think there are some huge parallels between the way our founding Lutheran documents are being ignored and the Federal government turning its back on the Constitution). To paraphrase, Bachmann (a WELS Lutheran, for what it's worth) told the crowd that we are here because every generation did what it had to do to to make certain that the republic survived. No generation has completely failed in that mission. Now it's our turn; not by choice but by fate. We are the only ones here in this time and this place. Not because we are qualified but because we are here. There's no "somebody else." They've either already done the job in THEIR time, and they're gone, or they haven't been born yet.This is OUR time.
Likewise in the Lutheran church. The early fathers are long gone, as are those who imperfectly but stubbornly fought for the faith in America. And I can only feel sorry for the ones on the way. They won't be taught anything but hype and heresy, so they won't even know what to pass on. I feel like an environmentalist protecting an endangered species here.
Look, I'm a kid from the sixties. I've been in the streets with my fist in the air and I'll do it again for a far better cause. This is OUR time. PUSH BACK; WALK OUT; CUT THE CASH OFF; picket Synod headquarters, talk to the press and write letters-not to Forward in Crisis but to your local paper.
Exposure, integrity, honesty and accountability. Get it or demand it. We PAY these people. They work for us.
In my own case, I have been talking to like-minded Lutherans in my very Lutheran midwest town and have generated some interest in meeting, studying the Catechism and the Confessions, and worshiping with Pastor Jackson via the Bethany stream. Right before I left my WELS church the pastor was giving away all the old hymnals in the basement. I snatched up six. Now, with those hymnals, a lot of Scotch tape, and my wife's bookbinding skills, we're good to go.
I pray we will all find our place in "this."
In the words of the mediocre halftime entertainment at this year's Superbowl,
"LET'S GET IT STARTED!"
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