I saw it was still posted on his semi-hidden blog today.
This Drive conference is one of many Schwaermer training events
for the three of them. Yes, very expensive.
Ben Wink has left a new comment on your post "Drive ’08 - Pastor’s Conference - North Point":
I pored over the whole 5 days and looked at the pictures too and several thoughts immediately came to the surface.
1) Who paid for this excursion to Georgia? His congregation? Was it out of his own pocket? Seems like this was a pretty penny spent when you could probably just get a Andy Robbins book on tape for $12 and get the same results. [GJ - Good question. Who pays for The CORE?]
2) Judging by my reading, these guys were not just standing there quietly with hands clasped during these worship services. Firsthand accounts of worshiping with people of different faiths right there in print. Incredible. Being WELS, I remember having crises of conscious as to what I should do everytime the Lord's Prayer was being said at one of my Catholic relatives' weddings, but these guys are whooping it up with completely different sects of Christianity without an issue. And presumably they should know the Scriptures if they are going to have the title of pastor. [GJ - Ski said they worshiped with Stanley. About eight WELS workers were there, including Parlow.]
3) "To be trustworthy is to be worthy of trust": this was an insight from DRIVE '08 that was mentioned as being memorable. If incredible nuggets of insight like that are being absorbed by, listened to and paid for by supposedly educated pastors, then that's pretty sad. Frankly I should see if I can get into this conference business because I could probably come up with gems like that too. "Heart attacks attack the heart" or "Whopper Jrs are Junior Whoppers" or "Using a posthole digger will help you dig post holes" and many more!
4) The fact that Deutschlander didn't take his mug and throw it down in disgust is the most surprising item in the whole spiel. He at least was at a relevant WELS conference, being WELS and all. He should have said something along the lines of, "You didn't learn a thing in my classes did you?" and finish his beer and walk away. [GJ - Ski bragged and took a photo of Deutschlander.]
5) Finally taking ideas on how to present worship from people who is not of your faith whatsoever is bad enough, but when they steal their ideas from hackneyed 80s metal bands, that's crossing a line. Looking at these photos, I noticed that you could've told me that Poison was about to take the stage and I would've fully believed it. They are only platform boots and facepaint away from being a KISS show, which should make anyone gag with anticipation of mediocrity. Imagine all of the people Jesus touched by just speaking to them throughout Israel. Now just imagine how many more would've listened if he had a smoke machine, flashpots, and projection screens! Oh wait, He didn't need that. Apparently the Word was effective without the Weapons of Mass Distraction.
That I think is the point of all of this. There are ideas and concepts out there that might lend to a new approach in presenting law and gospel. But do they cheapen the message? Are they focused on solid doctrine and based on the solid foundation of God's Word? Ask yourself if you took away the flash and bangs and smoke machines and viewscreens and guitar straight from the Van Halen playbook, what's left? Precious little.
I occasionally watch Trinity Broadcast Network for no other reason than laughs because these people couldn't be more addicted to the old Bakker/Swaggart/Tilton methods of production if they tried. The pics that I saw looked like the mediocre watered down set dressings from the shows on TBN. That's sad more than anything else.
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GJ - Ben, according to Bishop Katie's own Tweets, they went to two different Drive conferences, also to Catalyst (Stanley and Groeschel), also at Granger Community Church, Indiana - where they met former members of St. Marcus. Awkward! Katie went to something called Dirt! - about story-telling. Ski, Glende, and Katie went to Marc Driscoll, the cussin' pastor, in Seattle, where the crab photo was taken and broadcast.
Whether one, two, or three of them went to all the above is not in my records, because they began shutting down the open Tweets when I copied and posted them. I was truly astonished that they took off so much time for an extended period of time.
Ski, Glende, and Katie went together at some of these. Katie said eight WELS workers were at one of the Drive (Stanley) conferences.
Worshiping with false teachers is WELS practice. Kudo Don Patterson took a group of WELS workers to Exponential in Orlando, Florida. He gets a free vicar each year, thanks to WELS offering money subsidizing his 30 year old parish.
The Love Shack has used Trinity Divinity School in Deerfield so often that they were named twice in the Trinity academic catalogue. (Suckers list?)
It is sad to see many "conservative" Lutherans hanging out their tongues for this garbage. This is only the tip of the iceberg in WELS. All the DPs are guilty of promoting and covering up for this nonsense. Missouri, the Little Sect, and the CLC (sic) are no better.
