Mary Lou College needed a cathedral to teach their urchins how to conduct proper liturgical worship.
My father was the reason we became Lutheran in the first place. He was raised Roman Catholic and didn't want his children to grow up that way. So yes he did do some church shopping with my mother and fortunately God led them to the closest church in the neighborhood, which was a traditional Lutheran church in Milwaukee, a WELS church. This was back in 1982 or so. We have been Lutheran ever since. And since it was an older church in Milwaukee, the atmosphere lent itself to being a place of Lutheran worship. Some of the most meaningful and fondly remembered moments I ever had in worship was in that church. Strong Lutheran doctrine, used the entire service from The Lutheran Hymnal, sang Stille Nacht for Christmas. My brother and I went to the school that they had then and I can say now that we were given a great Lutheran foundation at a young age.
I look around now and see the modern churches with all of the whiz-bang tech and wonder why all of that superfluous flummery is really needed? All you need is an organ that works, a relatively good sound system in some instances, a good furnace (this is Wisconsin after all!), and dedicated servants of the Word that have been steeped in God's Word and Lutheran doctrine. As a staff minister intern I helped out at a small congregation. And all 15 or so members were blessed with a church, an organ, a fellowship hall in the basement, a church library, and a bathroom or two. That's it. Did they complain? Nope. The only worry was that the congregation didn't have a full time pastor at the time. Plus most of the membership were elderly. But they all pulled together and made that church work and has been a constant reminder that they didn't need anything more than what they had and they did just fine.
I remember when the MLC chapel was brought up time and time again when I was there. When there were missionaries that were out in the field holding services with a tarp and some folding chairs and managing to have substantial worship, what would a huge edifice do for a student body that usually skips chapel anyway? The auditorium was fine.
The organ worked, there were hymnals, there was seating, and there was even a sermon, which sometimes was well done. Other instances you wondered exactly how some of these guys managed to tie their shoelaces let alone write and present a sermon. But that gathering place was enough for a 30 minute worship, two times a day. And the room was a multi-tasker too. Now there's a huge monstrosity that towers over the campus that cost several bazillion dollars and it gets used as much for worship as the old auditorium did.
Well they certainly proved their point in having that building. Apparently these funding clowns never saw "The Bishop's Wife", a film that is sketchy in its doctrine to say the least, but it does handle the question of having a huge cathedral: you don't need it and there are better ways to spend offerings and donations.
Sorry for the rambling, but thank you again for the books and thank you again for your prayers and the message of comfort that the Scriptures give us concerning the fate of all those that have faith in Christ and follow His Word. Death is just the starting point for an eternal life in heaven with our Lord. Looking at it in those terms is quite comforting and strengthening at the same time.
They conduct popcorn and cola entertainment sessions,
dressed as if they were going to lube the car or change a tire.
19 comments:
"The auditorium was fine."
I disagree. The WELS is now reaping the rotten fruit of years of shabby training of its future pastors in how to handle the mysteries of God. No wonder CORE and others get the green light to worship in a movie theater or concert hall when that was the model of how to do it at (Dr)MLC. No font. No Holy Communion. An altar and pulpit on wheels. Don't think for a moment that didn't "train" future pastors. I once saw the baptismal font used as an individual communion cup receptacle at a WELS church. Very functional. Like the WELS doctrine of Church and Ministry.
Certainly, a congregation of confessional Lutherans does not need to hold divine service in a cathedral-like structure. However, promoting the pole barn (or WEF unit - Worship/Education/Fellowship) as the standard for WELS worship space is shameful and reveals the true nature of the doctrine of those who propose it.
Lex orandi. Lex credendi.
Wilehelm Loehe said this about the topic back in the early days of Lutheranism in the U.S.: "The Church remains what she is even without a Liturgy, she remains a queen in beggars’ rags. It is better to give up everything else and to hold only the pure doctrine than to go about in the pomp and glory of splendid services which are without light and life because the doctrine has become impure. Yet it is not necessary to let the Church go in beggars’ rags. Much better it is that her prayers, her hymns, her sacred order, the holy thoughts of her Liturgy, should be impressed upon the people" Three Books Concerning the Church.
Interesting points and well stated. However if the Word is the foundation for study and spiritual growth, then any building should and will do. I would find more fault in the classroom instructors and instruction at MLC and WLS than two 20 minute worship services a day in Podunk, MN.
I find it hard to believe that having to preach in an actual worship facility would have elevated the sermons to a higher level. The atmosphere shouldn't matter if you are sincere about the message and you realize the importance of what you're saying. But again parsing out 15-20 minutes twice a day with two hymns, liturgy, and a sermonette, probably wasn't enough time anyway. After all there are two WELS churches in New Ulm if one wanted an actual service to satisfy them.
And shouldn't that be a telling point if you let yourself get distracted by the building to the point of not listening if there was a thought out and well structured sermon being presented? You have a lectern, a sermon being read, a hymnal in your hand. There was a cross and an altar and candles and a font. If that is not good enough for one to focus, maybe the vocation you're training for isn't the right one for you.
Didn't Christ preach without a building around Him most of the time in Scripture? So did Moses and Elijah and Peter and Paul at some point and it didn't seem to cause their audiences to be distracted about how they weren't in a proper building for worship. (Oh sure there were probably some guys in the back row listening to the parable of the mustard seed as it was being presented for the first time who wished there were pew cushions and some modern Christian paintings up on the wall, but I like to think they were the exception. Leave it to some to be distracted from God's message in this way.)
And even in the quote that was mentioned earlier before the bold section, "It is better to give up everything else and to hold only the pure doctrine than to go about in the pomp and glory of splendid services which are without light and life because the doctrine has become impure." I would start with the weak tea sermonettes as a problem point before hiring a building crew. But apparently buildings are easier to construct than having to correct training methods.
Were the majority of the messages that were received in those chapels worthy of a grand church-like structure? But that leads back to the chicken and the egg argument about this: does lack of a building dedicated as a chapel cause bad sermons or does bad training cause bad sermons?
Cont.
Plus this building didn't make much fiscal sense either. Where exactly were the smart stewardship principles? Now there's a huge building that prepares students for...being MLC-trained laymen because the calls have been drying up due to budget issues throughout the synod. Now some of that is 20/20 hindsight on my part but the writing was on the wall even as the chapel was being proposed. And when the fiscal roof caved in around 2002-03, that chapel just became a black hole that sucked up cash.
Recall missionaries, eliminate staffing at MLC and LPS, deal with probably having to cut MLS, move NPH out of 2949 because you cannot afford it etc, but boy that building in Podunk, MN is really shiny and I'm certain that amazing sermons and thorough studies are being conducted in that chapel. I'm sure that renting it out for weddings and funerals and conventions of all denominations, Christian or not, is in the works too.
Overall, a building dedicated to worship is a nice idea at that school, but during those chapels in having the auditorium, you already had a building that was dedicated to worship because you were worshiping in it at that time and place. When the Lord said that "whenever two or three are gathered together in my name there I am in the midst of them...", He did not continue to say: "...unless they don't have a huge cavernous building with a state of the art sound system that only gets used nine months out the year, then forget about it, I've got better things to do!"
With the embarrassment of wealth that the U.S. has now even in a recession - and that includes WELS members - having a reverent worship structure which appropriately houses the "Gospel rightly taught and the Sacraments rightly administered" is a "both/and" not an "either/or" argument.
I know it's hard to grasp when you think it's coming from your own pocket, but $8 million is chump change in the real world out there:
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2010-legislative-races/political-partisans-give-8-million-in-final-week/
I was at the MLC auditorium more than once. I never imagined that they needed a cathedral there. I believe St. Marvin donated the money, one more installment in the indulgence the WELS Planned Giving Counselors sold him.
"I never imagined that they needed a cathedral there."
Gregory L. Jackson, your WELS is showing. Smacks of that whole "we-could/should-worship-in-a-barn-the-money-could-have-gone-to-missions" mentality.
At least I sign my own name.
WELS did nothing for itself by fawning all over an adulterer (one of many), but birds of a feather do flock together.
The MLC cathedral is odd, given the downhill progress of the school.
The marks of the true Church are the Word and Sacraments. I admire a beautiful church building, but it does not make up for teaching false doctrine all over the campus, all through the synod.
People must realize it was pulpit envy. The Little School on the Prairie got their copper-top chapel, so WELS had to have a bigger one.
In WELS, high church is when a homosexual archbishop like Weakland is paid to teach the Word at the college, along with a gaggle of his favorite gay priests.
The ELS is much stricter. They had a married, straight bishop teach at their religious service.
Did anyone other than my wife and I notice the moment the pastor students came to New Ulm, 1995, they needed a chapel like at good ole' Northwestern? Suddenly, the old Chapel-Auditorium wasn't good enough for them, thye needed a palace.
Scott E. Jungen
"At least I sign my own name."
What was that? "I know you are, but what am I?"
Stick to the issue. The knee-jerk reaction to spending money on the setting for the Divine Service by making it seem like it was money ill-spent is a vestige of pietistic thinking.
Scott E. Jungen, to say "palace" sums up the WELS mentality. (BTW, didn't you say you were once a WELS teacher?)
We're not talking St. Peter's basilica here. We're talking a churchly setting for the Divine Service. The fact that CORE and others so readily jettison liturgy and reverent worship settings is a directly correlation to the WELS low view of Word and Sacrament Ministry, especially as described in the Book of Concord.
I am getting an arrogance reading, somewhere between Jay Webber and James Tiefel.
"pot calling the kettle black" comes to my mind.
With all due respect. I think we're on the same page. The question is, why is it that, to quote you, Greg,:
"This is what happened to a generation of WELS students,....
They conduct popcorn and cola entertainment sessions,
dressed as if they were going to lube the car or change a tire."
I used the two Ski Photoshops because I had them and found them real, relevant, and relational - as much as he is.
No, we are not on the same page. The backyard barbecue style of clergy dress comes from Schwaermer doctrine, not a lack of architectural finery.
The ELS/WELS/LCMS theologians (to stretch the term) have been training men to study at Fuller Seminary and worse, so these zombies follow whatever they are told at Drive, Granger, Mars Hill, Willow Creek, Saddleback, Exponential, Dirt, and Catalyst.
Babtist leaders like Stanley and Stetzer lead to low-ball Babtist Emergent Church behavior.
Some points on some earlier points:
$8 million is indeed chump change in the real world. The snarky comment I wanted to say is "Since when is WELS in the real world when it comes to spending?" Reading over synod's budget, it is all about perspective: $8 million dollars is hardly chump change to them.
Just imagine if that $8 million were available now in order to prevent staff cuts at MLC? Or LPS? Or would be there to help stave off MLS from being closed? Or offer substantial tuition assistance to MLC/WLS/LPS/MLS students? Or have funding to help churches in getting a vicar or staff ministry intern? Maybe help to help prevent the recalling of missionaries? Perhaps the money could be used to fund in other ways so that graduates actually have calls and jobs when they leave New Ulm or Mequon.
Instead while MLC closes dorms, deals with shrinking classes, and cuts staff under the umbrella of fiscal responsibility, they erect a huge chapel for a declared price tag of $8 million. Granted there were plenty of people that gave because it seemed like a nice idea at the time. And it is a nice idea, but when you're under the gun to tighten up the budget, under the constant threat of staff cuts and prep school closings, this building was a definite luxury that could have most certainly waited.
True the United States is a fantastically blessed country in terms of wealth compared to other nations. But why shouldn't we then use good stewardship practices and spend wisely with a plan? Where does it say in Scripture that we can blow through God's blessings without a care in the world and then just say, "But God will provide!" after you've blown through your funds like a freshman with their first credit card?
Take for instance the Forward In Christ mission projects that couldn't spend money fast enough. Synod just threw money at whoever had a vague mission idea in order to get some results to prove that money was being spent. Look what happened: the mission projects all dried up when the money dried up. No planning, no foresight, no nothing, just indiscriminate spending. And why? Because the money was there.
But what is done is done. The chapel is built. Now there's an even larger building that is dedicated to worship where the students can skip out of worship. Ever attend the evening chapels? The crowd consists of the 17 students taking night classes, a professor that teaches it, and a tutor that didn't really prepare his sermon.
In the end this was all done in order to get a nice picture for the MLC brochure. I'm sure the student body, when they don't get a divine call to a school that was closed after being taught by a prof that was cut, will at least have fond memories of using an $8 million building for 20 minutes of worship possibly twice a day, maybe.
"The backyard barbecue style of clergy dress comes from Schwaermer doctrine, not a lack of architectural finery."
I would say both backyard barbecue style of clergy dress and a lack of architectural finery come from Schwaermer doctrine.
Before Fuller was Pietism. And Pietism is in the DNA of WELS because of WELS history. Pietism downplays "architectural finery" because "architectural finery" is usually designed to highlight the means of grace. Unless both Pietism and Fuller-ism are rooted out of the WELS, we will see more CORE, and more descriptions of appropriate worship settings as "Podunk," "cathedral," "palace," "finery," and those who support those things as "arrogant."
Peace out.
Its a copy of Trinity Chapel at Bethany in Mankato. If they are looking for a way to pay for it. one help would be to get rid of staff ministry synod wide. And cut Larry "The Hertic" Olson job from MLC and put him in the ELCA were he belongs
A little levity to lighten the discussion:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheLutheranSatire#p/u/4/20Kh5dzgim4
Germane to the discussion:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/03/17/churchgoers-say-pastor-denied-communion-refused-hand-tax-refunds/
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