An Update
March 3, 2011 by Rick
A year ago, on March 5, 2010, the five concerned area WELS pastors met with the Presidium of the Northern Wisconsin District, and asked for a meeting with the pastors of St. Peter & The CORE, and have diligently attempted to meet for the last year. In late December 2010, District President Engelbrecht told former Circuit Pastor Suhr there was not going to be a meeting. (For a more complete history, read the two letters linked in this post: “Why I No Longer Attend My Church“).
Then in late January 2011, Synod President Schroeder met with District President Engelbrecht. After that, it was reported that District President Engelbrecht was willing to have a meeting. District President Engelbrecht indicated that he wanted to first meet with the pastors of St. Peter & The CORE, then all the pastors could meet together. However, no laymen would be welcome or invited.
The five concerned area WELS pastors told District President Engelbrecht that they would not meet if laymen were excluded. Then on February 24, 2011, District President Engelbrecht sent the following letter:
Dear Brother,
With this letter we are inviting you to meet with your district praesidium at Trinity Lutheran Church in Neenah on Friday, March, 25, 2011 at 9:00 a.m. This invitation is being extended to the five pastors and two laymen who have raised concerns regarding doctrine and practice within our district, the three pastors who serve as a ministry team at St. Peter, Freedom and The CORE in Appleton, and your circuit pastor[s].
The goal of our meeting is to affirm that, while there may be some differences among us regarding our approaches to ministry, we are all united in doctrine and practice. We will gather as brothers in Christ with the District President asking questions based on the concerns that have been raised and moderating any discussion those questions may generate.
It is our prayer that the Lord Jesus will be honored by the time we spend together and that our unity in Him will be strengthened as we meet over the truths of His Word.
In the Savior’s Service,
On behalf of the District Officers
D. J. Engelbrecht
President of the Northern Wisconsin District – WELS
CC: Mr. Tony Kubek
Mr. Frederick Techlin Jr.
Rev. Jeffrey Berg
Rev. Samuel Degner
Rev. John Dorn
Rev. Kenneth Frey
Rev. Mark Gass
Rev. Timothy Glende
Rev. Mark Henke
Rev. Paul Jenkins
Rev. Paul Lidtke
Rev. Robert Raasch
Rev. Dustin Sievert
Rev. James Skorzewski
Rev. Jeffrey Suhr
Rev. Ronald Szep
Rev. Joel Zank
10 comments:
Wha?:
"...while there may be some differences among us regarding our approaches to ministry, we are all united in doctrine and practice."
"Approaches to ministry" is doctrine in practice. If the "approaches to ministry" are radically different from those of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the unaltered Augsburg Confession, then there is no unity in practice (and doctrine).
All united in doctrine and practice??? Doctrine-preaching from Groechel and New Agers such as Sweet. Practce-Struttin' around the altar in jeans and attending apostate megachurch conferences such as Drive and Exponential.(oops, not fair, Exponential was attended by pastors from a different WELS district, but you get the point...)
United in doctrine and practice! A BIG LIE! How did Engelbrecht stray so far off of the path? Where on the path was he in the 1960's and 70's?
In Christ,
from WELS church lady
"...as we continue to hold and to restore our wonderful divine services in places where they have been forgotten, let us boldly confess that our worship forms do not tie us with the modern sects or with the church of Rome; rather, they join us to the one, holy Christian Church that is as old as the world and is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets." - C. F. W. Walther, Der Lutheraner, Vol. 9, No. 24 [July 19, 1853], p. 163
Is the "spirit" of CORE et al, that of modern sects or of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the unaltered Augsburg Confession:
"Only those things have been recounted whereof we thought that it was necessary to speak, in order that it might be understood that in doctrine and ceremonies nothing has been received on our part against Scripture or the Church Catholic" - AC, Conclusion.
"...among us, in large part, the ancient rites are diligently observed. For it is a false and malicious charge that all the ceremonies, all the things instituted of old, are abolished in our churches" - AC 21.
"But it can readily be judged that nothing would serve better to maintain the dignity of ceremonies, and to nourish reverence and pious devotion among the people than if the ceremonies were observed rightly in the churches" - AC, Articles in which are reviewed the abuses which have been corrected.
"Falsely are our churches accused of abolishing the Mass; the Mass is retained among us, and celebrated with the highest reverence. Nearly all the usual ceremonies are also preserved,..." - AC 24.
And that's just the Augsburg Confession.
I tell you, kind reader, when it comes to worship, CORE, et al, do not breathe the spirit of the Augsburg Confession, the standard of Lutheran doctrine and practice, but the spirit of the modern sects.
Re worship forms, I wish the WELS District Presidents would speak like Walther did:
"In your letter you ask for my opinion on whether it is advisable to introduce the singing of Methodist songs in a Lutheran Sunday School. May what follows serve as a helpful reply to your questions: No, this is not advisable, rather very incorrect and pernicious" - C. F. W. Walther, “Methodist Hymns in a Lutheran Sunday School” [1883], in Matthew C. Harrison, At Home in the House of My Fathers [Lutheran Legacy, 2010], pp. 331-32.
Here's the rest of what Walther wrote:
1. Our Church is so rich in hymns that you could justifiably state that if one were to introduce Methodist hymns in a Lutheran school this would be like carrying coals to Newcastle. The singing of such hymns would make the rich Lutheran Church into a beggar that is forced to beg from a miserable sect. Thirty or forty years ago, a Lutheran preacher might well have been forgiven this. For at that time, the Lutheran Church in our country was as poor as a beggar when it comes to song books for Lutheran children. A preacher scarcely knew where he might obtain such little hymn books. Now, however, since our Church itself has everything it needs, it is unpardonable when a preacher of our Church causes little ones to suffer the shame of eating foreign bread.
2. A preacher of our Church also has the holy duty to give souls entrusted to his care pure spiritual food, indeed, the very best that he can possibly obtain. In Methodist songs there is much that is false and contains spiritual poison for the soul. Therefore, it is soul-murder to set before children such poisonous food. If the preacher claims, that he allows only “correct” hymns to be sung, this does not excuse him. For, first of all, the true Lutheran spirit is found in none of them; second, our hymns are more powerful, more substantive, and more prosaic; third, those hymns which deal with the Holy Sacraments are completely in error; fourth, when these little sectarian hymnbooks come into the hands of our children, they openly read and sing false hymns.
3. A preacher who introduces Methodist hymns, let along Methodist hymnals, raises the suspicion that he is no true Lutheran at heart, and that he believes one religion is as good as the other, and that he is thus a unionistic man, a mingler of religions and churches.
4. Through the introduction of Methodist hymn singing, he also makes those children entrusted to his care of unionistic sentiment, and he himself leads them to leave the Lutheran Church and join the Methodists.
5. By the purchase of Methodist hymnbooks, he subsidizes the false church and strengthens the Methodist fanatics in their horrible errors. For the Methodists will think, and quite correctly so, that if the Lutheran preachers did not regard our religion as good as, or indeed, even better than their own, they would not introduce Methodist hymnbooks in their Sunday Schools, but rather would use Lutheran hymnbooks.
6. By introducing Methodist hymn books, the entire Lutheran congregation is given great offense, and the members of the same are led to think that Methodists, the Albright people, and all such people have a better faith than we do. This may be a sufficient answer regarding this dismal matter. May God keep you in the true and genuine Lutheran faith, and help you not to be misled from the same, either to the right or to the left.
More, more, more, more....:
Walther:
"The objection, 'What would be the use of uniformity of ceremonies?', was answered with the counter question, 'What is the use of a flag on the battlefield?' Even though a soldier cannot defeat the enemy with it, he nevertheless sees by the flag where he belongs. We ought not to refuse to walk in the footsteps of our fathers. They were so far removed from being ashamed of the good ceremonies that they publicly confess in the passage quoted: 'It is not true that we do away with all such external ornaments.' (C. F. W. Walther, “Explanation of Thesis XVIII, D, Adiaphora, of the book The True Visible Church,” delivered at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, Beginning August 9, 1871, at the 16th Central District Convention; in Essays for the Church [Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1992], Vol. I)
There is a God, do you mean to tell me that "How Great Thou Art" and "I Love to Tell the Story" aren't appropriate, traditional Lutheran hymnody!?!?
With regard to this meeting, I suppose we should be grateful that the meeting is occurring at all, rather than get upset at the typically condescending tone of the letter. Let us pray for Mr. Techlin and all involved, that they may testify a bold witness against the blatant apostasy occurring in Appleton.
Daniel Baker,
I hope the concerned pastors meeting with the District President about the practices of CORE don't get distracted by nit-picking individual aspects of ministry in general and worship in particular at the CORE. What I mean by that is to imagine this dialog taking place:
DP to concerned pastors: "Are you saying that Ski is sinning by not wearing a gown at the worship service? A gown is adiaphora, isn't it?"
Concerned pastors: "Dah, yah, I guess you're right. Sorry to have bothered you."
The issue is: when all the parts of the ministry/worship are put together as a whole, what is the spirit of what the worshiper experiences? What over-all impression do unbiased observers walk away with? Did they just attend a service that looked and felt like a non-denom service? If yes, then they are not walking in spirit of Lutheranism as expressed by the Book of Concord. I would add that they are not walking in the spirit of how the Scriptures speak as well.
But someone will counter: "But the spirit of your service felt Catholic. That's not right!!"
I would answer that criticism by saying, "There's catholic (small "c" i.e. universal Church) and there's Catholic (big "C" i.e. Roman Catholic Church). If the service felt catholic (small "c") then it was in the spirit of the Book of Concord, which expresses a desire to remain faithful to the worship practices of the previous 1500 years because it best reflects biblical/Christological theology. Yes, it will feel Catholic (big "C") because by and large the Roman Catholic Church has also maintained the ancient traditions of the catholic (small "c") church.
WELS is by-and-large reactionary to any style of worship that doesn't feel 1970s TLH. And because of its pietistic DNA, it especially cannot stand "catholic" worship forms. Its blind spot is missions and so it will readily jettison good Lutheran/catholic worship forms for non-denom worship forms all for the pious-sounding sake of "evangelism."
"It cannot really be a matter of indifference to a Christian congregation when the order of service used in her midst shows so much similarity to a heterodox order as to confuse visitors. One may hardly argue that such adiaphora do not matter one way or the other, when it has happened that a weak brother has been offended. And a Lutheran congregation cannot justly divorce herself, not only not from the doctrinal, but also not from the historical side of its Church. It is a matter of expediency, as well as of charity and edification, that every Lutheran pastor and every Lutheran congregation have outward significant symbols of the inner union, of the one mind and the one spirit....
"This is true especially of the morning worship in the Lutheran Church, commonly known as The Service or The Communion. For this is not, as some people have supposed, a haphazard combination or a fortuitous conglomeration of heterogeneous material, but an artistic unit with definite and logical parts, a “spirituo-psychological, well-ordered, and articulated whole,” as [Friedrich] Lochner says [Der Hauptgottesdienst, 41]. The order of service is a beautiful work of art, presenting a gradual climax of such wonderful dignity and impressiveness that the mere presence [of people] in such a service should result in the edification of the faithful." - Paul E. Kretzmann, Christian Art in the Place and in the Form of Lutheran Worship [Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921], pp. 395-96.
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