rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "Gottesdienst Online: Memo to Synod: Mind Your Own ...":
Allegedly, the forthcoming emphasis for the WELS Stewardship Sunday is an emphasis upon time and talents of the laity. Recently, I heard a pastor call it "our ministry", as in "everyone is a pastor". There are several aspects of this attitude which bear emphasis. First, there is a downgrading of pastoral ministry, especially as it applies to the Means of Grace. Secondly, this places emphasis upon the laity as being stakeholders. It is akin to a communitarian approach to public ministry. The effect of this is to make members hamsters on a treadmill. This approach manifests itself with a nonstop parade of committee meetings, agendas, workshops, and lame "Bible studies". Great emphasis is placed upon members serving, with continued reminders that the "ball is in their court". The "technician approach" is undertaken, with members getting the impression that all one has to do is flip the right switches and tweak the controls, and the plans will fall into place. Plausible deniability is built in to this with certain Scripture passages that are proof texted to support the effort. What you end up with are members who no longer believe in the Efficacy of the Word and have instead become small m Methodists.
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GJ - The Lutherans really need a comprehensive study of the Book of Concord, but who will lead them? The faculties despise their own confessions and reject them. The MDivs find the Book of Concord "boring and irrelevant."
If there were a groundswell to study the Confessions, the Conference of Pussycats would finally find their claws and stop it. After all, Mequon has dogmatics notes that label justification by faith passages from the orthodox as "MISLEADING." That is also why Mequon is hotter than Georgia asphalt to buy the NNIV.
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AC V has left a new comment on your post "Another Fuller Program Will Cure the Ills Caused b...":
Excellent observations, rlschultz!
Did you catch how Bivens described the pastor's role in the Divine Service rite of Confession/Absolution in his Q&A answer posted here on Ichabod (http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2011/10/false-teachers-mislead-students-at.html)?
"This is why (AC V - i.e. UOJ) we may speak to one another to say 'Your sins are forgiven' or 'In the name of God, I forgive your sins.' This is why a pastor, acting on behalf of all the Christians in the assembly, says the same thing."
That's not how the rite reads even in the WELS CW hymnal: "Therefore, as a called servant of Christ and by his authority, I forgive you..."
2 comments:
Excellent observations, rlschultz!
Did you catch how Bivens described the pastor's role in the Divine Service rite of Confession/Absolution in his Q&A answer posted here on Ichabod (http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2011/10/false-teachers-mislead-students-at.html)?
"This is why (AC V - i.e. UOJ) we may speak to one another to say 'Your sins are forgiven' or 'In the name of God, I forgive your sins.' This is why a pastor, acting on behalf of all the Christians in the assembly, says the same thing."
That's not how the rite reads even in the WELS CW hymnal: "Therefore, as a called servant of Christ and by his authority, I forgive you..."
Notice how the WELS Constitution reads for synod and its districts:
ARTICLE II
Confession of Faith
Section 1. The synod/district accepts the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments as the divinely inspired and inerrant word of God, and submits to this Word of God as the only infallible authority in all matters of doctrine, faith, and life ("and practice" is in the district constitution).
Section 2. The synod/district also accepts the confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church contained in the Book of Concord of 1580, not insofar as, but because they are a correct presentation and exposition of the pure doctrine of the word of God.
I dug out my congregation's constitution. Notice the difference:
Section 4.
Hence, no doctrine shall be taught or tolerated in this congregation which is in any way at variance with these symbolical books and the Holy Scriptures.
Section 5.
Likewise, all controversies which may arise in this congregation shall be decided and adjusted according to this norm of doctrine and practice.
Is there significance that in the synod constitution there is no "all controversies shall be decided and adjusted according to this norm of doctrine and practice" I.e. Scripture and the Confessions?
I think so. Ask your local WELS pastor or synod official, "Is the Book of Concord the final word on interpreting a disputed doctrine, esp. when the BoC addresses the doctrine in question?
Vestiges of first WELS president Johannes Muehlhauser who said the Confessions were "paper fences."
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