ELCA Bazingo - Two Sets of Schools To Merge, Plus Two More Failing Seminaries

At least the ELS admits to the demographic shoals ahead,
and this blog is not the cause.

From ALPB:

"Earlier this year Lenoir-Rhyne University and Southern Seminary announced plans to merge. Now the latest edition of Above the Fog, the alum newsletter for Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary announces merger exploration between PLTS and California Lutheran University."

Two more ELCA seminaries are in trouble:

• Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. 
• Wartburg Seminary, founded by Loehe.

That means four ELCA seminaries are threatened with insolvency. Merging Wartburg and LSTC would only mean that two weak seminaries would unite - like Sears and K-Mart.

Most Read Posts for the Month

Sound doctrine quotations edged out
the Love Shack arrest, unless all the Hochmuth posts are grouped together.

Rev. A. Nony Mouse Hates These Sayings. But Loves ... Oct 3, 2007 1,629 Pageviews

WELS Love Shack - Director of Communications Hoc... Nov 16, 2011, 12 comments 1,442 Pageviews

WELS Church Speaks Out on Joel Hochmuth WELS Scand... Nov 21, 2011, 1 comment 386 Pageviews

WELS Ex-Director of Communications Joel Hochmuth D... Nov 20, 2011 328 Pageviews

WELS Love Shack - Update: $20K Bail for WELS Commu... Nov 17, 2011, 18 comments 236 Pageviews

Luther Rocks: Sound Familiar?

Spener borrowed cell groups from the Reformed.
Pietism defines Christianity by works while
downplaying  sound doctrine. "Doctrine divides."
Pietism turns into rationalism in one generation, at it did at Halle University.
UOJ came from Huber, who was Reformed,
and from Knapp, who amalgamated Lutheran and Reformed doctrine.

"In Pia desideria, Spener made six proposals as the best means of restoring the life of the Church: (LR - As if we can effect change)

• the earnest and thorough study of the Bible in private meetings, ecclesiolae in ecclesia ("little churches within the church"). (LR - Cell Groups)
• the Christian priesthood being universal, the laity should share in the spiritual government of the Church (LR - Everyone a minister)
• a knowledge of Christianity must be attended by the practice of it as its indispensable sign and supplement (LR - Works Righteousness and Church Growth Methods)
• instead of merely didactic, and often bitter, attacks on the heterodox and unbelievers, a sympathetic and kindly treatment of them (LR - Ecumenism and Unionism - Wauwatosa Theology)
• a reorganization of the theological training of the universities, giving more prominence to the devotional life (LR - More works and CGM)
• a different style of preaching, namely, in the place of pleasing rhetoric, the implanting of Christianity in the inner or new man, the soul of which is faith, and its effects the fruits of life." (LR - More about the heart and less about the head...less masculine)

Luther Rocks: Sound Familiar?:

'via Blog this'

***

GJ - The most obvious sign of Pietism is the necessity of the small group, which is tyrannical and controlling in many cases.

Pietists love unionism, but scorn:

1. Sound doctrine.
2. Intellectual support of the Christian faith.
3. The liturgy.
4. The creeds.
5. The Confessions.
6. The Sacraments.

Screen capture from the Thanksgiving game.
Is that...Ski?

2004 - The Sexual Abuse of Children In the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. Cover-Up Artist Archbishop Weakland Spoke at Wisconsin Lutheran College (WELS)

Archbishop Weakland was blackmailed by his boyfriend,
so he embezzled money from the Catholic Church.
WLC asked Weakland and a number of priests to lecture the public,
then tried to deny the facts.

The Sexual Abuse of Children in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee:


The Sexual Abuse of Children in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee
Submitted February 10, 2004 by:
Peter Isely
Jim Smith


"After 1985, all churches in the United States were on notice that they cannot put priests who have had incidents of having sexual abuse in parishes or any setting where they would have access to children.  For the church authorities to have allowed this to happen was sinful, more than negligent, and I believe they should be held accountable."
Father Thomas Brundage
Judicial Vicar of the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese




Introduction
Official history, Camus once observed, is written by those who make history, not those who suffer from it.      

A recently published authorized history of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee runs some 800 pages.  It is dedicated to the legacy of retired Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland, who served the archdiocese from 1977 to 2002.  Exhaustively and meticulously chronicled, the document reviews thousands of events and personalities that have shaped the character and quality of the Church of Milwaukee.

What the reader will not locate within this otherwise comprehensive survey is a single recorded instance of the crime of clergy sexual abuse.* Absent also is any indication of what Milwaukee’s Catholic bishops knew or did about these terrible crimes.

* Throughout this text "clergy" refers to ordained diocesan and religious order priests, deacons, and vowed religious order nuns and brothers. Pending Wisconsin legislation defines "clergy" as members "of a religious order, and includes brothers, ministers, monks, nuns, priests, rabbis, and sisters." 



'via Blog this'

Summary of cases linked here.

VirtueOnline - News - Exclusives - Jefferts Schori, Bede Parry, Charles Bennison, Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky & RCC. What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?

More cases are developing in the Sandusky case.
In the Milwaukee case, the police are making more arrests
in that large pedophile ring,
which is not limited by geography or denomination.

VirtueOnline - News - Exclusives - Jefferts Schori, Bede Parry, Charles Bennison, Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky & RCC:


Sandusky was charged on Saturday with sexually abusing eight young boys over more than a decade. Two other officials were charged with failing to report an incident. Sandusky is rumored to have been 'pimping out young boys to rich donors from the Second Mile Foundation for troubled young boys. The relentless deviate, former PSU defensive coordinator is accused of sexually assaulting children for years. According to the grand jury, he gained easy access to children and early adolescents through the foundation he founded in 1977.

Joe Paterno, the iconic football coach of Penn State knew and was informed of Sandusky's behavior. He passed the information up the line, but did not go to the police. He was fired. The president of the university has also been fired. This story is still unfolding with more horror stories yet to be revealed.

So what does this have to do with the Roman Catholic Church and The Episcopal Church? This. It is all about institutional cover up; it is about putting the organization ahead of the welfare of children. It is called covering their asses in the face of sexual predatory behavior and sin. Whether it is a football team attached to a state university that depends on the $50 million it makes to fill the university's coffers, to a church that claims to speak for God, the evil is the same. The institution first, the welfare of children and young people last.

Roman Catholic Church leaders, on learning of their priests multiple sexual crimes against mostly young men (epipedophiles), allowed priests to be shuffled from one parish to another without punishment. When it finally all blew up in their faces, the church paid out tens of millions of dollars to parents whose children were seduced by these priests with, in some cases, whole dioceses declaring bankruptcy.

What do Episcopal Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori, Fr. Bede Parry, PA Bishop Charles Bennison, star football coach Joe Paterno, former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky and the Roman Catholic Church all have in common? 

They all covered up or participated in sex crimes against children, mostly boys below the age of consent. Some were pedophiles; others were pederasts, but most were homosexuals.

The only one getting a pass is Katharine Jefferts Schori because no one is willing to hold her accountable.

'via Blog this'

Unit Principles - Learning from Cornerstone's Robotic Fleecing Methods. Doctrinal Units Increasing

Cornerstone, the WELS-LCMS fund-raising business, uses the concept of giving units. The principles are simple. Each community has a family income average that can be researched. That is the first number to put down, which often prompts a lively debate.

The second number is the total of giving units in the congregation. A husband and wife count as one unit. A retired couple is less than one unit. A woman whose husband never goes to church is a fraction of a unit. A single mother is also a fraction.

Imagine a congregation with 55 separate households. The giving units may be only 40. That quashes the notion that Grandma Schmidt cannot give as much as Dewey Cheatem N. Howe, Esquire, the attorney. However, the lower income members often give far more than the wealthy, a fact also represented in denominations, where the wealthy ones (Episcopal) give far less in percentage than the poor ones (Nazarene). The last time I looked, the Nazarenes were about 7% and the Episcopalians were less than 2%.

Next multiply the average household income by the giving units. To make things simple, I will use $50,000 as the average family income for one town. Benefits are pay, too, but most congregations use gross pay rather than the net value of pay and benefits. However, they understand pastoral pay as the total cost of all pay and benefits, plus the parsonage or housing allowance.

The total income of the parish is 40 times the average household income, or $2 million.

To find out percentage giving, write down last year's total giving, all causes, as a fraction - on top of the total income of the congregation. If they gave $40,000, the congregational average is 2%. 40k over 2 million is 2%.

This is where Cornerstone motivates with the Law. If the congregation simply increased its percentage giving to 2.5%, the income would be $50,000. Members would gasp in horror if asked to come up with $10,0000 more per year. However, a slight percentage in giving does not seem so frightening. Another way is to bump up giving one level. Attorney Howe may not want to give the way Grandma Schmidt does, but he may feel able to move from $25 a week to $35 a week.

The same figures are even more true on a national basis, where the bumps and crevices of statistics are evened out from a larger scale. The vast sums given by Thrivent to prostitute the synods into becoming their marketing centers could be made up easily. But it is easier to crawl to Thrivent for millions than to obtain the same amounts from the faithful.

This post has nothing to do with fund-raising. People like to read about money.

If the same principles are applied to doctrine, the results are similar. Most members are at the 2% or lower figure when it comes to examining the opinions offered by their abusive sects.

If everyone moved up one notch in doctrinal engagement, many festering infections would start to heal.

Some of that is already happening, and the overpaid executives are not happy. Like snipers, the executives pick off a few to intimidate the rest. Synod leaders can explain away murder and multiple felonies against children. They are all grace for the criminals but all Law for those who ask questions.

From Virtue Online - The Bishop of Orange's First Sermon

Mariann Budde,
New Age Episcopal Bishop, Washington DC

Washington Bishop Mariann Budde's First Sermon: 
The New Age Night

COMMENTARY

By Sarah Frances Ives
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
November 21, 2011

The consecration of Mariann Budde in the Washington National Cathedral was a bizarre excursion into New Age darkness only paralleled by her first sermon the following day.

In the consecration sermon, Rev. Linda Kaufman repeatedly referred to a New Age David Whyte poem, even as she found new lows in bad language and questionable cultural symbols. Kaufman declared that the movie Brokeback Mountain (that glorified a homosexual relationship) gave images of shepherds to parishioners. That was after Kaufman's reference to a "kickass sermon" whose violent metaphorical imagery of attacking other people seems out of place for a people dedicated to the Prince of Peace. But Budde's self-revelatory New Age sermon equaled her accident-prone consecration.

In just the beginning moments of the November 13, 2011 sermon, Budde once again quoted her New Age master, David Whyte. (You can watch this sermon online but looking at it requires real fortitude because you will once again see the bright orange vestments.) In one sentence towards the beginning, Budde talks of "Jesus and all of the great spiritual masters before and after him." Jesus Christ becomes one of many spiritual masters and for Budde, one not to the level of her chosen master, David Whyte, whose words she used throughout the sermon.

And to show how deeply Budde is engaged with New Age spiritual practices, she reveals her own use of autosuggestion, a mental technique discovered in the late 19th century. For not only is Katharine Jefferts Schori looking at herself in the mirror and practicing autosuggestion but also Budde. Many psychologists note that this technique can be used for good or ill but clearly at this point in history, these leaders use of it seems destructive for the Christian faith.

Budde's self-revelation about her mantra and dependence on Whyte came quickly in the sermon. "In a fragile time in my young adulthood, a person I admired... looked into my eyes and said, 'You are a unique expression of God's creative genius.' And she told me to repeat that mantra every morning as I looked in the mirror until I knew it in my heart. Now from this esteemed pulpit and on behalf of Christ, I say the same to you. In the words of David Wythe 'you are not an accident amidst other accidents you were invited from another and greater night than the one from which you have just emerged.'"

Throughout her sermon, Budde then peppered the name "Jesus" and "Christ" frequently, giving her own unique interpretation of what He stood for. Budde said, "Jesus lifted me." But then we must wonder why she encouraged this mantra rather than faithful dependence on Jesus. And when Budde wished to support her ideas, she continually turned back to the Whyte poem "you are not an accident" and her autosuggestion mantra (whose source is unknown.)

At the height of her sermon, Budde broke loose with one of her characteristic flights-of-fancy. She said, "And so, back in 2003, when a Lutheran pastor whom I deeply admired wondered aloud why the Episcopal Church insisted on taking so controversial a position on the full inclusion of gays and lesbians at the very time we needed to grow our congregations, I said to him, 'You don't understand. The full inclusion of lesbians and gays wasn't something we thought up on our own. God led us to this place. It has not been an easy road. And some day you will thank us because we are making it easier for you to do the same. This is our treasure. This is our treasure.'" She continued with the autosuggestion mantra, "We are a unique expression of God's creative genius. Never doubt the importance of what you are doing and what we are doing on this earth."

This seems to be Budde's reasoning.

1. If everybody in the Cathedral repeats the same mantra, we will have the same subconscious mind.
2. Guru David Whyte's poems will become our new scripture but we still use the name of Jesus to appear like Christians.
3. Ordained gays and lesbians will be seen as the true "treasure" of the Episcopal Church.

What is this new doctrine? What happened to scriptural authority and the use of accepted Christian theologians and mystics? And-the most important question-is what Budde saying even rational or have we moved into idiosyncratic thinking based on her belief that she is a "unique expression of God's creative genius"?

So what does David Whyte believe now that Budde has established him at the Washington National Cathedral? Whyte is not interested in the actual Lord of creation but turns his own life into his own divinity.

In his "Self Portrait," he writes,

"It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods. I want to know if you belong-or feel abandoned."

The section Budde repeatedly quoted in this sermon from Whyte's "What to Remember When Waking" reads:

"You are not a troubled guest on this earth, you are not an accident amidst other accidents you were invited from another and greater night than the one from which you have just emerged."

For those who want to look at David Whyte's writings themselves (though I surely don't recommend this) all they have to do is look at Oprah Winfrey's Lifeclass on June 15, 2011, in which she featured Whyte's thoughts. In Whyte's "Ten questions that have no right to go away," he writes a totally secular and emotional approach to life. Interested researchers on Whyte can find the poem "What to Remember When Waking" that Budde chose to start her first Cathedral sermon with on a website called "Life Trek Coaching International: How do you want to get there?" These experts will explain to you how to use this David Whyte poem as a mantra in your own life if you contact them (you might need to send them a generous contribution.)

That David Whyte's jumbled and troubled imagery did not rightly end up in Budde's spam file on her computer, but instead taken into her heart, mind, and soul and pronounced both in her November 12 consecration as well as her first sermon on November 13, 2011, should cause an international Anglican outcry. But at least one person has not gone along with her-Dr. Paul Budde-her husband, for as the Washington Diocesan newspaper proclaims, he is still a practicing Roman Catholic. The new bishop coyly announced in this sermon that her husband had thought of being a Roman Catholic priest earlier in life. Sadly, at Budde's consecration, he stood and read the interminably long poem by David Whyte, "Coleman's Bed."

Christians believe we are in the image of God, fell into the dominion of death and corruption, and yet redeemed by Christ. Yet Budde invites all people to follow David Whyte, the one who doesn't care about monotheism and who seems to believe that some dark force created us as in we emerge from a "greater night." Faithful Christians should not accept Budde's signature New Age philosophy yet Budde continued by inviting all Episcopalians to believe this.

Budde has stated in opening interviews that she is going to ask more of Episcopalians. She has already further impoverished this church by denying the singularity of the Incarnation of Jesus and dismissing monotheism through her self-canonization of David Whyte.

Budde's guru Whyte wrote in "Coleman's Bed" to "refuse to talk, even to yourself." That might be good advice for all fragile adults talking to their mirrors. Maybe the "stranger in you" that Linda Kaufman was yelling about in the consecration sermon is the mantra Budde pushed into her soul. All TEC leaders should immediately stop their self-proclaimed mantra looking into their mirrors. I know that Jefferts Schori thinks that the very idea of temptations is passé but the temptation to believe your own autosuggestions can take people (or the entire Washington National Cathedral) into something like outer space. The obvious idea though occurs: if you are grounded upon this bizarre autosuggestion, you should not be preaching from the pulpit of the Washington National Cathedral.

-------

Sarah Frances Ives is a frequent contributor to Virtueonline

Hydra - cut off one head, another one grows:
fed and watered by The Love Shack.