VirtueOnline - News - Exclusives - Presiding Bishop and HOD President Face off over TEC Budget

This an allegory for Jefferts-Schori's leadership.

VirtueOnline - News - Exclusives - Presiding Bishop and HOD President Face off over TEC Budget:


Presiding Bishop and HOD President Face off over TEC Budget
Litigation costs are forcing church's hand in how it will spend money now and in the future

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
January 31, 2012

A power struggle and simmering rivalry which has been going on for a number of years between Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies president Bonnie Anderson erupted this past week when the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church met in Maryland where the two parties offered different visions of the mission of the church.

Executive Council received two different budget proposals from its Executive Committee with one setting the diocesan asking at the current level of 19 percent, and requiring cuts of almost $6 million from the $140 million 2010-2012 budget adopted by the General Convention. This is the position favored by PB Jefferts Schori.

The other lowers the diocesan asking to 15 percent and requires cuts of almost $21 million from the current budget. HOD President Anderson favors the 15 percent asking.

Both budgets were ultimately scuttled and a third budget was sent to Program, Budget & Finance.

"We have created something different and unique. There are increased funds for justice ministry in this budget that we will present to PB&F," Said Jefferts Schori at a press conference.

Anderson ripped the national church's current spending habits, "Let's reduce the amount that we ask dioceses to send to the Church Center. Let's study the best use of the building at 815 Second Avenue with an eye to freeing up for mission the $7.7 million dollars that is earmarked for facilities cost and debt repayment during the next triennium. Let's expect that dioceses and their networks know best how to build up God's church and support ministry where it is most effective. And as we change the budget, let's acknowledge that we also need to change our models of accountability and responsibility to be mutual and respectful of the entire people of God, not just those with ecclesial power."

VOL reporter Mary Ann Mueller confronted the Presiding Bishop with this charge at a press conference following to which Jefferts Schori retorted, "I believe that all members of The Episcopal Church have ecclesial power meant to be used in service of God's mission."

Bishop and Mrs. Robinson.
He divorced his wife.

Behind Anderson's charges are the horrendous millions of dollars being spent on lawsuits to reclaim churches that have fled TEC's grip. TEC mortgaged 815 2nd Ave., for $60 million to continue the lawsuits and now must earmark millions for repayments. The reason for all this goes back to the consecration of the libidinous homosexual Bishop of New Hampshire Gene Robinson whose behavior brought about the tear in the Episcopal Church resulting in the formation of the Anglican Church in North America. Sin has consequences and it is catching up with The Episcopal Church big time. Aspects of mission are being downgraded for payments that MUST be made. Banks offer no mercy.

Chief Operating Office Bishop Stacy Sauls commented, "This meeting, as you might imagine, is the source of no small amount of anxiety for the staff as we consider the budget... Managers and team leaders are engaged in conversations about how to take whatever budget comes from General Convention and dream, create, adapt, and act. But I do ask you to be sensitive to their legitimate needs in this time."

He also asked for "a serious discussion of far-reaching structural reform leaving nothing off the table and no question unasked."

INTERPRETATION: The money is not coming in to cover all the crazy stuff TEC wants to pass and sponsor which the world and most of the laity in the Episcopal Church ignore. Canon lawyer A. S. Haley noted those challenges calling them "significant and substantial."

Kirk Hadaway, the church official in charge of congregational research, and Matthew Price of the Church Pension Fund raised the alarm saying that 72% of Episcopal congregations were in financial stress as of 2010 (compared to 58% of other denominations for the same year) -- the highest level in the past decade, by far... The question is how long will it be before the other 28% succumb and find they can barely raise enough funds to keep the doors open and salaries paid.

In order to get her way, Jefferts Schori blindsided the HOD president by going directly to the House of Deputies through the House of Bishops with a video of her plans and her take on the budget.

This so incensed Anderson that she fired back a public letter in which she said that the Office of Communications email sent to all the bishops had mischaracterized her response to the video's release and asked the bishops to forward the video message to their diocese's deputies.

She noted angrily, "In my nearly 25 years as a deputy, I don't ever recall the Presiding Bishop speaking directly to the House of Deputies outside of a joint session or without giving the House due notice, while at General Convention. I don't ever recall a Presiding Bishop corresponding directly with deputies outside of the General Convention, without the knowledge of, or in collaboration with the President.

"I was surprised because I thought that the Presiding Bishop, her staff, and I had worked through some important issues of internal communications last fall. I had talked with both Bishop Sauls and the Presiding Bishop and asked that we proceed in a more collegial and cooperative manner. I thought we had agreed to do so.

"But while the General Convention Office was holding the video, it was released by the Office of Communications to the whole church just hours before the Presiding Bishop and I were scheduled to arrive in Baltimore where we could have resolved the situation in person.

"I told her that I am concerned about the use of church wide resources to lobby General Convention on only one side of a legislative issue.

"Despite this productive conversation, upon direction from the Presiding Bishop, the Office of Communications sent the second email, this time to bishops, that mischaracterized my request that the video be held, thus putting me in a difficult position and making it necessary to spell all of this out."

Canon lawyer and former Eau Claire bishop William Wantland told VOL that Jefferts Schori's actions were "sneaky but legal." There is no limitation on a Diocesan Bishop speaking to the Diocesan Deputies, he said.

In the end money, or the lack of it, will determine the course of action TEC will take. The two women, who both share a liberal theological worldview will find that whatever they decide, events will overtake them and determine the course of TEC's long spiral downward.

END


'via Blog this'

Dwight Moody: the evangelist who nearly wasn’t « Churchmouse Campanologist

Dwight Moody: the evangelist who nearly wasn’t « Churchmouse Campanologist:

"Moody’s visits to the UK made news in Sweden. Swedish pietists invited him to travel there but he never did. Nonetheless, the Swedish Mission Friends looked forward to reading his sermons and sang Sankey’s hymns. Swedes who emigrated to Chicago attended Moody’s church."

'via Blog this'

GJ - I highly recommend this series. Moody was very important. I grew up listening to WDLM radio from Chicago, a city with a large Swedish population.

Augustana began as a Pietistic mission, but became confessional, as the name suggests. I look forward to future installments.

All Time Favorite Post Is...Drumroll

Tim Glende loved this photo so much that it remained his Facebook profile picture for a long time.
That is not his wife or daughter, but Katy Perry, the ex-wife of Russell Brand.
Tim wrote so many anonymous comments on this blog that I began
to call him A. Nony Mouse.
Tim began a blog with that name, but erased it.

The all-time favorite post, since June of 2010, is...


The Rev. A. Nony Mouse Hates These Sayings But Loves To Plagiarize Groeschel.


5,224 views so far. But nobody reads this blog.


What did the toxic but anonymous bully complain about in the latest fake blog eructation?


Quotations! He hates those collections of quotations.


He probably hates how appropriate they are, how the Word of God condemns his life, his false doctrine, his slaughter of the sheep.

One of Tim's Boys: Engaging, Articulate, Well-Informed, A Gentleman to The CORE

Mequon graduates provide medical opinions,
before anyone asks for one.
Their wives help out, too.

Anonymous said... I was thinking about it the other day and following the UOJ debate over at that Steadfast Lutheran blog: Does anyone think Jackson might have an undiagnosed form of autism? Aspergers perhaps? My wife works with kids like that in special ed. program in south Milwaukee and he seems to display a lot of the characteristics. For one thing, he has a hard time interacting with people on an emotional level. His humor is stuff that only he thinks is funny. I often times go his page and look at all his odd photo-shop stuff and think "I don't get it. Is this supposed to be funny? I mean, I can't even figure out what he's trying to portray here." It would also explain his relationship with his parishners. He seems to have never figured out that they uniformly disliked him. Secondly, people with Aspergers typically can't understand written works on an intuitive level. They are really good at memorizing facts, but they don't see the big picture. Case-in-point: Jackson builds up great deposits of quotes in his posts, but he doesn't really understands how to interpret them. I mean, looking at his "scholarship," I get why he could get into Notre Dame but then took 15 years to graduate. He can memorize facts, but he has no comprehension of how they work together or even that different words have nuance and can mean different things in different contexts. He probably aced the GRE, but then couldn't comprehend most of the course material. He's told some stories about his relationship with Yoder that seem to hint at that. Anyways, just an idea. Aspergers in a person of his generation would probably not have been diagnosed so it sort of makes sense.


***


GJ - A typical WELS tactic is to start with  falsehoods and spin tales from that. A little research would turn up my basic bio, which means I finished college, seminary, and a master's at Yale in 7 years, a PhD program at Notre Dame in 7 years. If you add an MA in education, 15 years would be the time involved in earning six degrees rather than one. That by itself would show the Glende pal (or Glende himself) to be an ignorant, hate-filled misanthrope. My diagnosis is - alcoholism, addiction to porn, and extreme laziness.


Northwestern Publishing House wants me to review their books, so WELS must think I can read and comprehend theological content. I wonder if the writer has ever been asked to review a book from a publisher. Has he ever written a book or essay? Has he ever signed his name to a comment?


Northwestern Publishing House also sells Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant. That meant studying the doctrine of Roman Catholicism, Lutheran orthodoxy, and Protestantism while providing a useful guide for all three. WELS sold cartons of the books years ago, and the book continues to sell. I am surprised that so many genius-level Mequon graduates never wrote anything like it. Glende's Uncle Brug recommended it to his classes, the last I heard.


At one point all the doctrinal books at NPH were written by non-WELS authors. How does one explain that fact to us supposed Asperger patients?


We have trouble relating to Lutheran pastors who copy Groeschel sermons verbatim, not comprehending that they have left the Lutheran Church by doing so.


The latest comment on Glende's anonymous blog simply means that the Time of Wrath/Church and Chicanery forces are feeling the hurt from being exposed. More people are questioning their honesty, morality, decency, and doctrine. 


The Hochmuth scandal, which Glende wants to cover up with PR, is just the tip of septic tank in WELS. Ask an insider. I have.

Jack Kilcrease, Paul McCain, and Rolf Preus: Anti-Means of Grace Triple Threat

Two years in the parish and he still calls
himself a pastor - just like Walther.

Comment Link: http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=4190#comment-279717
Author: Rev. Paul T. McCain
Comment:
I see that the Jackson disciples have been hard at work here spreading the Gospel according to Jackson.


People should know that Greg Jackson is a false teacher. He was, at one point, a Lutheran pastor, but he is no longer. He was expelled from several Lutheran church bodies. [GJ - Note his lies about working with Herman Otten. Same old liar - Paul McCain. He was already in legal trouble in the 1990s with Larry Darby for trashing Larry, one of the more generous donors to his alma mater, Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne.]


He now claims to have a "church" on the Internet, providing "worship services" and even communion, via  streaming video on the Internet, from a spare bedroom in his house. Meyer and Cruz are two of his "members" ... things are so bad that Jackson even coaches these people to hold elements up to the computer screen while he "consecrates" them. [GJ - Another delusion from McCain. He was recently forced to apologize to Norman Teigen for the vicious lies published on his crypto-Roman blog. He also said the congregation was named after my dead daughter, another false assertion. Why was this charmer banned from the ALPB's online forum?]


The best advice anyone could give to people who may be tempted to engage in conversation with Jackson or his small group of fanatic disciples is simply this: Mark and avoid them. Jackson and his followers are wolves in sheep's clothing, deceived and deceiving others.


We should have nothing to do with them, other than to rebuke them sharply and warn others.


I believe that the BJS site is doing no good service in providing a platform for these deniers of the Biblical and Lutheran doctrine of justification.

---

Jack Kilcrease, Roman Catholic employee,
is Paul McCain's expert on UOJ.

Carl Vehse strikes me as having a similar attitude.
Vehse knew all about Bishop Stephan's adultery,
like the Walther brothers and the rest of the Saxon Pietists.
Syphillis was the deal-breaker.

Dr. Jack Kilcrease has left a new comment on your post "Investigating Universal Objective Justification":


You write:


"Jack Kilcrease--trained by ELCA, employed by Roman Catholics to teach religion to papists--gave away his profound ignorance of Lutheran theology by his repeated references to "the doctrine of Objective Justification." David Scaer and Paul McCain think he is the bomb. The Lutheran Reformers avoided such terminology as "the doctrine of..." There is only one doctrine, a unified truth - in harmony with the entire witness of the Sacred Scriptures. Writing about "doctrines" in the plural suggests a modular view of Christianity, where some units can be changed, others dropped, and still others added."


SD V states:
"These two doctrines, we believe and confess, should ever and ever be diligently inculcated in the Church of God even to the end of the world"


Interesting how they use the word "doctrine" to describe separate articles of the faith (law and gospel).


What about Ep Rule and Norm section?:


"To this direction, as above announced, all doctrines are to be conformed, and what is, contrary thereto is to be rejected and condemned, as opposed to the unanimous declaration of our faith."


Again, interesting how here the body of doctrine is call (sic) "doctrines." Very interesting indeed. 

***

GJ - "To avoid" is not synonymous with "to never use." Poor Jack is so busy dazzling McCain and Scaer than he has lost his grip on the English language. Like the others, Kilcrease constantly makes a fool of himself by constantly going back to the absolution of the world, which is not taught in the Scriptures, never affirmed in the Book of Concord, and never taught with seriousness before Halle University's rancid Pietism began to take effect.

The double-justification language of OJ and SJ, lovingly stroked by the trio, is from the Calvinist Woods translation of the rationalist-Pietist Knapp's textbook.  Walther later approved of the language and F. Pieper canonized it. 

---

OJ trembled on Melanchthon's lips,
Rolf would have us believe.
No, this confesses exactly what Robert Preus wrote in
Justification and Rome.

LaughQuest has this gem from Rolf Preus:

As AC IV makes clear, the faith through which we are justified is the faith that believes that Christ suffered for us and that for his sake our sin is forgiven and righteousness and eternal life are given to us. To believe that for Christ's sake our sin is forgiven is to believe in objective justification. 

“I haven’t seen a clear Scripture passage that states that God ever absolved the world of sin, or that the sins of the world have been remitted – although they have certainly all been paid for!” 

Romans 4, 25 clearly teaches that God absolved the world of sin.

***

GJ - Romans 4 is a chapter on Abraham as the father of faith, climaxing with believers being justified by faith. World absolution is definitely not taught in Romans 4 or 5.

---

Author: Dr. Jack Kilcrease

http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=4190#comment-279752
Comment:
<a href="#comment-279742" rel="nofollow">@Jim Pierce  #225 </a>


Apt analogy with the oneness penecostals.  I've had the same experience.


I think everyone can see why I warned against engaging with the Jackson sect.  Discussions and debates with them are highly fruitless since they simply endlessly accuse one of holding positions that they do not.

---

Comment Link: http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=4190#comment-279771
Author: Rev. Paul T. McCain
Comment:
Jack, you are entirely correct. Engagement is futile. There is such a thing as invincible ignorance and Jackson and his disciples are prime examples of it.

---

Gibbon - "They fought without discipline and ran without shame."


---


Dr. Jack Kilcrease has left a new comment on your post "Jack Kilcrease, Paul McCain, and Rolf Preus: Anti-...":


Actually, I believe it is you who has missed the point. I am aware the the term "avoid" need not mean "never." The point is that you haven't provided any evidence that the Reformers, Confessors, or the Lutheran scholastics "avoided" the use of doctrine as a pural or talk of individual doctrines. My use of the Formula of Concord was intentional: If it was their MO to "avoid" such a practice (as you assert), they would have tried not to use such terminology in central confessonal document. But of course they show no such aversion and very casually use the term "doctrine" for individual articles of the faith. Certainly they want to define doctrine as a coherence body (corpus doctrina), but that does not mean that they avoided talk of individual articles of the faith as doctrines.


Actually, if you've read Preus or Richard Muller's scholarship on the period of Reformed and Lutheran scholasticism, you would know that the loci-method actually tended to isolate individual doctrines within given treatises designated as "common places." As Preus and Muller note, the development of each doctine is self-contained. This would suggest that both Lutherans and Reformed folks often thought of and developed individual doctrines on their own, even if they thought the the given doctrine had a larger meaning within the corpus doctrina. Hence, the arrangment of these doctrines within larger systematic theologies of the period tends to be arbitrary. For this reason, I do not think you have much of a basis for making your claim.


Now, I know you probably won't publish this. But I thought that I would clarify my point any way.


I wish you all the best and that God may bless you in spite of your theological errors.


***


GJ - Jack, you need an account on LaughQuest. You would no longer feel like an outcast. Maybe McCain can recommend you - while denying that he did.


---

"Enjoy our nuanced blend of Evolution and creation,
Roman liturgy and Arminian content,
on sale now at CPH."

bruce-church (http://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Jack Kilcrease, Paul McCain, and Rolf Preus: Anti-...":

Now that UOJ and McCain's evolution pandering to kids has been outed, he says everyone ought to mark and avoid the Ichablog. It's rather like the mafia telling people not to talk to the FBI and cops so they can get back to their business as normal, taking in money from people who think they are orthodox Lutherans.

David R. Barnhart: Komen Drops Funding for Planned Parenthood

David R. Barnhart: Komen Drops Funding for Planned Parenthood:

"Abiding Word Ministries has previously reported Susan G Komen's support for Planned Parenthood.
Therefore we are pleased to report that funding has stopped.

http://www.thechurchreport.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=siteContent.default&objectID=148289"

'via Blog this'

Investigating Universal Objective Justification

Comment Link: http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=4190#comment-279655
Author: Joe Krohn

Comment:


In January of 2011, a WELS pastor preached that our sins were forgiven before we were born; before we heard the Word of God; before our Baptisms.  He stated during discussions that before we do anything, God has forgiven us.  We challenged this teaching.  We received many of the same ruinations that are prevalent here in defense of UOJ.  So you see this is a big problem.  It will eventually go one of two ways.  Either it will morph into full fledged universalism, or go back to the way Scripture and the Confessions speak of one Justification (the promise of forgiveness) that comes through faith, by Grace for Christ’s sake; as it has been since the fall of man in the garden.


The key to understanding justification is where the righteousness of Christ resides and how it is distributed.  It is on Christ objectively FOR (not on) the world and becomes OURS (imputation) through faith by a hearing of the Word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.


BTW…we were excommunicated for our confession and told we were in need of repentance.  When we asked what commandment we broke, we were given no answer and told it was a fellowship issue.  Excommunication is reserved for the unwillingness to repent for breaking the Law of God…the Ten Commandments.

***

GJ - The Unsteady Lutheran Enthusiasts ended up with a good discussion on their hands, because a wide variety defended the historical Christian faith instead of bowing to the UOJ bullies.


Jack Kilcrease--trained by ELCA,  employed by Roman Catholics to teach religion to papists--gave away his profound ignorance of Lutheran theology by his repeated references to "the doctrine of Objective Justification." David Scaer and Paul McCain think he is the bomb.


The Lutheran Reformers avoided such terminology as "the doctrine of..." There is only one doctrine, a unified truth - in harmony with the entire witness of the Sacred Scriptures. Writing about "doctrines" in the plural suggests a modular view of Christianity, where some units can be changed, others dropped, and still others added.


That is exactly what happened in the aftermath of the Reformation. Calvinist influence merged the atonement with justification, first with Samuel Huber, who was rebuked and sent packing. Huber would be a Synod President today in the LCMS, WELS, or ELS.


The second wave of Calvinism came in the form of Spener's union efforts. The merging of atonement and justification came in the form of double justification, first taught by Georg Christian Knapp and later by F. Schleiermacher. Knapp, Schleiermacher, and Tholuck (Hoenecke's mentor)--all three at Halle--were pivotal figures in Protestant theology.

Ottomar Fuerbringer, Father of 
Ludwig Fuerbringer, Father of
Fibby
Missouri Lutherans know how significant the Fuerbringer family was. Ottomar came over with the syphilitic bishop and married the widow of C. F. W. Walther's brother. Ludwig Fuerbringer was born of that union, became the senior pastor at Frankenmuth, after his father, and later professor and president of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. Ludwig's son Fibby was the president of the seminary who turned the campus over to the liberals, leading to Tietjen and Seminex (the first gay Lutheran seminary, chaired by Jungkuntz, from WELS).


Ottomar Fuerbringer was trained as a pastor but could not get a call in Europe because he was a Pietist. The Lutheran Church in the German states was rationalistic, with little or no tolerance for "Pietists and mystics," the disparaging terms used for believers. "Old Lutheran" is a term used in America for those who rejected the extremes of revivalism - no liturgy, no creeds, transforming people's lives with the Law.


The "Old Lutherans" were not orthodox - they were cell group Pietists who kept the worship forms of the Lutheran Church while adopting the fantasy that the cell groups were the real church.


Pietism is unionism, which draws people away from Lutheran doctrine, so anyone in a cell group church is headed out of the Lutheran fold, even though the individual may remain a Lutheran in name only.


Doctrinal indifference and disparaging the Means of Grace will always lead to Unitarian-Universalism or to Pentecostalism. Many WELS pastors have gone charismatic (ironic, eh?) while others like Jungkuntz and Gerke have gone Unitarian-Universalist.