Bruce Becker Replaced Randy Hunter at Mark Jeske's Change or Die! ELCA-WELS-LCMS Romp

Thrivent is no longer a Lutheran company,
but it owns and manages ELCA, WELS, LCMS, and the ELS.
Whose agenda is followed? ELCA's  pan-religious, pan-sexual agenda.

The third Change or Die! conference, headed by Mark Jeske (WELS-LCMS) is over. I heard from one pastor:

Randy Hunter has dropped out – or was pushed – from participating in Change and Die. Mark Jeske has replaced him with (cue fanfare) Mr. Bruce Becker, former WELS pastor and synod administrator.

“I’m shocked – shocked – that heresy is going on here!” “Sir, here’s your false doctrine.” “Oh, thank you very much.”

Replacing Randy Hunter with Bruce Becker is like substituting a rat for a mouse. At least mice are cute and do less damage. Becker has been one of the architects of Church and Change - while enjoying a royal salary at The Love Shack.

Now that Jeske--the media hero for WELS and Missouri, approved and coddled by both--has had his third ministry conference with ELCA, we all know the confessional stance of SPs Harrison and Schroeder: none.

No.

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Febreze has left a new comment on your post "Bruce Becker Replaced Randy Hunter at Mark Jeske's...":

I tried to post something along the lines of this on Intrepid Lutherans (only this comment was more thought out):

Hunter left the conference for one of two reasons (from my limited point of view).
1) He felt compelled by his own or
2) the CoP told/encouraged him to.

If it was situation number 1 I don't know why he would feel he would get in trouble seeing as Jeske has been able to participate (actually, he is able to lead it if I'm not mistaken) all these times without any repercussion. Jeske is still a WELS pastor in good standing. If it were number 2 the same thing still applies.

It troubles me to see faithful, orthodox pastors be shunned and given the cold shoulder while these types are promoted and defended in the WELS. Something needs to change and it's not the Liturgy.

Martin Luther College Graduate: Stunned by Evangelism Day Church and Change Insights

Success Kid Comment

Bonuses given for being in the top 5% of the faculty,
out of 30,000 professors.

Synodical Conference History Is Wide Open for Viewing, But the Myth-Makers Fill the Air with Falsehoods

Compare and contrast C. F. W. Walther

Someone on the Net claimed I was discussing some "secret history:" of the LCMS.

The only new wrinkle in Walther history is the Philip Stephan book, In Pursuit of Religious Freedom. That book fills in quite a few details about Stephan's life and the Walther-led mob action. Paul McCain railed against the book, which de facto verified its overall truthfulness.

The only fact I have introduced is Bishop Martin Stephan's syphilis. Someone else pointed me to LCMS research that verified Stephan's STD (not a doctoral degree, in this case). Anyone can look up the symptoms of syphilis, Stephan's symptoms, and the mob action to arrive at the same conclusions, without a post-mortem blood test.

Adultery
I was re-reading Zion on the Mississippi this week. Stephan continued his degenerate ways in St. Louis. Although he came over without his wife, many women were allowed to hang around him, including his main mistress and Walther's kidnapped niece (who died young). The paragraph gave me a shock.

Walther knew all about Stephan, but he let his young niece hang around the randy bishop? Zion gives plenty of evidence that Stephan's behavior was well known in Dresden, continued on the ocean voyage, and expanded in America.

Syphilitic Delusions - Last Stages
Zion described how bizarre Stephan's behavior became when they arrived in America. The author ascribed it to Stephan's new title, but the range of actions is more harmonious with the final stage of syphilis, when the pathogen attacks the brain in earnest. Stephan's plans and spending were grandiose, but the clergy (including the Walthers) approved his spending. The clergy withdrew money for themselves, too, although not at the rate of the Right Reverend Stephan.

The bishop's adultery was not new. The trip was delayed because of Stephan's house-arrest. The bishop's spending was approved by the clergy advisory group. The new factor was the spread of syphilis in their close-knit group, which included physicians. Young ladies with syphilis were enough to cause a riot, even though adultery did not raise eyebrows.

The Walther Mythology
The real scandal is the Walther mythology promoted by LCMS and Synodical Conference politicians. Since they know the truth, much of it residing in the Concordia Historical Institute, where McCain once enjoyed a sinecure, their crowing about Missouri history is a sham, a disgrace, and another layer of lies on top of many others.

But the facts are there, even in the official hagiographies. More will be published later.

Mission Creep - Or Business Creep - In Synodical Schools

Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?
Who me?
Yes you.
Not me!/Couldn't be!/Wasn't me!
Then who?

rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "WELS Building Early Child Center, New ULM":

In this aspect, elementary education, the WELS is guilty of mission creep. It used to be fairly inexpensive to operate an LES. All that a congregation needed was enough member families. Decades ago, family size was larger. The purpose of the LES was to provide a Christ-centered education the children of the member families. Yes, it was exclusive. This enabled a certain aspect of quality control about it. The school was funded entirely through what was considered congregational operations. Fundraisers were scarce and frowned upon. Parental responsibility and support were emphasized. Extra curricular athletics were not significant. The mission creep has occurred because the emphasis has shifted from serving member families to being missional via community outreach efforts and day care facilities. Yet, with all of this in place, WELS membership numbers continue to decline. Some would argue that there is a latency period between day care and adult membership that is a half of a generation long. This is logical sleight of hand and is only used to rationalize the entire fiasco of congregation operated day care.

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GJ - I received a message from WELS that stated what a great business a parochial school was. Just get so many students at so much per year, and the congregation can hire a teacher. That was in the 1980s.

The use of the term "academy" is proof that WELS wants to make money from the business, so they get a bunch of kids together for day-care and keep the charges low. Ladies in the congregation make money and get expensive benefits. The state is involved because it is a public service, not a church operation. The parish has to subsidize the day-care, so the members have to donate funds for the ladies' jobs and the low tuition. And who are the kids? Most of them are non-members!

They call it a mission project, but it is really a jobs program to help non-Lutheran mothers have a job outside the home, to give members' wives a job outside the home.

Once the synods began seeing schools as a business, everything began to decline. As California has noted, the Wisconsin Synod went from avoiding government support to begging for it. The voucher system in Wisconsin has spawned school as a business, with Mark Jeske taking tax money, foundation money, and Thrivent money.

Voucher money is now a right, so officials must lobby for more tax money to keep their schools going.

At synodical schools, foreign students are called "walking bags of money." An American education is a passport to future influence, so they are willing to pay a bonus for the privilege.

Lutherans Playing with Plastic Jewelry While Ignoring the Treasures

Martin Chemnitz wrote more classics in the Christian faith
than most people could read in a lifetime.
The Formula of Concord is a good start.

One clever way to get people away from the treasures of the Christian faith is simply to ignore them. The Lutheran leaders have excelled in this skill for over 50 years, and the current ones are no better.

In the LCA, no one even mentioned Martin Chemnitz. He was never cited. I was confirmed in the 1960s, so there was still a lot of buzz about Luther's works being printed. College and seminary often referred to modern theologians: Bonhoeffer, Barth, and Tillich.

Roland Bainton's Here I Stand, A Life of Martin Luther,
was a best seller and remains in print.

Fortunately I had some excellent opportunities, from taking Reformation history in college to Radical Reformation in the doctoral program at Notre Dame. Roland Bainton was a constant the entire time, as a Luther scholar and a Radical Reformation scholar. I also had the chance to hear him lecture and to correspond with him. When Mrs. Ichabod and I did research together, going through theological manuals, we saw that Bainton published everywhere.

Jack Preus and his wife gave Chemnitz visibility.
The Two Natures of Christ is clear and inspiring.

Jack Preus began to make Martin Chemnitz a topic in Lutheran doctrine. He was not alone. My real introduction to Chemnitz was reading through Chemnitz' Examination of the Council of Trent to write Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant. The more I studied, the more I realized that the greatest theologians of Christendom were simply ignored - in favor of modern Marxists (Barth), serial adulterers (Tillich), and agnostics (Bonhoeffer).

Seminary education in the Olde Synodical Conference is pathetic. The faculty members are cheerleaders for their own buddies and the glories of their sect's history - told with deception and guile. Below are the authors people should read. I doubt whether anyone has enough years to exhaust the treasures from these men, so why spend time with the plastic jewelry?

Tyndale died in giving us the foundation for the KJV.
The moderns make money replacing his great work,
based on Luther's Bible.

The best translation of the Bible is the KJV, and it is the foundation of the English language. It is the only translation where the chief writer--Tyndale--was a student of Luther and Melanchthon.

Martin Luther's Sermons are the place to start, followed by his contributions to the Book of Concord, especially the Large Catechism. His Galatians commentary is one of the best books ever written, but so are other commentaries. Nothing is wrong with What Luther Says, although one should not be satisfied with brief quotations alone.

Although Chemnitz did not write all of the Formula of Concord, he was the senior editor, so I suggest becoming familiar with the entire work. Reading it will show how deceptive the synodocrats are today. The nostalgia salesmen like SP Harrison should mention that they are featuring Walther (four year degree in rationalism, devoted to Pietism) compared to men with doctorates in theology, the men who created harmony (Concordia) out of the splits in Lutherdom.

Setting an example for future dictators, Walther picked his own faction to teach the next generation, whose qualifications were normally the fact that they studied under Walther. Freud did the same thing to make sure his own sycophants preserved history (or mythology) his way.

Melanchthon is always neglected today. His doctrinal statements could be concise and brilliant, and his longer explanations models of clarity. How many seminary students - or laymen - read his Augsburg Confession and the Apology? The UOJ Stormtroopers never cite Melanchthon, because he always taught justification by faith.

Chytraeus and Andreae almost completely forgotten, but their work is available in English.

The best American Lutheran writers are not the Walther herd, but Krauth, Schmauk, and Jacobs. The Olde Synodical Conference likes to pile on the General Council leaders because they never kidnapped anyone, never pledged fealty to a known adulterer, never organized a mob to engage in grand theft. No, the General Council leaders do not deserve statues and shrines and votary candles, unlike C. F. W. Walther.

The decline in Lutheran doctrine will continue as long as pastors and members ignore their own spiritual treasures in favor of the plastic baubles paraded about today.