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| This is the scene of the crime. |
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| http://mzluth.org/ChurchHistory.htm |
Benjamin Wink has left a new comment on your post "Pastor Ski's Scrotum Sermon at Morrison Zion WELS ...":
I don't ask for much in sermons that I hear. I don't ask for humor. I don't ask for numerous anecdotes. I don't ask for powerpoints. I don't ask for projection screens. I don't ask for dazzling monologues or fantastic and elaborate sentence construction.
Here's what I do ask for: Law and Gospel. Seems like a simple request, right? I read and reread the above "sermon" and rather than explaining God's Law and Gospel, I just heard someone who enjoys listening to himself talk instead. If this rambling drivel is typical of a normal "sermon", I shudder. Everything appears to be based on personal feelings not the Word. You're spreading the Word just because it makes you feel good. So the focus is taken away from God and placed on you. Just like the focus of an 150th anniversary is taken away from the church in question and placed on your watered down "mission" bar/church.
Sad. Just sad. Oh and to appropriate and misquote from Planes Trains and Automobiles: "When you're telling a story, have a point. It makes it that much more interesting for the listener. Not everything is an anecdote, pick and choose."
After all that time spent in Lutheran day schools, high schools, colleges, and seminary plus being in a congregation and the simple concept of presenting Law and Gospel in a sermon is still lost? Sad, just plain sad. Can't mention God's Law but can mention scrotum several times. Fantastic. That's just great. Happy 150th Anniversary! I'm sure the church founders would have beamed with pride.
[GJ - Two comments were edited together, the Q source and the Benjaminite outline.]
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quercuscontramalum (http://quercuscontramalum.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Pastor Ski's Scrotum Sermon at Morrison Zion WELS ...":
I lost the link, but I just read on the internet that the Israeli Antiquities Authority recently announced a surprising upheaval of what was previously understood about worship life before the destruction of Jerusalem in 79 CE. [sic] Based on a meandering statement made by a sweaty drunk in faded jeans, the Israelis now believe there were actually no Jewish altars around Jerusalem from about 4 BCE to 35 CE.
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| 3. Should I with scoffers join Her altars to abuse? No! Better far my tongue were dumb, My hand its skill should lose. Timothy Dwight, "I Love Thy Kingdom" |
Does anyone remember WELS breaking with the LCMS due to Missouri turning liberal? WELS has regressed - far beyond liberal - into a state of crude blasphemy.
I was trying to imagine what the altar, pictured above, looked like from close up. I grew up in an area where church altars were plain wooden boxes. Therefore, I was always impressed with the classic WELS carved altars, often featuring Christ risen in victory. I cannot imagine sitting still during a sermon like the one piously reproduced and posted on the congregation's websty.
If you want to know the prime cause of such events, look to the synod president Mark Schroeder. Like the previous dolts who mismanaged the office, Schroeder has worked hard to convince people he is "conservative" or even "confessional" while doing just the opposite.
Complaints against Ski were registered before he was handed a sinecure and a pile of cash to waste in Appleton. As everyone knows, Jeske wanted him out of St. Marcus. Ski should visit Milwaukee and pick up that posted bond money he left at court. $3,000 bond? Hmm. What on earth was that for?
DP Jon Buchholz chuckled at the observations about Ski and Glende, which were being sent to me. "I know all that," he grinned. That reminded me of Paul Kuske saying the same thing decades before, about Columbus, where Glende got his training in Church Growth from LPR and Floyd Luther Stolzenburg.
"Lest the ministry be blamed" has taken a new turn. WELS translates this as "Let the ministry be blamed, just to show that we are more Evangelical than Jesus."
Ask pastors around WELS what good it does to discuss anything directly with the people involved. Matthew 18 is an accusation, not a method for getting anything resolved.
As one long-time loyalist says, the DPs are mean, petty, and vindictive, getting even with anyone who dares to cross them. If the pastor is protected by Church and Change, as Glende and Ski are, they can do anything and still be offered up as great examples of the WELS pastoral office.
Long ago, Pastor Mark Freier was known as "P-boy" for his habit of shocking congregations and ladies groups with discussions of his favorite body part. He disappeared from his Emergent Church, CrossRoads in South Lyons, Michigan, to surface much later as a highly-paid consultant at Parlow's pseudo-Lutheran operation (where else, but the Fox Valley WELS circuit).
The worst part of the Glende/Ski operation is not their loutish behavior, crude language, and work in bars (modeled after Craig Groeschel). Their doctrine denigrates the Means of Grace in favor of self-adulation. They are simply younger, cruder versions of their DP and their seminary professors at The Sausage Factory.
