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| But DP Buchie was so quick to forgiven Jeff Gunn! In fact, he recommended Jeff's work to all his youth. |
narrow-minded has left a new comment on your post "Visualize God Smiling at You. Yes, WELS and Missou...":
"How good are you at forgiving people who have done you wrong? Not so hot? Do you hold grudges sometimes?"
Ask these questions to Pr. Rydecki's DP. Ask these questions to the SynCon Papists who punish those who oppose CG/CW/UOJ. One doesn't even have to do anything wrong or sinful to suffer punishment. Just hold fast to Lutheran orthodoxy.
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GJ - In the words of Chemnitz, the SynCon style of leadership is either a tragedy or a farce. Everyone knows it.
DP Buchholz took years to determine that Jeff Gunn was just the guy they needed in WELS, along with Jeff's Rick Warren clone church - CrossWalk. In fact, Buchie had to have two blue-ribbon commissions studying the issue, because he was "concerned about all those souls."
But when the report came in critical, even with the meddling of Buchie to soften it up, the DP welcomed Gunn into WELS kosherdom while laity who helped with the report dropped their jaws in amazement.
The only one in the district who needed discipline was Paul Rydecki, for teaching justification by faith and for being willing to discuss it at the next meeting, as Buchholz promised that congregation. But at the conference, Buchholz gloated to everyone that he was foreclosing on the mortgage after kicking Rydecki and the congregation out. Such concern about souls! Such compassion! Such buffoonery.
Email to me, from DP Buchie, 10-5-2008, verbatim:
I’m hugely disappointed
in the lack of discernment demonstrated by pastors who put on the Sunday morning
carnivals. It absolutely blows my mind that pastors trained in Scripture and the
Lutheran confessions could even dream of adopting this garbage. Of course, the
problem is that these guys have read way too many paperbacks, unwittingly
adopted Arminian principles, and are green with envy over the numbers generated
by false prophets in their megachurches.
I’m likewise
disappointed, although not so surprised, by the torpidity of lay people who
think that this is cool, neato, wowie, and the greatest thing since sliced
bread. As you know, historically, it has often been lay people in key times who
have kept the pastors honest and faithful. I think it’s a sad testimony to the
lack of depth of the preaching and teaching that has left lay people at such a
shallow level of understanding that they also cannot discern the
folly.
Personally, I think
that we’re seeing the logical, inevitable conclusion of decades of inbred
thinking, hubris, and a flawed hermeneutical method, built upon a historical
foundation of pietism. Put all those things together, and the stuff we’re seeing
today is really the unrestrained, logical next
step.
The problem is that,
with our hermeneutical method craving a chapter-and-verse answer to every
challenge, we’re poorly equipped to synthesize concepts and formulate doctrine
based upon principles. That’s one of the overriding weaknesses that I see as a
legacy of the Wauwatosa Theology that has downplayed confessional and patristic
study in favor of a literalistic Biblicism. The irony is that, using this
approach, we would probably be hard pressed to develop a theology for infant
baptism today, if it weren’t already handed down to us, because that’s one of
those doctrines that is inferred by synthesizing a number of
passages.
I’m in the process of
developing a number of propositional statements that militate against the whole
contemporary style. I’m proceeding rather slowly, because I’m dealing with
smart, personable, articulate people on the other side, and I want to have
things formulated very carefully, and I’m also afraid that, given the
hermeneutical environment we’re in, my fellow pastors may be slow or reluctant
to draw the same conclusions unless the case is very carefully constructed.
We’ll see what happens.
My overriding concern
is for the souls at stake. I’m concerned not only about those that are being led
astray by the emotional, subjective, irreverent, inferior-quality worship, but
for the larger population of Christians who need to be gently instructed in the
truth. Many of our pastors and people, thankfully, have a deep-rooted antipathy
and contempt for the carnival stuff, but they’re ill-equipped to articulate a
response to it, and so it gets shrugged off as adiaphora. Ultimately, if we’re
going to be faithful to confessional Lutheranism, there will probably be a huge
split over this. (The alternative is that errant preachers see the folly of
their ways and come around, but I’m not optimistic that will happen; perhaps I
myself need to trust the efficacy of the word more in that respect.) I just hope
that the division, if and when it comes, will be over matters of doctrine and
practice, not the result of personal conflict and a mishandled
approach.
This, by the way, is
one of the reasons that I initially wanted to get to know you a little better
when I contacted you a couple of months ago. I am well aware of your history
battling the CGM in Lutheranism, and I wanted your insights into these present
challenges. I appreciate your willingness to let me tap your thinking from time
to time.
As I mentioned to Mark
Schroeder yesterday, I find myself on the front lines of something that I never
thought I had signed up for. Such is the charge the Lord places before
us!
Peace be with
you,
Jon
[end of quote]
Of course, when it came down to talking about justification by faith, Buchie had no interest in reading anything beyond his own WELS Essay Files copy and paste job. He was quick to interrupt and full of excuses why he had not opened the free copy of Thy Strong Word he had received.
American Lutherdom has paid a terrible price in letting politics determine who would be a bishop/DP.
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| He wanted to know why I called him an Enthusiast - because the Book of Concord does. |
