Those of you who have been following us on
Facebook and
Twitter probably could have seen this coming, as you've recently been fed a steady diet of links to some of our older posts reprising topics like
Pietism,
Sectarian Worship,
Lay Ministry, along with a few links featuring the advice of orthodox Lutherans from previous eras regarding genuine Lutheran practice that also does the job of confessing our separation from sectarians.
But they are just a bunch of old dead dudes, and who really cares about ancient history anyway. Yeah, they said stuff. So what. We say stuff, too, and what
we say is what matters today.
Meanwhile, an email rather circuitously made its way to our inbox yesterday. It was initially sent to the pastors of an entire circuit in the WELS SEW District, and included a passel of attachments for their review ahead of their meeting of this Friday. They will be discussing the opening of an
INTERDISTRICT MULTI-SITE CONGREGATION. The congregation, Hope Lutheran in Oconomowoc, WI (Western Wisconsin District), had been planning a multi-site effort since 2010, and, with the encouragement of their District President, had been communicating their plans with WW DMB throughout this time. In July of 2012, a conversation with Wisconsin Lutheran College (WLC) President Dan Johnson resulted in his offer to use the facilities of WLC as a "cradle to launch the second location of Hope" – in the Southeastern Wisconsin District (SEW).
Click here for the documentation.
Muli-site Congregations? Whence comest thou?
In a previous exposé on the teaching of Craig Groeschel, entitled
Pietism and Ministry in the WELS: A brief review of Craig Groeschel, we critiqued the thirteen points of his
Vision and Values document. Point one, along with our response to it, reads
"1. Since Christ is for us and with us, we are a fearless, risk taking, exponential thinking church. We refuse to insult God with timid thinking or selfish living.
"Interpretation: We like to tempt God.
"There is nothing laudable in casting Christian Stewardship aside, to openly take 'bet-the-farm' risks with resources God has given to us, which he expects us to wisely invest. 'Betting the Farm' is not wisdom, but foolishness."
Compare this, the
FIRST POINT of Groeschel's
Vision and Values statement with
THE FIRST POINT listed in the
Mission Vision Values statement of Hope Lutheran, from the documentation packet linked above:
"Since Christ is for us and with us, we are a fearless, risk taking, exponential thinking church. We refuse to insult God with timid thinking or selfish living."
Already we see, Craig Groeschel is their guide – they have adopted
his Vision for Ministry and made it their own, quoting from it verbatim. But it doesn't end there. Here are points four and seven from Craig Groeschel's
Vision and Values document:
"4. We give up things we love for things we love even more. It's an honor to sacrifice for Christ and His church.
"7. We will lead the way with irrational generosity. We truly believe it is more blessed to give than to receive."
You can read our
2010 exposé on Craig Groeschel to see our responses to these points. But compare these points to
POINT SIX listed in Hope Lutheran's
Mission Vision Values statement, again from the packet linked above:
"We love to give up things we love for the things that God loves."
We did a post or two on
plagiarism, did we not? Yes, I think we did. Here is the series we posted in 2010 on the sin of plagiarism. Craig Groeschel makes an appearance in this series, as well – commenting on those who do not give credit to their sources:
Re-read these old posts, and read the rest of our
2010 exposé on Craig Groeschel and his connection to the WELS. What we said then still applies today, and that application is most assuredly
expanding.
Recently, Craig Groeschel wrote an editorial for
FoxNews.com, which was titled,
Christians, here's why we're losing our religion. Aptly titled, his objective is, in fact to
lose religion. He writes:
"You see, religion alone can only take a person so far. Religion can make us nice, but only Christ can make us new. Religion focuses on outward behavior. Relationship is an inward transformation. Religion focuses on what I do, while relationship centers on what Jesus did. Religion is about me. Relationship is about Jesus... religion is about rules, but being a Christian is about relationship."
Compare Groeschel's statement, above, to point seven in the document
Mission Vision Values, again, in the packet linked above. It reads:
"We will not let our behavior or church culture create a barrier between Jesus and a person he died for."
The relationship between statements like this and Evangelical leadership emanating from the likes of Craig Groeshel is obvious. Yet, such leadership is Scripturally incompetent – a clear example of allowing an enemy of the Christian AND the Church (i.e., the World) to dictate our terms. In reality, those who separate religion from Christianity, as Groeschel suggests, have no idea what either religion or Christianity is. Sure it is a relationship between the individual and Jesus, but Scripture's testimony on the matter is clear and abundant: for as much as it is a relationship between the individual and Jesus, it is
also a relationship of
confessional unity between fellow Christians AND a relationship between the
congregation and Christ. Christianity is NOT strictly a matter between the individual and God, it is principally
corporate in nature! You cannot separate the idea of religion from Christianity! To even suggest it is nonsense.
Craig Groeschel continues in his editorial:
"But in order to reach the current generation and generations to come, we must change the way we do things. That's why we like to say, 'To reach people no one is reaching, we have to do things no one is doing.'"
He is repeating, here, the sixth point of his
Vision and Values statement – which we commented on in our
previous exposé. Hope Lutheran echoes this thought in
POINT FIVE of their
Mission Vision Values statement, contained in the documentation packet linked above:
"We are committed to reaching people that churches are not reaching."
But is Hope Lutheran, or anyone else who copies Craig Groeschel, really living out this vision statement? Hardly. Following the model of those 'who are doing what no one else is doing', those so doing such only succeed in doing what
everyone else is doing. It's called a
bandwagon.
John Schaller has better advice for Lutherans. The fact is, it is on the basis of his multi-site church model that Craig Groeschel's LifeChurch.tv was recently named the most innovative church. Those who
copy him aren't at all "doing what no one else is doing to reach those no one else is reaching," but are simply doing what
everyone else is doing, as they climb on board the bandwagon to do what has apparently been "successful" for Craig Groeschel. Everyone without a shred of creativity of their own, that is.
Read John Schaller to see what he says about doing what everyone else is doing, instead of what Lutherans, alone, can uniquely do.
Craig Groeschel continues further:
"[A]s churches, we don't have the liberty to change the message, but we must change the way the message is presented. We have to discover our 'altar ego' — and become who God says we are instead of who others say we are."
Note that by "we", Groeschel is
not referring to the Church anymore. By this point in his editorial, he has already separated corporate religion from the individual. The "we" he is referring to is individual Christians, and nothing more. Thus, the
change he is calling for is
not change in the Church, but change in the individual Christian, beginning with the separation of the individual Christian from the Church, and continuing with a change in his focus, calling the Christian to dwell on his own behaviour. Not only is this rank Sanctification oriented Pietism (which we detailed in our post,
Lay Ministry: A Continuing Legacy of Pietism, and highlighted as a problem with Craig Groeschel in our
2010 exposé), it's
manifestly duplicitous. All he is saying here is, "We must change the message the way others say we must change the message, change the way they say we must change, and become who they say we must be." Who are these "others" but Craig Groeschel and similar Evangelical leaders! Separating the Christian from his religion, they insert their advice to take over for the visible Church.
The Collective Descent of American Lutheranism
In our post,
C.P. Krauth explains how orthodox Lutheran Synods descend into heterodoxy, we quoted Charles Porterfield Krauth as he identified the
Course of Error in the Church, well-known since the time of St. Augustine and operating as well as it ever had in his own time:
When error is admitted into the Church, it will be found that the stages in its progress are always three. It begins by asking toleration. Its friends say to the majority: 'You need not be afraid of us; we are few and weak; let us alone, we shall not disturb the faith of others. The Church has her standards of doctrine; of course we shall never interfere with them; we only ask for ourselves to be spared interference with our private opinions.' Indulged in for this time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ, and any favoring of the truth, because it is truth, is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental. Anything on which they differ is ipso facto non-essential. Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the Church. Truth and error are two coordinate powers, and the great secret of church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them. From this point error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated, and that only for a time. Error claims a preference for its judgments on all disputed points. It puts men into positions, not as at first in spite of their departure from the Church’s faith, but in consequence of it. Their repudiation is that they repudiate that faith, and position is given them to teach others to repudiate it, and to make them skillful in combating it.
Krauth, C.P. (1871). The Conservative Reformation and its Theology. Philadelphia: Lippincott. (pp. 195-196).
For almost three years now Intrepid Lutherans have been warning of this danger, educating our readers on the differences between heterodox sectarianism and orthodox Lutheranism, and demonstrating those differences along with giving evidence of its incursion into our Synod.
Some have joined us by lending us their names; though some have been threatened for this, many remain. But these few do not account for the nearly 1500 daily page reads we see on average.
Many folks read our essays and informational posts, and are confronted with the stark reality:
our Synod is deteriorating right along with the visible Church everywhere, which almost unanimously now invites the World and worldly influences to abide with her in determining doctrine and practice. It is high-time for our readers to do more than just read. It is time to begin acting in a way that will bring an end to this sort of thing.
