The time-stamp or divide for Lutherans is 2009. That is when thousands woke up in ELCA and said, "We cannot stay in this mess any longer. We have tried every possible approach, and we get steamrolled each time."
The epic event was the ELCA vote to ordain and marry homosexuals, certainly a radical departure from historic Christianity. The bishops, like Liz Eaton, played the vote as nothing really, like many other preparatory votes and decisions. Everything she said was a lie, so she became the next ELCA Presiding Bishop.
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| Bishop and Mrs. Robinson, Episcopal icons, now divorcing. |
In the aftermath, about 20% of ELCA left, including a number of retired bishops. Even those who sat there with blank looks while being steamrolled were shocked into action. Two different groups were formed or enlarged. The LCMC grew by leaps and bounds. The NALC was formed to please the bishops and to facilitate their oblique moves.
Before that 2009 vote, I constantly blogged about the Episcopal bishops and congregations angrily protesting the same moves, which were move obvious on their side of the altar fellowship rail. I kept wondering why the placid Episcopalians had their hair and mitres on fire while the ELCA bishops, pastors, and members remained in a deep slumber.
I was pleased to see so many Episcopalian bishops, active in their work, willing to face down Katy the Horrible in court. Many congregations had their property stolen from them and locked up, out of pure vindictiveness. The Episcopalian Church had no legal rights over their property, which they owned before there was a United States or Constitution, but the courts generally favored Katy the Horrible, who used millions in borrowed funds to take property away.
Nothing seemed to matter to the ELCA people - then boom! - they began pouring out of the Synagogue of Satan.
Gather round and listen to a lesson about pruning roses, which is reflected in John 15:1-10 (although that passage is about grape vines).
Bushes like to be pruned. That wakes them up. When they wake up, they sprout new growth and bloom. Their roots grow faster, too.
What do we call "members" who never come to church, never commune, and never do anything - even when visited? We call them dead wood, for a reason. When the dead wood is pruned from a rose bush--a task many find abhorrent--the bush blooms.
I taught my grandson to prune the old rose blooms, because they are trying to go to seed. What do we call people and institutions where nothing is happening anymore. "They have gone to seed." When a rose bloom goes to seed, the energy of the plant is used for seed production and the rose will go into an early retirement.
These shake-ups in the Episcopal Church and in Lutherdom are good for people - good for their fatih. They have to examine what they believe from the Scriptures. They have to become disillusioned
"I am disillusioned!" Good - because they means you no longer have delusions about the institutional church.
Church officials audaciously grab property they do not own - and use the secular courts to accomplish their evil. They are the same ones who scream about how Christians cannot sue other Christians, when they are caught with their hands in the cookie jar and the trotters in the trough. But oh how they love to sue their congregations, to rob their endowments, to liquidate their equity.
Back in the 1980s the LCA routinely closed congregations and sold the property to balance their local district budgets. There was always a show of -
- Vote on where it goes, a good plan to make the robbery more palatable.
- Give some to Social Services (where our buddies work).
- Give some to missions (so we can rob those churches later).
- Give some to World Hunger (where the fat tummies of lobbyists are fed first and foremost).
ELCA has robbed itself down to bare metal, and the squealing is loud.
- Radicals do not give money - they use it up.
- Radicals do not become faithful parish pastors - they want to rule over everyone.
- Radicals leave no issue - for obvious reasons.
Faithful Christians should give up their illusions about the piety, probity, and parsimony of the church leaders. The professional ecclesiocrats make the Borgia Popes look like innocent lambs. The Lutheran drones know where the bodies are buried, because they buried them. They are only interested in money and power. Those are the powerful forces that attract them to the Thrivent trough - to grovel, oink, and tusk each other for the funds.
Leaving the apostate groups is difficult, because they use all their tricks to deprive people of their say in church affairs, then work to keep them in as dead wood, lifeless members with no opinion.
The marks of the true Church are the Means of Grace, the Word and Sacraments, not buildings and CDs.
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| Look at all the little porkers feeding off WELS. Missouri and the Little Sect on the Prairie are no different. |
