Many times I have walked into a bookstore, only to find a man behind the counter, right at the front, selling e-book readers. I wanted to say, "Do you realize you are selling the tool to close down this store for good?"
No one read my thoughts, and one favorite bookstore chain shut down completely - and they had the best oatmeal cookies ever.
The Lutheran Church anticipated this foolishness, engaging in it wholesale across denominational lines. Fuller Seminary? ELCA pastors were there in droves. So were LCMS pastors - and WELS/ELS pastors. The excitement was so great that James Tiefel in WELS and Paul Tiefel in the CLC (sic) fell under the spell - a great movement for little minds, flinty hearts, and no soul.
The Big Two and the Little Three comprise 99.99% of Lutherans in America, and they are all engaged in training pastors and laity to leave Lutheran doctrine and worship for good. No one admits it. Not at all. They are all "confessional Lutherans."
SP Mark Schroeder (WELS) has the audacity to call WELS orthodox while promoting the Mark Jeske Church and Change fund-raising operation at every opportunity.
SP Matt Harrison hymns the Olde Synodical Conference while transcending the battle, a battle that was never fought, since the Missouri leaders pushed it down on everyone while denying it was there.
Consider this - the Lutherans who grew up in the LCA and ALC of the past were far more Lutheran than the Olde Synodical Conference fakes of the present. The ALC/LCA members went to church expecting to sing real hymns and chant the liturgy. They did not crave feminist Bibles, feminist Creeds, and women teaching men. They were raised on the foundation of the English language, the King James (Tyndale) Bible, directly connected to Tyndale's study under Luther and Melanchthon.
The LCA/ALC members expected to hear a pipe organ, which supports hymn singing better than any other instrument. They looked forward to Biblical sermons rather than coaching or success story talks. They did not have monstrous screens hanging from the ceiling, nor did they expect a rock band cluttering the chancel with their instruments and befouling the narthex with their latest CDs on sale.
One of my good friends is a minister of music at an Evangelical church. When he learned that I still wore a robe and conducted the liturgy, he burst into laughter. I do not mind that he and his congregation have their style - that is their business. But I mind very much that Lutherans did not have the nerve to resist the total saturation of their denominations with the Fuller agenda.
