Glende to WELS Mission Board - "Shut Down My Disaster in Savoy, Illinois and Grab the Money for Yourselves!"

"Bless you WELS Mission Board, for buying that bankrupt bar for me.
And thanks for ignoring the WELS downtown church a short walk away."

Glende, fresh from WLS in Mordor, had to have things his way. The Mission Board let him force a "redevelopment" so he could have money to dump the campus location for one way out of town.

By the time Glende got done with Star of Bethlehem, few members were left and the new building was not even built. He vamoosed to St. Peter in Freedom, Wisconsin, a Church and Change free enterprise zone.

After taking over from Ron Ash, Glende hired his MLS friend Ski to spend oodles of money traveling around with him at various crack-pot Evangelical training camps, including gay activist Andy Stanley, closet Babtist.

Several women cried throughout the meeting. The purpose was simply to tell them that WELS would take over the property and shut down the congregation. WELS had no interest in providing mission support and a regular worship service.

I suppose that is only for congregations like St. Peter in Freedom, with $1.4 MILLION budget.

The parish cannot close during the school year because it is a designated evacuation site for two schools nearby.

From the Staff Clowns Who Took a Member To Court for Telling the Truth

This has to be the funniest self-parody on YouTube today: the drama, the music, the bathos.

Run by the tag-team of Ski and Glende, aging teenagers with self-control issues, St. Peter in Freedom was formerly helmed by the chairman of Church and Change - Ron Ash.

Church and Change is now so dominant in WELS that Mark Jeske is both the CEO and treasurer (Thrivent bagman) of the synod.

John Lawrenz and Steve Witte were both part of starting Church and Change. Witte was in Fox Valley in two parishes. They are at the portable Asian seminary where Doebler is heading.

Don Patterson got Doebler out of Round Rock so Holy Word could poach a rich suburb, moving away from their old location. Patterson and Gurgle will pretend to be multi-site, but they like deep pockets a lot more than ethnic diversity.

Miss those anonymous messages from your hometown, Garland, Texas, Don. How did you pass the baton to your son? Were you kicked out of college, too?

 

My Paid Vacation - Teaching English

By chance - if it were chance - I ended up teaching English in retirement. I tell my students, who feel compelled to hate required English composition, "My friends are on expensive cruises, burning up money. I am on a paid vacation, teaching a fun group of students."

Here and there I also teach graduate school and theology. Fortunately, my theology students are not Lutheran, so they love to hear what Luther says. I quote Luther all the time and teach the close relationship between the Spirit and the Word.

For English class, since my throat was a little sore yesterday - I played the animation of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. I enjoy pointing out that Bunyan's "most read book, after the Bible" was Luther's Galatians Commentary.

https://www.visionvideo.com/detail.taf?_function=detail&a_product_id=31141

Today it is safe to say that Luther's great classic (commended for study in the Book of Concord) is universally ignored.

Pilgrim's Progess is considered the best-selling book in English, after the Bible, but it is almost completely unknown today. When I asked students about the book, a native of Venezuela raised his hand! "I have seen the animation, only in Spanish."

http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1601-1700/bestselling-author-john-bunyan-11630081.html -

Bestselling Author, John Bunyan

Curtis, Lang, Peterson

Church History Timeline

6000-1 BCAD 1-300301-600601-900901-12001201-15001501-16001601-17001701-18001801-19001901-20002001-Now

• 0

John Bunyan was born in Elstow, Bedfordshire, England on this day, November 28, 1628. His home was a small thatched cottage, and his father was a tinker, who spent his days pushing a cart along the roads, stopping at homes to fix metal pots and pans.

Young John received a grammar-school education, but like most sons of his day, he learned his father's trade. During the English Civil War he served as a soldier-- probably on the Puritan side. At nineteen he married, and his Christian wife led him to try to reform his life. But John found himself constantly slipping back into old habits. Though he lived well enough to impress his neighbors, he described himself as a "painted hypocrite."

In 1651, John began attending an independent meeting at Bedford and was moved by the pastor's intense biblical preaching. He began to pore over the Scriptures, until the conflict within him ended in the assurance of God's grace in his life. Salvation had come to John Bunyan.

He joined the Bedford congregation and began to preach there, amazing people at the abilities of a "mere" tinker. Though King Charles II had at first promised freedom of religion, increasingly the Anglican church became England's only accepted church. Dissent was not encouraged, and in 1661 the authorities sent John to Bedford jail for his preaching. His times in prison were hard on his family and his blind daughter. He remained there until 1672, when Charles issued the Declaration of Indulgence, extending leniency to non-Anglicans.

Upon his release, the Independent meeting house called him as their pastor. He received a license to preach and became known as Bishop Bunyan-- perhaps becoming the organizing genius of Independents in the area, But the toleration was not to last.

In 1675 Bunyan again found himself in prison, and began his greatest work: The Pilgrim's Progress.This allegory of salvation and the Christian walk has given us such colorful phrases as "Vanity Fair," "the Slough of Despond," "House Beautiful," "Muckraking," and, "Hanging is too good for him." Drawing only on his own experience and the Bible, this largely unlettered preacher created a captivating piece of literature that appeals to those who travel - or would travel - on the spiritual pilgrimage from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City.

Perhaps because so many readers experienced the same sort of pilgrimage in their lives, The Pilgrim's Progress, became the world's best-selling devotional book. Bunyan describes the most intimate states of the Christian soul. His realization of the depth of God's grace in his own life gave Bunyan an ability to speak to many people, even generations, of their own spiritual state. Bunyan's other works, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, and The Holy War, never achieved the popularity of The Pilgrim's Progress. This one humbly written work touched thousands of live sand became a classic.

Bibliography:

1. Adapted from Christian History Institute's book Dates With Destiny by Curtis, Lang and Petersen. Revell, 1991.
2. Hendrickson, Ford. Martyrs and Witnesses. Detroit: Protestant Missionary Pub Co., ca. 1917. Source of the image.
3. Petersen, William J. C. S. Lewis Had a Wife; Catherine Marshall Had a Husband. Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1986.

Last updated July, 2007.

Classic Ichabod - Pilgrim's Progress - by John Bunyan

Thursday, July 16, 2009

John Bunyan - Pilgrim's Progress

And she named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel: because the ark of God was taken...
1 Samuel 4:21

William Blake illustrated the book and was buried next to Bunyan, over a century later.

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress was once the most read book in the English language, after the King James Bible. Bunyan's most read book, after the Bible, was Luther's Commentary on Galatians. I wonder how many Church Growth gurus have read either one.

Bunyan was famous for cursing before his conversion. He did not belong to the Church of England, so he was imprisoned for about 12 years for teaching as a Dissenter. He was released under a new edict of toleration but arrested again. They gave him a little jail cell, special built, where he wrote most of Pilgrim's Progress. In all he wrote 60 books, some of which perished forever because copies were gradually destroyed from being passed along and studied.

Pilgrim's Progress has been turned into an animation, which makes it a great introduction for children.

My copy of Pilgrim's Progress is from the Limited Edition Club, which means - superb paper, color prints tipped in, large print and margins. The book is a pleasure to read for its beauty, but the content surpasses that.

Allegories are difficult to write and often even more difficult to read. Moby Dick and Lord of the Rings have been called allegories.

---

Friday, July 31, 2009

UOJ Church Growth Can Be Hard To Swallow

Spoiled Egyptians Hard To Digest

Free Advice Needed for WELS

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Luther, Lord's Prayer, and OJ":

Dear Pr. Jackson,

Please offer to help WELS leaders sort out their theological mess. Start with a letter/email to the Prez.

***

GJ - I appreciate the suggestion. I imagine it will be read by some and discussed by many.

Otten made a serious mistake in brokering the news for various synods. He helped manage the campaigns for Jack Preus, Ralph Bohlmann, and Al Barry. A typical day, based on my visits there, had him on the phone frequently with various synodical power brokers. That made him an unacknowledged leader of various synods, because he was almost as involved in WELS/ELS as Missouri, and dabbled in the misbegotten CLC too.

The UOJ Stormtroopers did not want me discussing their precious heresy in public, so I was banned inCN. The tabloid is so last-century now, weeks later than most people get their news from the Net.

My approach will continue to be - publish whatever is rotten in the state of Denmark and discuss Lutheran doctrine. The Word is effective, as shown by the latest efforts to silence me by attacking my sainted daughters. Once exposed by their own Dreck, they called their opponents "nasty," refused to publish their comments, and stopped. They reminded me of Gibbon's description of one army - "They fought without discipline and ran without shame."

UOJ is the ugly head of Enthusiasm, while Romanism is the alluring answer to Enthusiasm...from Enthusiasm. Both must be addressed and defeated by Lutherans.

By naming the key doctrines of the Book of Concord--God's own methods--WELS has stepped into a new discussion that divide the sheep from the goats, or more optimistically, the sheep from the wolves.

Many Lutherans are new-born babes in discussing the Means of Grace and the efficacy of the Word. They have been fed religious Pop-tarts, candy corn, and soda crackers. The new diet will be challenging but exciting. They will meet opposition everywhere. Chytraeus wrote that one of the surest signs of orthodox is that opposition.

Reading Pilgrim's Progress again, I ran into a funny but accurate description of how things go. Apollyon (Satan's servant) assailed Christian to come back to the City of Destruction and abandon his trip to the Celestial City. "Your master stays where He is and never helps His servants when they are in trouble. But my master enters the world and helps his servants, by deceit and fraud." Of course, that is Satanic temptation, to imagine the first part true when it is not. But the second part is definitely true in every single denomination.

Everything But Justification by Faith - Lutheran Blog Fantasies

The liberal ALPB Online blog has banned one of their liberal participants "for life." His name is Charles Austin, and he has contributed to various ELCA periodicals. He is 100% in favor of everything ELCA does, which should please the Leftist group.

Since he is retired, "for life" is a relatively short sentence. Previously Paul McCain was banned.

I posted on ALPB a tiny bit. LCMS DP Benke, who communes with ELCA, and ELCA's Austin joined forces in trying to ridicule the facts about Walther. The site erased the entire thread, not because of their tactics but perhaps because the research overwhelmed their opinions.

The current attitude about blogging seems to be, "We want everyone who agrees with us to express their candid opinions. The rest will be banned, pilloried, and shunned." At ALPB, some of them (like DP Benke) seem to be online continuously. Someone who cares to join the blog can look at the thousands of posts they have written. Most of the opinions are unresearched.

I like that particular blog for its occasional unearthing of ELCA Schadenfreude. The German term means roughly - glorying in their shame. Yes, I enjoy watching their horrid seminaries wind down into insolvency. Like the suburban malls built on garbage dumps to reclaim land, these seminaries are founded on the effluence of modernism. They have forgotten their Schmauk, Jacobs, Krauth, and Passavant, just as WELS and the LCMS have forgotten Gausewitz, Luther, and the Confessions.

In ELCA, everything is so Leftward that their pioneer apostate--Carl Braaten--is considered an old fuddy-duddy by the elite and a Confessional Lutheran by the recent escapees in their quasi-ELCA groups.

No one seems willing to admit that ELCA, Missouri, WELS, and the Little Sect on the Prarie agree about justification without faith. With one accord, they proclaim this falsehood - that the entire world has been declared free from sin, justified without faith, and (covertly or overtly) saved without the Word or the Means of Grace.

Unlike the rest, I  have read the original documents of Lutherdom and the current output. I hesitate to say, because they fly into a rage so easily, that I went far beyond taking notes in seminary in studying comparative dogma, distinguishing between various confessions of faith or unfaith.

The Lutheran rage against faith is so great that those who agree with the Scriptures and the Confessions keep their peace, since the UOJ Hive is so quick to sting.