ICHABOD, THE GLORY HAS DEPARTED - explores the Age of Apostasy, predicted in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, to attack Objective Faithless Justification, Church Growth Clowns, and their ringmasters. The antidote to these poisons is trusting the efficacious Word in the Means of Grace. John 16:8. Isaiah 55:8ff. Romans 10. Most readers are WELS, LCMS, ELS, or ELCA. This blog also covers the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Left-wing, National Council of Churches denominations.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Lena Is a Sassy Look-Alike
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| Lena |
I just have to say, Sassy looks an awful lot like our German shepherd Lena 1.5 yrs old). Lena has the same propensity to sit quietly until a good sharp bark is warranted, usually causing some pretty strong reactions in unprepared people nearby. Love the Sassy stories. Good dogs are a real blessing from God!
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| Sassy - just before we adopted her. |
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| Sassy no longer chases cats, but they are wary of her. She is gentle with them, and always was, except she liked to give them a short chase. |
As the Episcopal Church Goes...So Goes Lutherdom
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. |
Send in the Clowns
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| Don't you love farce? My fault I fear. I thought that you'd want what I want. Sorry, my dear. But where are the clowns? Quick, send in the clowns. Don't bother, they're here. |
Send in the Clowns, from A Little Night Music
Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the clowns.
Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can't move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.
Just when I'd stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again with my usual flair,
Sure of my lines,
No one is there.
Don't you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don't bother, they're here.
Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer,
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.
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| Isn't it rich? Isn't it queer, Losing my timing this late In my career? |
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| And where are WELS clowns? There ought to be clowns. Well, maybe next year. |
Anonymous - Your Photoshop Is Done
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| Top Ten Crimes in WELS |
Polluted WELS Request
Anonymous said...
How about Alec Guinness' quote from the original Star Wars, "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious." Seems fitting for a GJ photoshop.
Polluted WELS Comments - Wise and Foolish
I like this thought experiment. It is not all that unrealistic. For instance, assume that you are an individual who had limited exposure to churches. Let's expand on this experiment. You have got this strange notion to go "church shopping". By the way, this is not all that uncommon. You go to an ELCA church with a woman pastor. Then you go to an LCMS congregation that has a Bible study before the service. This study is based upon a part of the Lutheran Confessions. The service that follows is liturgical. Then you finally go to a Contemporary worship service at a WELS "campus". After these three different experiences, what do you think of the word "Lutheran"? You could ask each pastor, "why should I want to come back again?".
In reality, isn't this what the Church Growth Movement is all about? What about all that blather about reaching the unchurched masses? Why not just be honest about all of this? Why call yourself Lutheran? As one pastor at a district convention many years ago asked, "why are we ashamed of being Lutherans?". More than one WELS pastor that I know is downright afraid to teach anything from the Book of Concord. Is it any wonder that Vernon made the observation about complacency in the previous posts? The normalcy bias is fairly common with lifelong members in the WELS. I will bet that some will just say, "we are not like those 'other Lutherans'".
In reality, isn't this what the Church Growth Movement is all about? What about all that blather about reaching the unchurched masses? Why not just be honest about all of this? Why call yourself Lutheran? As one pastor at a district convention many years ago asked, "why are we ashamed of being Lutherans?". More than one WELS pastor that I know is downright afraid to teach anything from the Book of Concord. Is it any wonder that Vernon made the observation about complacency in the previous posts? The normalcy bias is fairly common with lifelong members in the WELS. I will bet that some will just say, "we are not like those 'other Lutherans'".
Anonymous said...
WELS promotes that it is superior to the LCMS because it claims to possess the correct doctrine about church fellowship and church and ministry. WELS leadership then sends their pastors to various Church Growth seminars led by non-denominational leaders.
Got it.
Got it.
For a confessional pastor to have any future in the WELS, two things have to happen. First, congregations must bypass the district pope powerbrokers and take control of the call process by identifying their own candidates and interviewing each one face to face before issuing a call. Second, confessional congregations, if there even is such a thing in the WELS, must organize themselves into a non-geographic district akin to Missouri's English or Slovak Districts.
Anonymous said...
Oops, three things. He also must be in control of his own health and retirement plans. Hahaha...
Anonymous said...
Isn't the fly in the ointment, to a greater or lesser degree, the retirement plan?
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