Ichabod, The Glory Has Departed: 08/08/14

Friday, August 8, 2014

Some Notes on Mark Jeske's Prodigal Income

WELS officials stole this independent congregation and its endowment.
Worship stopped - mission accomplished. WELS likes bars and theaters a lot more.
Mark Jeske's helper, Pastor Ron Muetzel was directly involved.

Someone noted that Time of Grace showed an income of $140,000+ for Jim Johnson, one of its leaders, but nothing was listed for Mark Jeske, who wants to "grow wealthy slowly." Great joke, Mark.

Some names on the Time of Grace form, as officers:

John Bauer.
Bruce Eberle, secretary.
Daryl Raabe, Chief Development Officer.
John Zimdars, president CEO.
Tim Lehman makes about $36,000.
Cliff Buelow is listed on the previous year's form.

I looked up St. Marcus and found no income listed for the congregation, but a lot of money listed for the St. Marcus Foundation, with Pastor Ron Muetzel as chairman of the foundation board. No pay is listed for anyone.

Parachurch groups can do more with creative accounting than an insurance company.

I theorize that there is a holding corporation of some type that serves as the umbrella organization. One can see similar shell games going on with Schwan cash distributions, where gifts are noted but the trail ends at an address, often the same address.

Thrivent headquarters in Green Bay is a white-washed sepulchre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

Emergent Church Alert - A Third Member of the Silver Marks Group -
Removed by His Own Cult

Glende and Ski flew out to Driscoll-land to learn from their master.
DP Engelbrecht approved.

"Mark Driscoll is our idol.
He knows how to treat women!"

Show caption

Seattle megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll has been removed from a church planting network of more than 500 churches he helped found and lead called Acts 29.Photo courtesy of Mars Hill Church via Wikimedia

This image is available for Webpublication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

(RNS) Seattle megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll has been removed from a church-planting network of more than 500 churches he helped found after a pattern of “ungodly and disqualifying behavior.”

Driscoll, co-founder of the Acts 29 Network, has been an influential but edgy pastor within conservative evangelical circles for several years. His own Mars Hill Church attracts some 14,000 people at 15 locations across five states each Sunday.

At the same time, however, Driscoll has been controversial in evangelical circles for years. The New York Times Magazine called him “one of the most admired — and reviled — figures among evangelicals nationwide.” He has been provocative, occasionally profane and has faced allegations of plagiarism and inflating his book sales.

After Acts 29 board action, all of Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church locations have been removed from the website of the network.

“It is our conviction that the nature of the accusations against Mark, most of which have been confirmed by him, make it untenable and unhelpful to keep Mark and Mars Hill in our network,” the Act 29 board wrote in a letter. “In taking this action, our prayer is that it will encourage the leadership of Mars Hill to respond in a distinctive and godly manner so that the name of Christ will not continue to be dishonored.”

In a longer letter obtained by blogger Warren Throckmorton, the Acts 29 board asked Driscoll to “step down from ministry for an extended time and seek help.”

“Over the past three years, our board and network have been the recipients of countless shots and dozens of fires directly linked to you and what we consider ungodly and disqualifying behavior,” the board wrote. “We have both publicly and internally tried to support and give you the benefit of the doubt, even when multiple pastors in our network confirmed this behavior.”

Driscoll, who’s been facing the same heavy criticism in recent years that he was known for dishing out to others, recently admitted to and apologized for comments he made under the pseudonym “William Wallace II” where he posted statements critical of feminism, homosexuality and “sensitive emasculated” men.

The Acts 29 board’s letter suggested that it could not lean on Mars Hill’s own board for discipline.

“In response, we leaned on the Mars Hill Board of Advisors & Accountability to take the lead in dealing with this matter,” the letter states. “But we no longer believe the BoAA is able to execute the plan of reconciliation originally laid out. Ample time has been given for repentance, change, and restitution, with none forthcoming. We now have to take another course of action.”

As Throckmorton has reported on his blog, the Acts 29 action comes after evangelical leaders Paul Tripp and James MacDonald resigned as members of the church governing board, and ex-members staged a recent protest at the church.

The Acts 29 Network is a network of churches attempting to be “gospel-centered” and “missional.” Its mission is to plant new churches with an emphasis on holiness, humility, diversity and evangelism.

Driscoll stepped down as president of Acts 29 in March 2012, appointing Matt Chandler as his successor and moving the headquarters to Dallas, where Chandler is a pastor.

Driscoll’s spokesperson did not return requests for comment.

Earlier this year, Driscoll apologized for missteps in publishing and quit social media for the rest of 2014.

KRE/AMB END BAILEY

Another Eructation from Mark Jeske, MDiv, WELS - Guru to the Synod,
Servant of the Servants of Thrivent.
Resident of a Posh White Suburb

See the art project at The CORE, below.

This is the result of sinking all that offering money into a bankrupt bar.

By Pastor Mark Jeske

Posted 3 days ago

August 5th, 2014 12:27PM

Church and Changes

Last week I blogged about the conclusions from some Christian observers that membership and attendance in Christian churches is in serious decline. I offered my own “top five” list of attitudes in congregations that can help growth. The 5th was this:

“You aren’t really ready to welcome new people unless you are willing to let them change your style and congregational culture.”

That comment drew some questions and pushback, and so I would like to expand on what I meant by that.

The message of Scripture is non-negotiable. It is true and timeless, transcending all human history, and will be as relevant on the day before Judgment Day as it was the day after the Fall. But the way in which we deliver those truths, the way in which we organize our congregations, the way in which we set up our congregational worship life, the way in which we design leadership structures—all these are infinitely negotiable. Scriptural doctrine does not change. Cultural patterns can. This does not mean throwing out everything of the past. It does mean preserving the best of the church’s traditional forms but being open to new things, too.

This principle is of special importance to congregations that were founded as ethnic, racial, or linguistic monocultures—all Italians, for instance, or Germans, or Poles. That initial monoculture eventually evaporates, and the congregation needs to flex as it seeks to attract people outside that original founding group. Waiting for more ethnics to move in to replace the first and second generation is a forlorn hope. As a leader in the Armenian Orthodox church here in my town once ruefully remarked in the local paper, “It’s hard to have an ethnic church without any ethnics.”

New people may want to learn from the culture of the congregation, but they will want to contribute their flavor as well. I would like to think that my European-rooted congregation has much to offer people in my city, but I am also grateful to our many African American members for the energy that they have brought, for the evangelism passion, openness, and emotional intensity. My tribe has historically venerated the pipe organ as the chief worship musical instrument, but our congregation has benefitted greatly from gospel music played on piano and Hammond organ and from the guitar sounds of Hispanic cultures. The church of my childhood never had a drum in worship. We do now.

The church also needs to draw flavor from its youth. Younger generations need to contribute to the culture and style—their songs and their poems and their instruments are important to them and should be important to the congregation as well. They love their digital world and the gospel can thrive there too. This does not diminish the message. It only helps bring the one message to more people by letting it ride on a vehicle agreeable to the hearer.

St. Paul articulated a powerful maxim for church leaders of all times in I Corinthians 9: “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.”

Me too, Paul.