Authors Exposed! - WELS Documented Blog

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Finally, Introducing the WELS Documenters

We're sure that Pastor Spencer welcomed us back a few days ago because he's convinced that we are Matthias, a WELS pastor, who gained quite the following for a few months this past summer with the Polluted WELS blog. Sorry, Pastor Spencer, we aren't Matthias. And no, we live nowhere near the Arizona-California District of WELS.

Fact is, there are two of us who are part of this blog. The one who controls most of the content of this blog is a former WELS member who still has family members in the WELS. WD1 is gifted with computers and internet searches. She's able to find much more that's documented about WELS than this old pastor ever could on his own.

Yes, WD2 is a pastor with a number of decades in the WELS ministry. I've appreciated the recent efforts of the Intrepid Lutherans editors and Matthias at Polluted WELS to sound the alarm on the dangerous territory some within our church body seem intent on stepping. Yet, as you can tell from our earliest posts, we don't intend WELS Documented to be a WELS-negative blog. We'd like this blog to simply be a place where you can information about what's going on in the WELS.

WD1 and WD2 work independently from one another. We don't have editorial meetings and we don't spend hours mapping out the direction of this blog. So from time to time you may even find the two of us disagreeing respectfully. What WD1 posts may not be what WD2 would post, but if it's about what's happening in WELS, then it's fair game to report and discuss.

WELS Documented, I'm sure, will evolve from day to day since we really don't have a business plan for it. That said, WD2 would love for this blog to be a grass roots blog. We welcome people from around the WELS to email us at welswatch@gmail.com. Tell us what's happening in your congregation, circuit, and conference. Whatever you tell us, though, you must be able to document. We can only discuss that which we know to be true.

We aren't trying to be a competitor of Forward in Christ. It is the official magazine of the WELS. Let's face it, FIC  would never consider publishing anything critical of the WELS. Though we don't want to only be negative here, constructive criticism is necessary for any organization, even the WELS.

For reasons of our own, neither of us intend to reveal our identities at this time. This may change, especially for me, but for now we simply wish to facilitate the exchange of information and discussion.

WD2

Shewell-Cooper Had It Right Decades Ago

I found Compost Gardening by W. E. Shewell-Cooper at a bargain price on Amazon (used). The book was printed in 1974, and I read it at the Grace Dow Library in the 1980s. The library was my education in all forms of gardening, organic and anti-organic.

Note:

When I first started gardening in the early 1970s, I discovered a fascinating book entitled The ABC of Soils, Humus and Health. The author, Dr Wilfred Edward Shewell-Cooper, was an early organic gardening campaigner and pioneer of what he called the ‘no-dig’ gardening system, which advocated growing vegetables directly into beds of compost spread over the lawn, without the need to dig the ground. 

In 1966, he founded The Good Gardeners Association, which survives to this day. Shewell-Cooper was a devout Christian and the original meaning of the word ‘good’ in the organisation was taken to mean that members of the association were good because they carried out God’s plan for the soil. The title for one of his many books was ‘God Planted a Garden’, in which every reference in the Bible that relates to the principles of organic gardening and good soil management has been extracted and made relevant. However, whilst many Christian gardeners were attracted to the GGA, today this theological emphasis is no longer relevant to the Association’s aims. 

Shewell-Cooper was born in 1900 at Waltham Abbey, where his father was a major in the Royal Artillery and assistant superintendent at the town’s Royal Mills gunpowder factory. The family later moved to Blackheath, then Penarth, where Shewell-Cooper’s father was stationed. Before the outbreak of WW1, the family moved to South Africa, later returning to Britain where he studied at Monkton Combe School, near Bath. 

Shewell-Cooper’s early interest in gardening took him to Wye College, where he achieved a Diploma in Horticulture. His long and illustrious career in horticulture included Principal of The Horticultural Training Centre at Thaxted, Command Horticultural Officer, S.E. and Eastern Command from 1940 to 1948, Director of the Horticultural, Educational and Advisory Bureau, Horticultural Superintendent at Swanley College, Horticultural Advisor to Warwickshire and Cheshire County Councils and Gardening Editor, BBC Northern Region. He was a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts, although his greatest accomplishment was being awarded the MBE.

It was while managing the training centre at Thaxted that Shewell-Cooper, together with his Australian wife, Irene, and son, Ramsay, set up at a market garden to test his organic ‘no-dig’ theories. Ten years later, in 1960, the family moved to Arkley Manor, in Herfordshire, which became the headquarters of The Good Gardeners Association. The ten-acre garden was the research showcase for his ‘no dig’ system, being visited by thousands of keen gardeners interested to follow his organic gardening ideology. 

Shewell-Cooper brought out the British gardener in me -
quirky methods that work.

So it was fun to read the book again, and the book was just as I remembered it from 30 years ago, including his reference to humus as that substance from which God formed Adam. 

I was reading about organic gardening and earthworms at the time - and trying them out - so his argument about using compost as the ultimate mulch made perfect sense. Ruth Stout wrote about gardening in the midst of mulch, and that made even more sense. Mulch becomes compost, serving not only as an immediate weed barrier but also as compost as it weathers and rots.

Beastly Winter Not So Beastly in Springdale

We were told repeatedly about how awful winter was going to be. So far we have only had a snow that melted on impact. A hard freeze gave way to a thaw and this week - two days of rain.

I took the latest donation of newspapers and spread them out in the rain, so they would get soaked. It is a good time to add another row to the vegetable garden. I will line up the newspapers, wet and thick, and cover them with wet leaves, to hold them down. That will give me a new row to plant in the spring, reclaiming even more lawn for the garden.

Sow Abundantly, Reap Abundantly - So I Order Abundantly

Paul's advice to the Corinthians is related to good gardening practice, just the opposite of seed marketing, where they sell tiny packets for outrageous prices. They figured our the Keurig tactic (individual cups of coffee, based on $50 a pound costs) long ago. A little here, a little there. Soon the budget is gone and there are tiny little rows of this and that, a garden for ants.

I am sticking to some basic favorites and planting large amounts of them, so I will order pounds of giant sunflower seeds, for a green fence, pounds of edible pod pea seeds, for an early crop, plenty of Silver Queen corn. Since I will have large amounts seed, I can plant it all over instead of running out. And I am sure our helper would like some, and his children could create their own garden.

2 Corinthians 9:6 But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.

Congregations and denominations chase fads, using the Keurig approach, something for everyone, whatever seems popular at the moment. Lenski observed this, and he was active in the parish a century ago. "Fads come and go, but only the Word builds up the church."

Faddish ministers do not visit their members with the Word. They do not use the Word of God for evangelism, since marketing gimmicks seem so nifty. They avoid the Word of God in sermons, because someone will be offended. Moreover, why would a congregation or denomination use the Word when they are so far removed from it? The purpose of an apostate denomination is to advance the latest fads and flog the congregations for not cheering with loud Hosannas.

I Would Give It a a Five Ewwww Rating

WELS Pastor Richard Starr and WELS poster boy Scott Barefoot
jointly wrote this book,
Starr's second opus on gaiety.
Speaking the Unspeakable was Starr's first.

To Predict Lutheran Synod Losses - Look at the Episcopalian Church. Abominations Continue Unabated by Common Sense or the Scriptures

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
www.virtueonline.org
December 5, 2014

Before we end the year, it is important to tell the one single truth about the Episcopal Church that no one else will tell you: the pansexualists, who have driven the agenda over the past 40 years, have had just one goal -- the complete emancipation of the Episcopal Church from biblical morality and traditional sexual ethics. They don't care about what it costs, the damage they have caused, the consequences of their actions or the Church's ultimate demise. 

Beginning with Louie Clay (nee Crew), the one goal has been to destroy Christian marriage as we know it and usher in an age of (pan)sexual inclusivity that "broadens" marriage to make it mean whatever you want it to mean and thereby declare victory that God has spoken in and through General Convention resolutions (but not necessarily the Holy Spirit) and thus turn the Church upside down on sexuality.

By any standard, it has been an enormous success. They don't care if, in the course of pushing their sexual agenda, The Episcopal Church dies; they really don't care. They will have gotten what they wanted and to hell with anything else. Those parishioners still sitting in the pews will have been so dumbed down they won't know what has happened to them, even when the last geriatric is carried out of the last parish in a pine box, the final prayers said and the church doors are forever shuttered.

For pansexualists their identity is> their sexuality. It is not to be found in Christ. He has nothing to do with it. Their identity is totally caught up in what they think they are. They have become blinded by sex as the all-embracive issue; the future existence of the church be damned.

Most modern historians agree that within a generation there will be little that is left of The Episcopal Church. The deeper truth is that the pansexualists don't care if the Church dies; it is not their problem. Those gay and lesbian bishops and priests who have bought into and pushed the sodomist agenda will have either retired on fabulous pensions or died; it will be too late to repent. Spong's theological revolution will also die with him, never more to be remembered except as a footnote to an historian's bibliography. Future archaeologists will marvel that a Church could set out to destroy itself.

*****

Full time Church Positions in The Episcopal Church have dropped by 20%. Part-time clergy has risen by 10%, the Church Pension Group reports.

The combination of the two trends is changing the landscape of work and retirement for clergy. First, the proportion of part-time and bi-vocational clergy has been steadily increasing. CPG data indicates that the number of part-time clergy has increased by 10% in the last five years, while the number of full-time positions has fallen by 20%.

Second, the increase in late ordinands is even more marked. In 1980, 63% of those ordained to the priesthood were under 35, and fewer than 5% were over 55. By 2013, only 23% of those ordained were under 35, and nearly 40% were 55 or older.

From such little acorns at Northwestern College

do great big rotten oaks grow.

***

GJ - I link Virtue Online because it is well written and constantly updated. More importantly, all the trends David Virtue tracks in the Episcopal Church are visible in the Lutheran synods.

The WELS DPs are better friends with ELCA than they are with their own clergy and members. 

The Jeske mob has complete control of WELS, just as the equivalent bunch manages the LCMS. SP Mark Schroeder is just as useful and compliant as Gurgle was before him. 

The ELCA leaders - seated - American and Canadian,
are progressive and sensitive and all that,
so why is CLC associate Horst W. Gutsche working for them?