Naumann Introduced and Welcomed Church Growth - And the Worst False Teachers - Into WELS. WELS Documented Blog Retells the Myth

Synod President Naumann welcomed TELL in its first issue.
The door was flung opened and the the Jeske Mob took over -
led by Valleskey, Witte, Bivens, Kelm, Roth, Hartman, Larry Olson (DMin Fuller)
and many others.
The way to get ahead  in WELS, Missouri, and the ELS
is to have credits from Fuller Seminary.

WELS Documented Blog
It was reported that after the election, John Brenner congratulated his successor and mentioned to him that he had heard some talk about a “change in Bible thought” with the election of a new president. “God forbid it,” said the new president. Naumann may have been young, but he would not be intimidated by those demanding that the synod change its stand on Scripture to accommodate a changing world. He remained steadfast and faithful to the Word. Naumann’s steadfast faith, patience, and endurance would help the synod in his years as president, particularly in the painful break up with Missouri.

Here is Steve Witte with his Gordon Conwell drive by DMin degree.
Dr? No academic institution recognizes a DMin as a doctorate.

***

GJ - 

Old man Brenner had the drop on Naumann.

What a load of booshwa.
Kelm is an alien invader, importing the latest idiocies from Fuller Seminary.

Jackson Bird Spa Expansion - Stolen Leaves Are Sweeter

The Jackson Bird Spa is party central in our neighborhood -

nine feedings stations and seven places to drink or bath,

twigs, sticks, string, and lint for their nests.

When I came home from Walmart today, Mrs. Ichabod asked about the two huge garbage pails I had in the car. "They aren't garbage pails. They are rain barrels with birdbaths on top."

In the trunk I had some mulch for the Jackson Bird Spa expansion. I left newspapers out in the rain, which finally stopped. They are far easier to spread when soaking wet, and breezes do not blow them away. I expanded the area to be covered and mulched on top.

I put the garbage-can-lid birdbaths upside-down in the mulch and filled all the baths. These Rubber Maid lids were especially shallow and very large, which birds appreciate. They are not going to step into deep water, and I want toads to have a pleasant area with plenty of water.

I never looked for toads before, but I had one under the faucet last summer. I also saw baby toads here and there, without thinking much about them being such a blessing - eating slugs and insects.

Rain Barrels
I thought of capturing rain from altering the down spouts, but I had second thoughts after wrestling with one of the spouts today. Reworking the spout means additional work, which is a violation of the Maynard G. Krebs Prime Directive - Do not create extra jobs in the garden.

Instead I will leave the downspouts alone and capture rain from the roof runoff in the backyard (no downspouts or gutters there).

There are two ways to have great water for special treatment of plants. One is to fill a barrel and let it evaporate the chlorine out of it for at least 24 hours. The other is to collect the rainwater and use it before it generates a population of mosquitoes.

My mother always stored water before using it in the classroom. All the teachers wanted to know why her flowers were so bountiful and theirs were so poor. She just smiled. Moline water was so bleachy we did not need whiteners for our teeth.

The Crown Imperials are beginning to show.
Giant aliums are next.

Stolen Leaves
I watered the straw bale garden, which is going to produce gushy soil around it. The benefit of straw bales is that watering them will motivate the roots to go down deep. The disadvantage is the need to water often and stay out of the mud.

We began with a good base - heavy ragweed growth, pumpkin vines, and tomato vines mulched into the soil, which had plenty of wood mulch. Newspapers were on top of this, and straw bales on the newspapers.

Lacking was an area to dress up the sloppy look of leaning bales and newspapers under them like old nappies.

I know our veteran on the corner wanted his leaves gone, and his brother was taking several more months to finish the job. Sassy and I went down with the wheel-barrel and nicked them in  two trips. If no one saw the trips, the brothers will wonder how the leaves disappeared after abiding so long on the corner of the lot, killing the grass.

Autumn leaves, piled up, rained and snowed and sleeted on, are dark, wet, and somewhat slimy. They are pure food for the soil. Leaves harbor beneficial insects, soil creatures, and earthworms. Microbes and larger soil creatures (yea, even slugs) will shred, digest, and fix all that food in the root zone.

Yes, I smile at at Lowe's customers carting bags of inorganic fertilizer out to their cars. They probably bag their leaves and have the city pick them up. Endless withdrawals from the soil cannot be made up with inorganic salts.

So I piled my treasure along the base of the straw bales. Overflow of water will facilitate additional decomposition. The leaves will settle down in a few days, so I will add a bag or two of wood mulch,  on top - as I did at the base of the crepe myrtle bush.

I mulched the crepe myrtle all last year, and the mulch kept going down. What does this mean, class?
Answer - the soil creatures below consumed the trees leaves, bush leaves, mower grass clumps, and wood mulch, feeding the roots of the bush and giving us the most glorious crepe myrtle in the area.

We pruned the top of the crepe myrtle and got a second bloom when all others stopped. Why? They did not prune for a second bloom. The seed pods formed and lasted all winter and fed the birds. We mulched all the pruned branches by cutting them up into twigs. They decomposed into the soil.

Sunlight Plus + Organic Additions = Soil Health
The renewal of the soil comes from a combination of solar power and organic additions.

Solar power makes the plants grow, create complex compounds above and below the surface, and build the soil by turning energy into useful nutrition.

Organic additions build the soil by adding a wide variety of food for soil creatures to turn into food for plant roots. Just as the birds show up for suet, peanuts, corn, and sunflower seeds, the soil creatures arrive to consume manure, plant leftover, mulch, leaves, and grass clippings.

Great blooms, but this crepe myrtle could use a lot of pruning.

The Lyle Lovett pruning of the crepe myrtle bush
puts all the flowers on top, the branches below bare.
Little Ichabod laughed.

WELS Sharia Law

If an alcoholic WELS pastor--who specializes in porn--uses x-rated language around a woman staffer, makes lewd suggestions to her, and shows her a nude male photo, she must be shunned and her husband sued for objecting to this behavior. The District President and his successor covers up for him. The Synod President arranges a quickie call to another district - his fourth in four calls.

If a married WELS pastor hits on a young, single woman, she must be forced to resign and take the blame, but he receives a new position - and a free cover-up from the District President.

If a WELS pastor arranges to have his wife murdered, he takes a call to another state. Nobody knows nothing and evidence disappears.

If a WELS teacher stabs his wife to death in their bed, the president of Martin Luther College comes to Phoenix as a character witness - to defend him as a poor, innocent man.

Your Daily Gardening Fix

I am thankful for all the artwork from Norma Boeckler. I have a wide array of graphics to use each day, and I share them on Facebook, as others do.

Various people ask for more about gardening, and that is leading to a book about Creation Gardening later this year.

I am usually up before dawn, so I take the paper to door of my neighbor, Mr. Gardener. Paper delivery has declined so they make people walk out to the street to get their newspaper, which is often hidden behind parked vehicles. For that they want $360 a year for the daily newspaper.

Walking next door is also a chance to take Sassy out - she loves that. And I check out the progress of the garden. We are often up and about before the birds, so I feed them when necessary.

Gardening does not compare to the thrill of children and grandchildren, but it is still a pretty good drug, addicting but healthy and low cost.

I like the long-term investment and repayment system. When I buried the fall bulbs from Dutch Gardens, I had nothing to show for it. The mulched rose garden even covered the scars of digging. A late winter snowstorm or two delayed the bulbs breaching the surface, but when they did - ecstasy. Garlic is hard to mess up. Those stalks poked up first, then daffodils, then the start of Crown Imperials. One was missing. Where is the last Crown Imperial? The tulips worked up slowly and finally - the last Crown Imperial appeared, like a submarine sticking its periscope up.

Our helper is justifiably proud of our mulched gardening areas. Today I can easily pull aside some mulch along the fence and plant oodles of pool beans. I plan on a second, parallel slot for carrots. And if some of that fails, hundreds of plants will still grow.

The sunflower seeds I saved are called King Kong. They are not only 14 feet tall, but strong and multi-branched. They should be fun to see growing.

I was thinking about putting all the bee, butterfly, and hummingbird plants in the far back, partially as a screen to block the view, but I am going to have a cluster of these plants near the back door, so everyone can see the action there too. This summer will be fun.

Support your local fungus. They are smart enough
to spring a trap on a nematode and dissolve it,
moving the nutrition to plant roots in exchange for carbon credits.
Creation or a co-inky-dink? You decide.

Polemics Are the Best Tool. Lutherans Gone Mild

ELCA beckons and Thrivent pays the tolls on the way.

I have seen the reaction many times. If someone clearly defines a topic and also shows why the opposite is not true, manufactured storms of protest arise. The accusations are mostly personal attacks, but the real issue is - No polemics are allowed.

Another version of the rule might be - No Confessions allowed, There is not much difference between polemics and the Confessions of the Lutheran Church (or any good confession of faith). The Book of Concord defines sound doctrine and also repudiates false doctrine.

America was not afraid of polemics in the early days. The Founders had to motivate people to fight for their freedom rather than remain colonies of the British Empire. Ben Franklin had a great joke played on them once when he published a letter in England saying Britain should pay taxes to Germany since England was originally a German colony with a Germanic language. On a feature show a British gentleman became angrier and angrier reading this out loud - until the end, when the satire said - "After all, these are the same arguments used for America paying taxes to Britain." He burst into laughter and Franklin smiled.

Blogmasters have to deal with the way things are. Lutherans have gone mild, In the good old days, the Methodists were the mild ones. They were moderately conservative on all topics, but irenic, always anxious to keep everyone happy. Lutherans are the irenic Methodists now. Nothing will keep someone from a plush position faster than having a position on anything.

This attitude makes everything sublime for the false teachers. Simply raising an issue is an attack on Holy Mother Synod. It is considered "bad form," in the language of the New England prep school. The coven of false teachers quickly lands on this Neanderthal and silences him, especially when the point is on target.

Lutherans should welcome banishment by the Synodical Con-Men. The more people jump from the hot air balloon, the faster it will rise into the stratosphere of New Age Paganism. The fact is, the midly conservative Lutherans - who will not fight for justification by faith - are keeping the balloon on course toward merger with ELCA. Mild Lutherans are ballast, just ballast.

Bad form, Luther.
Synodicals will celebrate the Reformation while rejecting
your Biblical doctrine.

How Does the Garden Grow? Sow Abundantly and Reap Abundantly - 2 Corinthians 9

Susan Wilkinson photographed this common grackle,
a member of the corvid (crow) family, very smart and great at grubbing.
I spotted one eating the peanuts thrown out on the mulch.

Several asked about the gardening today. We had a fine mist raining part of the day, but more rain was predicted. When the going gets wet, the gardeners go straw baling.

The strawberries already perked up from one day of rain, I planted them the day before. The potatoes were cut but not planted. Today I took a very large plate of potatoes out and wedged each one into the straw.

Since the potatoes would be soaked by the garden hose first, then the rain, I decided to sprinkle some seeds on top the straw. The surface is so even and such a good medium for planting, that I reckoned a number of plants would spring up. I sowed some carrots, dill, hollyhocks, and parsley, and borage was already there from the day before.

On the sides of the bales I pushed in goblin gourd seeds. The idea is to have vines trailing out of the sides. The rain moved in at night and provided a long, thorough soaking for all the new plants and seeds.

Straw was a pain to wrestle into the limo, a big mess to clean out. However, if the potato harvest is good, the straw bale garden will grow next year.  With careful planning, Mrs. Ichabod will insist on what I want to do. Fortunately, she adores roses and loves having the ones I also enjoy. I found some $5 roses on sale from Gurney's and she said, "Get them!"

The peas and spinach did not survive our radical winter, with such extremes of cold and warmth. The very early planted sunflower seeds did not germinate, so that may have been the cold or the squirrels eating them. I planted a wide row in the back with plenty of seeds. Squirrels think it's all about them.

Doing well:

• Garlic bulbs planted last fall are springing up.
• Daffodils are almost ready to bloom.
• Tulips are above ground, just behind the daffodils for blooming.
• Crown Imperial bulbs have sprouted, but not the giant aliums so far.
• The old rose garden looks almost 100% green and growing leaves.
• No new roses have arrived, but they should soon.
• Butterfly bushes and the crepe myrtle bush are still dormant.

I will prune the roses back about 2/3rds when it is dry. Contrary to the fears of dabblers, pruning will spur cane and root growth. The most damaging pruning is no pruning at all. The dead wood builds up and the flowers go to seed. Roses love to be pruned, mulched, and watered. No other care is needed. 

The bird population has increased since I build up every possible way to attract them. I am not spending much on food. Suet lasts a long time and is very inexpensive at the meat market. I scatter seed to watch the varied species according to their Creator's design. 

By Norma Boeckler

Birds want water most of all, for bathing and drinking. As I mentioned before, a robin was willing to approach me because the shovel left on the ground held some rainwater. She drank from it and walked away, the most daring of the larger birds. Soon I will have garbage cans collecting rainwater from the two downspouts and the lids serving as ponds at the Jackson Bird Spa. One might go in the far backyard for the shy creatures, like cardinals, that avoid the crowds.

The male birds are singing to establish their territory, find mates, and build nests. This is a good time to put string and dryer lint out for their nesting. I leave twigs for them. My random stick pile is one place, part of the Jackson Bird Spa. Pruning the crepe myrtle adds twigs and bits for the front yard nesting stash. What does not make it into a nest becomes food for the fungi and bacteria in the soil. 

The Apostle Paul said to the Second Corinthians - 

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

The spider tirelessly catches insects that would eat our flowers and crops.

This applies to treating the birds well, promoting microbial growth in the soil, and planting seed, fruit, and flowers. Some things will fail, and the failures are larger on a bigger scale. But the harvest is so abundant that the non-growth does not matter.

Random success is great fun, when one afterthought turns into one of the best experiences. When I walked Sassy past the veteran's home, I recalled, "He has all kinds of materials I can use, and he was worried about how to reduce his pile of paving stones, and other materials." 

I even covet his leftover autumn leaves. He is using Jackson Mulch for his rose gardens this year, after seeing how mine grew without weeds and without pests.

He is going to prune my trees soon, to let more light into the front and back yards. He is after his brother to remove the last of the leaves, and I may help with my wheelbarrow. They are ideal for the straw bale area, where we have to walk to water and care for the plants.

As Sharon Lovejoy has noted, gardening means being eager to get in the morning and see what has changed.