SpenerQuest Post of the Century - on the LCMS Chap Who Joined Eastern Orthodoxy

 Justification by Faith?
Nope - Universal Absolution and a decision to accept
Universal Absolution: the anti-Gospel of the mainline Pietists.

Rev. Robert Fischer (Fischer) Advanced Member Username: Fischer Post Number: 766 Registered: 12-2004

Posted on Wednesday, November 29, 2017 - 5:47 pm:       It's ironic that with all the lead-up to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and all the emphasis on justification by faith alone that he left for a denomination which denies justification by faith alone.

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The First Feast - LCMS Clergy Join Eastern Orthodoxy

 ELDONA definitely expresses the spirit of Ft. Wayne,
smells and bells are the Chief Article:
everything else is negotiable.

The First Feast:



"The First Feast
8
SEP
For those who don’t know yet, our family is joining the Orthodox Church.  I just realized not too long ago that the church year for the Orthodox just began at the first of the month, and the first feast of the year is today when we commemorate the Nativity of the Theotokos (or in layman’s terms… Mary’s birthday )"

Start your own diocese, stealth-like, low church.

Go full Episcopalian later.

 We'll get to the Chief Article after we jettison Rolf Preus.

'via Blog this'

***

GJ - Apparently both LCMS seminaries are rife with Romanism and Eastern Orthodoxy. As one Ft. Wayne graduate wrote to me, "Eastern Orthodoxy is just a different polity." All the Ft. Wayne graduates do their best to prove to me how little they know about doctrine, comp dog, and the Scriptures.

I will say this for the Eastern Orthodox, they are friendly and welcoming. The priest who bought Glende's church in Illinois began a friendly dialogue with me, instead of being nasty, superior, and oafish (LCMS-WELS evangelism methods).

The Glende bunch began a toxic, anonymous blog against me - that is how they view outreach. They have no doctrine and steal their methods from the Pentecostals and used car salesmen, so that leaves them bereft of anything sound or edifying.

 Glende left two thriving congregations in Illinois -
one is Eastern Orthodox (Bethlehem -  the original, paid for church).The other is Babtist and already adding on, even though Glende skipped town before it was finished building.
That is how WELS evangelism is so much like LCMS outreach - totally incompetent and wasteful.

 Glende's abandoned new church is thriving because they teach the Gospel
instead of the UOJ anti-Gospel.

Kind Words from Someone Who Reads the Blog and Watches the Services on Ustream

Hello Pastor Jackson

I follow your blog and I watch your ustream broadcasts when I am unable to attend my local church.

Congratulations on your wedding anniversary. I hope that God will grant you many more.

I found your sermon "Two examples of Faith" in the November 26 service to be one of the strongest and clearest expositions of the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone that I've ever heard. 

Thanks very much for all you do.   

***

GJ -  I am glad to hear messages like this. More congregations should offer streaming video, because it helps so many people. Some are shut-ins. Some have no church. Some just cannot go to their own church due to weather, circumstances, or an illness.

Strange how  much the apostate leaders yak about evangelism when the best outreach consists of faithful exposition of the Chief Article - Justification by Faith. I will post the graphic again, for those who haven't cracked a Book of Concord since graduation from seminary.

GracePointe and the Elusive LGBT-affirming Megachurch | VirtueOnline – The Voice for Global Orthodox Anglicanism. LCMS-WELS May Need To Re-Evaluate Their Strategies

No more WELS pastors and their councils dressing
as women for the congregational picnic?
Church and Change your wardrobe - or Die!

GracePointe and the Elusive LGBT-affirming Megachurch | VirtueOnline – The Voice for Global Orthodox Anglicanism:

 No more Scott Barefoot photos?

"After his announcement of LGBT support in 2015, Pastor Stan Mitchell of GracePointe Church in Franklin, Tennessee was profiled in Time magazine. But what was a much sought-after sign of Evangelical movement towards LGBT affirmation may have been wishful thinking on the part of cultural progressives pouring money into programs that aim to shift Evangelical pastors' views on sexuality.

 No more Matt the Fatt cameos featuring Scott Barefoot and his ministry?

A Consequential Change

Time's Elizabeth Dias identified GracePointe as "one of the first evangelical megachurches in the country to openly stand for full equality and inclusion of the LGBTQ community."

GracePointe, with 700-800 weekly attendees at its height, was not actually a megachurch, typically defined as a congregation with worship attendance greater than 2,000 persons.

Perhaps more so than oldline Protestant denominations, pastor-driven structures of Evangelical churches are well-attuned to their constituency. Evangelical institutions that have waffled about Biblical teaching on human sexual expression -- such as World Vision's short-lived policy change allowing those in same-sex marriages to be employed by the Christian nonprofit -- have quickly reversed course as donors promptly redirected their giving elsewhere.

 No more plagiarizing the Fire Island gay music videos at
Martin Luther College?

Martin Luther College caught the attention of another demographic.

GracePointe was no exception: a 2015 article from the Nashville Scene reported significant departures: both members of the church's Board of Elders and half of the congregation's 2,200-person membership quickly decamped following the LGBT announcement.

"A happy ending has not materialized," the Scene reported. "Members have left, and the very fate of the church is at risk."

Changes ultimately were not limited to teachings on sexuality. In August, the Nashville Star reported that GracePointe would share space with another progressive congregation, now describing itself as "unapologetically interfaith".

A visitor to a recent service counted approximately 240 attendees, a fraction of the number that once participated."

 Are WELS, the ELS, and the LCMS done
with ELCA joint-ministry projects via Thrivent?
This is an ELCA meeting - not WELS, ELS, or LCMS.

'via Blog this'

This is a Martin Luther College of Ministry graduate - WELS - not ELCA,
so don't tar ELCA with the WELS brush. OK?

MLC roommates chortle and complain,
but MLC officials did not know!

ELDONA versus the LCMS

Josh Sullivan does the videos and Paul Rydecki translates the books.

The Right Reverend Bishop James Heiser, STM

ELDONA has become a strange bunch, now that "they have reached critical mass," - their words. But they have fallen into a familiar pattern for the micro-mini sects - defining themselves against the group they left. That leaves out the most important part of teaching - starting with the Lutheran Reformation and faithful Bible translations.

The CLC (sic) worries about WELS/ELS, who ignore the sacrament of donkey basketball. Missouri frets over the Leftwing lunacy of the ELCA, although that never prevents them from joint ministry projects with ELCA. Ditto WELS.

Since ELDONA is comprised of a bishop who recruited willing underlings, should not the bishop take a leadership role in teaching, even through YouTube? I was watching Fulton Sheen last night, a long-time fave of traditional Roman Catholics. He invented mainline media evangelism, and he was very good at it, for his time. But Fulton crossed Cardinal Spellman, once described as "that fat, little liar" when they quarreled over $1 million. Sheen collected the money, which Spellman considered his own. Even in Romanism, it's all about the Benjies. Sheen lost and was consigned to the Roman equivalent of Steam Corners, Ohio.

Once Sullivan began with the errors of LCMS resolutions, my brain shut down. The resolution jungle is parallel with the WELS essay norm. A WELS essay is normative if they want it to be, but only in those parts blessed by WELS. A current loud and proud atheist defended Church Growth while being a WELS pastor, but that does not matter. He defended their Helen of Troy, which happens to be everyone's Helen of Troy - Church Growth. Ditto with Richard Jungkuntz, who was kicked out of WELS for being a liberal on the Scriptures. He was ultra-UOJ, which makes him ultra-cool. The only PhDs in WELS at the time were both kicked out for being liberal on the Scriptures. Jungkuntz joined the LCMS and became a seminary professor and theologian for them. But no matter, he was UOJ! He was caught up in the Jack Preus revolution and joined The ALC as a college professor. But no matter, his essay stays in the WELS Holy of Holies because of UOJ.

For Missouri, UOJ is correct because they voted for the Brief Statement of 1932, which they largely ignore. And yet they rest their confidence on the UOJ in that convention document, the early (but not late) statements of Robert Preus, and the sacred exclamations of David Scaer, whose doctrine resembles Tourette's more than the Book of Concord.

Heiser made vesting in the LCMS pension plan more important than leaving Holy Mother Synod. He supposedly rejected UOJ once he found out what it was - in 2000 - but look at how many years passed before that was even mentioned, let along rejected by ELDONA.

 Packing them in at an ELDONA conference.