Draft of WELS Convention Summary. "I Can Be Funny Too. Not Just Ichabod" (M.S.)

 "Puh - lease find a better photo, OK? Maybe a long lens, a filter, and some Photoshop work."

WELS convention lowlights

2019/08/20/in Together

Delegates to the 65th biennial synod convention, held at Martin Luther College in New Ulm, Minn., three weeks ago, have much to remember - more to forget - and to share with others as they return to their shrinking home congregations. They are fewer but better WELS members, as Ninotcha said.

Illustrating how our worldwide fellowship of confessional Lutherans continues to grow smaller and meaner, our synod had the privilege of declaring fellowship with two overseas Lutheran church bodies. The Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ—Kenya is a relatively new Lutheran church body that is united with WELS in doctrine and practice, Objective Justification and Extending the Left Foot of Fellowship. The Christian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Taiwan had its origin as a WELS mission in 1968 and has since become an independent church body. The convention formally declared fellowship with both Lutheran churches; delegates cast their unanimous votes with a standing ovation for me.

The convention approved the synod’s two-year ministry financial plan recommended by the Synodical Council. No changes were made to the plan that was proposed, because disagreeing with us is a fellowship issue. This plan outlines the financial support that will be provided to all areas of ministry for the next two years, excluding lawsuits we never discuss.

Numerous changes to the synod’s bylaws were approved. Most of these changes involved bringing more consistency to the length of terms on various boards and committees. Nearly all positions are now four-year terms, with a person able to succeed himself twice.

Twenty toothless memorials (requests for convention action) were acted upon by the convention via hand-picked floor committee reports and edited resolutions.

Director of the WELS Commission on Congregational Counseling Rev. Jon Hein’s keynote presentation provided an honest but scary evaluation of membership trends and the challenges posed by a changing culture and the triumph of NIV/OJ. He outlined the synod’s plans to address these challenges making use of the sociological studies and committing all results to the hands of Fuller Seminary, Willowcreek, and Trinity Divinity. [See if anyone notices my little joke.]

After hearing reports from all areas of the synod’s missions and ministries, many delegates commented that for the first time they had a real picture of the scope and nature of the many things we are doing together as a synod. And they are panicked! They expressed an eagerness to return home to share what they had learned with their therapists, bartenders, and beauticians.

Rev. Joel Voss was re-elected as the synod second vice president. He promised to read a book this year! And I made sure I was blessed and honored to be elected to serve another term as synod president.

The convention was another opportunity for WELS to acknowledge the amazing grace of God as he works through us to proclaim the gospel now and, as the convention theme stated, “for maybe one more generation to come.”

Serving in Christ,
President Mirthful Mark Schroeder

Access all synod convention news and materials at http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com

Just kidding. I never read it.

Take the Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down Test

 Scholars are divided about the origin, words, and meaning of the song.

At the Midland church, the kids sang and fell down for this song, all the time. The refrain is so descriptive of mainline churches, including all the Lutherans. Here is the test -

Ashes Ashes We All Fall Down 

1. The seminary is old but going downhill fast in enrollment.
2. The school may be in name only, because the total enrollment is 1, 2, or even 0 students.
3. The faculty members are not scholars faithful to the Word, but safe teachers who will indoctrinate the students in worshiping the denomination.
4. The early history of the school is forgotten or ignored, because a few people with very little money taught the basics of their denomination's doctrine.
5. The seminary now teaches the opposite of what the early professors taught - not only in the ELCA - but also in the LCMS and WELS.
6. Enormous sums of money have been spent to remodel the buildings, but the students are expected to pile on debt to keep the seminary going.
7. The school is selling off assets, including the main campus, to keep going.
8. The school teaches Church Growth and universal salvation.
9. Scandals and crimes are covered up, but dissent from the new radical dogma is treated as a scandalous felony.

 10. When the Invasion of the Body Snatchers reminds you of your own synod.

Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down - The Fate of the Mainline Denominations - Including ELCA, WELS, LCMS, ELS, CLC (sic), ELDONA

The baby of the family loves to laugh and entertain others.

The Leman Birth Order Book is significant because personalities affect what happens in various institutions. Domineering first-born males tend to get a lot done, but the ultimate effect is not always good. One long-term General Motors worker said that type of leader ruined his company.

In church politics, that has meant leaders - if thwarted by opposition - who would retaliate by punishing anyone who questioned them, especially those who endangered their imagined infallibility.

AKA - the Untouchables.  Make missions flakier than ever before - No problem! Teach Calvinism at the seminary - No problem! Publish debates with the Holy Spirit - No problem! Promote Church Growth disasters - No problem! Copy and paste from Fuller - No problem! Kick the mother church out and steal it back - No problem!

Real leaders want able cohorts who work with integrity. Second-rate leaders need third-rate lackeys who will do anything to remain in their protected jobs (sinecures).

The trouble with the Scriptures as the ruling norm? - the Word displaces the infallibility of the leaders. That is intolerable to them, so citing the Word (unless distorted their way) is a sin.

The Second Reformation - The Deformation

Readers, you have witnessed the Second Reformation - which will be known by a better word - The Deformation.

The Deformation began with the Great Depression. Savvy leaders used the financial crisis (caused by the gubmint and the Fed) to blame the Christian Church. The Christian Church was too passive when it should have been involved in changing and improving society.

The secretive and very influential Brotherhood of the Kingdom, 1892 (Rauschenbusch) leveraged their initial success and began making the old, mainline denominations see social activism as the real mission of the Church. Rochester Seminary made Rauschenbusch a true, rationalistic liberal - and he taught there later. Rauschenbusch rejected all the traditional Christian doctrines, so he is very much honored today as a saint in the Episcopal calendar.

They named their Deformation -  The Social Gospel Movement. As readers will see, it shared many similar elements with the Church Growth Movement of the future (aka The Death Rattle):

• Anti-inerrancy.
• Rejecting the basic Christian articles of faith.
• Advocating universal salvation because of the grace of God. Faith cannot be a contingency, or grace is not universal. Yes, that sounds just like the pinheads in Objective Justification.
• Loving the new, scientific study of the Bible (historical-critical method).
• Undermining the canon by rejecting the traditional text of the Bible and steadily erasing verses and sections of the New Testament.
• The Quest for the Historical Jesus (and they have yet to find Him).
• Spending offering money on government lobbying, passing laws to make America socialist - and it worked.
• Unity comes from sharing the agenda of the group - the rest be damned.

All the accomplishments of the Brotherhood, and its sterile offspring - The Social Gospel Movement - are taken for granted in the big churches today. The agenda is far more Left-wing and kinky, but the foundation is the same.

How Is Church Growth Another Version?

Fuller Seminary was founded to teach a weakened version of inerrancy, which is really the errancy of the Bible. The Scriptures are only correct in doctrine, not in history and geography. If only the Holy Spirit knew as much as those hair-splitting, thimble-rigging fraudsters.

Every denomination and seminary has adopted this Church Growth Movement. What does that say about the quality of the content and the ethics of those leaders? Donald McGavran, a liberal in a Left-wing denomination (Disciples), gave it a clever name. It is a brand, a tattoo, a meme, all rolled into one blob.

One Church Growth idea was to use the congregations to support Planned Parenthood.

Once the Growthers began criticized for being too inward, they began advocating social activism (as if infanticide was not enough). The last gasp of Pietism has always been rationalistic social activism. Look at Oberlin, for whom Oberlin College is named. He gave sermons on getting inoculated and building bridges.

The Deformation's Goals

1. Once women's ordination is added to the Ten Commandments, work toward LBGTQ+ ordination.
2. Refuse to discuss any Bible using the traditional text (King James and modernized editions of the KJV).
3. Work on religious projects with all denominations, the move to all religions.
4. Protect dangerous, drunken incompetents and slime critics.
5. Grab the big bucks for the leaders' salaries and benefits, let the missions and little churches starve.
6. Make everyone forget the faithful leaders of the past.

WELS kicked Gausewitz under the bus so they could teach Objective Justification to all the children, using Luther's Catechism. They read the Parable of the Unrighteous Steward wrong. They should emulate his zeal, not his dishonesty.