WELS - Will My Grandchildren Have a Place To Worship the Synod?

 Together, they destroyed more congregations than the Chicago Fire, but they made a lot of money doing it. Give them that much.

The WELS money-grubbing letter from Jonathan Hein is a hoot, to paraphrase Steve Spencer. Ever since the sect embraced the Church Shrinkage Movement (now called Attritional), they have lost members faster than Sears has lost customers. What have they done in response? The sect has pumped up the volume of praise bands, pipe organ bashing, sermonless rants, and munchies during the sneaker service (imitating that prince of a man, Hybels, Willow Creek).

 Mirthless Mark Schroeder went to Appleton to bail out Ski, as Engelbrecht bragged in writing. However, I was the cause of all the troubles in the Anything Goes District. Did I write and post the infamous Ski sermon? Ha.

Let us pause to consider the pastoral care offered by Glende and Ski at St. Peter in Freedom, Wisconsin. When a long-standing member challenged them correctly about their plagiarized sermons, the DP backed up the Booze Brothers and Glende/Ski excommunicated the member. Open the back door - extend the Left Foot of Fellowship.

They were so full of themselves and the suds that they drove one staff member after another away - one pastor after a few months, Bishop Katy, and then the woman whose husband they sued four ways from Sunday. That was Glende's genius in Illinois, bullying members so he could get what he wanted. That is another WELS congregation closed instead of serving a university population. No one will say that, because the Boy Wonder is Brug's nephew.

That is just a microcosm of the abusive sect. The slander tossed at the Kavanaugh family now is a nice sample of what WELS clergy, DPs, and SP do when crossed. Do you think the evil lies against the judge are bad? WELS does the same to their workers, the families of the workers, and even the extended families. But it all depends, of course. If someone is from the right family, he can do no wrong and gets another call. If he knows the right people, the same is true. But the vast majority are treated like plantation slaves and cringe at the voice of the DP.

 Katy Perry lights the dreams of the Booze Brothers.

The WELS Tetzel says it is up to the congregations to increase in size. Pardon me while I reach for my oxygen hose. Laughing this hard makes my lips turn blue. This wonderful solution comes from the sect that has:

1. Abandoned and repudiated Justification by Faith.
2. Promoted the evil, false NIV on its members and publications.
3. Choked the traditional liturgy to death.
4. Mocked the Book of Concord while devilishly posing as Quia Marias in public.
5. Allowed the Mark Jeske Crime Family to run the synod without being elected, skimming money from all the funds to lubricate their ELCA-centric agenda. 
6. Welcomed the Odd Couple Ministry of Starr, Barefoot, and the Boys in the Band.
7. Driven away faithful members and workers.
8. Absolved felons (murder, child sex trafficking, love letters to children).
9. Wasted money at Fuller Seminary, Trinity Divinity, and Willow Creek.
10. Squandered the Schwan money, just as furiously as the MilCraft estate was ruined (which was the estate's fault, doncha know).
11. Looked the other way when all the clergy and teachers were being trained that the only path to success was in following the anti-Lutheran, feminist, mainline growth hives. Management by Objectives - that is the cure - not the efficacious Word in the Means of Grace.
12. Pretended to be awash in the Gospel when really legalistic, self-centered bullies of the worst kind, even when sober.

Jonathan Hein: "Open the front door and shut the back door." 

I am helpless with laughter. When I confronted DP Bob Mueller about his anti-Scriptural reign, he said angrily, "If you don't like it, leave." The solution in WELS is never to face their failure to follow the Scriptures and Confessions. No, "in our circles, orthodoxy means whatever we say it means." When they say "Write a letter," they mean, "Please take the first step in being excommuncated."

 Sadler - his graphic. Belch.
Alcoholism is a career enhancer in WELS.

"We have a program."

Has anyone heard that before? The Babtists always have a program of sanctification. This is going to cost a lot of money, I am sure.

"This is not about WELS. This is about souls."

They were soooo concerned, they let a healthy congregation in Illinois be ruined by Tim Glende, and he urged everyone to close the parish after he abandoned it - so everyone could forget.

"We need your prayers, your service, and your moolah."

WELS had the biggest charitable gift ever, the Schwan Foundation, gushing all kinds of money. The bosses hired their buddies and doubled the staff at the Love Shack. They spent money like Congressmen and the results were even worse.

The WELS executives get the highest salaries and benefits, doing the least work in the Means of Grace.

Mordor in Mequon does not have a single Lutheran professor.

 Martin Luther College - looking for a few good men, cuz
"We make a good man better."

Martin Luther College is openly LBTQ, but shhh, do not tell anyone. They have to be, to get their gubmint money. It too is failing, shrinking, but still staggeringly expensive.

 WELS/ELS could not get enough of this genius.
They love adulterous false teachers.

More Emergent Congregations in WELS - Denying the Name, Denying the Faith

From Brett Meyer -

Latest post - Ichabod and WELS Documented.

Missing from the WELS church list are these two emergent churches:

http://www.carbonchurch.com/

OUR STORY

CVL is a new church plant located in Carbon Valley (Firestone, Frederick, & Dacono).  Why Carbon Valley?  Our goal is to bring the saving message of Jesus to our vibrant, growing, new community.  Everyone is from somewhere, and many are without a local church to be strengthened in God's Word.  Our Mission at CVL is:  Loving Christ (Worship)...Learning from God's Word (Grow)...and Living for our Community (Serve).  Formal worship begins September 13th, 2015.  For now we continue to meet in homes as we organize and encourage one another.  For the most up to date information, sign up for our "Carbon Connection," email Pastor Tim at pastor@carbonchurch.com, or text Pastor Tim at 720.833.8873.

"I will put my Spirit in you and you will live."  Ezekiel 37:14

http://www.eternalrock.org/

Eternal Rock  is a collection of families and singles who live in the Castle Rock, Parker, and Larkspur areas.  We have one goal.  We want a church that seeks to follow Jesus and live his love.   We feel the best way to do that is take our faith to the streets and grow in our faith through Bible Study and Worship.  

We are about 80 adults strong right now and meet every Sunday for worship and during the week for Bible study.  Our first monthly service was in  May of 2011 and weekly church  started September 11, 2011 at the Castle Rock Middle school (2575 Meadows Pkwy, Castle Rock).  Do you want to know more or would you like to be part of our efforts?   Email Pastor Oldenburg here.  

ETERNAL ROCK--Our name comes from the Bible in Isaiah 26:4. It says, "Trust in the LORD always for the LORD GOD is the eternal Rock."  (NLT)

The OWLs are asking,
"Who? Who? Who? Who?"

Google Tells the Truth When Shrinkers Deceive

bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Classic Ichabod - Randy Hunter - Whose Latte Churc...":

Church Growth Outfits Unmasked by Google's Algorithms:

Usually the church growthers are so vague about doctrine that they even leave the word Lutheran off their church sign, and also off of any prominent spot on their website, especially the html title of the page. Often they'll just have a graphic with the word Lutheran in the hopes that the word Lutheran doesn't end up in the search results.




However, Google unmasks the church growers because in its search results, it inserts what it feels is a descriptive title, plus a relevant snippet under the title. Thus, if you go to Randy Hunter's site, it just says "St. Andrew" for the title of the page but in the Google results for: St. Andrew Middleton, it inserts the word Lutheran right in the title, and over on the right side, too, where it gives a map. In FireFox, the browser gives the site title in a bar at the top, but in Chrome the title is in the tab. One can hover over the tab to see the entire title. Anyway, church searchers don't need to sniff around Hunter's site to find out it's Lutheran since they'll know right away:

Google: st. andrew middleton

http://www.st-andrew-online.org/

Website of the defunct St. Andrew Waunakee Campus, probably because Google exposed it:

http://web.archive.org/web/20110807124013/http://www.st-andrew-online.org/Waunakee.aspx

Google explains how it unmasks the church growthers:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35624

Google's Rich Snippets:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170

Google unmasks web farms, too:
http://searchengineland.com/the-penguin-update-googles-webspam-algorithm-gets-official-name-119623

ChurchMouse on Becoming Missional

ChurchMouse relaxes.

churchmousec (http://churchmousec.wordpress.com/) has left a new comment on your post "The New Legalism: Missional, Radical, Narcissistic...":

Thank you, Dr Jackson, for this timely post. I shall be borrowing from it in the days to come.

This is an excellent summary of what Christianity faces today in the West. It also answers several questions of mine, as I observe from across the pond.

I am very happy that David Platt was mentioned. (I've always had my suspicions ...) He gets a lot of mistakenly positive traction on Protestant blogs written by those in their twenties and thirties.

Thank you also for citing the Aquila Report (one of the most popular Calvinist news/opinion sites in the US ;) ).

May God continue to bless you and yours.

Churchmouse

***

GJ - You are welcome. The article was impressive in its detail and discernment.

This becoming missional fanaticism is the new law on Mt. Sinai, without the benefit of God's inspiration. I saw it in the Church Growthism in WELS in Columbus, Ohio, and it worse in Fox Valley, Wisconsin.

I will link that Aquila Report and catch up on the news there.

PS - I just read some of the report about Wesley's marriage - another great article.

The New Legalism: Missional, Radical, Narcissistic, and Shamed

Missional cat has worked hard today.

The New Legalism: Missional, Radical, Narcissistic, and Shamed:

The New Legalism: Missional, Radical, Narcissistic, and Shamed

Being a “radical,” “missional,” Christian is slowly becoming the “new legalism”

Written by Anthony Bradley | Friday, May 3, 2013

23

Missional, radical Christianity could easily be called “the new legalism.” A few decades ago, an entire generation of Baby Boomers walked away from traditional churches to escape the legalistic moralism of “being good” but what their Millennial children received in exchange, in an individualistic American Christian culture, was shamed-driven pressure to be awesome and extraordinary young adults expected to tangibly make a difference in the world immediately. But this cycle of reaction and counter-reaction inaugurated by the Baby Boomers does not seem to be producing faithful youth adults. Instead, many are simply burning out.

A few days ago on Facebook and Twitter I made the following observation:

Being a “radical,” “missional,” Christian is slowly becoming the “new legalism.” We need more ordinary God and people lovers (Matt 22:36-40).

This observation was the result of long conversation with a student who was wrestling with what to do with his life given all of the opportunities he had available to him. To my surprise, my comment exploded over the internet with dozens and dozens of people sharing the comment and sending me personal correspondence.

I continue to amazed by the number of youth and youth adults who are stressed and burnt out from the regularly shaming and feelings of inadequacy if they happen to not being doing something unique and special. Today’s Millennial generation is being fed the message that if they don’t do something extraordinary in this life they are wasting their gifts and potential. The sad result is that many young adults feel ashamed if they “settle” into ordinary jobs, get married early and start families, live in small towns, or as 1 Thess 4:11 says, “aspire to live quietly, and to mind [their] affairs, and to work with [their] hands.” For too many Millennials their greatest fear in this life is being an ordinary person with a non-glamorous job, living in the suburbs, and having nothing spectacular to boast about.

Here are a few thoughts on how we got here:

(1) Anti-Suburban Christianity. In the 1970s and 1980s the children and older grandchildren of the Builder generation (born 1901 between 1920) sorted themselves and headed to the suburbs to raise their children in safety, comfort, and material ease. And, taking a cue from the Baby Boomer parents (born between 1946 and 1964) to despise the contexts that provided them advantages, Millennials (born between 1977 and 1995) now have a disdain for America’s suburbs. This despising of suburban life has been inadvertently encouraged by well-intentioned religious leaders inviting people to move to neglected cities to make a difference, because, after all, the Apostle Paul did his work primarily in cities, cities are important, and cities are the final destination of the Kingdom of God. They were told that God loves cities and they should too. The unfortunate message became that you cannot live a meaningful Christian life in the suburbs.

(2) Missional Narcissism. There are many churches that are committed to being what is called missional. This term is used to describe a church community where people see themselves as missionaries in local communities. A missional church has been defined, as “a theologically-formed, Gospel-centered, Spirit-empowered, united community of believers who seek to faithfully incarnate the purposes of Christ for the glory of God,” says Scott Thomas on the Acts 29 Network. The problem is that this push for local missionaries coincided with the narcissism epidemic we are facing in America, especially with the Millennial generation. As a result, living out one’s faith became narrowly celebratory only when done in a unique and special way, a “missional” way. Getting married and having children early, getting a job, saving and investing, being a good citizen, loving one’s neighbor, and the like, no longer qualify as virtuous. One has to be involved in arts and social justice activities—even if justice is pursued without sound economics or social teaching. I actually know of a couple who were being so “missional” that they decided to not procreate for the sake of taking care of orphans.

To make matters worse, some religious leaders have added a new category to Christianity called “radical Christianity” in an effort to trade-off suburban Christianity for mission. This movement is based on a book by David Platt and is fashioned around “an idea that we were created for far more than a nice, comfortable Christian spin on the American dream. An idea that we were created to follow One who demands radical risk and promises radical reward.” Again, this was a well-intentioned attempt to address lukewarm Christians in the suburbs but because it is primarily reactionary, and does provide a positive construction for the good life from God’s perspective and, it misses “radical” ideas in Jesus own teachings like “love.”

The combination of anti-suburbanism with new categories like “missional” and “radical” has positioned a generation of youth and young adults to experience an intense amount of shame for simply being ordinary Christians who desire to love God and love their neighbors (Matt 22:36-40). In fact, missional, radical Christianity could easily be called “the new legalism.” A few decades ago, an entire generation of Baby Boomers walked away from traditional churches to escape the legalistic moralism of “being good” but what their Millennial children received in exchange, in an individualistic American Christian culture, was shamed-driven pressure to be awesome and extraordinary young adults expected to tangibly make a difference in the world immediately. But this cycle of reaction and counter-reaction inaugurated by the Baby Boomers does not seem to be producing faithful youth adults. Instead, many are simply burning out.

Why Christ’s command to love God and neighbor not enough for these leaders? Maybe Christians are simply to pursue living well and invite others to do so according to how God has ordered the universe. An emphasis on human flourishing, ours and others, becomes important because it characterizes by a holistic concern for the spiritual, moral, physical, economic, material, political, psychological, and social context necessary for human beings to live according to their design. What if youth and youth adults were simply encouraged live in pursuit of wisdom, knowledge, understanding, education, wonder, beauty, glory, creativity, and worship in a world marred by sin, as Abraham Kuyper encourages in the book Wisdom and Wonder. No shame, no pressure to be awesome, no expectations of fame but simply following the call to be men and women of virtue and inviting their friends and neighbors to do the same in every area of life.

It is unclear how Millennials will respond to the “new legalism” but it may explain the trend of young Christians leaving the church after age 15 currently at a rate of 60 percent. Being a Christian in a shame-driven “missional,” “radical” church does not sound like rest for the weary. Perhaps the best antidote to these pendulum swings and fads is simply to recover a mature understanding of vocation so that youth and youth adults understand that they can make important contributions to human flourishing in any sphere of life because there are no little people or insignificant callings in the Kingdom.

Anthony Bradley is an Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at The King’s College, NYC. This commentary is taken from the Acton Institute Power blog and is used with permission.

'via Blog this'

Fuller and Missional Questions from 29a

Be sure to read about Fuller Seminary here.

Becoming Missional is a Good Thing. The old ways are bad, so the goal is BM.

Becoming Missional is a blog to read to find what is hotter than Georgia asphalt in BM-land.

BMs are considered good for the visible church, because everyone is afraid of their church dying. That is why WELS Pastor Tim Glende plagiarizes Groeschel each week.

BMs can be identified by their sloppy clothes in church, their spikey hair, their hatred of the liturgy and the confessions.

BM heroes are Ed Stetzer, Andy Stanley, Mark Driscoll, and Leonard Sweet. There are more. They all have that crazed, just-met-Buddha-on-my-way-down-the-mountain look.

I would ask Don Patterson about the best BMs in his experience. He took a bunch of church workers to the Exponential Conference in Orlando. That would be the best collection of BMs in one place.

Steljes went there and got his spikey hair-do after that. I was going to do a Photoshop before and after, but there is a captivating show on QVC I would rather watch.

---





















Ed Stetzer - Ed has planted churches in New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia and transitioned declining churches in Indiana and Georgia. He has trained pastors and church planters on five continents, and holds two masters degrees and two doctorates. He has written dozens of articles and books, including Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age, Perimeters of Light: Biblical Boundaries for the Emerging Church (with Elmer Towns), Strategic Outreach (with David Putman), Planting Missional Churches, Comeback Churches, and most recently Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the Churches that Reach Them (with Richie Stanley and Jason Hayes). Ed served for three years as a seminary professor at the Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky and has taught as (sic) fifteen other seminaries. He is currently the President ofLifeway Research and Lifeway's Missiologist in Residence.

Plagiarism and the Emerging Church, Becoming Missional? What A Shock!

The current heroes of Lutherdom are featured on this graphic. Missing are: Josh McDowell, Waldo Werning, Kent Hunter, Robert Schuller, and a few others.

MacArthur: The Emergent Church is a Form of Paganism

Paul Edwards (On Crosswalk.com - oddly enough)

"The Paul Edwards Program," WLQV Detroit

Paul Edwards, host of “The Paul Edwards Program” on WLQV in Detroit, interviewed pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church John MacArthur about the emerging church movement in America. Paul begins the interview by asking Pastor John to respond to a radio interview with prominent emerging church leader Doug Pagitt. In the clip from October 22, 2007, Pagitt denied that there is a place of eternal conscious torment for persons who die apart from faith in Jesus Christ.
Paul Edwards: Help me with this—the emerging church prides itself on conversation, having a conversation, so let’s have a conversation. How can you have a conversation with someone, when you’re not even speaking the same language?

John MacArthur: Let me just cut to the chase on this one: [Doug] Pagitt is a Universalist. What he was saying is real simple. He was saying when you die your spirit goes to God and judgment means that whatever was not right about you, whatever was bad about you, whatever was substantially lacking about you, gets all resolved. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Buddhist, a Hindu or a Muslim—doesn’t matter whether you’re a Christian really; we’re all going to end up in this wonderful, warm and fuzzy relationship with God. That’s just classic universalism.

I think you know it’s most helpful, Paul, to go back and kind of recast how we view these people. He’s not a pastor; he’s not a Christian; that’s not a church. When you call yourself a Christian and you call yourself a pastor and you say you have a church, all of that has to be—to be legitimate—defined biblically. And if it’s not, that’s not a church and you’re not a pastor and you’re not even a Christian.

What you have here is a form of false religion … A form of paganism that basically wants to be thought of as Christian because it gains a certain ground. But the underlying bottom line of this whole emerging movement is they don’t believe in any doctrine, they don’t believe in any theology. They don’t want to be forced to interpret anything in scripture a certain way and the out is, “Well the Bible isn’t clear anyway.” In other words, we don’t know what it means; we can’t know what it means.

Brian McLaren says nobody has ever gotten it right—we haven’t got it right now—so let’s not make an issue out of anything. Let’s just be open to everything. Let’s not take a position on theology, or for that matter, on morality or behavior because, hey, there’s no judgment anyway so we’re all going to end up in God in some ethereal, eternal relationship. And that’s just non-Christian. It is blatantly, flagrantly non-Christian. It’s as non-Christian as any false religion.

Edwards: [When “Emergents” and many seeker-sensitive church advocates say “We do church a certain way,”] it seems to me that they do it by totally ignoring the book of Acts and the Epistles.

MacArthur: I’m going to seem anachronistic if not an outright dinosaur at this point. I believe the church has one function, and that is to guard the truth, to proclaim the truth and to live the truth. So you take the Word of God, you teach it, you proclaim it, you protect it, you defend it, and you live it, and that’s a church. The Word of God rightly divided, rightly understood.

That’s not the idea in a seeker church; that’s not the idea certainly in an emerging church. Everything becomes style and contextualization and everything is built around the manipulation of people’s hot buttons as if we were selling a product like any other product in our culture. This fails to understand that the only real power in the spiritual realm is Divine and that God works His power through His truth, and that’s all that matters.

I think the illusion of success is created by crowds. You’ve probably heard recently that Bill Hybels, who is the guru of the seeker movement, has openly confessed that they did a big survey and found they’ve been doing it wrong.

Edwards: “We made a mistake,” he said.

MacArthur: Yes, we made a mistake. And so, the solution is—one of the lines in the statement was—we gotta get a blank piece of paper and start all over again. That’s exactly the problem. Why do you want a blank piece of paper when you have all kinds of paper full with the Word of God?

Edwards: Right.

MacArthur: If you want a biblical mandate and you want to do ministry biblically, you teach and preach the Word. I don’t think it matters whether you have smoke and mirrors. I don’t think it matters whether you wear a tie, or don’t wear a tie, whether you wear a black T-shirt and holes in your knees or a blue suit. (I think there are reasons to go with the suit rather the grunge approach—of dignity, respect, sober mindedness, seriousness, loftiness, etc, etc.)

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that we proclaim the Word of God. Look, I’ve been doing this for so long, and I haven’t changed anything. Contexts come, contexts go; fads come, fads go; styles come, styles go. I just keep doing the same thing. We show up on Sunday morning, we sing a little bit, we pray, we open the Word of God and explain His meaning to the people. The people just keep coming and coming and what I say goes around the world, on radio, and then it gets transferred into 50 languages and books and commentaries because [the Word] knows no boundaries. It knows no cultural restraint, because the Word of God is transcendent.

Edwards: One of the things I get most frustrated about is whenever people like you who are standing for truth point out the error both in the emergent church and in the seeker movement people will immediately run to 1 Corinthians 9 and begin screaming, “You know Paul said, ‘I became all things to all men,’ which means to the grunge I become as grunge, to the Universalist I become as a Universalist.” But in 1 Corinthians 9 Paul isn’t saying that we compromise the message and we become whatever the audience needs us to be in order to make the gospel palatable.

MacArthur: Well, of course not. All he is saying is there’s a foundation in the proclamation of the gospel with the Jew and there’s a different starting point with the Gentile. If I’m going to evangelize a Jew, I’m going to start with the Old Testament because that’s the substantial basis. So every time the Apostle Paul preached to the Jews he started with the Scripture—the Old Testament Scripture. Every time he evangelized Gentiles he started with creation. For example, in Acts 14 and Acts 17 he talks about the unknown God. Who is the unknown God? He’s the God who made everything—that was the foundation.

All he is saying in 1 Corinthians 9 is you must understand the starting point of your audience and here’s the point: ideologically. In other words, how do they think ideologically, philosophically, religiously? What are the ideas, the theories, the viewpoints that they hold? It’s not about identifying with their lifestyle; it’s not about being able to converse about every episode of South Park, every R-rated movie and every Rap song—that’s not it at all.

How do people think religiously, how do they perceive truth?—those are the starting points that Paul was establishing. That’s a far cry from saying that to reach this generation we must do their music, we must dress the way they dress, we must live the way they live, we must be familiar with the baser components of their culture. That’s a million miles from what the Apostle Paul had in mind. He was talking about those things that controlled their thought process and their worldview.

Paul Edwards: Help me with this—the emerging church prides itself on conversation, having a conversation, so let’s have a conversation. How can you have a conversation with someone, when you’re not even speaking the same language?

John MacArthur: Let me just cut to the chase on this one: [Doug] Pagitt is a Universalist. What he was saying is real simple. He was saying when you die your spirit goes to God and judgment means that whatever was not right about you, whatever was bad about you, whatever was substantially lacking about you, gets all resolved. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Buddhist, a Hindu or a Muslim—doesn’t matter whether you’re a Christian really; we’re all going to end up in this wonderful, warm and fuzzy relationship with God. That’s just classic universalism.

I think you know it’s most helpful, Paul, to go back and kind of recast how we view these people. He’s not a pastor; he’s not a Christian; that’s not a church. When you call yourself a Christian and you call yourself a pastor and you say you have a church, all of that has to be—to be legitimate—defined biblically. And if it’s not, that’s not a church and you’re not a pastor and you’re not even a Christian.

What you have here is a form of false religion … A form of paganism that basically wants to be thought of as Christian because it gains a certain ground. But the underlying bottom line of this whole emerging movement is they don’t believe in any doctrine, they don’t believe in any theology. They don’t want to be forced to interpret anything in scripture a certain way and the out is, “Well the Bible isn’t clear anyway.” In other words, we don’t know what it means; we can’t know what it means.

Brian McLaren says nobody has ever gotten it right—we haven’t got it right now—so let’s not make an issue out of anything. Let’s just be open to everything. Let’s not take a position on theology, or for that matter, on morality or behavior because, hey, there’s no judgment anyway so we’re all going to end up in God in some ethereal, eternal relationship. And that’s just non-Christian. It is blatantly, flagrantly non-Christian. It’s as non-Christian as any false religion.

Edwards: [When “Emergents” and many seeker-sensitive church advocates say “We do church a certain way,”] it seems to me that they do it by totally ignoring the book of Acts and the Epistles.


Paul Edwards is the host of The Paul Edwards Program, a columnist and pastor. His program is heard daily on WLQV in Detroit and on godandculture.com. Contact him at paul@godandculture.com.

***

GJ - I want to steal a march on Brett Meyer and post the obvious - Universal Objective Justification is an ideal doctrinal partner with Church Growth and implicit Universalism.

One WELS DP denied to me that WELS has ever taught Universalism, but I mentioned the "evangelism" campaign with posters that read, for all the world to see, "You are saved, just like me." Everyone is saved = Universalism.

Everyone is forgiven, without the World, without the Means of Grace, without faith - that is the UOJ message and the basic content of Universalism.

Teaching grace (forgiveness) apart from the Means of Grace is Enthusiasm.

The WELS, Missouri, and ELS leaders cannot defeat the Schwaermer Shrinkers because they are also Enthusiasts, as long as they cling to UOJ.

Schwaermer Input Equals Schwaermer Output

Youth Trip.

Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Clueless Times Two":

I thought they were marketing to an older age group. Sure sign of shoddy evangelism when what should be good solid Christian demographic marketing of the gospel actually brings in the wrong target group. Equally appalling, and likely to come as a complete shock, is that they may not be prepared to speak in the language of 12 year olds today. The gospel given in the language of today's 25 year olds would never be understood. What's a Methodist Baptist Universalist Lutheran to do?

That "language of today" position was actually presented by WELS Pastor Jared Oldenburg (Mission pastor to Covington, Wa.) in a church news letter titled, "Multicultural Urban Missionary?" May, 2005. He had just returned from a two day Leadership Seminar in Milwaukee that featured speaker Dr. Reggie McNeal (Baptist Church Growth disciple and Fuller Seminary instructor). Quote, "I can't explain the whole two days in 400 words, but it comes down to this: Generations are different and to connect you almost need to speak a different language. Different generations have different ideas, they have different ways of communicating, different job choices and sometimes even different core values. There is no doubt that the seriousness of sin and the wonder of Jesus dying for us is necessary for every generation. However, if we try to communicate this wonderful message in the language of a different generation, we may not be communicating at all. Obviously this is a scary thing - but with the Lord's help we will have the courage to learn the language of every generation in our multicultural ministry."

Pastor Oldenburg was also active in having his new mission congregation create new creeds and using Lyle Schaller and Herb Miller's The Parish Paper articles in directing church efforts. One such presentation to the church elders was, "Recovering Inactive Members" (June 2002) which began, "I'm glad we're getting a new pastor," she said. "Yes," her friend replied. "Maybe she can get some of our inactive members to come back."....... The article goes on to point out 20 reasons people drop out of church and how to respond - none of which dealt with using God's Word.


Reggie McNeal is another Fuller Seminary gasbag.

***

GJ - Lyle Schaller (another leader I met and spoke with) has some interesting ideas never mentioned by Church Growth feminists. He is a liberal and says so. He also pointed out that every church position occupied by a woman will never be taken by a man again. It becomes a woman's position and no man will take it. Notice the WELS churches with council secretaries who are women. Wait for a man to take the position. Ditto Sunday School superintendent or children's sermon speaker (a woman at St. Mark Depere). The old fuddy-duddy position of WELS forced men to do the spiritual work and kept more men coming to church. Feminist churches quickly become all-women churches. One woman talked about this with my wife. Her church had a woman pastor and an all-woman council. Hardly any men attended. Mrs. Ichabod said, "How do you like that?" The woman, after bragging a bit, said, "I miss them."

People can flip all the rules around but human behavior remains the same. A girl will ride a boy's bike, but a boy will not ride a girl's bike more than once. His friends will see to that.


Church and Change favors Lyle Schaller over John Schaller. Grace in Milwaukee used to have John: now they have Lyle.

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dk has left a new comment on your post "Schwaermer Input Equals Schwaermer Output":

That Hideous Strength
A quote Reggie McNeal quote cited by Brett:
“Different generations have different ideas, they have different ways of communicating, different job choices and sometimes even different core values.”

This lie is spread by Educators everywhere, who indoctrinate their pupils to think that humanity can reinvent itself every twenty years. If this statement were true we would not be able to understand “The Epic of Gilgamesh” and other ancient literature, not to mention The Holy Scriptures, since we're so far removed from ancient culture.
McNeal is just one more liar fooling around with language for his own purposes.

Quick book review: I cannot recommend C.S. Lewis’ theology, but Lewis is very observant about language problems of our modern age. In his fictional story “That Hideous Strength”, which I highly recommend, (A great metaphor for the current WELS problems) Lewis shows how the manipulation of language is used and why manipulation of language is so powerful.

For the folks on the fence—the ones who are disturbed by the liberalism in the WELS but yet are unsure of who to listen to—“That Hideous Strength” would be a good choice. Lewis’ characters are understandable; we find them thinking and reacting the way we have thought or reacted. We see real tension and real inner introspection happening in the characters that compare quite easily to our own experiences. Lewis vividly and accurately depicts how groups of people work—and how people work groups.

It’s not theology; it’s very readable. (not to say that theology is unreadable) It is a great analysis of the modus operendi (sic) of Pastor Kelm, and the other heads in the basement of 2929 N. Mayfair.

Thirty Years of Fuller Training For LCMS--->Stetzer Worship

Stetzer-Vision. Why is anyone listening to a Babtist without a pulpit?

Welcome to Missional Journey

...thoughts on Missional churches, missional people and how a church planting movement might be fostered in the Texas District, LCMS.

Some have been gleaned from others who are writing, speaking and living with church planting everyday. Some are my own thoughts from my own experience with church planters and missional churches. Your comments and reactions are welcomed.

God's Blessings as you continue on your own missional journey.
Paul Krentz
Mission Facilitator
Texas District, LCMS

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Facilitating Church Planting Movements #4 - Factors for Higher Attendance in new church plants
Stetzer has done significant research into factors that contribute to higher attendance in new church plants. Here is what he found

Factors for Higher Attendance

• Meet in a school for first year
• Meet in a school or theater in subsequent years
• Conduct special children's' events (e.g. fall festival)
• Mailing invitations to services, programs, events
• Conducting regular new member classes
• Use a membership covenant signed by new members
• Plant at least 1 daughter churches within 3 years of initial church plant
• Having a proactive stewardship development plan enabling the church to become financially self-sufficient
• Having multiple staff members (can be volunteer or part-time) rather than a single staff member at beginning of church plant
• Financial compensation for planter (from a variety of sources)
• Planter receiving health insurance, whereby majority of premiums were paid by church plant, sponsoring church, and/or denomination
• Conducting block-party as outreach event (in neighborhoods)
• Working full time over part-time or half-time as church planter
• being assessed prior to planting the church as the church planter
• Having the church planter's expectation realized

What Stetzer says does not work: You do not get a church planting movement by creating non-reproducible models. i.e. - you can't reproduce a plant in which you invest $500,000. The denomination can't do it and the planted church can't do it. Planters and churches reproduce in the way that they were produced! If the investment is too high – expectations for next plant are so high that reality can never match (Ed Stetzer has planted 5 churches and never received more than $20,000 from the denomination)

Probably no church plant has all of the factors that Stetzer has found contribute to higher attendance. Some of them are out of the control of the planter or planting congregation. But, many can be done no matter what kind of plant is being pursued.

In the Texas District, LCMS we have been saying that the right person, the right place and the right plan need to be in place in order to receive funds from the Board of Mission Administration. Stetzer's list affirms those three criteria.
Posted by Paul Krentz at 4:02 PM
2 comments:
pastorp said...
As I read the "higher attendance" insights, I was genuinely amazed at how perfectly they lined up with our own personal experiences at Water's Edge (mission plant in Frisco). Paul, you're right, this dude knows what he's talking about!

September 28, 2007 3:32 PM
Paul Krentz said...
I'm glad Ed Stetzer has been researching and writing. People like you know intuitively what needs to be done. Stetzer's research affirms it. The good news is that his work also helps those who don't have that intuition to benefit from his work and not have to reinvent the wheel every time a new mission starts

September 29, 2007 8:00 PM

Babtists

Billy Graham, 90 years old.

A Baptist leader once explained that there are Baptists and Babtists. He stretched out the word Babtists, as "Ba-a-a-abtists." I thought that was pretty funny. Many did not. I think they were the Babtists.

That is why I remind Church and Change leaders about organizing ther sacred pilgrimage to hear Babtist Ed Stetzer, who has abandoned the pulpit in favor of telling everyone what to do. That must work. One LCMS leader threw himself at Stetzer's feet, begging for pearls of wisdom.

Some people think WELS and Missouri are joined at the hip through Thrivent, but I believe the Church Growth Movement is the glue holding them together. This is Ed Stetzer, discussing the difference between Missouri and WELS, since both groups are paying him to speak:


I like Lutherans.

In one of my first blog posts (about one year ago now), I wrote about my time speaking with their leadership at Concordia University. I talked about what I learned from one of their bishops and how they rebuked me.

I am excited about speaking to the Missouri Synod Lutherans North American Mission Executives in St. Louis in April 2009.

Also, I will be with another tribe of Lutherans in 2009. In this case, I will be with some Wisconsin Synod leaders at a meeting hosted in Milwaukee by a group called WELS Church and Change in November 2009.



(I am sure that someone will tell me the differences along the way, and it may include a famous episode of the T.V. show Cheers, where Woody and his fiancé discover they are from different Lutheran denomination.)

My favorite Cheers / Lutheran exchange:

Woody - "Ask her why she thinks the Book of Concord is not in line with the Scriptures!"
Kelly - "Because it's not."

Woody - "HERETIC !!!"

Good people, those Lutherans.

And, they (the Missouri Synod) have a plan for planting 2000 churches by 2017, the anniversary of something in Europe.

So, I received the email below and answered with some ideas from Planting Missional Churches. However, I think it would be helpful to hear from you on some of the job descriptions you would want for a core team. I will probably use them for an article as well, so be sure to put your name a church if you have any insights.

Here is the email. Please take a look and let's give a little blog help to some Lutherans who love Jesus and want to plant churches.

My name is Dick Evers, and I am part of The 72-Partners on the Road (formerly Harvesters for Christ) a ministry of LCMS World Mission.

It is our understanding that you have considerable expertise in church planting.
The 72 teams provide training to existing congregations to begin, enhance or revitalize their outreach activities. You can check out our website: www.lcms.org/The72. There are about 70 of us, located in various areas of the country.

Our ministry was recently asked by the LCMS to get involved with our congregations who want to sponsor a church plant. We are trying to establish a training program for The 72 teams who will work with the congregation and the church planters. As you will note from the attached "Areas of Training" information which discusses what we do, we believe we can be of real help to the church planting teams and the church planter.

We understand that the congregation is to provide a "core" group (40 members or more) and a launch team to work with the church planter. However, we are not exactly sure of the responsibilities of the core group and the launch team. We want to gear our training to help both groups be better prepared, as well as the church planter. We will be only acting in a "helping equip" role, not doing any supervising.

Can you give me any direction as to how we might find the basic "job descriptions" of the "core" group and the launch team? By knowing more about what the core group and launch team are supposed to do (or what additional help they could be to the church plant with more training), we can modify our existing modules, or create new ones, to help equip them.

Any information or direction you can provide us on how to find the "job descriptions" or any other comments you have that might be helpful to us would be greatly appreciated.

May God continue to bless your ministry,

Dick Evers
The 72-Partners on the Road

Plus these two comments:

Michael Schutz
08/08/08 @ 1:24 AMHi Ed,

Just saw this blog post, and though I don't have much of an on-topic response at this point (though the topic of church planting always intrigues me, and I've been following your blog for a while), I just wanted to give a shout-out as an LCMS Lutheran to say I'm glad you're connecting with some of us. We can be a bit of an odd bunch, definitely out of many mainstream evangelical (I use the small "e" intentionally) conversations, but I think we can learn a lot from one another! Blessings as you prepare to enter this brave new world (for you). :)

Dick Evers
08/24/08 @ 7:44 AMI want to thank you Ed for putting my e-mail on your blog. I also want to thank all those that provided comments. They were most helpful. As Michael Schutz said, we LCMS Lutherans can learn a bit from one another. Many thanks again to all.



***

GJ - The blog speaks for itself. Stetzer discussed Lutheran differences by quoting a TV show. He might have addressed the issue of Baptist sects. One of his responders, did, and this is but a tip of the iceberg:

Lynn Pryor
08/06/08 @ 12:38 PMYour quote from the Cheers episode reminds me of the old Emo Phillips routine:

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"

He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"

Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.

ELCA BMs Share Doctrinal Unity with WELS/LCMS

Martin Marty, former LCMS, now ELCA,
frequent WELS speaker

Let the River Flow is a "connecting event" event for pastors, staff, and other leaders of large ELCA congregations and "anyone who feels they can benefit from this opportunity".

June 18-21 at Prince of Peace Lutheran in Burnsville, Minnesota.
Featured speakers are:

1. Martin E. Marty, was a featured speaker at Wisconsin Lutheran College (WELS),
   
2. Barbara Rossing, ELCA seminary professor,
   
3. Reggie McNeal, Becoming Missional, Fuller Seminary Professor, 2005 C & C speaker,
   
4. Wyvetta Bullock, ELCA pastor, worked with WELS on AAL Membership Initiative,
   
5. Leonard Sweet, liberal Methodist, helped cause C & C cancelation, 2005,
   
6. Ken Medema, musician,
   
7. Peter Eide, musician and kid's speaker.

Four out of seven ELCA speakers have worked with WELS or were booked for the Church and Change Schwaermer-fest in 2005. Martin Marty has worked with WELS several times. He spoke at WLC, but he also spoke for the ELCA-LCMS-WELS evangelism conference in Florida.

Wyvetta Bullock was a division head of ELCA when she helped coordinate the Membership Initiative lavishly funded by AAL (now Thrivent). The Membership Initiative, another embarrassing flop, united ELCA, WELS, and Missouri in evangelism training and study. Evangelism is "outside the framework of fellowship" in WELS, so quite growling.

Reggie McNeal and Leonard Sweet were booked for the 2005 Church and Change event, causing such turmoil among the normally comatose WELS clergy that C & C was shut down. Finished. Dissolved. "Game over, man! Game over!" Truthfully, for we know that Holy Mother WELS always lies, C & C was booted upstairs to The Love Shack. The most recent apostasy conference was registered through the official website, not WLC's Charis. For outsiders, Charis is the official journal of WLC apostates.

***

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "ELCA BMs Share Doctrinal Unity with WELS/LCMS":

Proof Positive: Religion is the Devil's playground!

Watch for WELS/LCMS BMs

LCMS Rev. David Born is encouraging congregational BMs.

People wonder why I dwell on past errors in the Synodical Conference. "The child is the father of the man," as one poet said. The early days predict what will happen in the future. When we go back a few decades, the present debacle is easier to understand.

I have to apologize for being unaware of the Becoming Missional (BM) fad developing out of Fuller Seminary. Here is a quotation from an LCMS site:

LCMS World Mission began working with a dozen LCMS districts in a pilot project for revitalization in 2005. It begins with a process called “Motivation for Mission” that’s designed to shift a congregation’s spiritual paradigm. After completing the course, congregations must decide whether to become missional or continue "business as usual." Participating districts in the 2005 pilot identified 255 declining congregations that were invited to take part in the Bible study and its follow-up component, “GroupsAblaze,” a small-group process for building an outreach-focused congregation. Learnings from this initiative will become the basis for a Mission Revitalization Institute, conducted by the Center for U.S. Missions in Irvine, Calif.

From Donald McGavran we learned that "God wants His church to grow," but the bearded saint never mentioned being faithful to God's Word.

The new incarnation of the Church Growth Movement is Becoming Missional. The LCMS is mouthing the same words with a new twist, as Rev. David Born declares:

God desires all Christians to be missional, and in most cases, people have just forgotten what their first love was and why they existed as a congregation to begin with. The role of LCMS World Mission revitalization ministry is to help declining congregations “get back to where they were in the beginning” of their ministries. As dying congregations once more begin to thrive, their success stories will encourage others in similar situations to seek help, too.

The original Church Growth Movement was horrible enough, with its call for congregations to join a local Planned Parenthood chapter. The Becoming Missional fad will be far more activist, as becomes an apostate seminary. When the BMs arrive in local congregations, left-wing activism like ELCA's will follow. The ELCA uses the term mission to describe its role in redeeming society.

***

rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "Response to New Poll by WELS Lay Student":

The comment by WELS lay student is just another example of those "yeah, but" apologies for the CGM. Lutheran doctrine truly has degenerated.

BM - Painful at Times, Says WELS Leader

By Dr. John E. Bauer, Editor
Reggie McNeal, not a Lutheran, pictured above.

A Singular Lack of Repentance

By now, readers may be aware that the 3rd annual Church Door Symposium was cancelled after WELS district presidents actively discouraged pastors in their districts from attending. Not one, but three guest speakers were to have shared their insights and the results of their research and experience. One was a Baptist and two were from the LCMS. The 2005 Symposium hosted Dr. Reggie McNeal, a nationally known Baptist author. At the fall 2005 Church and Change Conference, Dr. Leonard Sweet, a Methodist, was the keynote speaker. In the spring of 2005 a Baptist author spoke at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary as part of the Home Mission Seminar.

In those events that were held, the parameters for the presentations were clearly outside the “framework of fellowship.” In all cases, the expertise of the outside speakers was of great value and they were warmly received. In no case was there a misunderstanding about the doctrinal differences between the hosts and the speakers. As the COP report indicated, these speakers were properly used.

To say that these speakers were “not well received” is not accurate. In fact, representative district presidents and seminary professors were at all of these events. They spoke well of the events and the insights that were gained from listening to the speakers.

But to say that they were well received would not support the conclusion of the COP argument, namely, that the “continuation and increase of such outside speakers is leading to making it unhealthy for the synod.” One has to wonder what is unhealthy about having speakers share their expertise in matters outside the framework of fellowship, especially when they were all received with high praise and appreciation. What appears to actually be the case is that certain parties who
have never attended such symposia or conferences have prejudged the presence of such speakers as being in and of itself a violation of the doctrinal principles of fellowship. Without taking the time to think through such things as audience, topic,context, purpose, setting, etc., reactions often seem to be based on personal and individual impressions. Rather than engage in brotherly discussion, emails and letters fly about that label individuals “and their ilk” as “heretics,” even when the purpose of the presentation is of a non-doctrinal nature. Is this the “sensitivity” that is spoken of in the report—a sensitivity that is based on an inadequate understanding of the doctrine of church fellowship and a narrow interpretation of how it should be applied?

Much of the confusion comes from the fact that it is a matter of judgment as to which speakers might be acceptable and which are not. However, it is never clear whose judgment should prevail. The correspondence from some pastors and district presidents urging that the Church Door Symposium be cancelled was more than outweighed by the outrage expressed by other pastors following the Symposium’s cancellation.

Can this report really be saying that the COP can’t find fault with the practice itself on doctrinal grounds, but finds it unhealthy because a number of individuals have their sensitivities offended? Readers are again urged to read the article in the Christmas 2005 issue of CHARIS entitled “What the Scriptures Say About Christian Liberty.”

But consider the nature of the symposia and conferences that have come under attack and which seem to be goading church leaders into becoming more and more prohibitive. These events are offered on the well-founded assumption that attendees are spiritually mature and biblically literate. The audiences are comprised largely of pastors and lay leaders in the WELS fellowship. These are not impressionable undergraduates or theologically naïve laypeople. These audiences are comprised of the very people who are in the best position to discern truth from error, to take what is wholesome and beneficial, and to recognize if something said doesn’t jibe with WELS doctrine and to challenge it.

The context for such symposia is clearly academic in nature. Analyzing and evaluating ideas about ministry is consistent with what think tanks, institutes, colleges, and seminaries are supposed to do. The topics are carefully chosen to avoid direct instruction in doctrine, but are rather selected to explore issues and challenges that face the church. The audience is comprised of theologically trained pastors and teachers, along with spiritually mature lay leaders. The expectation is that they are capable of discernment and good judgment. The purpose of such events is to help churches carry out their ministries, not to alter doctrine. To that end, church leaders participate with the expectation that they are getting from the event what they paid for. If they are disappointed, or offended, then they don’t attend. How sad that we have devolved to such a level of mistrust, that brothers in the ministry don’t have confidence in each other to exercise appropriate discernment. How sad that the WELS has been reduced to factional mistrust instead of collegial respect. How odd it is that some of the “strongest” voices in the Synod are making the greatest appeal to their “weakness.” And how sad it is that we can’t trust pastors and professors to properly engage with the authors of the very books that are sold to untrained laypeople at Northwestern Publishing House.

College Qua College

These distortions of the church fellowship principle raise a larger issue regarding the nature and qualities of a college that identifies itself as distinctively Lutheran. What are the attributes of a Lutheran institution of higher education? What are the means and methods by which it educates its students and extends its educational mission into programs and services for its larger constituencies? A college is a place in which students explore and examine ideas, develop reasoning skills, cultivate the ability to communicate ideas, reason scientifically, think critically, argue logically, and grow in appreciation for the arts and humanities. In a Christian college, this is done in the context of the Bible as the ultimate source of truth, but not the only source of all truth. In a Lutheran college, this is conducted within the parameters set by the Lutheran confessional writings. Wisconsin Lutheran College in particular expresses this commitment by saying that “education is inseparable from religion, that all knowledge in all areas of human thought and endeavor is worthy of inquiry when viewed in the light of human sin and divine grace.”

***

The whining in 2005 worked well. Church and Change had their conference October 15th.

LCMS BMs

From John Whaley:

Mt. Olive Lutheran Ministries hosted Circuit 18's Convocation Sunday, January 22nd. A good number of churches from the Silicon Valley came to hear President Newton share his vision of the ministry for the CNH District. He continued to speak on the theme from Jeremiah 29. In addition, the group spent time in discussion around the six realities facing the church today as identified by Reggie McNeal in his book, The Present Future. As experienced in other convocations this year, lively discussions ensued.

Try Not To Gag

Present Future: A Book a Lot of People are Reading


Why is President Newton giving away copies of Present Future to everyone he meets? Perhaps it's because Reggie McNeal has touched on the jugular when it comes to where the church needs to be as it attempts to minister in our world.

Reggie McNeal identifies the six most important realities that church leaders must address including: recapturing the spirit of Christianity and replacing "church growth" with a wider vision of kingdom growth; developing disciples instead of church members; fostering the rise of a new apostolic leadership; focusing on spiritual formation rather than church programs; and shifting from prediction and planning to preparation for the challenges of an uncertain world. McNeal contends that by changing the questions church leaders ask themselves about their congregations and their plans, they can frame the core issues and approach the future with new eyes, new purpose, and new ideas. Written for congregational leaders, pastors, and staff leaders, The Present Future captures the urgency of a future that is literally now upon us, in a thoughtful, vigorous way. It is filled with examples of leaders and churches who are emerging into a new identity and purpose, and rediscovering the focus of their mission within new spiritual dimensions.

Get your copy. . .