Like Martin Stephan with LCMS, Randy DeJaynes Is Ignored as the First Bishop of ELDONA

 

This is the only DeJaynes graphic I could find - on the obit page -  all the others had photos.  I later found a Bishop DeJaynes photo, which is at the bottom of this post.

 Lutheran Confessional Synod Trade Mark

Randy L. DeJaynes

Jan. 10, 1951 - Aug. 18, 2021

FORSYTH - Randy L. DeJaynes, 70, of Forsyth, Illinois, died Wednesday, August 18, 2021, at Decatur Memorial Hospital. Randy struggled for two weeks with a COVID-19 infection that resulted in pneumonia.

Born on January 10, 1951, in Macomb, Illinois, to Roy E. and Joan (Martin) DeJaynes, Randy grew up in the Plymouth, Augusta, and Bowen villages and graduated from Bowen High School in 1969. He met his wife, Arlis White, in 1973, and they were married January 18, 1975, in Quincy, Illinois. He later earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees (summa cum laude) from Western Illinois University in Macomb, where he taught at the university for several years. Later, he earned his M. Div. degree from Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, and he served as pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in Decatur for sixteen years.

Randy and Arlis were blessed with two sons, Adam John and Christopher Nicholas, who were the lights of his life. Both sons reside in Decatur. Randy is survived by his devoted wife of forty-six years, Arlis: his sons: Adam (Sarah Hayes) DeJaynes and Christopher (Sara Hammann) DeJaynes, all of Decatur; his beloved grandchildren: Noelle (DeJaynes) Malkamaki, Christian DeJaynes, Caley DeJaynes, Avery DeJaynes, Mary Margaret DeJaynes, and Ella Smith; one brother, Roger (Gretchen) DeJaynes of Blandinsville, Illinois; one sister, Rhonda DeJaynes of Santa Rosa, California; numerous in-laws, 22 nieces and nephews, and his beloved Corgis, Huey and Taffy.

Randy was a simple man who loved simple things like his many flower gardens, fruit trees, his dogs, and his baking. He owned Daily Bread Bakery for several years. More than anything, he loved his family and being around them.

Services for Randy L. DeJaynes will be held at 10:00 a.m. on Monday, August 23, 2021 at Sacred Heart Church, part of St. Katharine Drexel Parish, with a private family visitation preceding service. Burial will be at Calvary Catholic Cemetery in rural Illiopolis, immediately after service with a family luncheon at Grace United Methodist Church, in Decatur, Illinois after the burial. Memorials in Randy's honor may be given to Sacred Heart Church in Springfield or to his grandchildren's education fund c/o CEFCU.

The family is being served by Brintlinger and Earl Funeral Home in Decatur, Illinois.

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that Day." -- St. Paul's 2nd Letter to Timothy

Condolences and memories may be shared with the family in care of Brintlinger and Earl Funeral Homes at www.brintlingerandearl.com.

***

GJ - You may read  - from the link - the charges against Bishop DeJaynes, who was working with the future Bishop Jim Heiser, STM. Heiser started Repristination Press there - an odd name for the odd couple to use. 

They started the Lutheran Confessional Synod with the help of Jay Webber and Kincaid Smith (DMin, Church Growth). So much to confess, yet they never told anyone why the ELS and WELS declared fellowship with this character, whose wife preached for him when he was away. Heiser, Webber, and Smith came from Concordia, Ft. Wayne, so there is also a common bond of Objective Justification fanaticism in the mix.

The ELS/WELS declared fellowship with DeJaynes (sniffle, can't help it, that touches my heart-strings), as reported by Presiding Bishop, ELS, John Moldstad.

The Lutheran Confessional Synod (LCS) was a Confessional Lutheran church, characterized by a strict interpretation of the Lutheran Confessions and a historical liturgy. Organized in 1994, when Christ Lutheran Church in Decatur, Illinois, broke away from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, it initially declared doctrinal agreement with the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod,^[1][2][3] but broke fellowship with those two synods on June 14, 1997, because of differences in the doctrine of the ministry and the Lord's Supper.^[1][4] The LCS organized the Johann Gerhard Institute (a denominational publishing house) and St. Anselm Theological Seminary in 1996.^{[1] The LCS - Wiki.}

The LCS - Wiki 

The LCS' first bishop was the Rev. Randy L. DeJaynes, consecrated to that position on October 7, 1994.^[3][5] As of 2009, stating a "desire to return to the Apostolic faith," some former LCS clergy were chrismated in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, while others entered the Roman Catholic Church.^{[citation needed]} At least one is now a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America. By 2012, it was reported that the church body had disbanded.^[6]

 Repristination Press, Decatur, Illinois - The Right Reverend Jim Heiser, STM.

Bishop Randy DeJaynes ordained his son.

Picture Gallery

 

 Right Reverend Bishop Jim Heiser, STM

ELDONUT Eric Stephanski

ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton

Greek Saying - A Chameleon Can Be Any Color, Except White

At first, Jim Heiser was low church and not buying out C. H. Almy for clothing and expensive altar pieces. He only had an MDiv, but like all Concordia Ft. Wayne graduates, he was and is an expert on everything.

 Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne faculty place a heavy emphasis on Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic practices. Most ELDONUTS are Ft. Wayne graduates and refer to the St. Louis seminary as "the other one." St. Louis is quite Roman, too. One Ft. Wayne graduate called Eastern Orthodoxy "only a matter of polity." 

Heiser tried to grow his little group by merging with the Rolf Preus Synod. Although Rolf has only one topic, Objective Justification, Heiser said (on his own video) that he never heard of the extent of  the OJ heresy until Rydecki (WELS) was being kicked out. And Rydecki said Buchholz told a flat out lie!

 This seems to be at Heiser's congregation in Texas. Compare this photo to the first one on this page. As Chemnitz wrote of the Roman Mass, it is either a comedy or a farce.

 The Philippines - and Mars.

On pointy hats - "Evangelical Catholic" - a favorite Father Neuhaus term.

Another Bishop James Heiser

Name This Point from the Book of Concord

5 Namely, when under the title and pretext of external adiaphora such things are proposed as are in principle contrary to God’s Word (although painted another color), these are not to be regarded as adiaphora, in which one is free to act as he will, but must be avoided as things prohibited by God. In like manner, too, such ceremonies should not be reckoned among the genuine free adiaphora, or matters of indifference, as make a show or feign the appearance, as though our religion and that of the Papists were not far apart, thus to avoid persecution, or as though the latter were not at least highly offensive to us; or when such ceremonies are designed for the purpose, and required and received in this sense, as though by and through them both contrary religions were reconciled and became one body; or when a reentering into the Papacy and a departure from the pure doctrine of the Gospel and true religion should occur or gradually follow therefrom [when there is danger lest we seem to have reentered the Papacy, and to have departed, or to be on the point of departing gradually, from the pure doctrine of the Gospel].

Adiaphora

Cascione Writes! The Biggest Event Since Brando Sings!

Brando sings! Guys and Dolls
They decided to use a more appealing concept to promote the movie.

Whenever the musical Guys and Dolls is discussed, someone recalls that a promotional banner was going to say, "Brando sings!" Wiser marketing experts prevailed.

Cascione Speaks!

I remembered that nugget when LutherQuest (sic) headlined - "Cascione speaks!"

Steve Schmidt (Sschmidt) Senior Member Username: Sschmidt Post Number: 1409 Registered: 3-2017

Posted on Tuesday, March 02, 2021 - 11:20 am:       I have posted here for four years and never recall Pastor Cascione conversing with us. What I find revelatory is a picture of an alternate LCMS in transition and what was left behind, what might have been. An alternative LCMS, if you will. Most of these quotes could deserve a thread of their own. “The LCMS has chosen to abandon its differentiation from the broad spectrum of American congregations and surrender considerable “market share.” They have posted a sign, “Hey everybody. We are just like all the other churches.” Here we don’t shy away from the idea of denominational marketing and “brand loyalty.” You may locate this principally in women’s suffrage. Yet we are fortunate in having the example of the WELS, which maintained this prohibition. The WELS does not display any more congregational harmony or growth than the LCMS. They may possibly have a bit more clubby esprit de corps. But the American public at large is not interested in buying into either.

***

GJ -  I have noticed that LQ (sic) and the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau Online Discussion Forum are equally enamored of sociology and marketing. Both are dedicated to the crypto-Universalism of Objective Justification. Both host Rolf Preus pontificating and preening in his declining years. Both sites have writers who discuss marketing trends, sociology, and comparing themselves to other denominations and volunteer groups.

Neither one pays any attention to faith in Jesus, 

• as if the Savior never compared the good tree and the corrupt tree in Matthew 7 to faith and unbelief, 
• as if Paul never wrote Galatians or Romans 10. 
• I know they have never read Romans 4, because they jibber like monkeys ready to throw their Dreck at anyone who upsets them. 
• Both sites have called me crazy for following Luther rather than their heroes, though LQ (sic) did apologize when civil law was mentioned.

Another favorite, Calvinist News, has popped off about OJ again. The cub editor, another Ft. Wayne graduate (like Cascione, Webber, Rolf, and Heiser) invoked Romans 4:25 again, but so ambiguously that I failed to see a blatant OJ spasm. But there is a reason, as Krauth explained long ago.

Heiser Features His Fellowship with ACLC on His Cathedral's FB Page

 "Superintendent Robert Lawson of the Association of Confessional Lutheran Churches and Bishop James Heiser of our diocese (ELDoNA) at the recognition of fellowship between the ACLC and the ELDoNA at the 2010 synod."
Note the purple bishop's shirt!

Facebook led me to the page for Salem Lutheran Cathedral, the seat of The Right Reverend Bishop James Rodham Heiser, STM.

I was shocked to find the captioned photo of Lawson with Heiser, especially because Steadfast (ha!) Lutherans (sic) have posted the ACLC scrap with ELDONA over Justification, 2014, as recorded by Jay Webber, Floyd Luther Stolzenburg's bagman in the Ukraine.

The shock comes from the bizarre videotape lie that Heiser did not know about Objective Justification - an obsession at Ft. Wayne, where he studied - until Rydecki was kicked out of WELS over it. That is in spite of Heiser's endorsement of Thy Strong Word and selling of the book in 2000, and then his ALCL fellowship. To say he was doctrinally unstable is too kind.

Rue de Schadenfreude - "Memories, All Alone in the Moonlight."

Questions about the ELDONA YouTube Series on Justification

 "Slim, we know you're in there! Come out!"

WM asked about the ELDONA YouTube series on Justification, so I looked them up.

They prominently feature The Right Reverend James Rodham Heiser, STM, so I have trouble taking them seriously. He read Thy Strong Word in 2000 or so, found out what Objective Justification really was, and then ignored the issue while working closely with OJ fanatics, especially the Rolf Preus Synod crew, who went back to their original OJ synods (Little Sect on the Prairie and LCMS).

So - which is the real bishop? - the one working with Paul the Plagiarist McCain? - the one grinning with Rolf Preus and crew at Jim's altar? - or the patriarch explaining how bad OJ is, wearing a smug, knowing smile, saddened that so many are deceived by this false doctrine?

ELDONA suddenly switched to Justification by Faith when WELS Pastor Paul Rydecki and a group from Washington State advocated the Chief Article. The Rolfites were furious and horrified, which tells a tale in itself.

 These free printed books are going to the Philippines.
Here is our growing collection of free classic Lutheran ebooks, including a full set of Lenski and Luther's Sermons and Gems.

One of our future members gave up on ELDONA when he learned first-hand how nasty, petty, and dishonest ELDONA was, the venom fed by Heiser and his toadies. I was glad to see them change from virtual Universalism to the Biblical view of Justification by Faith, but sorry to see Heiser cloak his opportunism in typical Ft. Wayne rudeness.

The problem with Ft. Wayne seminary graduates is their idolatry of a few professors, notably Robert Preus, Kurt Marquart, and Dave Scaer. The Waynites are prone to unearned vanity and reproducing the same troubled triumvirates. They graduated extolling OJ without knowing what it is - how comatose were they in school? The triumvirate is infallible; QED, OJ is infallible.

 In 2008, the Right Reverend Bishop-for-Life Heiser was grinning in his purple bishop's shirt, next to OJist-for-Life Rolf Preus. Missing are - stacks of Thy Strong Word, given to the Heiser book selling operation years earlier. 

The YouTube Videos
ELDONA has a string of YouTubes on Justification, so I began watching them. They want to honor the Reformation but they do so in a strangely Methodist way, gently talking about Justification by Faith and smiling about those who actually believe and teach OJ (see the Rolf-ELDONA photo).

The ancient Christian and Reformation teaching style is to identify truth, support the truth with Scripture, and reject falsehoods about that truth. I did not take notes on what I saw, but where is that?  The OJists rage against those who "reject OJ" - as Heiser did before reading Thy Strong Word. But after? - he was with the Rolfians!

Why not identify those errors, the errorists, and show why they are wrong? I missed that entirely. Wading through history, especially in dealing with Zwingli, is jarringly ineffective. The Word is effective. Church historians turn into Leftists (Ralph Bohlmann, etc) who cleverly spin the facts their way. Example - the Lutheran Left said inerrancy was a new word, though it is found in its Latin form in the Book of Concord. How new is the BoC?

 To Mars and beyond!

From Bishop to Bishop - The Strange Case of DeJaynes and Heiser, Stephan and Walther, and the Fort Wayne Assassins

 The Right Reverend Bishop James D. Heiser,
successor to The Right Reverend Bishop Randy DeJaynes
and the Johann Gerhard Institute Press.
Taking over as a bishop and indifferent about the Chief Article? - that is truly reclaiming Walther.

Long-time friends among the independent Lutherans stopped by and gave us TLHs and a box of books from ELDONA. I began to sort the books when I came across one with no title on the outside.

Inside title page -

The Office of the Ministry in Nicolaus Hunnius' Epitome Credendorum

Rev. James D. Heiser

The Johann Gerhard Institute

34 South Country Club Road

Decatur, Illinois 62521

1995 - James D. Heiser

The address is  now CrossPoint Community Church or is/was

an ELCA church - Christ Lutheran. Google is uncertain.

Funny how that never comes up.

Foreword

"It is with great pleasure that I write the Foreword to The Office of the Ministry in..."

So, who wrote this foreword? Turn page.

Answer - The Rt. Rev. R. L. DeJaynes, Bishop. The Lutheran Confessional Synod.

I only know a few facts about the short-lived Lutheran Confessional Synod. DeJaynes was an LCA pastor who made himself bishop. He had his wife preach for him when he was out of town. Somehow Heiser resided there and disputed with DeJaynes about the books when everything blew up. Jay Webber and Kincaid Smith worked to get the ELS and WELS in fellowship with the LCS, once again proving how little doctrinal discernment Ft. Wayne graduates have. Like cheap tires, Ft. Wayne graduates go flat early or just blow out on the road.

So Heiser, who left the LCMS to join Bishop DeJaynes, went back to the LCMS and later received a call to Salem, Malone, Texas, LCMS, where he worked hard to get control of the congregation's property. He took the congregation into his new sect - ELDONA. I knew about ELDONA before Heiser announced it, because his putative website was already listed in the browsers. Like Cascione, another Ft. Wayne graduate, he held onto Holy Mother Missouri for the longest time before being pulled away. Like Kincaid Smith, the pension plan was the prize - so he got the property and the pension plan.

Even though Heiser admitted in 2000 that he was appalled by UOJ, when he learned what they really meant by Objective Justification, he partnered with Rolf Preus and his bros from the ELS when they were kicked out or walked out of the ELS sect. The others went back to the Little Sect on the Prairie - and Rolf begged and apologized his way back into the LCMS.

The mystery book and Cascione's recent oration against Scaer prompted me to post on the topic of horrible Ft. Wayne graduates and their evil, duplicitous ways. Cascione wrote about all the pastors before him, in various parishes - all of them having at least one mistress. I thought - "How clever. The congregations are not named. The pastors are not named. He has defamed a lot of people without any facts stated. Of course Otten publishes this drivel because he is Cascione's xerox machine, the only person left who believes anything Cascione says.

I took account of the Ft. Wayne graduates I have known personally, at least to some degree, alas some to a great degree. What do they have in common? Here is a list -

1. Paul McCain
2. Jay Webber
3. James Heiser
4. Jack Cascione
5. Kincaid Smith
6. Rolf Preus

They start out friendly (except for Rolf) and quickly become tar-babies. Ft. Wayne graduates go out of their way to engage in behavior that would make Mequon graduates blush - quite a feat. But I will let God sort that out. 

They have this in common - after three or more years at Ft. Wayne, which they modestly call The Fort, they show no knowledge of Lutheran doctrine whatsoever. No wonder Concordia Publishing House (McCain) chooses to promote Reformation trinkets, gee-gaws, and dog collars.

We have this confidence - Bishop Heiser's tiny cult is going nowhere. Anyone who joins from the outside is silenced. Those who used to post on the Net no longer say anything in public, whether laymen or pastors. The ELDONUTs themselves do not publish anything in particular. Their congregational websites offer such treats as - doctrine - a copy of the ELDONA graphic. That really helps when they jump from UOJ as an adiaphoron to Justification by Faith - and back to silence.

Heiser never mentions the rare books I sent him for free,
or Thy Strong Word, which he sold,
or the fund-raising I did for him in getting a rare set of books.
He "borrowed" one set of books and kept it,
but whines about me publishing this photo he published.
So where is the watermark on the photo? Hmm.

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I found out the last ELDONUT conference had a theme - "How Much Do We Hate Ichabod - Let Us Count the Ways."

Dealing with Lutherans is always an experience in irony. In this case, it is dramatic irony, in which the characters do not get it, but the audience does. The characters betray the truth by their words and actions - unknowingly.

In this case, the ELDONUTS Rydecki and Heiser shared a Facebook post about presidential candidates, in which I had a few gentle words posted about the voters making the difference in the long run. Heiser solemnly declared, "It doesn't take long for the crazy to come out." Strange they had so much time to discuss someone who was not there. Soon after Rydecki whined that I unfriended him on Facebook. I asked him directly via IM about the conference and he claimed falsely that nothing happened. He was part of it, perhaps not throwing stones, but happy to hold the cloaks.

The most ironic claim was this one - "Jackson does not work with others."

Sixteen years ago I was publishing Thy Strong Word, which Heiser chose to sell from his website.

I spoke at his church, and Hudson and Ahonen were there. Heiser and his church were LCMS. During this period of time Heiser and I spent many hours on the phone, mostly with him calling. We often discussed publishing, which printing company to use, prices, Paul McCain, and so forth. We also discussed the process of leaving a synod, since I was independent for some years already.

No ELDONA existed, except in the mind of Heiser. I found his nascent website during my Internet searching. So he formed his little group and named himself bishop in 2006.

Somehow ELDONA existed without Justification by Faith for many years, although Heiser saw the flaws in Objective Justification in 2000.

Spencer, below, and Rydecki, above, were both circuit pastors at the
first and last Intrepids Conference.
WELS broke up the group that Schroeder wanted to organize.
Spencer was the first Intrepid to bail out - another irony.

Meanwhile in WELS

WELS Pastor Steve Spencer asked me about how to form a group to support Synod President Mark Schroeder. They are classmates, hence blood-brothers. Schroeder claimed "the others" were out-organizing him, and way ahead. Those were the Church and Changers, whom Schroeder has backed 100%.

My idea, not to back Schroeder, but to air out the musty halls of WELS, was to have a group blog. We did that in the graduate classes I taught in education. An exchange of ideas would be good. Spencer asked me to nominate people who would be good to participate, so I named quite a few people who wrote intelligent comments on Ichabod.

In 2010, Spencer had corporate papers and set up what he called The Intrepid Lutherans - another irony in my narrative. Among the most prominent participants were Vernon Knepprath, Paul Rydecki, and Doug Lindee. Doug wrote often on Ichabod and recently had a new post on the Intrepids blogs.

Brett Meyer - our Bethany member, lived near the Emmaus Conference and attended one where we had lots of publications to give away. Brett spoke with Vernon, as I recall, and sat with Rydecki. Everyone got a few copy of my latest book on Justification by Faith. Jay Webber hid behind a pillar to motion Rydecki to speak with him or go to lunch with him. More irony.

Rydecki first disagree with me about Justification by Faith - in the Intrepids blog. In fact, Spencer used Rydecki's position to argue against me. That was a false use of appealing to authority; there is only one authority - the Word.

But the free exchanges on the group blog led to airing out the issues about Justification by Faith, the horrid NIV, and other issues. Rydecki began arguing against Objective Justification.

Note - I was asked a few opinions at the beginning, and I made it clear I would not be part of their leadership in any way. Once they asked my position on Justification and I posted that. But I always promoted their posts and gave them a lot of visibility.

I spent many hours back and forth with Rydecki, discussing the doctrinal issues and also the topic of leaving WELS. When he joined ELDONA, I thought that would be interesting, given all the UOJ ballast in the group:

• Stefanski, who signed one of his famous UOJ tirades "an unbeliever."
• The Rolf Synod, almost as fanatical as Stefanski.

But it seems Justification by Faith entered ELDONA through Vernon Knepprath and Paul Rydecki. The Rolf Synod abandoned its fellowship with ELDONA with great bitterness and threw themselves on the mercy of the ELS, begging that the terms of reconciliation might be merciful. Jay Webber helped, of course. 

So articles on Justification by Faith were posted by ELDONA in 2014 and they argued against the Objective Justification of the Rolf Synod. So Heiser and his ELDONUTS  were content with Objective Justification for at least 14 years, in spite of Heiser's obvious alarm about what it really meant. Not Objective Justification as the Atonement - no, that was wrong by definition. The entire world was already forgiven and saved in the reckless language of UOJ.

Through our little church - and the blog no one reads - these ELDONA members were influenced by the Word of God to agree with St. Paul, Luther, Melanchthon, Chemnitz, and Gerhard about Justification by Faith:

1. Bishop Heiser Hisself.
2. Pastor Paul Rydecki.
3. Layman Doug Lindee.
4. Layman Vernon Knepprath.

 When we were in Washington State for the wedding, Brett's wife told me how she worked with Vernon on the study of WELS worship practices.

So I really think the ELDONUTS should stop muttering against those who have been very friendly with them, happy to broadcast their message. They would have more friends if they treated them better.

Bishop James Milhouse Heiser, STM