Pearl-Clutching Panic - Steadfast Lutherans (Ha!) and Calvinist News Share Headline Outrage

 

 Four fish-hats, gold white and red stoles, and one red Webber-approved chasuble prove that true unity has not been achieved, despite many years of coffee and danish.

"Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection. The lovers, the dreamers and Ski."

 Note - you hair-splitters! It does not count as fellowship if someone lines up with all the bishops and is only wearing a Friar Tuck clergy shirt. I wonder if they took 45 photos so each potentate could pose in the central position.

Steadfast Lutherans (sic) and Calvinist News have jointly condemned the Rev. Dr. Matt Harrison for participating in the enthronement of a bishop LCMS is already fellowshipping. However, two of these consecrated and consecrating men were found to be not kosher, and they snuck into this ceremony with little cat feet. OK, they were invited, but facts do not matter when painting the front page with alarms and diversions.

I do not have a decent Drudge siren to announce this debacle, so I am posting the pearl-clutching woman as a symbol of LCMS-WELS-ELS plans to ordain women after they have wrecked everything else.

The basis for unity in the Book of Concord - remember that from seminary? - is the Chief Article of Christianity, Justification by Faith.

These groups are unified against Justification by Faith. That may vary. LCMS-ELS-WELS are united by Objective Justification, but that is largely a Midwestern folly that sticks to them like the sticky sweat of August humidity. However, the Europeans are enchanted by the era of Barth, Bultmann, and rationalism. 

 The LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic) leaders who reject this confession, which cites Luther, Melanchthon, and Chemnitz, call themselves "confessional" (hahaha), "orthodox" (hold my Maalox), and "conservative" (lah-dee-dah).

The Actual, Factual Fellowship Scandal

The real offense is not standing near the bishops from the two micro-synods, but Missouri's illicit, brazen marital relations with ELCA, bottled in bond by Thrivent Insurance.

Quick quiz -

1. How many genders exist among humans?
2. What did Paul say about pastors in 1 Timothy 2?
3. What are the Names of the Trinity?
4. Is the Bible full of miracles or myths? 

By participating with ELCA in joint religious projects - including worship - the LCMS has repudiated its own imaginary confessional status.

We all know that many Missouri pastors agree with ELCA on most points of apostasy. Some realize that the Seminex spirit is strong in WELS, too. After all, Jungkuntz was loved by many students at NWC, and so was Gehrke. They were Seminex pioneers.

So what do we have in these shrieking front page stories from the Deadlast Lutherans and the cub editor of Christian News? They are prime examples of the hypocrisy of Pietism. That allows people indifferent to Biblical doctrine to engage in the invented sacraments  of stink-eye and shunning. 

 You are not from Wisconsin? 

 You have departed from what you were taught at Mordor!

Double stink-eye. Begone!

Obituary and Commentary - Paul T. McCain, LCMS

Paul McCain, awards dinner, 2019

The Rev. Paul Timothy McCain, publisher and executive editor at Concordia Publishing House (CPH), died in Ballwin, Mo., on Nov. 25. He was 58.

McCain was born on Feb. 12, 1962, in Pensacola, Fla., to the Rev. Paul B. and Jean (Geipel) McCain and received the Sacrament of Holy Baptism on Feb. 25, 1962. He married Lynn Grunow in 1983. He graduated from Concordia University, River Forest, Ill., with a Bachelor of Arts (1984) in Biblical Languages and from Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne (CTSFW), with a Master of Divinity (1988) in Systematic Theology.

McCain served as assistant to Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) President Rev. Dr. A.L. Barry from 1992 until Barry’s death in March 2001, and as assistant to Interim Synod President Rev. Robert Kuhn until the Rev. Dr. Gerald Kieschnick’s installation as president in September 2001. Prior to becoming Barry’s assistant, McCain served as communications director for Iowa District East; pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church (Artesian) in Waverly, Iowa; and guest instructor at CTSFW.

After his years assisting two Synod presidents, McCain served briefly as interim director of Concordia Historical Institute in St. Louis. In January 2002, following the retirement of the Rev. Dr. Stephen J. Carter as CPH president and CEO, McCain began serving as interim CPH president and CEO, a position he held until the installation of Dr. Bruce Kintz on Oct. 31, 2006. In a statement released after McCain’s death, Kintz said the CPH family was “deeply saddened by the news of Rev. Paul T. McCain’s passing. He was a close friend and co-worker and will be sorely missed.”  

During his time at CPH, McCain was general editor of Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, A Reader’s Edition and also played pivotal roles in the publication of Lutheran Service Book, The Lutheran Study Bible and Treasury of Daily Prayer. He was a frequent guest on KFUO and other programs and podcasts and the author of numerous articles. As word of his death spread across the Synod on Thanksgiving Day, the Rev. Todd Wilken, host of the radio program “Issues, Etc.,” credited McCain for putting the Book of Concord “back into the hands of the laity. For that, and for all the other gifts God gave through Paul, every confessional Lutheran should give thanks today.”

The Rev. Robert Bugbee, former president of Lutheran Church—Canada, said, “My beloved friend, Paul McCain, was a source of support, not only to Missouri Synod people, but also to us within the Synod’s wider family. I will always treasure the brotherly encouragement he provided in my early days as the leader of a partner church. I trust God to use the many publications Paul made possible like seeds going into the ground … to bring forth a harvest to life everlasting! The sharp pain we feel at losing him is just the measure of how much he came to mean during the years the Lord shared him with us.”

In a statement shared widely on social media, LCMS President Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison wrote, “Our Lord Jesus has called to Himself our brother and fellow servant in Christ … to await the blessed resurrection unto life everlasting. … The Lord blessed Paul with a passionate zeal for the Gospel as taught in the Scriptures and confessed in the Book of Concord. Join us in prayer for Paul’s wife and children, and his CPH family. Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed!”

McCain is survived by his mother, Jean; his wife, Lynn; his children Paul Jerome (Kirsten) McCain, John Augustine McCain and Mary Ann McCain; and his granddaughter, Anna Jean McCain.

A funeral service is set for 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 1, at the Chapel of St. Timothy and St. Titus on the campus of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, where he is lying in state, with a private burial following the service. The service will be livestreamed. Viewing will begin one hour before the service at 12 p.m. in the chapel narthex. Clergy are invited to process.

In order to comply with COVID guidelines, anyone who plans to attend the funeral or to participate in the procession will be asked to sign up. Additional details about the service sign-up and livestream are forthcoming and will be provided here when available. Please check back for more information. 

Posted Nov. 27, 2020

***

GJ

Commentary

Paul McCain introduced himself to me in 1989, when he and Jay Webber were graduating from Concordia, Ft. Wayne. Soon he was writing letters to me about how much he enjoyed my articles against Church Growth, published in Christian News. Webber said the same thing, though neither one published anything (as far as I know) against that passion and addiction in LCMS and WELS.

Soon I was in St. Louis - and so was McCain. He and Otten worked together to get DP Al Barry's materials in Christian News before anyone else got them. He was working at the Purple Palace for Al Barry (!) and I was tent-making. He and Otten both told me how they worked together on the project to elect Al Barry. I imagine something similar happened with Matt Harrison, since Harrison sang an ode to Otten in New Haven and became Synod President. When Otten was dying, Harrison sang a song (to others) about Otten being crazy.

Otten and McCain denied working together secretly. McCain gave me a tour of the Purple Palace and said he would be fired if anyone knew he was talking to Otten (who called while we were in the palatial office of the Synod President).

McCain earned the nickname "McNasty" and demanded that anyone who offended him had to apologize. I remember Wilken saying he would not apologize to McCain and then apologizing to him - both times on Facebook. I do not think McCain was one bit nastier than Bohlmann, Barry, Harrison, Mischke, Gurgle, or Mirthless Mark Schroeder, DP Robert Mueller, DP John Seifert, Paul Kuske, Floyd Luther Stolzenburg, and a few dozen Church Growth experts.

I was Facebook friends with Who's Who in Church Growth Waldo Werning. His last message to me was, "Are you staying out of trouble?" I wrote back, "No."

The litmus test must be one about doctrine, not popularity. What does he believe, teach, and confess?

Plagiarism of Roman Catholic Propaganda

McCain betrayed his office by dishonestly promoting the Roman Catholic Church, through his own blog, Cyberbrethren, and also with the help of clueless Jack Cascione, yet another Ft. Wayne graduate.

As I revealed time after time, McCain copied and pasted verbatim the various saint fantasies of The Catholic Encyclopedia on his blog, omitting the dead give-aways like "nilhil obstat" and "imprimatur" with Catholic officials' names. His less-than-discerning readers thanked him for his great posts. He modestly published their comments and responded favorably to their praise. He also copied the material of his friends' blogs and barely hinted at their origins.

Jack Cascione, guardian of the galaxy, kept publishing McCain's posts by letting him write something like "Today is St. Hoodwink's Day. We pray..." and there followed a link to McCain's plagiarism from The Catholic Encyclopedia. His CPH boss unfriended me and refused to do anything for a long time. Cascione kept publishing McCain until repeated posts from me seemed to reach his gallery.

One plagiarism example is posted here. The man who demanded apologies never apologized for his plagiarism of Catholic and Lutheran sources, but we all know the LCMS is infallible.

Forgiveness without Faith - Objective Justification

Even worse - if that is possible - was McCain's posturing about Lutheran doctrine while repudiating Justification by Faith.

As one LCMS couple wrote, and I paraphrase, "How can someone go through seminary and not know we are justified by faith? OJ is a tangle of contradictions."

 Is it ironic or logical that Edward Preuss, a Concordia professor, became a Roman Catholic editor after publishing his essay, which LCMS OJists adore? And also - Robert Preus repudiated OJ in his last book, Justification and Rome.

Worship Is All About the Benjies - LCMS Profiteering. WELS Cancels District Conventions!

Buy some LCMS Church Growth eyes.

"At the end of the year Concordia Technology Solutions will be increasing their price for their Church360 membership management solution. If you subscribe before the end of the year you will lock in the current WELS rate of $37.50/month or $450/year regardless of church size. This is a special rate worked out exclusively for WELS churches. Effective 2019 the price increases to $40/month or $475/year. Here is a link to the WELS Discount page for Church."

Matt the Fatt demonstrated Church Growth methods in
"Honey I Shrunk the Synod."

 No district conventions! We will appoint!

Decision on district conventions - Smuggled First Draft

2020/04/07/in Together

After thorough discussion and with great joy, the Conference of Presidents (COP) has concluded that the district conventions, scheduled for early June, will be canceled, an excuse caused by the COVID-19 virus. Even though it might seem somewhat early to cancel the conventions, a decision needed to be reached now to enable districts to cancel their contracts with convention facilities with no penalty. They are out of money.

The COP did consider whether the conventions could be postponed until later in the summer or early fall. However, several districts would not be able to hold district conventions at a later date due to unavailability of meeting facilities and accommodations for delegates, and the cost. The COP also discussed whether virtual conventions could be held, but several districts concluded that a virtual convention would be virtually useless. The COP agreed that if some districts could not hold conventions, none should. They may sound like - If some could, all should. But it is all about the benjies. You know that.

On the positive side, a benefit of canceling district conventions will be a significant cost savings. This is in keeping with synodwise efforts already undertaken to reduce expenses in the coming year - because the Church Shrinkage Movement has been so effective.

Even though we cannot hold “regular” district conventions as the bylaws state, we will continue to walk together in our irregular confession of unfaith and shared emissions. It is our commitment to the truths of Scripture (by opposing them) and our commitment to carry out God’s work (while trusting in gimmicks) that will guide us in times such as these—times that constitutions and bylaws and Fuller programs could not have foreseen. Even without specific guidance from bylaws, we are committed to moving forward in a united way, striving to do all things in good order.

With no district conventions, normal elections will not be able to be held. Instead, we will plan to have elections for the district officers conducted electronically. The details of how this will be done are still unknown, but we have been assured that called worker delegates and congregational delegates will be able to participate, or at least feel they participated.

Once the district officers are elected, we will follow the bylaw that gives responsibility to the district presidents, with input from the other district officers, to appoint people to serve in offices in which elections would have been held at the conventions. The district presidents will appoint those currently serving to continue in their positions until the next district conventions if they are willing to serve and if they have not reached the time limit for serving. For vacant offices in which there is no incumbent, the district presidents will make appointments using the information that the district nominating committees have assembled.

The decision regarding the proposed changes to the synod’s retirement program will likely be deferred to the 2021 synod convention. The planned discussion of the document “Male and Female in God’s World” also will not happen at the district conventions this summer; rather, discussions and study will continue in pastor and teacher conferences.

 How about some input from Sammy, Church and Change exemplar?

A digital version of the Report to the Twelve Districts as well as other important materials will be made available to each congregation and to district convention delegates.

We pray for the day when lives return to something like normal, and another Marvin Schwan of blessed memory opens his capacious wallet.

Serving with you in Christ,
WELS President Mark Schroeder

 "We are here for you."

"We had to wait until the New NIV to get a Bible that agreed with us on Justification. There is it - ALL, ALL are justified."

Start your own ministry in WELS.

 This is the proper attitude for Mequon students.

Harrison Re-Elected. Entertainment Evangelism and ELCA Fellowship Have Won In the LCMS.

• Harrison was voted president-elect with 3,014 votes (51.76 percent);
• Maier received 2,323 votes (39.89 percent); and
• Klinkenberg received 486 votes (8.35 percent).

LCMS Election Results Should Come in Today

 Current SP Matt the Fatt Harrison

The three candidates who received the highest number of votes for the office of President and have given their consent to serve if elected are:

• Matthew C. Harrison, 1181
• David P. E. Maier, 947
• Timothy M. Klinkenberg, 638

 Team Maier

 David Scaer is disgusted - in his Lulu book - about all the Maiers teaching Justification by Faith, which he renames "rejecting Objective Justification."

Notice How LCMS and Her Thralls Teach against Luther While Selling Luther Trinkets

LCMS Brief Statement - Scripture teaches that God has already declared the whole world to be righteous in Christ, Rom. 5:19; 2 Cor. 5:18-21; Rom. 4:25

 LutherQueasies kept the beer stein, but left the sound doctrine back in Germany.

WM: Here is a good example of Luther against UOJ, from p. 4 of the Gems:

"87. And I cannot reject this interpretation; for St. Paul also speaks in like manner in Romans 5:18: "As through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men unto justification of life." Although all men are not justified through Christ, he is, nevertheless, the only man through whom justification comes.

So, it is also here. Although all men are not illumined, nevertheless this is the only light through which all illumination comes. The Evangelist has used this manner of speech freely, and had no fear that some might take offense, and explains himself before and afterwards, and says: "The darkness apprehended him not, and his own received him not." These words are sufficient proof to prevent anyone from saying that the Evangelist meant to say that all men are illumined; but he did wish to say that Christ is the only Light that lighteth all men, and without him no man is lighted."

Third Christmas Day, or Principal Service. Jackson Lenker, Luther's Sermons, Vol. 1: p.146.

 LCMS/CPH honored the Reformation's 500th with trinkets and gimmicks. No indulgences? They sold a truckload to Marvin Schwan, RIP. Remember - Herman Otten put these clowns in the Purple Palace, lying about his collusion with Paul McCain.

SP Matt Harrison Knows How To Explode Those Seminary Enrollment Numbers. Will the Cheesehead Campaign Work Its Magic Again?

The teaching of Objective Justification and Subjective Justification, Calvinist terms, is taught in the recent CPH dogmatics book and enormous Small Catechism.

SP Matt Harrison, from Ruefully Lutheran:
“I was asked recently at a district convention about what we are going to do about low seminary class numbers. I suggested that each delegate needs to write down two names of prospective students and then give those names to the seminaries for recruitment."

“Church attendance overall in the U.S. is down. The millennials are particularly noted for a general loss of religious identification. Marriage is postponed - often due to educational debt, and the change of sexual habits of young Americans has become a factor. Postponed marriage means fewer children”
(p. 29)."
Cited in Christian News, 11-19-2018

Thanks to the Wrecking Crew: Otten, Scaer, Harrison, McCain, Werning, and dozens of other weevils in the harvest of shame they call Church Growth.

Could the LCMS be suffering from doctrinal apostasy and religious fraud?

Otten thinks it is terrible that priests come from LCMS seminaries. Solution: he sells the anti-Luther collection of lies called The Truth about Luther.

1. Every school is recruiting, so a big list does not make up for students mortgaging their lives to pay enormous salaries for anti-Lutheran professors. LCMS creates ed-debt to the max.
2. As Harrison proves in his little book, marketing and sociology are the trusted resources of the LCMS, enhanced by decades of Fuller training and UOJ.
3. No one asks why these overpaid professors graduate future Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic priests. 
4. The LCMS leaders - like WELS and the rest - are skilled in blaming others and placing the responsibility on others.

When was this last heard at the Purple Palace, in the lavender halls of Concordia Publishing House?

 Every time a new mission starts with a generic Fuller name,
an angel is put on probation and not allowed to help the synod.

When will the Otten-Preus-UOJ cabal

 apologize to the Maier family,

 for defaming WAM II, replacing the Bible's Justification by Faith with Stephan's Objective Justification from Halle?

Navigation Page for Confessing the Gopsel and the Huge, Expensive LCMS Small Catechism

A Murder of Crows - Initial Response to Confessing the Gospel, LCMS Two-Volume Dogmatics

Gideon - On the Dogmatanic and the Huge Expensive Catechism

Another Layman on the Huge Expensive Catechism

UOJ Should Stop Pretending It Belongs to Luther - Reader

UOJ in the New, Huge Small Catechism

How To Discern the Spirits

A Man Spoke, But the LCMS-WELS World Does Not Listen

Matt the Fatt Ordered Joshua Scheer To Cover Up an LCMS Scandal - And He Did. Some warning from the ELCA… and a great video from the Fort Wayne Symposia | Steadfast Lutherans

Steadfast Lutherans told the horrible story of Darwin Schauer placed in a congregation, only to offend again.

 Matt the Fatt ordered SL editor Joshua Scheer to erase all the evidence from SL, and he did. I preserved the story on Ichabod, which made Scheer grumpy.

 One of your LCMS pastors, Joshua?
Protected by Harrison, too?

 The caption is in the graphic below.
LCMS is still haunted by Walther and Stephan.

Love that cheesehat. A man of the sheeple,
always ready to entertain.

Some warning from the ELCA… and a great video from the Fort Wayne Symposia | Steadfast Lutherans:



"Posted on March 15, 2018 by Pastor Joshua Scheer
So in the heavily antinomian, reductionistic, Biblically uninformed “bound conscience” ELCA a couple recent things should be pointed out as warnings for those who have drank (sic) too deeply of their theology (or fathers) and methodology (largely listening to the culture instead of the Word)."



'via Blog this'

***
GJ - LCMS cover up artists (like Herman Otten) are congratulating themselves for not being ELCA. Did someone spike their dranks, I mean, drinks?

The grandees of Steadfast Lutherans teach the same UOJ as ELCA does. In fact, SL is a closed shop for UOJ. No one can post who teaches Justification by Faith. Comments in favor of the Chief Article are often erased, and those JBFA Christians are called "morons" by the previous editor, a self-inflating bullfrog named. Best of all, no one can link to this blog, which is great for viewer numbers, averaging 3,000 per day - every day.

Tim Rossow called y'all "morons."
LCMS seminaries do not teach manners, grammar, or Lutheran doctrine. They have drank (sic) from the same cup of toxins.

Scheer madness also linked  an ELCA website that seems to be even naughtier than Nadia, but why give them Search Engine Optimization? I know - to enhance that superior feeling, even though the LCMS clergy think Nadia, Leonard Sweet (seminary speaker), and other snake oil salesmen are worthy of study. Here is Nadia and a penetrating question from Sceptical Baby.