Do you remember when this photo would have been a scandal? Kudu Don Patterson does.
He also went from high church (WELS at least) to bee-bop.
Church and Change Your Gender.
Kudu Don's staff dressed up for Halloween or something. Is this guy holding a stapler in a menacing way? WELS cool is so funny.
Kudu Don had live bunny petting offered at their Easter services, because the Gospel is not enough. Abandoned, the bunnies joined a biker club to get more attention.
Someone observed that when conservative organizations are mixed with liberal elements, they eventually morph into liberal and finally radical entities. The Methodist Church is a good example. They began with the Social Gospel Movement around 1910 or so, with the Federal Council of Churches. The Social Gospel was the ecumenical face of Communism. Branches of Methodism (Wesleyan, Nazarene) pulled out until the liberals owned and controlled everything. Now the Methodists laugh at their founder and oppose everything he taught.
The Lutherans have followed the same pattern. They chipped away at Justification by Faith until it became a cause for excommunication - except for Paul Kuske's case. They did nothing there except take away a meaningless title. DP John Seifert was so tough.
The deliberate change should not surprise anyone, because WELS trained people on Gausewitz, which was used in the LCMS and ELS too. They kept "improving" it and then switched to Kuske's OJ catechism, a large, expensive and dumb book. (Not Paul Kuske, but his cousin) They were aided in this transition from the Gospel to Universalism by the Mordor president who got his OJ from the Walther-Pieper faction of Missouri.
Tossing Gausewitz under the bus enabled WELS to use the OJof the liberal, mainline Calvinist groups to go whole hog on Church Growth Enthusiasm.
Panning, the Greek professor and former president of Mordor, edited Meyer. As Brother Shrader said, and I experienced, Panning never touched on OJ in his Romans class. However, Romans 4 completely obliterates all of the Meyer-Walther-Pieper falsehoods. Of course, the Scriptures do that throughout, from Genesis to Revelation, but that does not suit the false teachers who snip and clip what they like. Can anyone read this out loud for the Gospel lesson in church? Bueller, Bueller, anyone, anyone?
The Formula of Concord editors commended Luther's Galatians to all those who wanted to know more about Justification by Faith. LCMS-WELS-ELS completely ignore one of Luther's greatest works. For Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, Luther's Galatians was his most read book after the Bible.
The ears of Objective Justification Dummies should glow red with shame when reading this, but they know it is their path to promotion.
The much-admired Preuss book is much closer to Calvinism and Walther than it is to Luther and the Gospel of Christ. Preuss repented of his quasi-Lutheranism and became a Roman Catholic intellectual leader.
Wesley United Methodist Church in downtown La Crosse is changing its name to Bridges United Methodist Church.
Erik Daily, La Crosse Tribune
Members of Wesley United Methodist Church in La Crosse came to a bridge, and they’ll cross it Sunday — emerging on the other side as Bridges United Methodist Church, as they plan to refocus their mission to connect more people to faith.
Church members will mark the occasion with a special service at 9:30 a.m., followed by a potluck — both events open to the public as a celebration of the new name and mission.
The rebranding, which members approved unanimously two weeks ago, is an effort to reverse the historic downtown church’s plunging membership, said the Rev. Anna-Lisa Hunter, who has been half-time pastor for nearly two years.
“I knew when I came here it was struggling,” having dropped from a top membership of 450 souls to 72 now, Hunter said.
In the late 1990s, attendance at Sunday services ranged from 150 to 180. It now averages 38, she said, adding, “It’s not an uncommon story for a lot of churches, and a lot have decided to close.”
Wesley members eschewed a suggestion to shut down the church and instead decided to resurrect it — what has become known as the “Lazarus Plan” in church circles, Hunter said.
One of Wesley United Methodist’s niche ministries in recent years has been serving homeless people. That took on added urgency during the brutal winter of 2014, when Wesley opened its lower level as an overnight shelter when the La Crosse Warming Center and The Salvation Army were overwhelmed.
Those dramas occurred before the creation of the La Crosse Collaborative to End Homelessness, which has made inroads in finding housing for dozens of homeless and families.
Wesley United also had to close its Sacred Grounds Coffee Sanctuary, which had been open several mornings a week as a gathering place for the homeless, Hunter said.
Security was part of the problem: “This is a big building, and we don’t have the resources” to monitor every nook and cranny, she said. Members occasionally found heroin and used needles in the building.
Now congregation members are working to simplify and define Bridges’ mission, she said.
The name has an ironic inspiration. The idea was planted when Hunter was at a training session to help pastors overcome their churches’ challenges, she said. The trainer told participants to take a 20-minute walk to see what kind of vision God might inspire, she said.
“I’m a cynical Gen-Xer,” she said with a laugh, “and I thought, ‘God doesn’t give visions on demand.’ But before I got out the door, I thought of bridges. I had been here only a couple of months, and I didn’t realize the importance of bridges in La Crosse.”
Later, during a meeting about the congregation’s future, a member asked whether it should have a new name, and Hunter explained her bridge experience.
“We are one of the closest churches in town to the (Cass Street) bridge,” she said, and the idea meshed with the congregation’s “main focus to connect the people with God. The mission is to make disciples for God.”
Means to accomplish that goal include returning to weekly Communion services, a practice that began disappearing from many Methodist churches as far back as the Revolutionary War, Hunter said. Many pastors returned to England, leaving a shortage of ministers.
“Because of the shortage, many congregations only got Communion when the circuit rider came around,” and even today, many Methodist congregations offer Communion monthly or quarterly, said Hunter, whose husband, Martin, is pastor of Onalaska United Methodist Church.
Bridges also will offer small group opportunities such as Bible studies, she said.
Congregation members are considering mission endeavors, perhaps including efforts to ensure that people have clean water and to address the increasing problem of pollution from one-use plastic items, Hunter said.
“A lot of people need clean water,” she said, and the United Methodist Church’s Global Ministries strives to meet those needs through initiatives in Nicaragua, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Plastic pollution has gained traction recently with news and photos of vast amounts of plastic bottles and other plastic debris floating on the ocean, she said.
“With plastics, everybody can be involved,” Hunter said. “It’s a social justice issue because low-income people usually end up being those most affected.”
As far as Bridges’ finances, “we have been blessed with a couple of bequests that we will use to pass from one generation to the next,” Hunter said. “It won’t be used for daily expenses but as a grace period to invest for the next generation and hopefully grow.”
Members scratched the idea of closing up shop and moving to rented quarters, Hunter said.
“This is a huge building with tremendous historical importance — a special sacred space,” she said.
The building is acknowledged as such, having been declared a La Crosse historical landmark in 1988. The Wisconsin Historical Society describes it as “one of the four most architecturally significant 19th century structures in La Crosse.”
“We want to give it one last try,” Hunter said.
The largest Methodist church in America, closed. Location, Maryland. What is their secret for shrinking?
