More about Driscoll

This is the link about Driscoll's abusive language. Is it a wonder that the same language was reported in the Anything Goes District of WELS, after two chumps went to a Driscoll conference?

Positive Response after The Shattered Pulpit Blog Posted

Monday, September 8, 2014

Synod Responds within Hours

http://shatteredpulpit.blogspot.com/2014/09/synod-responds-within-hours.html

Within hours of my last post that a registered sex offender was listed in the Synod Yearbook, I received official word from the WELS Synod Administration office that they had already taken the necessary steps to remove this individual from the yearbook. It was an oversight that he was included in the first place and they do not have his name in the 2015 synod yearbook.

I feel like a thousand pound weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I have struggled for months over that one issue and if that meant God condoned what happened to me also. Today knowing, without a doubt, that it was NOT intentional and the Synod does NOT condone that type of behavior, gives me a tremendous amount of peace and relief.

Over the course of time, my thinking has become so warped that I no longer know what “my way” of thinking is and what is “normal” thinking. In my mind I am terrified of God, therefore, I constantly look for ways to further doubt him and “prove” that he truly is evil and condoned what happened. My brain is so programmed to proving that God is evil that it is an instinctive reaction to everything now. I have dwelled on that yearbook point for countless hours wondering, whereas, a “normal” person would be able to immediately process that as unintentional and go on with life. I, however, let it become a major stumbling block of doubt for me instead.

I think one of the biggest impacts in my healing has been writing because as I write, I get responses from people that truly mold my journey and aide with the healing process. I have become SO convinced that God is this “evil being” up in heaven causing pain that it’s my primary focus now. However, through this journey, I am finding many people who are proving that theory wrong and showing me a loving God instead. That it’s “my way” of seeing God and not how God actually is.

Several pastors have also written offering me tremendous amounts of support with my journey and that, combined with the Synod Administration response, gives me an indescribable amount of peace today. Up until TODAY, I always had that nagging doubt that God condoned this. Today that was finally put to rest.

Today is the VERY first time, since this all began that I can honestly say God doesn’t condone what happened - and actually believe it. I can’t even find the words to describe the peace that I feel because of that. When you have been terrified of God for so long, and to such a degree, coming to realization that God and the church, as a whole, doesn’t condone what happened is the most amazing feeling on earth!

Maybe I can survive this journey after all. Maybe there is hope for recovery. To all the pastors that are showing me how God, and the church, really is thank you. Thank you for hope and this incredible amount of peace that I have today because of that!

***

GJ - One Satanic temptation is thinking that such evil is condoned. Most people are disgusted and alarmed at this behavior, and they do not comprehend what is being hidden from them. The greater the scandal, the greater the motivation to hide it.

Jeske's Church and Changers have engaged in gorilla warfare for years to get their guys in jobs and their wild hair projects funded. They are bullies and thugs, as everyone has seen from the Engelbrecht-Patterson debacle with Ski and Glende, who are both former hirelings of Jeske.

Moreover, such Dreck as this item from the WELS Meditations is sure to encourage the worst in everyone -

This is from WELS's Meditations, March-May 2014, for Monday, 17 March 2014.  The howler is in the second column which reads:  "No matter what you did yesterday -- or failed to do -- and no matter what you will do tomorrow, God has forgiven you." 

Everyone should encourage Lillian Armstrong, because she has been willing to put her experiences on display to help others. Continue to contact and support her. Here is the contact information for The Shattered Pulpit blog.

Some think that nothing can be done, but things happen as soon as light is shed on evil. Web pages are erased. Denials are issued. Problems are fixed - or at least massaged. 

The situation has to change to the point where officials fear that cover-ups will be even more damning than the facts. 

Delivering the Nutrition - Why Gardeners Do Too Much

Cathedral Rock in Sedona, Arizona
illustrates God's landscaping methods.

Strangely, gardeners and farmers have followed the Liebig mistake in thinking their big programs work better than microscopic action in the soil.

1. If I buy 40 pounds of nitrogen and spread it on my lawn, the grass will be so happy. I will bag up all the clippings and haul them away for that neat pool table look.
2. If I scratch fertilizer into the garden, the flowers will love me. 
3. If I rototill the garden before and after the season, the soil will be be fertile and smooth.

All three programs are wrong for the soil and harmful for the plants. Yet people blunder away, spending too much money and working too hard for bad results.

Almost all the nutritional benefits come from fungi and bacteria, and the interactions based upon fungi and bacteria. The bacteria are so small that 500,000 fit on the same space occupied by a period at the end of a sentence. Fungi are bigger and can be quite lengthy. Fungi can grow faster in a few hours than bacteria move in a lifetime.

As a Creation gardener, I want to help the fungi and bacteria distribute nutrition as they work with earthworms and other creatures. The three actions above damage the microscopic actions in the soil without providing more than marginal help. For example, Scotts Lawn fertilizer will not stay in the lawn but pass through into the water table, adding to pollution.

In contrast, nitrogen from mulched grass will be locked up by the soil creatures and passed back and forth in the root zone, to feed and energize those living forms that need nitrogen. They pass it to plant roots in exchange for their carbohydrates. The root tips receive nutrition from and donate food the bacteria, protozoa, and fungi need.

The earthworms are gentle bulldozers than move soil constantly, improving and multiplying the good effects of the bacteria they graze upon. I do not want to tear up this intricate web, but support it from above by protecting it from disruption.

Before, when I put mulch under the crepe myrtle bush, I thought about holding in rainwater and protecting the surface from drying out and wind erosion.

Now I realize that by mulching the bush with its plant material, I am feeding the bacteria and especially the fungi that need dark moist environs to do their work. I added Epson salt before the rain to take magnesium and sulfur down into the soil. Fungi distribute the chemicals where they are needed.

Church Programs - Scotts Lawn for Congregations
Church programs are like the three damaging steps I described above. The grand projects, often forced at a national level, ignore the divine effect of the Word and substitute man's cleverness. The more they fail, the more they insist on doing everything the wrong way. They search among all the false teachers to find an expensive magical formula instead of trusting in God's Word.

Creation and the efficacy of the Word are two sides of the same coin, to borrow a phrase. Denying one means rejecting the other.

Only in ELCA - Or WELS - Missouri, ELS, and CLC (sic) - If We Are Going To Be Honest

HOLY SMOKE! Sex offender William Prante, pictured yesterday,
has St. Peter's Church in an uproar.

PORN-AGAIN PERV

By Matthew Nestel

May 7, 2008 | 9:09am

Outraged parishioners have abandoned a Manhattan Lutheran church – after their pastor vowed to keep a convicted kiddie-porn collector on staff.

“The families were horrified,” said Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge John Wilson, who attended St. Peter’s Church at the Citicorp Center in Midtown with his wife and young son until learning last October that its receptionist was a registered sex offender. “It’s truly disappointing that someone in a position of authority would think so little of protecting children.”

But the Rev. Amandus Derr said that by keeping William Prante on the job, the church is fulfilling its Christian mission of rehabilitating sinners, while protecting kids by barring Prante from being alone in St. Peter’s with anyone else.

Prante, however, regularly sees children at the church as part of his job.

Prante, 61, pleaded guilty in 2004 to a Louisiana child-porn charge after authorities found more than 700 sexually explicit images of children, including girls who appeared younger than age 5, at his home.

Prante, who downloaded the porn onto his work computer during his past job as an arts group’s education director, served two years in prison.

“The best day of my life was the day of my arrest because I could get healthy,” Prante told The Post yesterday.

After his release, he moved to New York – registering as a low-risk sex offender – and started hanging around St. Peter’s, where a friend is the organist.

But when the church finance director – who was unaware of Prante’s crime – hired him last year, a parish council member uncovered news stories about him and complained to church officials before ultimately resigning.

Derr then felt compelled to tell his congregation, and did so following a Sunday service with Prante’s permission.

“That day was particularly heinous,” said a parishioner and mother of a young child, one of more than a dozen congregants who stopped attending St. Peter’s afterward.

---

http://www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/StPeterLuth.html

St. Peter Lutheran Church (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) 619 Lexington Avenue at 54th Street New York, N.Y. 10022 http://www.saintpeters.org Organ Specifications: 619 Lexington Avenue at 54th Street (since 1903): Present building (since 1977) ► II/43 Johannes Klais Orgelbau (1977) First building (1903-c.1970) ► III/17 M.P. Möller, Inc., Op. 7626 (1948) • II/5 Welte Organ Co. (ca.1912) – Sunday School room ► III/32 Eifert & Stoehr (1905) 474 Lexington Avenue at 45th Street (c.1871-1903): • George Jardine & Son (1872) See also the Continuo Organ in the Chapel.

St. Peter's Church (c.1871-1903)   Since its founding on June 2, 1862, as the Deutsche Evangelische Lutherische Sanct Petri-Kirche by a group of German immigrants, St. Peter's has faithfully served the midtown Manhattan area. Worship services in the German language began in a loft above a feed and grocery store at the corner of 49th Street and Lexington Avenue. By the 1890s, it became apparent that English services were required. During its first ten years, parish growth required several moves to larger quarters, eventually purchasing the former Lexington Avenue Presbyterian Church at the corner of 45th Street and Lexington Avenue. St. Peter's remained at this location until being uprooted by the construction of Grand Central Terminal.     St. Peter's Church (1903-1970) The building was sold to the New York Central Railroad in 1903 for $200,000, with the proceeds going toward the construction of a new Gothic-style church at 54th Street and Lexington Avenue. The new church was dedicated on May 14, 1905, and was typical of Lutheran church design of the time. Carved wooden sculptures, altar and pulpit dominated the chancel with a mural of the Sermon on the Mount above the altar, and glorious stained glass windows pictured scenes from the life of Jesus. In the balcony was space for a three-manual organ, the choir and the overflow crowds. By the 1920s, German services no longer predominated and English was adopted for morning worship. In 1925 the legal name of the parish was changed to "Saint Peter's Lutheran Church of Manhattan." By 1960, congregations in New York City were dwindling and St. Peter's was no exception. Rather than flee to the suburbs, the congregation of St. Peter's decided to affirm human life amidst the skyscrapers and develop a ministry that would serve more than just a Sunday congregation. A renewal of liturgical life unfolded and new programs in jazz, drama and the arts were developed. John Garcia Gensel joined the staff as the first pastor to the jazz community. In 1970, the First National City Bank (later known as Citibank) purchased the property for $9 million and agreed to build a new church next to its 59-story office tower. Hugh Stubbins & Associates designed both the tower and church, and Vignelli Associates designed the church interior. Stubbins described the church as two hands held up in prayer with light coming in between them." Consecrated in 1977, the church is a flexible space allowing for a great variety of expressions of worship through liturgy, song, sermon, dance, music and poetry.

WELS-ELS-LCMS Are Still in Cover-Up, Deny, and Slander the Victims Mode

As of today, child-porn file swapper Hochmuth
had this up on LinkedIn.
Here is a link I obtained - listing other Lutheran offenders.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Collusion is Devastating

"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and remembering.”--  Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (1992) 

“Collusion is usually far more devastating to victims than the primary abuse.” -- Dee Miller 

What message do leaders send to clergy abuse victims by this conduct?
Answer: "What happened to you doesn't matter. Go away. Shut up."

What message do leaders send to clergy perpetrators by this conduct?
Answer: "You're safe with us. We'll cover for you." 

When people collude, they are making themselves complicit in the cover-up of some sort of unethical conduct or in the protection of others who engage in unethical conduct.  

We see the manifestations of collusion with clergy sex abuse through minimization, denial, rationalizing, victim-silencing, victim-blaming, and keep-it-quiet tactics. Collusion can be accomplished both consciously and unconsciously, intentionally and unintentionally. Even if someone says they didn’t intend to collude, their conduct may still be collusive. Many collude through silence and inaction. You won’t see collusion in what they do; you’ll see it in what they don’t do. Collusion often occurs behind closed doors. It’s a secretive sort of thing.

Here is an example: 
I'm sure that everyone involved would say clergy sex abuse itself is a terrible thing. But look at the message it sends to a victim when something is done even unintentionally:

True case of a WELS pastor which happened a few years ago; local news media reported: 
A Lutheran pastor was sentenced to two years in prison for possessing child pornography on his home computer. _________ pleaded guilty. The felony charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. The prosecutor told the judge _____ had more than 70,000 images of young boys and other homosexual photographs on his computer. _____ is a pastor at ________.

As a victim, I struggle with the fact that he pleaded guilty; is a registered sex offender; had possible additional charges in a neighboring state; BUT, despite all that, is in the WELS Synod yearbook as being “retired”. He was an active pastor when this happened and instead of resigning he “retired” and, as of today, is still listed in the yearbook as retired. I struggle tremendously that the Synod knowingly lists a registered sex offender in their directory as if nothing happened; thus giving the appearance that he retired normally and there was no wrong-doing. I left God because I thought the church condoned what happened, so when I see this still in the yearbook, I continue to wonder. When you are struggling to come back to God, faith, and church, things like this (even if done unintentionally) are stumbling blocks. It puts doubts in your mind as to what is acceptable to the church. 

Since the church considers itself to be “the family of God,” the parallels in how families deal with the shame of alcohol and other abuse are strikingly visible when we compare how families of “faith” justify such pervasive collusion with abuse.

It is generally recognized that enabling behaviors of the family members of a drug addict help to keep the patient in denial and out of treatment. By constantly "lowering the bottom" through rationalizing and covering for the addict, close relatives become a part of the problem. Generally, they are as resistant to seeing this as addicts are to facing their own addictions. 

Family members do not collude intentionally. It's just that addicts are experienced con artists. They know how to play on the emotions of everyone. They are excellent actors, often even fooling themselves. By diverting attention, often to other issues, the addict keeps people from staying on course to clearly focus on the addiction as the root cause of their suffering. 

The same is true for clergy perpetrators. A clergy perpetrator, usually with years of being in the public eye, is skilled at convincing almost everyone, including victims, that he is really innocent or just “made a mistake.” He uses his charisma and status to enhance this skill. Even if he breaks down and "confesses," he finds ways to minimize the problems and the harm already done. It takes an enormous amount of energy to find one’s way to reality through the fog of deception which has been created by the offender and the many colluders who have already been misled.

Certainly there has already been a lot of effort, on the part of most denominations, to consult attorneys and instruct clergy about the "new rules." Unfortunately, just like many spouses of alcoholics, the concerns seem much more about protecting the image of the "family" than protecting its most vulnerable congregation members. 

When a patient enters treatment, everyone in the family minimizes. "It must be a chemical imbalance." Or "He'll be fine in a few weeks. After all she's only been drinking heavily for five years." The same dynamics are evident with clergy perpetrators and their colluders. "It's just the stress of the ministry. Treatment will be tough, but we are all going to expect total rehabilitation. With all the prayers going up for him, he'll be back in the pulpit in no time, being the great guy that he has always been.” Other common characteristics which colluding church leaders share with family members of substance abusers: distrust, high anxiety, conflict among formerly close colleagues, inconsistency, unpredictability, constant manipulation of the rules, and aggressive tendencies. 

When an addict is finally forced into treatment, he seems to "clean up" quickly, but often does not stay sober for long, once he is released. It is common for him to look at the wife and children he has harmed and expect them to forget what he has done, welcome him home, and restore him to all the blessings of marriage and fatherhood while leaving behind their memories of neglect and/or abuse. Colluding family members have the same attitudes, thereby naively giving his denial support more than his sobriety. All of this is usually true, as well, of the clergy perpetrator and his colluders, as he tries to manipulate his way back into a trusting relationship with his congregation and profession. 
“The world is too dangerous to live in -- not because of the people who do evil but because of the people who sit and let it happen.”  --  Einstein

 

References:
http://stopbaptistpredators.org/whats_collusion.html
http://www.takecourage.org/parallels.htm