ELCA - A Warning for the Syn Conference

Budget Matters

The 2012 budget represents strategic use of funds and a commitment to continue faithful stewardship of the ministry entrusted to the churchwide organization, Wyvetta Bullock, ELCA executive for administration, said.

The proposed 2012 churchwide budget totals $80,292,900. This amount anticipates current fund income of $61,792,900, which represents a 19.5 percent decrease from the 2011 income proposal approved at the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly. The ELCA World Hunger fund portion of the budget is $18,500,000. Mission support is 76.1 percent of the current fund budget, down from 81.2 percent as proposed in 2009.

In the past three years, mission support for ministries through the churchwide organization has declined from $65.3 million to a projected $47 million for 2012. Subsequently, the churchwide organization’s budget has been reduced by nearly 24 percent, said Bullock. At the same time, this budget is presented to the assembly with gratitude for their partnership and “with confident hope in God’s faithfulness,” she said.

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GJ - ELCA and its earlier components invented the Tetzel-like Planned Giving Counselors that WELS and Missouri use. That has been working great for them, no? The 1987 ELCA budget, NOT allowing for inflation adjustments, was going to be about $150 million, the total from the LCA and ALC. The actual budget ended up at around $120 million and kept declining in dollars, which means the decrease was even greater than that.

ELCA is in a world of hurt, even with licensing checks from WELS, Missouri, and the Little Sect for their worship materials.

WELS just displayed its arrogance again, thanking Mark Jeske, ignoring the real Jeske issues, and spit-wadding the NNIV into WELS faces. Holy Mother Synod does not repent, and the floggings will continue until morale improves.

Missouri's CPH Promotes the Calvinist Edition of the RSV: UOJ Headquarters a Calvinist Lair? Doth McCain Knoweth?

Lookee here. That debbil Mark Driscoll, the cussin' preacher, the obscene homiletician, is knee to knee with J. I. Packer.
Was this before Driscoll became the mentor of Glende, Ski, and Bishop Katie? Or after?

I never took much interest in the ESV, because Pope Paul the Unlearned and CPH were promoting the latest flavor of the Bible. I suspected a reason for the ESV rhyming with RSV.

Taking some time from various book projects, I did some research on the ESV. The respected Calvinist theologian J. I. Packer is the senior editor of the ESV, and the ESV is nothing other than a remake of the National Council of Churches' Revised Standard Version.

I respect Packer as a Calvinist. He is true to his confession, unlike the shape-shifters in the LCMS. They are always chortling over justification by faith being "Calvism," but they are the ones promoting Calvinism as confessional Lutherans. As one of the thinkers in WELS wrote, Calvinism is no longer crypto.

The LCMS and WELS leaders are overt Calvinists. WELS is leading the race to the bottom (mainline translation NNIV, women's ordination) because there is little organized opposition and far too much power held by a few drunks, lazy-bones, and incompetents in that sect.

CPH will base all their new books on the ESV, which shares the double-whammy of coming from the RSV and the Calvinists. Thus the ESV will enjoy the heritage of manuscript manipulation and anti-Sacramental changes in the text.

But all the Lutherans scorn the KJV, which is the only Bible where the translator--Tyndale--enrolled at Wittenberg to study under Luther and Melanchthon, where the very first English printing came from Germany because of that relationship.

Unlike Moo, Tyndale did not earn fat paychecks from a billionaire sponsor. No, Tyndale was burned at the stake for his trouble.

Intrepid Lutherans: Issues with the NIV 2011: "The saints" are no more

Intrepid Lutherans: Issues with the NIV 2011: "The saints" are no more

Issues with the NIV 2011: "The saints" are no more

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There are no more “saints” in the NIV 2011. The term has been completely removed and replaced with various alternatives. I find this very troubling.

Consider the following analysis of how many times the word “saints” appears in the most standard English translations of the Bible:

KJV:		96
NKJV:		95
ESV:		81
NIV84:		69
NASB:		68
HCSB:		61
NIV 2011:		0

As the reader surely knows, the English word “saint” comes from the Latin “sanctus,” which means “holy” or “holy one.” It has been used for centuries as the common English translation of two Hebrew words in the Old Testament and one Greek word in the New Testament.

There are two nouns in Hebrew that have traditionally been translated as “saints” in English: Chasidim and Q’doshim. The primary meaning of Chasidim is either “recipient of mercy” or “merciful or faithful.” In most of the cases where that word occurs in the Old Testament, NIV 2011 translates with “faithful people,” “faithful ones,” or “faithful servants.” This change may be justifiable (see Professor Brug’s comments below), but most English translations have, nonetheless, historically translated the word with “saints,” and Luther’s German translation had “Heiligen” (“saints, holy ones”) for this word.

The primary meaning of Q’doshim is “holy ones.” In these cases, the NIV 2011 translates as “holy ones” or “holy people” in most cases. Again, this change is justifiable. One may argue about whether or not it is helpful or necessary to do away with the term “saint.” It has served the English language well for four hundred years and remains in common usage in most translations of the Old Testament.

Hagioi is the Greek word in the New Testament that has traditionally been translated saint. The word hagioi means “holy” or “holy ones.”

Here is the breakdown of how many times the word “saints” appears in the most standard English translations of the Old Testament:

KJV:		35
NKJV:		34
ESV:		21
NIV84:		24
NASB:		8
HCSB:		0
NIV 2011:		0

UK riots: Police water cannon and plastic bullets? After 50 years of the most lavish welfare state on earth? What an abject failure, says Peter Hitchens | Mail Online

UK riots: Police water cannon and plastic bullets? After 50 years of the most lavish welfare state on earth? What an abject failure, says Peter Hitchens | Mail Online

Police water cannon and plastic bullets? After 50 years of the most lavish welfare state on earth? What an abject failure

By PETER HITCHENS

Last updated at 9:16 AM on 14th August 2011

Bitter laughter is my main response to the events of the past week. You are surprised by what has happened? Why? I have been saying for years that it was coming, and why it was coming, and what could be done to stop it.

I have said it in books, in articles, over lunch and dinner tables with politicians whose lips curled with lofty contempt.

So yes, I am deeply sorry for the innocent and gentle people who have lost lives, homes, businesses and security. Heaven knows I have argued for years for the measures that might have saved them.

Faced with reality: Left-wingers at last meet the filthy thing they have created, and which they ignored when it did not affect them personally

Fear, intimidation, cruelty, injustice, savagery: The mass criminality in the big cities is merely a speeded-up and concentrated version of life on most large estates

But I am not really very sorry for the elite liberal Londoners who have suddenly discovered what millions of others have lived with for decades. 

The mass criminality in the big cities is merely a speeded-up and concentrated version of life on most large estates – fear, intimidation, cruelty, injustice, savagery towards the vulnerable and the  different, a cold sneer turned towards any plea for pity, the awful realisation that when you call for help from the authorities, none  will come.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2025695/UK-riots-Police-water-cannon-plastic-bullets-After-50-years-lavish-welfare-state-earth-What-abject-failure-says-Peter-Hitchens.html#ixzz1V5SScxs1

How To Study Theology

How To Study Theology

David R. Barnhart

David R. Barnhart

1. Grace Lutheran Church, Monongahela, PA passed its first vote to leave the ELCA.

2. First Lutheran Church, Britton, SD passed second vote to leave the ELCA, 137-11. Will join LCMC.

3. Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Manistee, MI passed second vote to leave the ELCA,118-6. Voted to join NALC.

Another Inuitu Fidei Story

AP/WorldMag ^ | Aug 15, 12:01 AM EDT



ILULISSAT, Greenland (AP) -- Greenland's Inuit people have countless terms in their language to describe ice in all its varieties. This gallery of photographs by AP's Brennan Linsley likewise is something of a visual vocabulary for the striking and beautiful forms ice takes on and around the giant Arctic island.