WELS Movie Theaters - From the Rotten CORE to Infinity and Beyond.WELS Documented Blog

WELS Movie Theaters

WELS Movie Theaters: The Way of the Future for WELS Church Services?

FIRST there was The CORE in Appleton, WI...

St. Peter Lutheran Church in Freedom has been reaching out lately to young, unchurched Fox Cities residents. But rather than focusing exclusively on expanding its home base, church leaders turned to downtown Appleton to target the crucial audience at a second site.

The CORE in Appleton, WI

St. Peter’s, a Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod member, found a permanent spot for its new campus, known as The Core, in a former tavern on West Franklin Street.

The move in 2012 put the church on a growing list of congregations that have converted former businesses into houses of worship.

“Part of it’s a trend in our culture and world today where there are churches who are trying to reach people in a different way that people, who might not be looking for a traditional church, might come to and be more comfortable at. I think part of that drives it,” said the Rev. Tim Glende, lead pastor at St. Peter’s.

The CORE Worship Service

Glende said the premise behind the downtown campus was to bring The Core’s less traditional, multimedia and music-centered services to young adults instead of waiting for them to come to the Freedom church. “One of our reasons for being downtown was young people go downtown. They hang out at the downtown. There’s a college downtown. It’s an area that they’re familiar with and if people come downtown for other things they’ll come downtown for church,” Glende said. “Sometimes we won’t reach that demographic of people because of the traditional church building we have and the history that we have of being a church that’s 140-plus years old.”

http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20130921/APC0101/309210323/Churches-moving-expanding-operations-into-vacant-downtown-Appleton-sites-story-video

Revolution building turning into church
That vacant building at 222 W. Franklin St., at the corner of Superior Street in Appleton, was purchased in a deal that closed Friday.

The new owner is The CORE, a church group that previously held services in the former Big Picture theater and then the OuterEdge Stage in downtown Appleton.

The Core is an outreach ministry of St. Peter Lutheran Church in Freedom.

“We’re not a standalone congregation. We’re a second campus,” said campus pastor Jim Skorzewski, who is known as Pastor Ski. “The Revolution building fell into our lap. It’s been a blessing.”

His congregation tends to be on the young side, mostly under age 35. Worship includes live bands. The Core will continue to hold its Sunday evening worship services at OuterEdge until this building is ready in September.

“We were never looking for a building, but we we’re always looking for a building,” he said. “We didn’t want to be a church that gets a building and then its vision and mission fall to the back burner because everything turns into paying the mortgage. We wanted to put our dollars into flesh and blood, people and relationships.”

Online, real estate listings show the asking price was $850,000. Outagamie County records listed its 2011 fair market value at about $523,000.

“We paid closer to fair market value,” said Jeff Ulman, a member of the church’s executive committee. “George Karl worked with us and helped us out extensively.”

George Karl, head coach of the Denver Nuggets and former coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, owned the building.

The purchase was handled through a church extension fund, said Skorzewski.

“We received a wonderful grant and loan from WELS, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Our remodeling was covered by the loan from WELS.”

Church volunteers are already inside working on the renovation. The church draws about 250 people on a typical Sunday.

Revolution was the last nightclub that operated in the Franklin Street building. It was open for about six months, until July 2010. Prior to that, the club had been opened and closed by several operators under the names Tom’s Garage, The Garage and Pulse Nightclub.

http://archive.postcrescent.com/article/20120620/APC0301/120625098/Revolution-building-turning-into-church


...NOW now make room for "The Way Church" in California.

Worry?
Guilt?
Tension?
There is a Way. The Way Church. Bringing Life to Rancho San Diego.

September 21, 2014
We had our first service ever this morning! Most of the fifty in attendance were from Shepherd of the Hills Ev. Lutheran Church & School, but we don't mind - we kind of like them:). Thankful for the new faces that joined the familiar ones, and for the word/Word continuing to spread!

Nothing says "church" like the desert back drop on the walls - unless the sermon is on John the Baptist each week... [Their quote from their Facebook Page]

Consider visiting our Mogiv site to set up a one-time or recurring gift to support the ongoing ministry of The Way Lutheran Church. Support of the gospel ministry is truly the gift that keeps on giving!

********

• ▼  2014 (18)
  • ▼  December (18)
    • WELS Movie Theaters: The Way of the Future for WEL...
    • Beyond "Contemporary" Worship to "Modern" Worship
    • St. Marcus Now Owns the ECC Property
    • Urban spelunking: St. John's Evangelical Lutheran ...
    • On a mission: Syrian studies ministry
    • Grass Roots Contribution: Crown of Life Transforms...
    • Finally, Introducing the WELS Documenters
    • The Future of Worship in the WELS
    • DP Buchholz Responds to Christian Leadership Exper...
    • Crush Cancer for WELS School Teacher Paul Krause
    • "Time of Grace" with Mark Jeske: WELS affiliated?
    • WELS Lutheran church serves at center of growing H...
    • In Memory of Karen Schroeder
    • Comfy chairs important in WELS advertising
    • Watch "Karate Kid" during WELS Sermon
    • NEW Religious Experience at WELS Church
    • From Nightclub to WELS Church
    • Church Growth: By the Gospel or By Gimmicks?

I Almost Raked the Leaves Yesterday

"You throw leaves away?"

We are enjoying warm weather and sun rather than the dreadful winter predicted. The lawn is greening up for spring, but the leaves are finally gone from the trees.

Our helper came over for a last effort with the leaves. He mowed the front lawns, mulching the leaves with the grass, which is much neater than trying to rake them. In the back we are keeping them whole and raking them over the gardens near the house and in the back section.

I like the way leaves naturally fall into the mulch and stick there. They will be easily absorbed by soil creatures in the spring. We use excess leaves around the front evergreen bushes, to suppress weeds and feed the soil under those bushes. The evergreens provide good cover for insects and birds, and they are much better than lining up roses against the house.

I have two areas for raking leaves in the front. The crepe myrtle bush has a tepee of leaves at its base, but I will expand the leaf mulch with the ample supply on the driveway. The maple tree will be encircled by roses, so I am adding leaves to the perimeter, to help the soil  and the digging in spring.

In the backyard we want leaves in the compost, over the mulched garden areas, or on the future butterfly-hummingbird area. The beneficial insects book has inspired me to get a wide variety of bee and butterfly plants growing where parasitoid wasps will prosper and do their work.

Leaves are scorned by many organic gardeners for being mostly carbon and low on nitrogen. But what did we learn about carbon, class? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?

Fungi are the heroes of decomposition in the soil, because they feed nutrition and water to the plant roots, in exchange for - carbon from the plants. Fungi need carbon to grow, so autumn leaves are ideal for the health of the soil and the growth of all plants. The soil creatures will sort out what they need, even while we rest in bed, pull up the covers, and roll over for a few more winks.

While you were sleeping I posted another
contribution to Creation Gardening.

Michigan Lutheran Seminary and Martin Luther College - Explore New Depths of Stupid and Obnoxious in the Latest Video

What Would Schone Wear?
The question on everyone's mind before a video premier.

Published on Dec 1, 2014

Michigan Lutheran Seminary's 2014 Junior night video. This was done by this year's MLC freshman from MLS. Hopefully this shows you the fun things that are available here at MLC!

• Category

  • People & Blogs

• License

  • Standard YouTube License
  • 
    

***

GJ - How many words are misspelled in the captions? Two, three? I guess it depends on the state of English in Minnesota.

What an ending to a truly mediocre effort! Goofing around in the chapel and "Our Jesus looks like Russel Crowe."

Consider the video a warning to stay away from WELS schools. This one is even worse than the gay video and the  one where MLC statues come alive, fight and curse.

Juicy Ecumenism Provides Details

These four - ELCA and Episopalian -  have destroyed more congregations
than the Chicago Fire.

WELS and Missouri Are Following ELCA Down the Drain:

Yet since the launch of ELCA its course has been permanently downward.  The ELCA’s own statistics show that after 5,288,048 Lutherans came together in 1987 to form the denomination, only 4,059,785 remained in ELCA in 2011, the latest year of available data.  In all, this is a “staggering loss of over 1.2 million members, or 23% of their membership,” Rev. Kevin Vogts of the conservative Lutheran lay organization Steadfast Lutherans notes.  The number of ELCA congregations has also dropped from 11,138 at the 1987 founding to 9,638 in 2911, a loss of about 13%.  “As they ‘celebrate’ this year the 25th anniversary of the ELCA,” Vogts observes, “the fact is that during that time they have lost more members and congregations than make up many entire denominations!”

Almost every year of ELCA’s existence has witnessed membership loss, particularly the 270,349 and 212,903 leaving in the succeeding years 2010-2011.  The loss of each of these two years averaged more than five percent of ELCA’s total membership.  This followed the 2009 Churchwide Assembly decisions to allow individual congregations “to recognize, support and hold publicly accountable life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships” and for individuals in such relationships to serve as ELCA leaders.  Only the years 1990 and 1991 ever showed any ELCA membership growth of 1,941 and 4,438 congregants, respectively.

Such membership losses have financial consequences.  Vogts calculates that national ELCA donations in 2008 were $88 million, but dropped to $40 million in 2011.  Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, the ELCA’s largest, announced in 2012 a $6 million operating deficit on a $27 million budget.  Reportedly one couple had given $1 million annually to the seminary but stopped after ELCA’s pro-gay decisions.  Luther Seminary had to cancel programs and lay off a third of its staff as a result.

Who needs the Lutheran World Federation?
We have Thrivent to unite us all with Fuller and ELCA.

Freedom - No Longer Tied to the Classroom

I will be able to get more book projects done now.

I was demi-semi-retired, which meant taking all the teaching jobs offered. The problem with working 8 days a week is finding the extra day.

Online classes have increased in number and I may be advising PhD students, so I decided to stop teaching at the local college, a few miles away. So I have upgraded my status to semi-retired.

Teaching undergraduates was a lot of fun. There is really nothing like face-to-face classes. I already had a lot of practice turning angry, ill-advised comments into humor. One of my favorite episodes repeats from time to time - a student argues about my theories of writing (which are hardly original).

I answer, "Only one person in this room is paid to be here. Maybe you should listen to that person."

More than once, the student has said, "Someone can get paid to be here? How does that happen?"

His fellow students answer, "You dummy. The teacher gets paid."

Or, I try to counter worn-out forms of writing by promoting creativity. This will always irritate someone who says, "My last English teacher did not agree with that at all."

So I ask, "And how many books and articles has that teacher published, hmmm?"

"Well, none, I guess."

"I thought so," I answer.

Every so often I had special test days where the students could get candy by answering correctly. This worked out so well that some students  joined our class for a few minutes to snag Snickers, Almond Joys, and PayDays out of the air. I especially enjoyed the young women athletes intercepting the bars aimed at the back row.

For finals I had bags of fresh chips, various flavors, for the classes. I looked at my favorite flavor in horror, at the end of the session - crumbles left. They all laughed. I had two giant bags left in the car.

I banned digital toys of all kinds, which meant they had to listen. No texting was allowed. No Facebooking or Instagramming on laptops or smartphones. Some tried to sleep or slump during class. For that I had a variety of sound effect machines. One was very loud and coveted by other teachers. The other two included a car crash, clapping, a bomb going off, and cheering. When all else failed I simply ordered the student out of the room.

Many claim students have no discipline but I think the problem is spineless teachers, from public school on up. When I began at a community college, the students were steamrolling some instructors about assignments and everything else. I remember one young woman saying loudly, "That's YOUR opinion." I said, "Yes, backed by six earned degrees and six computer certifications." Shoulders slumped. I won.

I had to submit every written assignment to a plagiarism checker, because hardly anyone else does. The public schools ignore the issue. Many instructors do not take the trouble, or they say, "It's part of the culture now." Sad to say, I caught many of the students - some twice in the same class - earning them an automatic fail, a return to the Purgatory of English composition.

Copying from the Net is easy: so is proving it was copied from the Net. Knowing well that no one can accidentally write hundreds of the same words in the same order as another person, I listened to lazy liars deny their plagiarism.

Homeschooled students were easily my best. They listened. They took notes. They revealed an impressive background in reading. They did the assignments on time, and they wrote well - the result of reading so much. They did not cheat to get by.

Being tough on students does not mean being unpopular. They do not respect weak teachers who cave in. The registrar told me at lunch, "All I have to do to fill a class is put your name on it."

Theology Blog Links Doing Well

I set up two groups of links, one for theology, one for gardening. I included theology blogs that I follow and appreciate for various reasons. We should all follow several denominations at once to see what the trends are, since so many organizations work together covertly while marketing their own brands. Hypocrisy is leadership today.

The fun part is this - the latest post goes to the top. Readers can look over the list and find the newest article in the group, thus rewarding the active writers and chastening the slower ones.

Page views have been very high lately, over 3,000 each day.

Yesterday, Blogger recorded 4,500 pageviews - a very big classroom, more like a stadium. If this blog gets more people reading Luther and the Confessions, with the Scriptures, I am pleased.

For Whom Rob Bell Tolls - He Tolls for Thee

The entire article about Rob Bell can be found here.

Rob Bell was a nationally renowned popular Evangelical Michigan megachurch founder and pastor (one of Time’s100 most influential people!) until his 2011 book Love Wins questioned traditional Christian understandings about salvation and damnation. He was following the trajectory of other post-Evangelicals towards liberal Protestantism and well beyond. Bell lost his pastorate and much of his Evangelical following, a fall meriting a New York Times feature.

But Bell is a creative and talented religious entrepreneur in America, where there are always more chances for self re-creation. He moved to California, naturally, continued as a widely read blogger, and accelerated his liberal theological journey, embracing same sex marriage as a “justice issue,” of course, and doubtless much else as he streaked away from orthodoxy. His new book, The Zimzum of Love: A New Way of Understanding Marriage, has been mocked for citing the Bible only three times, further signifying his expansion into a post-Christian frontier. He now surfs at the beach, rejects theological categories, and happily relates to others who’ve escaped the rigid confines of organized religion.

Bell’s self re-creation appropriately led to his joining a nationwide motivational speaking tour called “Life You Want Weekend” appropriately led by America’s high priestess of therapeutic pop religion, Oprah Winfrey, an evident fan of his provocative books and reassuring style.

Now, the Oprah Winfrey Network will this month start broadcasting “The Rob Bell Show,” consummating Bell’s spiritual transfer from Evangelical subculture to The Cult of Oprah. Like Oprah, Bell no longer belongs to or worships at a traditional church, instead operating in a wider reality. “We have a little tribe of friends,” Bell recently told Religion News Service. “We have a group that we are journeying with. There’s no building. We’re churching all the time. It’s more of a verb for us.”

More here...

***

GJ

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.  John Donne

I have been writing about religious marketeers for years, because Mark and Avoid Jeske follows them so devotedly. Jeske is not the only dullard in Lutherdom, but he has the most visibility.

One only needs to look at the trends in WELS and Missouri to see that the leaders are bewitched by the latest trends or rather - terrified by the future.

They are circling the drain with Rob Bell, who got there first.

The CORE - WELS.

The CORE exists to transform lives for Christ through faith that is Real, Relevant, and Relational.

We deal with life's issues through the lens of God's Word. We come face to face with sin and the havoc it creates in our lives. We celebrate the forgiving, undeserved love of God and how that changes our lives. We sue our own members in court for telling the truth.

We shun them and excommunicate them.

El Party in el MLC - WELS Famous Gay Video Lives On. Spanish Web Host

Buddies of WELS and LCMS and the Little Sect - From Exposing the ELCA

Three ELCA leaders laugh at your faith in God's Word.
Look at how well they have done with their alternative lifestyles.

http://www.exposingtheelca.com/exposed-blog/elca-leaders-respond-to-bible-believing-creationist

ELCA Leaders Respond to Bible-Believing Creationist

12/4/2014

6 Comments

There are few ELCA pastors that believe the Biblical account of creation (see here). Recently a discussion took place on a facebook page for ELCA clergy that began with an ELCA pastor writing this - 

“After teaching introduction to the OT for a group of laypersons in our synod, I was disappointed that one of the ten persons blasted everything I taught about Genesis for her final paper and presentation. It took courage, I think, for her to make her presentation, but she basically said that, if you believe in any form of evolution or if you believe someone other than Moses wrote Genesis or if you believe that the days of Genesis 1 are not literal 24-hour days, you're a godless pagan who goes against scientific principles and sound reasoning. I'm still astonished... and a bit disappointed.”

The comments that followed were revealing:

•  “i'm often astonished and saddened how many people insist on believing in Mosaic authorship and 'literal creation.'"

•  “Don't worry...I used to believe that too”

•  “I can remember a lot of wounded people taking Pentateuch back in Seminary days. A lot of students started out not far from this woman's position and moved to a different one. It takes time. Perhaps you planted seeds.”

•  “I would assume that kind of hyper conservative view of Genesis, Evolution, etc....is VERY common in our pews. I know it's very common here in Southern Indiana.”

•  “had a similar experience in my last parish. People in the pews actually believe we all come from Adam and Eve.”

•  'If she is planning on being a certified lay preacher, I say NO to that person's being approved.”

•  “you can't fix crazy.”

Bob Dylan Mass Better than the Horrible Examples Posted Below It

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Historic St. John Lutheran Church - Synodical Conference Mother Church - Still Closed after WELS Stole the Property and Endowment

Long ago, WELS kicked the congregation and pastor out of its infallible sect,
but recently -  stole the property and endowment with the help of Jeske employees.
This happened to prevent new members from
getting involved and broadcasting services,
just the opposite of the claims in this article.
SP Mark Schroeder did nothing to stop the theft.

Monday, December 8, 2014

 

Urban spelunking: St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church

St John’s is one of Milwaukee’s finest examples of high Victorian Gothic ecclesiastical architecture. Designed by architect Herman Paul Schnetzky, it was completed in 1890. The East tower, with 3 bronze bells weighing 6 tons, is 197′ tall while the west tower is 127′ tall. Unique theatre style lighting featuring 800 individual light fixtures was installed in 1909 and is seldom seen in churches. The church seats 1,100.

St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church

WELS Documented - St. John

Urban spelunking: St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church
On Milwaukee
http://onmilwaukee.com/visitors/articles/spelunkingstjohns.html 

St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church, 804 W. Vliet St., is a bit like Milwaukee's own Mont Saint-Michel. Its imposing Gothic spires sprout from a high point in the city, soaring above everything around it.

But, geographically, it also feels a bit cut off, like the French religious site at high tide, with the expressway to the west, the freeway-like McKinley Boulevard to the south. You can see it from everywhere, but it's not immediately clear how to reach it.

Trust me, it's worth the minor effort of getting there.

These days there are no services held at the church – designed by Herman Schnetzky and his then-draftsman and foreman Eugene Liebert and erected in 1889-90 – where there are just two trustees and a congregation whose members can be counted on one hand.

Designed by Herman Schnetzky

It's a major shift for St. John's, founded in 1848 and housed originally in a frame church on 4th and Highland that was rented – and later purchased – from Trinity Episcopal. Over the next two decades the church had to be enlarged at least three times. By the 1880s the congregation boasted, according to an unsigned church history, "well over" 2,500 members.

In spring 1889, the congregation hired Schnetzky to design a church, a school and a 14-room cream city brick parsonage. (A stuccoed bungalow caretaker's residence was added to the property in 1914 and still stands and serves its original purpose.)

The cornerstone for the church was laid that same year and on July 28 of the following year, the cream city brick Victorian Gothic church, which could seat 1,200, was dedicated.

The church is imposing. Supposedly inspired by St. Peter's Church in Leipzig, the building boasts a pair of towers, one taller than the other, with long, sleek steeples that rise toward the heavens. The west tower is 127 feet high and the east tower, which houses three bells that still function, climbs an impressive 197 feet.

Both towers boast the elegant turrets that often distinguish Schnetzky and Liebert churches.

Inside, there is a gorgeous carved wooden Gothic altar – donated by local lumberman, and church member, Johann Schroeder – and matching pulpit and sounding board. There is a solid marble baptismal font and an unusual solid brass lectern with an eagle that was reportedly purchased from Tiffany's, though another source says it was imported from Germany.

Hand-carved wood altar and pulpit

While the interior of the church was once heavily decorated with painted motifs, much of that was whitewashed over in 1962. Even without the stencilwork, the sanctuary is lovely, especially in the morning when sunlight floods in through the stained glass windows in the east facade, generating a kaleidoscopic rainbow.

In 1890, a writer for a national Lutheran publication called St. John's the most beautiful Lutheran church he'd seen. It was also among the largest Lutheran churches built "in the west" in the 19th century.

In 1909, the congregation undertook the unusual step of adding rows of light bulbs to the arches of the sanctuary, creating strips of what look like theater lighting.

Up in the U-shaped balcony, there's an Herculean organ that was donated by parishioners the Kieckhefers, who also donated the large stained glass windows in the east and west transepts.

There is stained glass throughout the building, on both sides of the sanctuary, above the entrance, in the vaulted narthex (which also houses a stupendous electric fuse cabinet that must be seen), in the towers ... everywhere. My tour guides – trustees Paul Demcak and Tim Kitzman – say that the church opened with all that glass in place. Clearly, St. John's was a wealthy – and therefore influential congregation.

But that's changed now. In 1950, the neighborhood around the church was condemned, bulldozed and replaced by the Hillside Terrace public housing project. In 1985, the church ended German-language services. By 1988, there were roughly 80 members at St. John's and within just two years another 10 percent of the congregation was gone.

The parsonage sat empty from 1958 until Demcak moved in a few years ago.

Parsonage

"It's a good vantage point to see the church and worry about its future and dream about it also," says Demcak.

These days, because services have been suspended, the church doors are almost always locked.

"We could start up immediately but with so few members we want to appropriately use our resources," Demcak says as we chat in a parlor in the parsonage. "We didn't think the resources were being used appropriately to just go on the way we were without refocusing on a mission that would work today. We were just kind of going on and on each month, inwardly focused. We want to have outreach, we want to be vital again."

The problem, the trustees say, is that church leadership in the past never really embraced its changing neighborhood, my guides say. As the original German immigrants and the generation that followed died off and/or moved away, no one replaced them in the pews.

This is not a recent issue, either, adds Demcak.

"The church has been seriously hemorrhaging membership off of its books since the 1960s," he says. "So you're talking 50 years – a very long decline."

At one point the church school welcomed neighborhood children at no cost. But, the church itself didn't appear to take a similar approach. When the school closed, it was turned over to a mission group that occupied it until 1961, when it could no longer afford to maintain it and by the mid-1960s it had been demolished.

Amazingly, in its 166-year history, St. John's – which is a Milwaukee city landmark and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992 – has had just seven pastors. Two of those pastors account for 90 years of the church's history, from 1868 to 1958. In more recent years, politics divided the congregation and church leadership (you can dig up the nitty gritty online if you want to know more).

German immigrant church

"That's a turn-off for us," says Demcak. "We're all too aware of that, we've seen it too much and that's so much about what was going on here in the past and to me that's not the focus if you really consider yourself Christian, Lutheran or whatever. That should not be the focus on your mission. The focus should be people."

So, that's where St. John's stands at the moment. Thanks to an endowment fund, Demcak and Kitzman have been able to keep the church complex in good repair. But that money will not last forever, says Demcak, who vows that St. John's surviving trustees are looking toward the future.

"We want to turn this around," Demcak says. "We're a few blocks from things that are very exciting the way they're happening. We have a footbridge that goes across McKinley, which comes out right on the Pabst property. You have two residential units operating (there), you have three more on the drawing board, you have the Brewhouse hotel. You're going to have real residences there, including upscale (and) mixed income. Our church is right on the edge of that. We're the gateway to Downtown.

"Let's move on to the 21st century. In many ways the church had continued in a 19th century tradition."

That's the challenge, then: connecting the rich history embodied by an impressive and imposing Milwaukee landmark with a changed and again changing neighborhood.

"We are (working on a plan), exploring how we can build bridges to some of the congregations around here, possibly some of the ministries that are already going on in those congregations, exploring how we might do that in some sort of cooperative manner with our former synod," Demcak says.

"I would hope that in the future we can have a presence here that shows we are not afraid to rub elbows and be here and get to know our neighbors. This is a very historically important church but we don't want to be a museum."

Further Reading:
Milwaukee Sentinel; July 6th, 1991 - Future of Church in God's Hands
Wisconsin Historical Society Property Records

Horst Gutsche Phoned To Confirm His Work with CLC Pastor David Koenig

Pastor Horse Gutsche claims he does not belong to any denomination,
but he is serving an ELCiC congregation in Canada.
He confirmed on the phone that he worked with CLC Pastor David Koenig
on the conference in Germany.

The Church of the Lutheran Confession (sic) pretends to be a "confessional Lutheran" church body. They should confess their relationship with Horst W. Gutsche,

• who was once one of their pastors, 
• who served ELCA in San Francisco (where he was arrested and kicked out) and 
• who now works in Canada again.

Horst W. Gutsche, pastor

St. Michael Evangelical Lutheran Church at Mystery Lake

c/o 4908 - 43A Street, Barrhead, Alberta T7N 1J5

Canada

Tel.: 780 674 3944

Email: hwg1923@hotmail.com

Gutsche has as much trouble with the truth as the Church of the Lutheran Confession does, so they have that much in common. He pretends to be innocent, telling me a fanciful tale about opening his trunk in front of some kids in Needles, California. According to Horst, the kids saw a rope and ran away. Soon he was in the slammer - a gross misunderstanding, Ja? He was ordered to register as a sex offender and stay away from minors. He did not mention the part about them being in his motel room - and there is much more to the story besides.

Gutsche shouted at me that "the charges were dismissed." So misleading. Here is one definition of dismissal - "A dismissal simply means that the matter is no longer before the court, i.e. the court case is over." That is not the same as saying it never happened. When a bankruptcy is dismissed, the court is no longer presiding over the terms, which can stretch out for years. The end of the case is a dismissal, not denial that it ever happened.

Horst had been on probation and registered as a sex offender, so he was still in the court system at that point. After the case was dismissed and no longer active in the system, he was still prohibited from holding public office. Horst still has to disclose his conviction any time he is applies for public office or a license. "Have you ever been convicted of a crime?" is a common question in all matters pertaining to the public, since a license of any kind implies official approval of that individual. Has Horst been convicted of a crime with minor boys? Yes.

Horst used the term "dismissal" on the phone to claim he was innocent. In fact, he phoned a second time that day to offer to send me proof of the dismissal. He obtained my cell phone number, but he did not seem aware of the official court documents I posted on this blog. When I told Horst I had the documents, he was not pleased.

The Church of the Lutheran Confession wrote up their conference in Germany, but forgot to mention Horst Gutsche's participation and help.

In fact, David Koenig Hisself forgot to mention his convict pal Horst Gutsche in his report about the German conference.

CLC Pastor David Koenig prosecutes anyone who
dares to question the Church Growth Movement or
its advocates in WELS - his buddies.
Why does Koenig work with Horst Gutsche?

CLC Pastor Paul Tiefel, cousin of James (below)
joins Koenig in their pursuit of anyone to the right of Mark Jeske.
The two are known for always causing trouble and never listening to anyone.

WELS worship professor James Tiefel is an argument
for using grape juice for Holy Communion.
His lawyer made his drunk driving arrest go away,
so "it never happened" in WELS parlance.
I copied the original records into this blog,
because WELS is so good at flushing things down the memory hole.

ELCiC Bishop Susan Johnson -
Is Horst Gutsche one of your pastors?
Why is he serving one of your congregations?