One Named

BMEYER has left a new comment on your post "Paul McCain, Compassion Incarnate":

Mr. McCain, you state, "Name even one single Lutheran pastor who supports you Greg(g)." Truth is if you have an issue with Pastor Jackson's doctrine, name the doctrine and state the Scripture and Lutheran Confessions and show where you believe he violates it. Everyone is required to contend for Scriptural truth. When you see a problem it is in the interest of doctrinal purity to point it out and correct it. No one benefits from accepting false doctrine, knowingly or not. The fact that you may be hated (alienated) because the Holy Spirit has led you to contend for pure doctrine and worked in you the willingness to endure persecution it is a good thing. We then share in the persecution suffered by our Lord and Savior. It is those pastors who do not support Pastor Jackson and his attempt to warn Christ's universal church of these false doctrines who have neglected their duty to protect the sheep. They have exchanged the clarity and efficacy of the Scriptures for temporal, human relationships. Many become indignant at the charge that Church Growth doctrines have taken hold in the WELS and ELS. Allow me to relate my experience in the WELS to support the charge.
Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (HTLC) in Des Moines, Washington owned their church facility and property. They were holding multiple services on Sundays and during the week to accommodate the congregation which was larger than the building could hold at one service. They operated a CDS in the basement. Working with the WELS Synod officials they decided to raze their current building and build larger church with increased facilities for the school. The CEF assisted with obtaining part of the roughly 2.4 million dollars required. Part of the money came from getting congregation members to take second mortgages on their homes. Part of the money came from donations using Thrivent matching funds. Thrivent is also the organization who had recently given 2 million dollars to ELCA to support their Christ denying outreach and finance abortions. When this issue was raised to the voters the response from a retired pastor was, "But if we don't use the money somebody else will." So they built the church under the theme, "Let the Children Come". (Apparently directed toward those children not aborted by Thrivent money) Once built there was intense pressure to ensure consistent offerings to support the new facility. Because there was now roughly 1.3 million owed in outstanding debt, doctrines on Christian stewardship moved from a function and motivation of the Gospel, with the Holy Spirit working faith in a person to give of what they've been given by God, to a function of the law where you have to give. That the amount each family gave, or said they would give, was more and more important. When the comment was made, "that had God wanted HTLC to build a larger church He would have provided the means to do so "prior" to building it" was met with silence. The comment, "that making a dicision on your own that God wants the church to do this even though there wasn't the money available" was met with silence. So the money required to handle such a large debt was not coming in. The families who mortgaged their homes were being asked by the banks to pay the debt and the church did not have the money to repay them. So the harshest twist came when money from the "Let the Children Come" restricted school funds was used to pay monthly expenses. And more money drives were dreamed up in an attempt to repay the debt. A comment by the CDS principal during a voters meeting exposed what apparently private conversations opinioned prior to the building, "If we had just gotten the 15% increase in membership that building the facility was supposed to have brought we wouldn't be in this position." When a comment was made that, "In contrast to that statement, the Holy Spirit alone is the one who provides any increase." the principal walked out.
And during this the Synod decided to send a call to the fairly conservative pastor for an open lead pastorship in Arizona. He accepted the call and we received a call list. The new pastor immediately began the church growth process. The first being a Bible class on "What is a Church?" where he made the statement, "We come to church to bring our praises to God." When I made the contrasting statement, "No, we come to church to be served by God through Word and Sacrament" a discussion ensued which included the pastor's statement, "well, ok but I can't say which is more important." and ended with his, "Ok, let's say their both important" and "let's just agree to disagree." Various issues followed that initial Bible class. Mostly surrounding his attempts to grow the church by Church Growth means instead of through God's Word and Sacraments. He was adament that he wasn't, "Church Growth" while declaring that his favorite seminary professor was David Vallesky. One Sunday the pastor decided to begin the liturgical reading and during the reading he handed it off to all the women to read the liturgy to the congregation, and after a few verses had all the men read and then around it went. A long discussion ensued which lasted a few months concerning the role of women in the church and the applicability of 1 Tim. 2:12 and 1 Cor. 14:34. It ended with the following statement from the Pastor and Elders, "After prayerful consideration and study of the Word in this matter we believe that antiphonal worship is a proclamation or reading of God's inspired word and is not considered to be teaching the congregation." And from another WELS pastor, "However there is quite a stretch between women teaching (ie expounding, explaining, clarifying and elucidating Scripture) and reading Scripture antiphonally and collectively without giving instruction."
Take this for what you are capable of getting out of it. Truth is that what Pastor Jackson points out in quoting false teachers and exposing their actions is actually happening. Sad, sick and unChristian as those quotes and actions are. And while so many pastors in the ELS and WELS scramble around to excuse one another there remains in the pew thousands of individuals who need to hear God's pure Word and need to learn to discern between God's Truth and the faith killing lies fed to them by false teachers. May each of you reject temporal, human relationships in favor of the everlasting grace found in God's Word and Sacraments alone, purely taught and rightly distributed. What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

By the grace of God, forever in Christ,
Brett Meyer