Oh my! The WELS Damage Control Team went into overdrive, like James Carville on meth. The arguments (all anonymous) range from the normal WELS name-calling to the assumption of repentance to the usual excuses (old news).
"That their evil hurt not others." - From The Defense of Poesy by Philip Sidney.
Perhaps my work is too subtle for most WELS pastors. The origin of the discussion was the bizarre assumption that former Vice Pope Paul Kuske was an ultra-conservative because he lobbied for MLS. A school is not a doctrine, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, as the saying goes. If the Church Growth people hate schools, then a friend of one school is ultra-conservative by virtue of being against the target of Church Growthers.
Pastors are obliged to teach and defend sound doctrine. Someone who advocates Church Growth doctrine, as Kuske did, is not even an infra-conservative. He is a false prophet. The legions of false prophets in WELS do not make one false teacher more tolerable.
As I was saying, the leadership in Columbus was completely and utterly false, corrupt, evil, and destructive. Members there now rejoice that the old gang is gone. The trouble is not so much that Stolzenburg, Zehms, M. Schroeder (not the SP), and their buddies Stadler, Iver Johnson, etc. destroyed their own marriages, but that the doctrinal destruction was allowed, even encouraged to spread.
Columbus, Ohio was Ur-Church-and-Change. The apostates in Columbus suddenly became hosts to the national WELS youth gathering. And who was a featured speaker? Stadler. The actual hosts were not the local pastors but Lutheran Parish Resources, Zehms and Stolzenburg.
Other liberal denominations do exactly the same thing. That is why I feature so many Episcopalian articles. The more dysfunctional a church leader is (no matter the denomination) the more power he--or she--grabs and holds. The evil spreads until a group makes an effort to stop it. The chief victim is sound doctrine because apostates hate the Word of God. They never stop blabbing against the efficacy of the Word and the glory of their own work, so they murder souls with quiet efficiency.
The Episcopalians have shocked and surprised me by packing up and leaving the denomination, with or without their property, willing to face down the lovely Presiding Bishop in court. She uses their offering money to pay the lawyers to sue them, so they must use their local money to defend themselves against the national lawyers funded by their denominational gifts. How many elderly Episcopalians knew they were funding future lawsuits against conservatives, when they signed over their estates?
So far Lutherans have remained spineless and supine.
One WELS minder decided to level the playing field by name-calling, a tactic familiar to all those who have dealt with this sect. How dare I joke about Vicar Zerbe being a youth leader? I did not joke. I asked a question based upon previously gathered information. Recently someone said, "Just is not around WELS anymore, is he?" I told the caller what I understood from a knowledgeable friend - "Just was seen with a WELS youth group." The defence of Just doing youth work was--yes, indeed--he was repentant. Or maybe he served his time. I was sternly warned to avoid mentioning Just because his case still rankles in Phoenix. Some clergy believe Just is innocent (as he claimed), overlooking the fact that he was convicted and also confessed his sin to a pastor.
I was not being comical when I asked if Zerbe was a youth leader in his Muskegon WELS congregation. Al Just murdered his wife, lied about it, manipulated friends and in-laws into defending him, married his children's baby-sitter, and then engaged in WELS youth work when out of the clink.
The Wisconsin sect's pattern of behavior is cancerous and needs drastic surgery. As I mentioned before, the Michigan District drove three good pastors (Toledo) out of the ministry--for good. Were they divorced and married to their former girlfriends? No. Were they sound teachers? Yes. What was their crime? All three were mildly critical of the Church Growth Movement.
Meanwhile, the Michigan District's pet phony-pastor, Floyd Stolzenburg, is still serving a Lutheran congregation. Emmanuel in Columbus was linked several years with the Little Sect on the Prairie, with Kovaciny as the bagman for Thoughts of Faith in Ukraine. The sacrament of absolution is wonderful indeed, especially when accompanied by gold and silver reparations.
The pattern of punishing sound teachers and rewarding false prophets is all too familiar in this Age of Apostasy. The Wisconsin sect is just another example of a mainline denomination decaying into Unitarianism.
The concept of a wealthy adulterer funding pastors, congregations, and the denomination is not new. When J. P. Morgan was the richest man in America, he used to take his Episcopalian bishops to the national convention on his private railroad cars. He took his mistress on the same train. Morgan was known for his many conquests, or purchases, as the case might be. What did these stolid Episcopalian bishops of the Old School say about the mistresses and donations? "Praise God from Whom all blessings flow."
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GJ - The following is too funny, especially because it is anonymous, misspelled, with the name Robert assigned:
It's likely you know your actions are sinful and you're to (sic) cowardly to admit them on your blog.
The most entertaining comments are the anonymous ones yelling, "Coward!"
