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Daughter Congregation Installation
November 16, 2008 by Rick
"At the 10:30 service on November 16, 2008, St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church installed James Skorzewski as the pastor of our new daughter congregation named “The CORE.” According to the bulletin, “Christ is at the core of everything we do as a church . . .” CORE is also an acronym that stands for Connecting, Overhauling, Reconciled, and Engaged.
The CORE will not identify itself as a WELS congregation, and might not identify itself as Lutheran. However, the CORE’s new logo does incorporate a cross.
The service was held in our grade school gymnasium and was well attended. Most of the pastors presiding and attending were wearing jeans and silk shirts, and the Milwaukee band Koine played during the service.
The entire musical selection was taken from the WELS hymnal, Christian Worship. The members of Koine are musically talented, and it was refreshing to be able to sing doctrinally solid hymns from our own hymnal.
As part of his installation, Pastor Skorzewski made this vow:
—Do you believe that the Unaltered Augsburg Confession is a true exposition of the Word of God and a correct presentation of the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and that the other Confessions in the Book of Concord are also in agreement with this one Scriptural faith? If so, answer “I do.”
— I do.
—Do you solemnly promise that all your teaching and your administration of the sacraments will conform to the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions? If so, once again answer “I do.”
— I do.
St. Peter Church is not supporting the CORE financially. Anonymous WELS members are paying for this effort. Also, Pastor Skorzewski along with Pastor Ash are on the Board of Directors of an organization called Church and Change."
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Rick has left a new comment on your post "Stealthy to the C.O.R.E.":
Mr. Jackson,
I am the original author of this post, it was cut and pasted here in its entirety without permission. I do not approve of its association with the silly photo of Pastor Skorzewski nor with the false accusation that he is a Baptist. Under the fair use laws of the United States, bloggers may quote small excerpts of other articles with appropriate citations and use of quotation marks to show that another is speaking, and without implying endorsement of ideas or positions not belonging to the original author.
Bloggers must also link back to the original article's permalink. Under no circumstance may you republish an entire article without permission. You are hereby requested to fix these violations as soon as possible. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Rick T.
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GJ - After consulting with my attorneys at Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe, I can respond as follows:
1. This is an anonymous comment, with no last name, no address, no church affiliation, no secret society membership information. Ron Ash, Mark Jeske, or Larry Olson could have posted this. QED - the comment is worthless.
2. The law is clear about Fair Use, which I happen to be studying at the moment for my degree in Yellow Journalism. I quote for scholarly purposes only. This is a non-profit blog. No ads. No income. Just fun work, getting the apostates buzzing like the angry Schwaermer they are.
3. I never heard such ridiculous, legalistic claims as "Bloggers must also link back to the original article's permalink." I link back even though others are not so kind. Be happy, blogger, if you are the actual author - someone besides your Aunt Gertrude is finally reading your anonymous posts. Maybe if you grow a spine you can add a second reader.
4. Ski posted his silly photo, so I reproduced it. He must be proud of the pose since it appeared on his blog. He was proud of by-passing (pun intended) Professor Deutschlander so he could attend the Drive 08 conference with other WELS pastors. He blogged about that. He was proud that Buske and Parlow went, along with others yet unnamed. Drive 08 was organized to promote a stealthy Babtist, Andy Stanley, who cannot admit his church is Babtist - North Point Community Church. Andy is death on infant baptism, so I wonder what deep insights Andy has to offer to Lutheran pastors. You should send an anonymous comment to Andy about honesty.
5. My attorneys said that anyone can copy and paste from my blog. They especially encourage people to copy and paste the orthodox Lutheran quotations I provide. Shucks, you do not need to give me credit for gathering them. I consider it an honor to provide them.
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J has left a new comment on your post "Stealthy to the C.O.R.E.":
These types of posts continue to show how you know very little factual information about Pastor Ski, where he stands on doctrinal issues, and how God as blessed his ministry. If your goal is to stifle the CORE and what God has planned for them then you need to realize you are in fact only helping its cause. God is going to use Ski’s ministry to reach so many people despite your very poor research. Will Ski sacrifice sound Lutheran doctrine in his ministry? No and he sure didn’t while at St. Marcus, but you would never know because I doubt you’ve ever heard him preach, teach, counsel, administer the sacraments, rebuke or witness him perform any other pastoral duty. If however you have, let me know the time, place, and context because odds are I was there with you.
Pastor Ski is Lutheran but you wouldn’t know that because you refuse to take the first step to have this discussion. I realize it is safe to hide behind a blog and consider that your "formal accusation" rather than to have this talk in person (the irony of me saying this in a blog is almost overwhelming. I hope you find that as funny as I do).
The claims you make are almost comical and I will continue to defend Ski. I know Ski would love to have this talk with you but to be honest I doubt he even knows that you, or this blog, exists. I’m sure you’ve had the offers, but if you want to have this talk I’m sure I can help arrange it. I’m serious. I would love to be there and have him explain what he is doing and then to see you, like a man, make these accusations from many of your other postings to his face.
If there is anything I can do to help arrange this, let me know. In the meantime, feel free to bash me, make judgments on my faith and the doctrine I profess because of this post. I’ll willingly take it but please understand that the way you are talking about Ski, Jeske, Buske, The CORE, St. Marcus, etc. is just wrong.
J
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GJ - Of course, J will not give his real name. He will not even name his blog, because he apparently has a blogger blog. Blogger encourages (that is a verb based on the word courage) blog publishers to give their own names. Profile Not Available
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I am quite used to whiny apostates demanding that their own 10 Commandments be followed when they are so negligent about the original version. One Church and Change advocate wants people to turn to Christian Life Resources (nee WELS Lutherans for Life) for family guidance. Like how to dump your wife and marry your secretary? Why is no one blushing in WELS?
I am only posting what is publicly available, thanks to Ski's own blog, Church and Change, St. Marcus, Drive 08, Fuller Seminary, Willow Creek, North Point Community (really Babtist) Church, etc.
I marvel at how WELS pastors are taught to wrinkle their noses in disgust whenever the LCMS is mentioned, yet they fall all over each other to study at Fuller, Willow Creek, North Point, Stetzer-World, and Leonard Sweet-o-rama. If they are not actively bowing to the Enthusiasts, they are pretending none of this is going on.
J, whoever you are, I suggest checking out the Large Catechism. There it says that public doctrine may be reproved publicly. I did not deal with any private sins of Ski. He may have been caught sitting with someone other than his own classmates in chapel (a sin at the Sausage Factory). He may have told the secrets of GA to someone outside the Sausage Links. No, everything I have addressed is freely available on the Internet and discussed with remarkable clarity in the Book of Concord. I highly recommend the book. It will cast a lot of light on the pastoral ministry.
I know many in the WELS system have actively turned future ministers into Fuller clones. They should be roundly condemned for their false doctrine, their open deception, and their weasely ways.
PS - About The C.O.R.E. Nothing makes sense in that title. How does the go with the verb forms? Why are they not in parallel? I know the name was switched officially at the last minute. Did another group of Enthusiasts establish the name first?
The C.O.R.E. will probably go down as the worst name for a stealth church - ever. It reminds me of another program, a unionistic evangelism effort started by a WELS pastor on his way into ecumenism-land. They called it F.I.E.R.C.E. I have forgotten what all the initials meant, except the last one was evangelism. Fierce evangelism seemed a bit strained.
