Anticonfessionals from Church and Change run the WELS periodical. Jim Aderman was a founder of C & C, was fired as a pastor for shrinking his church, and has served or serves as a regular contributing FIC author. Other past and present Chicanery FICaries are: Peter Pan-denominational, Kudu Don Patterson, Frosty Bivens, David Valleskey, Paul Calvin Kelm, Joel Gerlach, Wayne Mueller, Jim Huebner, Larry Oh!, etc.
Everyone is whining about ELCA's latest venture into diversity. ELCA is getting rid of CORE (anti-gay agenda) clergy on the roster. They are threatening to expel any congregation belonging to another denomination, such as LCMC or CORE's new entity. The seminary faculties are all behind these moves and support draconian measures to enforce the 2009 votes.
I respect ELCA for being honest about their beliefs and acting on them. They are just the opposite of the Syn Conference.
WELS claims to have fellowship principles, but Parlow, Kelm, and Trapp have belonged to the Willow Creek denomination without being disciplined. Their congregations have joined Willow Creek without being kicked out. (Ditto ELS, LCMS, and CLC (sic) examples, with some minor variations.)
ELCA advocates homosexual and lesbian pastor couples, homosexual weddings, the entire gay agenda - almost to the exclusion of heterosexuality. Any deviation from deviancy is called homophobia and roundly condemned. The Syn Conference is supposedly straight, but they have been doing joint work with ELCA since the 1987 merger, with the ALC and LCA before that.
The Syn Conference is supposed pro-life, but they have been cosy with ELCA, even though ELCA pays for clergy abortions through its health plan. ELCA uses its World Hunger money (with starving babies on the posters) to pay for political lobbyists all over North America, to advocate abortion on demand as a legal right.
ELCA practices unionistic worship because ELCA favors full-throttle ecumenism. In contrast, WELS and Missouri and the Little Sect are outwardly opposed to this, but...
1. WELS Pastor Ski brags about worshiping with the Babtists at the Drive conference. It is posted on his public blog and left there for everyone to enjoy. Bishop Katie boasts that there were 8 WELS church workers there. No discipline. No sir. Instead, Ski is a expert speaker at Mary Lou College, Jeske, and Deputy Doug district events. Ditto Kelm, Huebner, and the rest. (Imagine ELCA tolerating a second-in-command who is an ardent Triglotta, KJV, Luther-first orthodox pastor! Huebner is the equivalent of that polar opposite in WELS. And he went to Fuller Seminary.)
2. WELS and Missouri have devoted themselves to promoting the very doctrine they supposedly reject - Enthusiasm.
3. To train pastors and leaders, WELS and Missouri ship truckloads of money to Fuller, Trinity Divinity, Willow Creek, Drive, and Exponential - but they are against unionism.
4. Syn Conference leaders cannot articulate a clear Lutheran message. In contrast, Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson is the darling of the ecumenical Left. He is their poster boy, their white Obama, for forcing unwanted change upon his denomination, getting away with it, and enforcing his edicts.
5. The Syn Conference is supposedly scandalized by ELCA cuddling up to the Antichrist, His Holiness the Pope. However, the ELS invited a bishop to march with them in their religious dedication service - where he spoke; WELS had the homosexual archbishop and his scrofulous priests teach at WLC; and Missouri sends its finest to Rome and Constantinople, thanks to papalists on their seminary faculties.
6. Thrivent doles out money based on ELCA's agenda, and the Syn Conference has both trotters in the trough.
7. The Episcopal Church, the weak sister partner of ELCA, watches while entire dioceses leave the denomination with their bishops - all united in fighting the PB's lawsuits against them. However, ELCA has not had a single active bishop leave the synod. Nor has an entire group of congregations left at once. ELCA's leader looks like the reference librarian at the public library, but he takes no prisoners.
The Syn Conference is very strict in one area of doctrinal discipline. Although they are in bed with every denomination, every orientation, and the Lavender Mafia, they make a point of marking and avoiding me. For that I am grateful. I do not think I could stand the purity of their doctrine, the integrity of their confession of faith, the honesty of their practice.
