Rydecki wrote on the Intrepid Lutheran blog:
"Note: I can’t provide here a complete history of what happened in Kokomo, IN, in 1979. There are several articles out there describing what happened, and I’ve only skimmed a few of them. I’m not even sure that KM was fully briefed on the situation. It seems that a group of members at that WELS congregation found themselves in disagreement with the way the WELS had been teaching Objective Justification, and so wrote up some extreme statements to characterize this doctrine, not because they believed the statements, but in order to point out how ridiculous they perceived the WELS teaching to be."
Unlike Rydecki, I traveled to Kokomo and visited with the families involved. How strange that Rydecki would post more erroneous material after admitting how little he knew about it.
Two families were kicked out of WELS, not a group. The two families were shocked by Pastor Papenfuss teaching the tenets of UOJ. He admitted to them (in the kitchen where we were standing) that he had never heard of it until he went to seminary in Mequon.
The two men wrote up four statements based on what Papenfuss was teaching. Three of them were almost verbatim from Mequon Professor J. P. Meyers, Ministers of Christ. The fourth one they discovered from some research on the topic. They wrote these down and said to Papenfuss, "Is this what you are teaching?"
Papenfuss said it was.
Because these two families rejected what Papenfuss admitted to teaching, WELS kicked them out for false doctrine, stating that fact in a letter sent to both families. They gave me a copy of each letter, and I copied it in Thy Strong Word, with this background information.
The letter included the four statements. The elders of the congregation gave as their reason the two families' rejection of the Kokomo Statements.
The families appealed, and Panning was on the appeals board. The synodical appeal agreed with the expulsion of the two families for rejecting the Kokomo Statements.
So let us finally dispose of the falsehoods promoted once again by Rydecki:
- The first three statements were not made up by the two families but published by WELS, by a seminary professor of WELS, and taught by WELS at its seminary.
- The fourth statement was supported by Papenfuss and the appeals committee. It came from an earlier controversy over the same topic - UOJ.
- The four statements are not extreme UOJ but ordinary, synod-supported UOJ.
- The four statements are not a caricature of justification, unless one concedes that WELS has indeed published and taught a caricature for many decades (while lying about it).
- WELS has told quite a few lies to turn two families into evil, dishonest trouble-makers when they were doing what they should have done in discerning doctrine. That the clergy continue to slander them--whether they were right or wrong--is an indictment of the synod.
The Intrepids are falling back on the Sloppy Language argument to justify forgiveness without faith, an argument Jay Webber has been shopping around for a long time, with the recent help of DP Buchholz. Since they cannot get their facts right, should anyone trust them with doctrinal matters?
I think not.
