Ascension Day Service, Tomorrow at 7 PM Central

By Norma Boeckler

We Americans have turned the worship service into another day of labor. Someone said, "The Christian faith is the only world religion where God gives to man, instead of man giving to God."

That would be a Means of Grace perspective, almost absent in the Lutheran Church, but staging a minor comeback in some places.

The Pentecostal-Evangelical tradition turns the worship service into a recruitment drive. From that point it has degenerated into a time of entertainment and manipulation. Most of us ministers are not that entertaining, so that sends the majority into bouts of plagiarism to keep up with demands.

God has a marvelous way of tripping people up in their conceits, or perhaps it is Old Scratch hisself, leading false teachers along and betraying them at the end.

Robert Schuller claims to have invented the Church Growth Movement, and I believe he has strong claims in that area. Situated near Fuller Seminary, he had the chance to influence Fuller as a successful TV minister instead of just writing about it, as McGavran and Wagner did.

Schuller got to gloat about all his victories in Your Church Has Real Possibilities.

His empire is declining rapidly now. Purpose-Driven Rick Warren, profoundly influenced by Schuller, is rolling in money and enjoying his influence.

The multi-site ministers have the Syn Conference pastors slavering and slaving to be just like them. Loving praise, these Emerging Church boys invite people to copy them, and thereby enjoy the sincerest form of flattery.

Schuller is selling off his properties, including part of his own main campus. Ditto the old D. James Kennedy property. The other personality cults will do the same, eventually. They only prove that weed seeds do grow well.

Recipe for Pastoral Work
All the Lutheran churches need to do is provide liturgical worship with home-made sermons (ingredients: KJV, Triglotta, Luther's sermons, Lenski).

Add pastoral visitation instead of committee meetings and mission/vision planning sessions.

Add adult and youth education.

Subtract all parish activities. The pastor is not the social director of the Love Boat.

Subtract community events. Local leaders see ministers as handy volunteers.

Subtract most other activities to spend time with the family.

Clock Roll-backs Are a Mistake
Some people want a denomination which is like the one they remember from 20 years ago. Unfortunately our brains are better at Photoshopping than the software is.

A stricter version of Pietism is still Enthusiasm, and it will end up in a few years just like that bad old denomination which was left for good.

Missouri is almost identical to the LCA I knew in the 1960s because the LCMS is a Pietistic sect. Missouri will catch up with ELCA unless the leaders begin taking the Book of Concord seriously.

ELCA Has Church Discipline - Unlike the Syn Conference

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.

Join the Jeske Synod - Contribute Generously and Often To His Own Brand of Generic Christianity

CEO Jeske to graphics slaves - How can we get Jeske into this a few more times?


John has left a new comment on your post "Mark and Avoid Jeske Crosses the Wide Missouri":

Jeske appears to be another learned man who is so tied up in promoting his own agenda that the message of Christ, and Him crucified is totally lost.

One wonders whether Jeske has lost his identity as a Lutheran, or is denying that identity.

I have heard his program being praised as great for the W/ELS home bound and servicemen serving in areas where no W/ELS services are available.

How is this possible when there is no such affiliation mentioned in the program?

I dare say that if one looks at Jeske's program, simply applying the test of whether it spreads the message of Christ, and Him crucified, one will mark this program as having absolutely nothing to do with his/her salvation. Such a person will not only avoid this program, but also spread the word that it's a total waste of time.

What an opportunity this man has had to spread the Word. Has he done so?

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2oo babies baptized in one year!
Those German immigrants were coming in by the boat loads. Now Jeske, it is 100 years later and more Lutheran churches have been built. Perhaps your faith lies in the Fleck Foundation. Maybe the LCMS? I know pastors who started a mission church on a shoe string budget. This was done without church growth gimmicks.(the pastor went out in the community and talked one-on-one with people) According to my source, this was no get rich quick scheme. The sad part is that these same churches with humble beginnings, are being lead by C&C/CG pastors. Jeske, do you subscribe to the Holy Scripture and the BOC? "Change or die." Sorry Mark Jeske, I will not sell my soul!

In Christ,
from WELS church lady

Tombstone City, Wisconsin

Deputy Doug Englebrecht presides over a Church and Change district. The Changers run everything...into the ground.

The chairman of Church and Change is Ron Ash, formerly of St. Peter Freedom.

The pastor of The CORE Lutheran Church is Ski, a board member of Church and Change. He and Bishop Katie came from Jeske's non-denominational church in Milwaukee. Jeske is the Church and Change rock star, because he lives off more government grants than Headstart.

The pastor of St. Mark Willow Creek, John Parlow, is a key figure in Church and Change.

St. Mattthew has been shrinking under its Church and Change growth program. I heard it is down to 100 members. Soon it will be as small as The CORE.

Deputy Doug is busy stamping out any traces of Lutheran doctrine and worship. Re-elect Deputy Doug, so he can finish his work.