KJV Joel 1:1 The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. 2 Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? 3 Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. 4 That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten. 5 Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth. 6 For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion. 7 He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white. 8 Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. 9 The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the LORD; the priests, the LORD'S ministers, mourn. 10 The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth. 11 Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished. 12 The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men. 13 Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God. 14 Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD, 15 Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.
One reader sent some information that easily escaped me, since I dislike most modern music. A misfit by the name of Cee Lo Green has a song out with an obscene title, and that video has 57 million hits on YouTube. I checked out the facts and verified the figures.
The Little Three of the Syn Conference participate eagerly in this decline. I was thinking about reasons why matters continue to get much worse. Here are some samples:
- Someone in the Missouri Synod decided to post a video mocking the liturgy, filming it at the church, near the altar.
- For reasons unknown, a WELS pastor videotaped himself gyrating to "Elephant Dance" in his robe, at the altar. He posted it to the congregation's website, also for reasons unknown.
- In the name of Emergent Church, various parishes in the Little Three provide mediocre copies of entertainment services, and the leaders defend this. That is really the bigger or worse mockery. The first two examples were taken down. The routine mockery continues and grows.
- Four decades ago, the main difference between a Missouri service and an LCA service in my hometown was the musical setting of the liturgy. Everything else was the same and the sermons were often similar: Biblical and original. The LCA said they practiced open communion, but in reality communion was 99.9% members only.
Congregations have forgotten that they can call anyone from within their own sect, so they do not have to beg the District Pope for candidates, nor do they have to accept the alcoholics and adulterers who are passed around, to use and abuse again. The hyper-congregationalism that allows Easter bunny ads and rock music services can also be used to reject the same and operate outside of Changer/CGM dictates.
Chemnitz Lutheran Church could say, "We dropped your CG hymnal and feminazi creeds. We opposed your failing fads, so we are taking in members from all over. Deal with it." The division of the synods should not be along historical or quasi-political lines, but based on money and property alone. The apostates should get all the Schwan and Thrivent money, all the property, and the Changers installed in lifetime positions. I forgot. They are already installed in lifetime positions.
The orthodox Lutherans could be thrust into the world with nothing but the Word and the Confessions, unencumbered by the alleged dictates of the money grants. The bureaucracy sets up those grants to force them to do what they want to do anyway, so they can claim they had to bed down with ELCA or overlook a little matter like abortion in the denomination's health plan. Confidential to Baby Blue Eyes: each sect has gay clergy, so no one is bothered by ELCA. Any bureaucracy is going to end up like Hollywood, full of misfits and addicts and unemployable relatives. Boss A overlooks the DUI conviction so that Boss B overlooks his arrest in the park - one big, happy family. The Little Three are full of divorced and remarried clergy, too. "Bless be the tie that binds our hearts in secrets hid." Just asking about it will get a put-down normally reserved for a certain blogger.
The Boomer clergy, especially the younger Boomers (born 1946 - 1964) will have the ultimate punishment meted out. They will get to see the results of their cowardly conformity visited upon everything they know. They will see membership vanish, congregations and schools closed, and increasing harshness from the insecure popes. Their children will pay a fortune for their denomination's education, borrowing tons of money, but they will not have jobs in the sect. The big Emergent success stories will happen, here and there, boosted by the unique chemistry of the senior apostate. If the congregation does not pop like a bubble, it will go into future iterations as a generic Protestant church and finally as a Unitarian outpost. Robert Schuller has done all that in his one, famous church in Garden Grove. So yes, Boomer conformists, Your Church Has Real Possibilities too.
PS - DP Buchholz said the biggest problem in WELS was with the Boomer leaders, but how is he different, with Changer Jeff Gunn in the same metro area? The only discipline visited upon Gunn is his election to the board of directors of Willowcreek's Little College in Milwaukee, along with the new president coming from CrossWalk, and another board member coming from CrossWalk. Gunn was shopping for a job at WLC. SPindoktor Schroeder put his foot down, so Paul Calvin Kelm got the invented job.
