Losing by Winning:
Younger WELS Members Not Fooled
Mark Jeske has moved full-time to Time of Grace,
meaning he is too precious to waste his time in pastoral work.
Discussion on Facebook
I used to contribute to Time of Grace Ministry on a regular basis, but quit doing so. The issue that bothered me was that Jeske preached one message to one group of people and another message to another group of people and elevated people of known moral flaws to high status. The law and gospel are meant for all and his occasional scripture-poor messages undermined his normally good ones. I wrote to Pastor Jeske about this and did not receive adequate responses. The later controversy over Jeske's involvement with LCMS raised still more questions for me. I get the impression that Jeske has a tendency to push the envelope, to stretch his Christian freedom a little too far.
My own personal story of "dissapointment" with Pastor Jeske (not that it is one of biblical importance) was last winter when he was one of the "Key Note Speakers" at the WELS College Rally (I attended as a work shop speaker). He got up there and basically showed a "sales pitch" for his Time of Grace T.V. Program. After his talk, he said "Sorry, I have to run... but, please feel free to talk to my staff...".
I just thought that was really, really BAD form. Here he was, invited to be a "Key Note Speaker" at a college rally, and gives a "sales pitch" before pawning everyone off on his "staff". If anything, I personally, think his ego just needs to be "taken down a few notches".
I think his ability to share God's Word with "The Masses" via a syndicated television program is a great one. I just (personally) question his motives, at times.
Scott,
That reminded me of an incident where a friend and I felt duped into attending a short seminar put on by lay people associated with Time of Grace. The invitation was a short, vague statement indicating that we would be learning evangelism techniques. It turned out to be a recruiting pitch to join Time of Grace. It more notably spoke to all of the great things that Pastor Jeske does, but said little of the the gospel message and the work of the Holy Spirit.
No problem, Scott!
(In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a signatory to the first memorial [2011-06U] so obviously I support it.)
To the points that Scott and Gregg have made: I was also present at the 2010 College Rally this past December (Scott and I were both workshop presenters). I was absolutely not impressed with the Time of Grace video Pastor Jeske showed--not only was it pure self-promotion, it wasn't even self-promotion aimed at the right audience (WELS college students)! He was clearly recycling a past fundraising video and passing that off as his "keynote speech"! Even worse, as Gregg notes above, there was not even a word of the Gospel, or the action of the Holy Spirit, and none of the "success stories" of people that ToG had supposedly reached mentioned any involvement with churches of any denomination (let alone WELS/ELS churches). They were all basically stories revolving around "Pastor Jeske inspired me to improve my life". It was very works-oriented and very Jeske-focused.
(If I am misconstruing the video--and I don't think I am--I would welcome a link or a transcript.)
