Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Narrow-Minded Dares To Mention the Vindictive District Presidents

But DP Buchie was so quick to forgiven Jeff Gunn!
In fact, he recommended Jeff's work to all his youth.


narrow-minded has left a new comment on your post "Visualize God Smiling at You. Yes, WELS and Missou...":

"How good are you at forgiving people who have done you wrong? Not so hot? Do you hold grudges sometimes?"

Ask these questions to Pr. Rydecki's DP. Ask these questions to the SynCon Papists who punish those who oppose CG/CW/UOJ. One doesn't even have to do anything wrong or sinful to suffer punishment. Just hold fast to Lutheran orthodoxy.

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GJ - In the words of Chemnitz, the SynCon style of leadership is either a tragedy or a farce. Everyone knows it.

DP Buchholz took years to determine that Jeff Gunn was just the guy they needed in WELS, along with Jeff's  Rick Warren clone church - CrossWalk. In fact, Buchie had to have two blue-ribbon commissions studying the issue, because he was "concerned about all those souls."

But when the report came in critical, even with the meddling of Buchie to soften it up, the DP welcomed Gunn into WELS kosherdom while laity who helped with the report dropped their jaws in amazement.

The only one in the district who needed discipline was Paul Rydecki, for teaching justification by faith and for being willing to discuss it at the next meeting, as Buchholz promised that congregation. But at the conference, Buchholz gloated to everyone that he was foreclosing on the mortgage after kicking Rydecki and the congregation out. Such concern about souls! Such compassion! Such buffoonery.

Email to me, from DP Buchie, 10-5-2008, verbatim:

I’m hugely disappointed in the lack of discernment demonstrated by pastors who put on the Sunday morning carnivals. It absolutely blows my mind that pastors trained in Scripture and the Lutheran confessions could even dream of adopting this garbage. Of course, the problem is that these guys have read way too many paperbacks, unwittingly adopted Arminian principles, and are green with envy over the numbers generated by false prophets in their megachurches.

I’m likewise disappointed, although not so surprised, by the torpidity of lay people who think that this is cool, neato, wowie, and the greatest thing since sliced bread. As you know, historically, it has often been lay people in key times who have kept the pastors honest and faithful. I think it’s a sad testimony to the lack of depth of the preaching and teaching that has left lay people at such a shallow level of understanding that they also cannot discern the folly.

Personally, I think that we’re seeing the logical, inevitable conclusion of decades of inbred thinking, hubris, and a flawed hermeneutical method, built upon a historical foundation of pietism. Put all those things together, and the stuff we’re seeing today is really the unrestrained, logical next step.

The problem is that, with our hermeneutical method craving a chapter-and-verse answer to every challenge, we’re poorly equipped to synthesize concepts and formulate doctrine based upon principles. That’s one of the overriding weaknesses that I see as a legacy of the Wauwatosa Theology that has downplayed confessional and patristic study in favor of a literalistic Biblicism. The irony is that, using this approach, we would probably be hard pressed to develop a theology for infant baptism today, if it weren’t already handed down to us, because that’s one of those doctrines that is inferred by synthesizing a number of passages.

I’m in the process of developing a number of propositional statements that militate against the whole contemporary style. I’m proceeding rather slowly, because I’m dealing with smart, personable, articulate people on the other side, and I want to have things formulated very carefully, and I’m also afraid that, given the hermeneutical environment we’re in, my fellow pastors may be slow or reluctant to draw the same conclusions unless the case is very carefully constructed. We’ll see what happens.

My overriding concern is for the souls at stake. I’m concerned not only about those that are being led astray by the emotional, subjective, irreverent, inferior-quality worship, but for the larger population of Christians who need to be gently instructed in the truth. Many of our pastors and people, thankfully, have a deep-rooted antipathy and contempt for the carnival stuff, but they’re ill-equipped to articulate a response to it, and so it gets shrugged off as adiaphora. Ultimately, if we’re going to be faithful to confessional Lutheranism, there will probably be a huge split over this. (The alternative is that errant preachers see the folly of their ways and come around, but I’m not optimistic that will happen; perhaps I myself need to trust the efficacy of the word more in that respect.) I just hope that the division, if and when it comes, will be over matters of doctrine and practice, not the result of personal conflict and a mishandled approach.

This, by the way, is one of the reasons that I initially wanted to get to know you a little better when I contacted you a couple of months ago. I am well aware of your history battling the CGM in Lutheranism, and I wanted your insights into these present challenges. I appreciate your willingness to let me tap your thinking from time to time.

As I mentioned to Mark Schroeder yesterday, I find myself on the front lines of something that I never thought I had signed up for. Such is the charge the Lord places before us!

Peace be with you,

Jon

[end of quote]

Of course, when it came down to talking about justification by faith, Buchie had no interest in reading anything beyond his own WELS Essay Files copy and paste job. He was quick to interrupt and full of excuses why he had not opened the free copy of Thy Strong Word he had received.

American Lutherdom has paid a terrible price in letting politics determine who would be a bishop/DP. 

He wanted to know why I called him an Enthusiast -
because the Book of Concord does.