Saturday, August 29, 2015

Another Clueless Lutheran Leader.
Eaton Is the Product of 25 Years of ELCA Radicalism

The ELCA Bishops in America and Canada are female.
Susan Johnson is single.


ELCA Bishop Liz Eaton, Thrivent Partner with Matt Harrison and Mark Schroeder:

From time to time I am invited to celebrate congregational anniversaries. It’s wonderful to see the church in action and to meet members from all across the country...


Very often, however, the membership of these congregations has shrunk. A sanctuary built to seat 400 now only sees 50 on a Sunday. Sunday school rooms and gymnasiums that rang with the sound of children are now empty or, in more enterprising congregations, are rented out to community groups and social service organizations.
In these congregations the anniversary celebration is bittersweet — for one glorious Sunday the sanctuary is filled with current and former members and their children and grandchildren, stories of the congregation’s heyday are shared, there is energy and enthusiasm and then everyone goes home. Next Sunday the 50 hearty souls who are the remnant will gather in a now more obviously empty sanctuary.
***
Two  new ELCA seminary presidents are ill-equipped females,
with almost no parish experience, or no education, or neither one -
like Louise Johnson at Wartburg Seminary, founded by Loehe.

GJ - Liz Eaton accelerated the decline of ELCA. When the 2009 ELCA convention voted for gay ordination and marriage, she told her anxious members and pastors in her local diocese (Ohio) that nothing was changing. Everyone should relax. The winnowing began in earnest. Anyone opposing this move was ousted and congregations were sued in earnest for deciding to leave ELCA, which they had a right to do. Some packed up and left the property to escape ELCA, leaving many of those great old buildings almost empty.
"Brett, I know what you're thinking - I had it coming.
We are still bigger than the Church of the Augsburg Confession."

Liz ran against Mark Hanson, who shepherded - or wolved - the 2009 decision, and she replaced him as bishop of ELCA.
Mark's right-hand man, Stan Olson, had his job removed from the ELCA budget, so he preceded his retirement with a stint at Wartburg Seminary, as president.
I spoke to a man in this area. He was very nervous in talking about being Lutheran, because he and others chose to leave the ELCA congregation and start a new one. Once he knew it was safe, he spoke about the change in guarded tones. He was clearly relieved to be out of ELCA.
The rapid escape of members, congregations, and properties from ELCA after 2009 surprised me, because they took the gay quotas and agitation for so long. The ELCA conservatives did nothing while their partners in the Episcopal Church were raising holy hell about the same departures from historic Christianity, always coming down from above, from the bishops and presiding bishop.
Was Louise Johnson a bridge too far?
Wartburg Seminary earlier had a financial crisis and fired professors.

Note the lop-sided smile below - Robin Steinke, new Luther Semianry President.


The Sermon as a Means of Grace - And Various Styles of Disgrace



"To the Lutheran the sermon, as the preached Word, is a Means of Grace. Through it the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth. It is a constant offer of pardon; a giving of life, as well as a nourishing and strengthening of life. In the Reformed churches the sermon is apt to be more hortatory and ethical. It partakes more of the sacrificial than of the sacramental character. The individuality of the preacher, the subjective choice of a text, the using of it merely for a motto, the discussion of secular subjects, the unrestrained platform style, lack of reverence, lack of dignity, and many other faults are common, and are not regarded as unbecoming the messenger of God in His temple. Where there is a properly trained Lutheran consciousness such things repel, shock, and are not tolerated."
G. H. Gerberding, The Lutheran Pastor, Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1915, p. 278.

The pulpit shown is from the congregation of Pastor John Bachman, Charleston, South Carolina. He served there 56 years.

Although Herman Melville was a free-thinker, his statement about the pulpit is far more impressive than what we hear from putative Lutherans who feel a need to entertain, titillate, and caffeinate their audiences.

Chapter 8 - The Pulpit by Herman Melville, from Moby Dick
I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation, sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, among whom he was a very great favorite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, but for many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry. At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom- the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February's snow. No one having previously heard his history, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without the utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life he had led. When he entered I observed that he carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in his carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner; when, arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit.

Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor, seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany color, the whole contrivance, considering what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly sailor-like but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel.

The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of wood, so that at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship, these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little Quebec.

I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity, that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen. Can it be, then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties and connexions? Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of the word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-containing stronghold- a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well of water within the walls.

But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place, borrowed from the chaplain's former sea-farings. Between the marble cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back was adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy breakers. But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel's face; and this bright face shed a distant spot of radiance upon the ship's tossed deck, something like that silver plate now inserted into Victory's plank where Nelson fell. "Ah, noble ship," the angel seemed to say, "beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling off- serenest azure is at hand."

Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in the likeness of a ship's bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship's fiddle-headed beak.

What could be more full of meaning?- for the pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.


Remember that Ski screamed about crawling through the mud
for a sinner?
Funny - Craig Groeschel screamed the same thing.



---

 "The individuality of the preacher, the subjective choice of a text, the using of it merely for a motto, the discussion of secular subjects, the unrestrained platform style, lack of reverence, lack of dignity, and many other faults are common, and are not regarded as unbecoming the messenger of God in His temple. Where there is a properly trained Lutheran consciousness such things repel, shock, and are not tolerated." - Gerberding

Rose Pruning - Reverse To Outen



A classic illustration on lighting altar candles showed seven candles on each side. The first candles to be lit started to the right of the cross and were numbered moving away from the cross. The the left side was lit, starting at the cross and moving away. The instructions said next, "Reverse to outen." That meant the first candle lit would be the last one extinguished.

That is a tradition from the days before filling the chancel with pit bands and giant movie screens.

Rose pruning works the same way. All summer long, pruning spurs growth, from planting them and pruning bare roots and new canes, to the last blooming cycle.

Nothing slows down rose production more than letting a flower go to seed, which means a chemical change in the plant.

The weather reports suggested rain last night and today, so I decided to water. No rain fell and the sky is blue. We are in the sun-drenched South, so I am giving the roses another bloom cycle.

I went through all the KnockOut roses and cut off every spent and going-to-seed rose I could spot, then went back two more times to find even more. The first draft is never enough. I could  have chopped the six foot bushes in half again, but that would have meant no color for now and too much growth going into the fall season of going dormant.

All roses love to be pruned, and KnockOut roses are especially eager to grow and bloom after a 50% pruning.

I was not keen about Cinco de Mayo roses - $5 each for two bushes,
but they proved to be quite beautiful in full bloom.


Reverse To Outen
Once we reach the end of September, there will be no more pruning. The roses will become dormant and I will spend the winter thinking about transplanting a few and planting a few more - nothing like this year. The yard will be full with about 100 rose bushes. That means a few more Mr. Lincoln roses - Mrs. Ichabod's favorite - some roses for rose hips - and some bargain roses for $5 if that offer is made by Gurney's again.

No Insecticides, No Herbicides, No Fungicides
I was going to buy rose spray when I began reading, Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden. Yes, I know, but just in case. I never did. In all the years of rose growing I have seldom sprayed, and it never really worked anyway.

I had enormous damage to white roses and Peace roses on the first bloom - thanks to aphids. But they were the incentive for beneficial bugs to move in - Flower Flies and Ichneumon Wasps. The second blooming of those flowers was almost completely perfect. At the end of the season I may have six John Paul II blooming and six budding with one flower aphid-destroyed. No problem. "You aphids are just attracting my favorite bugs. Your sins will visited upon the second and third generation."

I had Black Spot, a fungus, on some roses, but I never found it to be a major problem. I clipped off the damage into the grass and forgot about it. Roses are now far more protected against Black Spot, but not completely.

These Yellow Cone Flowers host beneficials and create seeds loved by birds.

Beneficials
The Rudbeckias at Norma Boeckler's garden were hosting beneficial insects when we visited. They are best seen when the wind is not blowing. I bent over the Brown-Eyed Susans and saw them close-up, flitting about.

Spider webs wrap around my face at times as I view the garden. People like to say they hate spiders, which are free insectide and bio-degradable, sustainable, and eager to fight global warming.


Pruning the Crepe Myrtle

This bush is late-blooming, but holds it flowers a long time, turning to seed. Now they are mostly bloomed, so I will cut them all off for a second blooming cycle. The seeds will be food for the birds all winter and the seedheads cut off in the spring to encourage new growth and buds.

Crepe myrtles can be pruned in many different ways,
but they need pruning at least twice a year.

Poor Buchholz Does Not Know the Holy Spirit Convicting the World of Sin...
Because They Do Not Believe on Me



Buchholz:
But this preaching of the law is exactly what is required. We cannot preach the gospel to people who are comfortable loving their 401(k)s, their automobiles, their jobs, their leisure activities, their travel plans, or even their children more than God. We are to expose their idolatry and warn them to repent. We are not to rail upon the outward sins of the flesh that condemn all the wicked Hollywood movie moguls, slam the purveyors of porn, and indict the murderers and pedophiles at the state penitentiary. We are to condemn the sins that lurk, cold and sinister, within the hearts of our hearers in the pew. We cannot make excuses for people’s apathy, stinginess, lack of Christian charity, and indifference to the means of grace. We must tell them in the words of Christ, “Unless you repent, you too will all perish” (Luke 13:5).  Essay, Part 2 , Page 5



John 16:7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you.
And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:
Of sin, because they believe not on Me;
10 Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see Me no more;
11 Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.

This is why genuine justification posts enrage the WELS Sanhedrin members. The Holy Spirit convicts them of the sin of unbelief, the foundational sin. That is also why they seldom let the words "justification by faith" enter their speech or writing. 
Calvinists and Babtists avoid -
Holy Communion, Holy Baptism, the sacraments, and the Creeds. 
The Emergent Church missions promoted by Jon Buchholz, Mark Jeske, and Mark Schroeder also avoid those terms and practices. 
Ski/Glende's The CORE promoted itself as a congregation (not so) but avoid Holy Communion with the excuse they were waiting for the right custom equipment to be made. Imagine Jesus offering the same excuse for delaying the Last Supper. And St. Peter's was so poor, with a $1 million plus annual budget that they could not loan or buy a temporary set. You get my drift, yes?
Repeat the same with Jeff Gunn and the Sacraments. Why are these Emergents so allergic to the Sacraments? They do not believe the efficacy of the Word and they are afraid of upsetting their anti-Lutheran prospects. 

Jesus cleansed the Temple,
long before Lutheran churches sold cakes, cookies, cookbooks,
and other trinketsin the narthex.
Ski/Glende - they are very big on commericalism in the congregation.
So is Thrivent.
Art by Norma Boeckler.

Roman Catholic Bishop and Child Abuser Found Dead



Jozef Wesołowski: Former Catholic archbishop found dead ahead of child sexual abuse trial


Jozef WesoÅ‚owski, 67, was found dead in his room – seemingly from natural causes – in the Holy See on Friday morning, a statement from the Vatican said.
"Vatican authorities intervened immediately for first verifications, which indicate his death was due to natural causes," the statement, posted on the Vatican press website, said.
The former ambassador to the Dominican Republic would have been the first church official to go on trial for child sexual abuse. His case, which had attracted a significant amount of international attention, was the first under a Vatican system reinvigorated by Pope Francis following widespread accusations of abuse within the Church.
The statement added that the Pope has been informed of Wesołowski's death.
READ MORE: VATICAN GETS UN GRILLING OVER SEX ABUSE
WESOLOWSKI COULD FACE TRIAL AT VATICAN
HIGH-RANKING VATICAN OFFICIAL SET TO STAND TRIAL FOR CHILD ABUSE
Wesołowski was due to stand trial on charges of paying boys to perform sexual acts, downloading and buying child abuse material and offending Christian morality.
His trial, originally scheduled for 11 July of this year, had been repeatedly postponed due to the former Polish archbishop’s poor health.
He had been laicised, the Catholic term for defrocking or removing him from office, last year ahead of a Vatican criminal hearing in September 2014. Despite being defrocked, Wesolowski was due to be judged by a Catholic court and could have faced as many as 35 years in prison should he have been convicted.

WELS DP Jon Buchholz Cannot Get Past the Simple Truths of the Gospel, Justification by Faith



The objective reality of justification for the world that was achieved at the cross does not change with the roller coaster of human emotion. Whether a person’s faith is weak or strong, Christ—the object of faith— remains rock-solid and unshakeable. God’s completed forgiveness, acquired at Calvary and sealed by Easter’s empty tomb, is the objective basis of comfort for troubled sinners. 
Buchholz Essay, Part 2, page 2.

Sorry Jon - you get a D in sentence construction. Your baloney was expressed far more elegantly by Edward Preuss, the UOJ expert who joined the Church of Rome after teaching at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.

Yes, this is the same nonsense, but Preuss said it better.
Paul McCain and Jack Cascione love the Robert Preus essay
but never quote Preus' Justification and Rome, where UOJ is repudiated.

Buchholz:
The Lutheran Church was born of Martin Luther’s Anfechtung9 and his subsequent rediscovery of the righteousness of God in Christ freely given by grace. Only the pure doctrine of God’s completed salvation in Jesus offers the comfort that a troubled heart craves, and preserves an afflicted conscience from despair. Essay, Part 2, Page 3.

So many errors in two sentences - what arrogance! The Lutheran Church is nothing more than a continuation of Christian orthodoxy, as the Book of Concord is anxious to show. Hilarious to claim that the Lutheran Church was born in Luther's anxious heart. Perhaps Luther's earned doctorate in Biblical studies and his teaching the Scriptures had something to do with his doctrinal clarity.

The Lutheran Reformers often expressed justification as "the righteousness of faith." How that phrase must gnaw at the anxious hearts of false teachers who have no faith, but also have no jobs apart from mouthing the words of the Christian Faith without believing them.

One cannot expect a mere WELS DP to grasp the efficacy of the Word. Why, the noted Mequon Professor of Old Testament, Dogma, and Everything Else - John Brug - managed to write a thick book called The Ministry of the Word without more than a brief mention of the efficacy of the Word.

Buchie's Beewax is a cure for chapped hides.
At first Rick Johnson chapped his hide, but later he made sure Rick was well funded.
Jeff Gunn chapped his hide, so Buchie later accepted Gunn and scorned those who objected.
"Jeff has repented. Have you?" - he said as he smote them with his righteous wrath.

More Ex Cathedra Nonsense from WELS District President Jon Buchholz.
Woe to WELS for Justifying the Wicked for Reward



But even looking outside himself, the troubled soul may fail to find peace, if Jesus’ justifying work is not seen as complete for all. For whom did Jesus live, die and rise again? Was it only for the elect? Was it only for those whom God recognized in his foreknowledge? Did Jesus somehow manage to pay for the sin of the entire world, yet still overlook me? When Jesus said from the cross, “It is finished,” did that triumphant decree embrace me and declare my justification finished, complete and certain—or was I left out? Is there something that I have to add to make Jesus’ justifying work real for me? Is there a change inside me that has to take place for me to be found not-guilty before the judgment bar of God?6 

The next time you find yourself lying awake in the pre-dawn darkness, thinking of the passage of time, contemplating your own mortality, and reflecting upon the approaching appointment you have with a just and holy God, your only unassailable assurance of salvation is the unchanging truth that Jesus lived, died and rose again to justify the world—and the world includes you! 
Convention Essay, Part 2, page 2

***

GJ - Pardon me for quoting the Formula of Concord on justification by faith.

WELS favors JP Meyer, Sig Becker, and CFW Walther over Luther, Chemnitz, and the Book of Concord. The quotation in the graphic above is completely at odds with the WELS fables about the forgiveness of sin.

If someone bothers to go through the entire essay, every premise rests upon a false assumption - that all unbelievers are forgiven and saved. Buchholz keeps repeated his mantra of the "objective reality of justification" and honkers like this -

Lutheran teaching has always pointed the troubled sinner away from himself to a completed salvation that exists completely outside himself.

This premise is a feature of this mangled essay - everyone in the world is forgiven and saved. But this assumption comes from the throne of his heart, just like the pope's cardio-legislations, but not from the Scriptures, Confessions, Luther, Chemnitz, or Gerhard.

This Universalism is a mask for the unbelief of Buchholz, Webber, and the leaders of WELS. They rejoice - supposedly - in something completely alien to the Word of God.

Their doctrinal bankruptcy is emphasized by their hackneyed tribute to justification by faith, which they call Subjective Justification. But that is not justification by faith - only a reflexive nod to their favorite dogma - because their SJ is "faith in Objective Justification."

I think Buchholz was listening to Dedicated to the One I Love when he wrote this sentence -

The next time you find yourself lying awake in the pre-dawn darkness, thinking of the passage of time, contemplating your own mortality, and reflecting upon the approaching appointment you have with a just and holy God, your only unassailable assurance of salvation is the unchanging truth that Jesus lived, died and rose again to justify the world—and the world includes you!




"While I'm far away from you my baby
Whisper a little prayer for me my baby
Because it's hard for me my baby
And the darkest hour is just before dawn."

Rather than emphasizing the Gospel, Buchholz and the WELS focus on their own peculiar dogmas, which are no more comforting than the nightmares they cause faithful pastors and members. They have no concern about the cancer of Church and Change, or Mark Jeske organizing WELS-ELCA-LCMS ministry seminars under their noses. No, they take out their flamethrowers and claymore mines for anyone who claims WELS has doctrinal problems.

Far better to preach false doctrine night and day, to snuggle with ELCA (as Mark Schroeder and the rest do, with impunity) than to imply that anything is wrong in the scandal-plagued sect.  To prove this, the WELS clergy take their victims to court in Appleton - with the blessing of Don Patterson and the Synod President.

But Change or Die! conferences - ah, to rest securely in the Universalism of ELCA and share in their claims of grace.

Note the combination of LCMS clergy, WELS leaders, and a female ELCA minister -
all arranged by Mark Jeske and blessed by Mark Schroeder.
Steve Witte was a founder of Church and Change in WELS.
Change or Die!
Rev. Lisa Bates-Froiland, Redeemer Lutheran Church, ELCA, Milwaukee
Rev. Jim Bickel, Outreach for Hope, Greater Milwaukee Synod
Deborah Engel, Siebert Lutheran Foundation
Rev. Mike Ernst, Retired, Hales Corners Lutheran Church, LCMS
Rev. Paul G. Hill, ELCA, Lake Wapogasset Lutheran Bible Camps, Inc.
Rev. Mark Jeske, Time of Grace Ministry
Bill Meier, Kingdom Workers
Rev. Mark Schulz, Trinity Lutheran Church, Lisle, IL
Brenda Skelton, Siebert Lutheran Foundation