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| This link includes a brief history of Waterloo Lutheran Seminary. |
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| The newest version of the seminary building is called Martin Luther University Seminary, but the official title still says Waterloo Lutheran Seminary. |
"Improvements made during the recent restoration include:
Guided tours throughout the day." |
I am still in shock that the largest Lutheran church in Canada, where I vicared, is being turned into low-cost housing. The Kitchener-Waterloo area had a number of the largest Lutheran congregations; they are also converting worship and education space for secular uses.
Fifty years ago, the seminary building and St. Peter's were brand new. The 50-year mark for churches is usually the time when repair bills mount up - furnace and roof, plumbing, and so on.
My vicarage supervisor, Henry Opperman D.D., nicknamed Bishop Heine, was a traditionalist, eh? Ontario residents love to end sentences with "eh" so I had to toss one in. His response to anything new was - "What's next?!" He was close to tears when he phoned me, from Kitchener, about the latest seminary student for his parish.
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| My vicarage supervisor was the pastor of the largest Lutheran church in Des Moines before he served in Canada, eh? |
The spirit of change was burping, fizzling, and demanding new measures already in the 1970s. It is a good thing so many adopted the new without honoring the old, eh? Tradition in worship took a back seat and then left quietly out the back door.
We are using the gesima Sundays at Bethany, even though they are anathema everywhere else. It is now easy being a radical in worship, eh? Just go back a few decades and use what people loved and honored back then - hymns, the historic liturgy, actual sermons written out carefully so they can be preached without notes.
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| Minus the fish hat, Matt the Fatt is now using Roman Catholic regalia in Europe but not-as-gay garments in American ceremonies. |
Costumes - it took a while, led by ELCA and then the ELDONUTs - now LCMS - the bishops and Archbishop Matt the Fatt. This means extensive investments in rich garments!, just like Jesus and His disciples. Few will hear a sermon based on explaining the text. The vast majority of Lutheran clergy, all ages and all genders, reject Justification by Faith and the Apostolic Text of the New Testament.
When people seize the corrupt and fraudulent texts, blocking the good traditions, decay accelerates, as we see today. The last time I looked, WELS had 60 or more precious published essays on the glory of Justification without Faith, aka - Objective Justification, aka Justification of the World, aka Universal Justification, aka Universal Objective Justification.
The pitiful Christian News cannot bear to use the words Justification by Faith and the Means of Grace. There were a couple of citations since the cub editor - Halestorm - tried to run a paper, but those words in CN are as rare as heterosexual smells and bells (high church) leaders.
How does this almost complete silence fit in with the LCMS-ELS-WELS claims of being -
- Orthodox
- Confessional
- Book of Concord Quia Marias
- Advocates of die Reine Lehre?
