Efficacy of the Divine Word - Lutheran and Mainline Sects Covet the Results, Reject the Labor

The ambiguous smile of Church Growth Valleskey is identical to Mark and Avoid Jeske's.

The Scriptures, from Genesis 1:1 onward, teach that the Holy Spirit is always at work in the Word of God. The Spirit either enlightens or blinds, converts or hardens the heart. Likewise, the Word of God is either invisible (teaching and preaching) or visible (the Sacraments of Holy Communion and Holy Baptism). The Word and Sacraments are Means (that is Instruments) of God's grace. That grace only comes through faith in Jesus Christ, Romans 5:1-4.

1. For Roman Catholics, the foundation is the papacy, because they imagine the institution of the papacy alone is effective. 
2. For Zwingli-Calvinists, the individual gives life to the dead letter of the Scriptures by using reason, appeal, marketing, and so forth. Objective Faithless Justification is the crown jewel of Zwingli and Calvin.
3. The rare Lutheran pastor or professor teaches that the Word of God (invisible and visible) always has the power of the Spirit, without gimmicks, without sugar-coating, without salesmanship. They believe and teach that the Chief Article of Christianity is Justification by Faith.

Look Around - Read a Few Articles

The seminaries have already collapsed, as demonstrated by the ELCA. They are so broke that merger is already one step closer to the finish. Concordia St. Louis bought a seminary (!) and later sold it for a loss (?). WELS was gay liberation years ago - and proud of it. They even set up a counseling service worthy of ELCA. "Email us for help with your problems."  Um-hmm.

Try Giving a Biblical Explanation of the Reading - For the Sermon

Some of the gimmicks tried by the lazy pastors and synod drones:

1. Copy each other's sermons.
2. Copy sermons from sermon books.
3. Tell funny stories.
4. Copy the so-called sermons from the Church Growth clowns.
5. Waste a fortune at Fuller and other places destitute of the Gospel.
6. Kiss up to those who tell everyone how great they are because they steal the snake oil from other snake oil salesmen.
7. Ask if any synod president has written any books on his/her own.
8. Ask the professors if Jesus was actually born of a Virgin and rose bodily from the dead, the tomb empty. Listen for the sputters, gasps, pauses, and angry rebukes.
9. Consider not the wasted space of the giant buildings that once were full. Consider instead why they traded the Gospel for moldy straw of Left-wing activism and Zwingli-Calvinist mockery.

Wayne Mueller was an early promoter of Church Growth and a published denier of Church Growth in WELS.

Leave it to Calvinist News to bring together, at long last, the Objective Faithless Justification dogma of these two swells - an opportunity! Readings from Justification and Rome, by Dr. Robert Preus, were not welcome.

Some are gone but not forgotten, others are forgotten but not gone.