What Hath Church Growth Wrought!?

 

 Official presidential portrait of John Quincy Adams

What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 is a nonfiction book about the history of the United States written by historian Daniel Walker Howe. 

Each Denomination Left Its Own "Growth Strategy" Faster Than a Scalded Dog 

A clever fellow has created graphs on the decline of Congregationalists as churches, also as individuals. The United Church of Christ changes were well known 50 years ago, and I saw the similar numbers about Lutherans at an LCA conference. 

By the way, ELCA lost half of its population from its merger-mobile - and splendid harmony - with LCMS-WELS-ELS populations. 

Guess what? The United Church of Christ shrank from 8,300 congregations in 1957 slithering down to 4,500 in 2020!

UCC membership soared downward from 2.1 million members to 680,000.

Running Out of People -https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/the-united-church-of-christ-is-running

New way of spelling McGavran! Yes, the Lutherans ATE IT UP!

One Giant Leap for the Church Growth Synodical Heroes. Protestia Strikes Again.

 

16ft Chocolate Waterwall? Megachurch Turns Church Into High-Production Willy Wonka Factory

The church is linked here.

"LCBC (Lives Changed By Christ) is a non-denominational multisite megachurch with twenty locations spread across Pennsylvania. Founded in 1986 and led by senior pastor Jason Mitchell, last year, they had an average weekly in-person attendance of 14,044, with another 7354 watching online. They had 12,267 first-time guests, baptized 640 people, sponsored 934 children overseas, and gave $41,115,218 in tithes and offerings."

Imagine all the time pastors have wasted studying the Bible, the Confessions, and church history. Fortunately, Church and Change - established in many other forums - developed new efforts with even less knowledge. Gimmicks are the solution, so they can all sit down to eat and rise up to play (Exodus). Bible study with booze was an innovation, because they could not get the Babtists to come out into the open with the ultimate lure of liquor.

The efficacy of the Word has its negative but powerful side. When people mock the Gospel Word, substitute various poisons, and gloat over their success, they are hardening and blinding themselves.

Note that the Growthers are quick to pounce on any pastor or layman who dares to question the Great Fake, hatched by Fuller Seminary and coached by Peter Drucker hisself. Fate propelled me into LCA Growth, then WELS and LCMS Growth, and finally the doomed CLC (sic) Growth. That moved me to question the great New Awakening that seemed so appealing to the dim-wits yet smelled like vomit.

Congratulate - The Faithless Five - 

ELCA-LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic).

Look back in anger, reflect on the last 50 years of Lutheran Synodality: 

1. Ridiculing the KJV Bible while embracing and promoting the Left-wing paraphrases - RSV, ESV, NRSV, NIV, Becker-Otten Copycat, TEV, etc.

2. Promoting women's ordination, which opened the gates to gay ordination, or merely ordination cloaked gay - you know who they are.

3. Seminary posts derived from the Pasadena Polecats, to legitimize the district Church Growth experts and meetings with ELCA and the whole gang.

4. Women in charge of congregational worship, so the exhausted pastors can do even less work and be subordinate to the lady's ordination circle.

5. Confirmation watered down to the least possible content, but not without a 400 page Small (stop laughing) Catechism.

6. Run, crawl, spy on, and surveille the nearest clown sect (especially in one's own demi-semi-Lutheran district).

7. May your clown congregations be like Bill Hybels'. I remember the WELS pastors slobbering about Willow Creek Community Church, given money from the sect to be trained there for free.

Link to Willow Creek "Growth"

"The scandal prompted Hybels to resign under pressure on April 10, 2018, and eventually led to the resignation of Willow Creek’s entire board.

In 2019, Willow Creek’s new board released a statement accusing Hybels of “unchecked sin and intimidating behavior.” And the board admitted that the church’s initial response, blaming the alleged victims, harmed the victims and their advocates.

Since 2018, Willow Creek has shrunk in size, and giving has plunged as much as 45 percent."

ELCA Lost Members and Congregations Galore with Church Growth - You Can Too!

 

ELCA began with 10,000 congregations and 5.3 million members in 1987. Compare that to the latest  numbers and tell it not in Gath. They are doomed and their lesser Thrivent church partners are shrinking at the same rate. The current numbers below are certainly inflated.

About the ELCA

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States, with nearly 3.3 million members in more

 than 8,900 worshiping communities across the 50 states and in the Caribbean region.

Behold! - Luther's Statement Silences Objective Faithless Justification!The Holy Spirit Is To Convict the World In Respect of Sin, of Righteousness, And of Judgment!

 

"These are the three parts we have in this Gospel lesson: 

1. Sin is unbelief; righteousness is faith;

2. the judgment is the holy cross. Therefore give heed and learn to consider everything that is without the Spirit as nothing and as condemned,

3. And afterwards be prepared for the holy cross that thou must suffer on account of it."

If every congregation would adhere to the three explanations above, they would become healthy, strong, and devoted to the Scriptures. The last 50 years take us back to what was happening in 1974 A.D.

All the denominations used to be infatuated with plans for new missions, new ideas, new Bibles, new hymnals. They knew the demographic shift, but lo! - they wanted the spin, the glory, the glamor of Fuller Seminary. World missions executives were first sent to Fuller, because seminaries were not preparing missionaries for anything except quinine for malaria. Their American missions executives trained the same way - completely wrong.

The last 50 years were a con job, the perfect example of -

“Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next. ”

William Ralph Inge

A Facebook poster linked me and others to his garage sale of electronics. He was apparently building on the multi-campus model, because he had a large pile of very expensive electronics and a big bill for renting an empty space. (People do not have buildings anymore - they have spaces.) In short, his space and his toys were bleeding him dry. 

His offerings disappeared, which reminds me of the motto - "A sucker is born every minute." - the iconic P.T. Barnum - because every one and every thing is iconic when it often should just be ironic. English is so degenerate now that media people say "very iconic" and "the most iconic." I'm so old I remember "unique." I could neve be a media expert now, because my vocabulary is bigger than 50 words.

"Build it and they will come" (Field of Dreams) said no one in the Bible. Tower of Babel - Build it and they will run.

Why Are The Big Five - ELCA-LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic) - Remarkably Alike? Affinity Is More Powerful Than Divinity to Them.

 

Slick dark roads, take me home, to the Hell where I belong!
Church Growth Movement, nursing mother,
Take me home, Church Growth song.

I was drinking some Earl Grey tea and pondering the hypocrisy of the Little Three -WELS-ELS-CLC (sic). They live on being shocked by how loose Missouri and ELCA are. That is so hilarious. They were silent when Marvin Schwan gave so much "orthodox Lutheran" money to the Missouri Synod. I was writing about Marvin when several news organizations asked me about Schwan's investments in gambling. I knew nothing about that, but the news people were hot on that trail. 

Kids putting make-up on men who all wore dresses? That's so ELCA!
No, that is so WELS, from the cross-dressing "pope" in their hazing week
to the Party in the Fire Island Pines plagiarized video (but worse).

We all know how family oriented the Little Three are. Marvin dumped his wife and married the wife of one of his executives. Schwan was featured in Forbes magazine laughing uproariously about giving up $1 million and a Cadillac to leave his wife and marry his employee's wife. The Little Three did not make a peep, chickens as they are. I sent the story to Herman Otten and he reproduced it. Pastor Jay Webber (of Objective Faithless Justification fame) denounced me on the phone for doing that. I said, "It is a national publication, not a secret." He responded, "Nobody reads Forbes." The Little Three are not used to reading more than CN and their synodical publications.

Two out of three gained weight, andThrivent builds.

Earlier, Otten invited us to the dedication of the St. Louis seminary church. He had some Russian visitors along. Christina also went in our Aerostar van. I never overlook possible evidence, so I checked out bulletin boards and saw - gasp - Marvin Schwan being a major donor to their new cathedral. If anyone has heard a WELSian roar about the apostasy of the Missouri Synod, the silence was telling. The previous pastor at Shepherd of Peace (WELS) said he left the table during his LCMS brother saying the prayer. How many souls were saved by that gesture of purity? One should read his books and study his "ministry" in WELS.

The Big Five - ELCA-LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic) - did this, not just WELS.
Hartman gave the dates.

Nobody had any problem with Marvin's shenanigans in WELS or the ELS. I think the CLC (sic) focused on the evil of using the wrong insurance company, because they had no other distinct object of their stink-a-thons. And yet there is more on that topic.

Marvin spread his money around for the ELS, LCMS, and WELS. As those buildings age and accumulate the costs for shrinking populations, some will admit they spent a lot on nothing and now must pay. And yet, the WELS and ELS are building spectacular gyms for their colleges, somewhere around $15 million each, 35 miles across. That is no farther than Bella Vista to Fayetteville in Arkansas, 36.5 miles. 

The strangest addiction of the Walther Four - LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic) - has been their intoxicated, dreamy devotion to the Church Growth Movement. Who among the Lutherans are more caustic and sanctimonious about the Calvinists than the Walther Four? Yes, you got that on the first try - Walther and his idolaters! The best anyone can say about them - is Peter Drucker remains their idol. I was hearing his nonsense already in the LCA, when they used his snore-a-thons for clergy meetings. At least the Walther Four kept God out of their reveries. It was and still is a perfume of money, buildings, praise bands, and empty sermons. 

Oh! Oh! Oh! Let's hear it from the LCMS Purple Palace - another white elephant.

I knew the Church Growth lingo before I left the Lutheran Church in America. Their evangelism meetings were besot with Fuller dogma. I found WELS even more intoxicated. The ELS and CLC (sic) were anxious to do the same and deny it, because they were so pure. Instead of confessing their doctrinal sins, they hushed up anyone who dared to mention the sacred words of Pasadena, McGavran, and Wagner. They welcomed anyone who hated Luther's Biblical doctrine and gloried in their apostasy.  As Wayne Mueller (WELS CG star) said at a youth meeting, "Evangelism is easy. All you have to do is say, You are already forgiven." 

No one wants to admit now that they wrecked their synods in the name of GROWTH!

1. They chose rah-rah language over the Means of Grace.
2. They made fun of Luther but never looked in the mirror about their fantasies.
3. They wasted money and pursued the elderly to give even more with irrevocable charitable trusts.
4. They never examined their motives and lusts.
5. They loved to kick out those who even suggested their fallibility.
6. They drove the youth out of the churches.
7. They hated the KJV and promoted the NIV-RSV-NRSV-ESV-Beck bogus Bibles.

The Social Gospel - Look at Its Foundations

 

I had a project, to research an Augustana Synod professor and explain his career. He went to Yale Divinity for extra credibility, since he already had an STD - when that was just a seminary degree - Doctor of Sacred Theology. He was A.D. Mattson.

He became enchanted with the Social Gospel Movement, best known through Walter Rauschbusch, who gave his famous lectures at Yale, also his book A Theology for the Social Gospel. Rauschenbusch was a liberal Baptist who already accepted the rationalistic approach to the Scriptures. The liberal element in the Augustana Synod and the mainline denominations were definitely for the Historical-Critical Movement of Biblical analysis.

A litmus test for liberals (or rather - apostates) is asking about Rauschenbusch. The Social Gospel Movement is either the capstone or foundation today. 

Lacking in all the mainline denominations today is faith in Jesus Christ. They have lots of social activism, which may prompt people to say, "Are we better than we were before WWII?" Social activism is now 99% of mainline work, including The Big Five - ELCA-LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic). The smaller synods may deny their affinity with ELCA's agenda, but in some cases they are way ahead, such as the gay obsessions of WELS, cloaked by hazing and "we were just having some fun."

The Church Growth Movement was hatched by Donald McGavran, liberal sociologist, B.D. Yale, PhD Columbia University.

The Social Gospel Movement stopped using its name but continued its Left-wing work. The Church Growth Movement was unionistic and Left-wing, from the start. Fuller Seminary's Thought Police insisted that any pastor objecting to women's ordination would be visited by their feminist Gestapo units. 

Do you really think that LCMS-WELS-etc stood up to the feminist bullies or declared, "We are on your side, Rev. Aimee Elizabeth Semple McPherson - The Blessed!?"

The denominations and synods do not have the basics of the Christian Faith. Unfaith cannot produce faith through the efficacious Word. Church Growth has been sold and smeared in everyone's face, and the results are in. Their agenda is hardened concrete. 

Do you remember when the rainbow was a sign from God?

Kudzu vine was brought to the USA because it spread so quickly - and alas - smothered everything useful.

It only took a few decades to unleash Smells and Belles and expensive costumes.

Werning spread the Church Growth disease around in all sects - LCMS, WELS, ELS.

Does the Church Growth Movement Make Totalitarian Denominations?The E-Frees Are Heavily Influenced by Totalitarian Fuller Gurus.

So lacking today.

For those who studied at MLC and Mordor - this translates as "I AM the Good Shepherd."

Another Conservative Pastor Disciplined by The Evangelical Free Church of America

From Protestia

In the Fall of 2022, Pastor Kliewer, who pastors Cornerstone Church in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, had his ordination censured by the Board of Ministerial Standing of the Free Church. In June at the national conference, he was officially disciplined when the pastors sided with the leadership.

Pastor Kliewer was censured because he wrote a book titled, Woke-Free Church, criticizing the Social Justice push by the Free Church leadership. Remarkably the leadership never dealt with the content of Kliewer’s book where he showed convincingly the Social Justice agenda among the leadership. In other words, he got censured because he revealed their compromise not because he violated anything biblically (see Nine Conclusions Against Jeff Kliewer at efcaandsocialjustice.wordpress.com).

What happened to him was a grave injustice. Now that Pastor Kliewer was censured, they moved on to the next person who has brought the leadership concern. That is Pastor David Whitney of Cornerstone Church in Maryland (near Washington DC). Now these two men have similar stories. Pastor Kliewer got the leadership’s attention because of his writing that called out their compromise, while Pastor Whitney got their attention during a Zoom call at the height of COVID-19.

At this Zoom call pastors belonging to a cluster of the East District were asked how each of them and their churches were handling Covid-19. Pastor Whitney shared that his church did not close. A few of the pastors were troubled by this and a meeting was called that took place a while later. Pastor Whitney met with three pastors, all in leadership (present and past), who expressed concerns about his church being associated with the Free Church. They were troubled by his conservative political views.

One pastor said, “He would never want anyone in his church to listen to Pastor Whitney’s sermons.” Another pastor said, “You do not fit within the ethos of the Free Church” and asked, “Are you going to remove your church?” The pressure was on for Pastor Whitney and his church to leave the Free Church. Now think about how irrational the request for him to leave is. Pastor Whitney has pastored in the Free Church for forty-two years at three different churches. He planted Cornerstone Church as a Free Church and has pastored there for thirty years. If anyone fits within the ethos of the Free Church, it is Pastor Whitney.

He has worked well in the Free church to this point. The one asking the question should be asked, “Do you fit within the ethos of the true historic Free Church?”

***

GJ - A good friend told me about the dishonest tricks used by E-Frees to get more members. One is to invite a girl to have a guy have dinner together. During the dinner, the girl steps out and E-Freed bullies sit down and start demanding membership in their church. This is repeated, even though my friend said to the young lady, "Never again!"

I got the same treatment when a salesman invited me and Christina to his house for vague reasons. Actually, a fairly large group was there. Without any real introduction this turned into a meeting to have us as part of their group. I do not know how many were already in on the effort, but I did not like it. We sat in a circle and listened. It seemed remarkably vague and lacking in content.

We had E-Frees in Moline because they are a break-off from the Swedish Pietists (Augustana Synod). When I was reading the Church Growth materials to figure out CGM in WELS/LCMS/ELCa, I saw that Church Growth "really worked" for the E-Frees. And yes, they had a couple of big churches. Whoopee. 

Where Are They Now? The Big Five - ELCA-LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic)At Work And Play

 

These men graduated from Mequon (aka Mordor) in 1970, and championed the vacuous methods of Peter Drucker, the business bully, C. Peter Wagner the Pentecostal. Disciple of Christ (sociologist) Donald McGavran urged pastors not to mix races together. As anyone can see, WELS inhaled the flatulence of Fuller Seminary and called it perfume. The Enthusiasts - those who create their own dogma - were happy to push away the Legalists and speed the decay.

I copied this verbatim from Christianity Today in 1991. I really thought some WELS leaders would phone or write me and be thankful I had set them free from the quagmire of Church Growth. It was already a complete joke and a matter of parading the errors of Pietism, Calvinism, and Druckerism.

The LCMS and ELCA did exactly the same things. Each sect encouraged people from competing sects to come over and finally hear the Gospel. 

• I was reading about Hagedorn today, a sacred name in WELS, and I was remembering how many wacky dreams he spun for membership growth. 
• I also read the biography of David Rutschow, written by his son, but without telling that Rutschow as a pastor did not allow Church Growth in his parish, but promoted it as the District Pope. 
• Wayne Mueller needs no introduction, since he is more Objective Faithless Justification than Rolf Preus, a man of all synods. Wayne told the kiddies at the WELS youth conference that evangelism was easy - "Just say - you are already forgiven." He reminded me of the farmer who put the wrong liquid in his sprayer and killed the whole crop.
  
• John Lawrenz achieved the honor of being President of Martin Luther College...for a month. He and John Brenner had no problem with hazing kids, which may explain how WELS rotted from their major abuse problems, not excluding alcoholism ("synod vitamins").
• Paul Kelm,D.Min., is the sect's favorite Mr. Magoo, the cartoon figure who constantly walked into all kinds of pratfalls and spills, coming out without a scratch. The more WELS faltered, the more Kelm stirred up new programs - conjoined with Hagedorn and others.

I feel obliged to repeat Kelm's climactic end to the Church Growth conference that I was required to attend. I objected to their deification of Paul. Y. Cho and other fakes. Kelm concluded his ultimate speech, "After you have heard all the things we can do with our Wisconsin Synod, can you name anyone in America who would not want to join our synod? (The audience remained silent.)

Herbert Chilstrom, elected presiding bishop of ELCA, 1987

I responded, based on logic and time spent with Chilstrom at lunch, "Herbert Chilstrom?"

The audience roared with laughter, which went through many waves of hilarity. It was ridiculous that given the right information, every single person would want to join the sect.

Like Missouri, ELS, the CLC (sic) and ELCA, all of them have used congregation and synod funds to promote their deadly, toxic waste matter.

Wrong Diagnosis, Bad Practices, Expected Results

The LutherQueasies and the ALPB Online Forum Hot Air Merchants repeat the same verities as their managers. I like to torment both groups because they add another five or six views per day. They may complain about a current Ichabod post to their families, so that is good for a few more page views. It's all about the numbers.

At this point they have about 50 years with Fuller Seminary, Willow Creek, and the late Crystal Cathedral. They use the hot words that move people to act on foolishness, so they can be synod stooges honored at the next banquet, meeting, or parish closing.

"Testing the spirits" has never been their strong suit. 

1 John 4 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try [test] the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

2 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:

3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.

4 Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.

5 They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.

Lettuce use a gardening example. (That's the horticultural subjunctive). For a healthy plant or seed, growth will come from sunshine, rainwater, and the nutrition of the soil, aided by soil fungi.

These components are already provided and engineered by the Creator. 

1. Note the living Seed of the Word, the seed sown, the seed that falls into the ground - all have the energy of life which only God can create.
2. Consider the rain and snow-melt - both considerably superior to chlorinated tap water. Rain and snow-melt are blessed with usable forms of nitrogen which do not burn or harm plant life. They lack chlorine bleach, which holds back plant life and seed germination.
3. The energy of the sun makes it possible for a seed to germinate, form different kinds of cells, and grow into an infinite variety of plants. The engineering makes it clear that there is a vast number of growth settings - soil, moisture, temperature, shade versus sunshine. 
4. Finally, and most mysterious (but right in front of us) - all the living elements of Creation work together to help the others grow strong, grow healthier, and recover from catastrophes. Fire and flood create new growth to make a rebirth possible.

As the Minnesota farmer told me, "Irrigation will keep a crop alive, but only rain can make it grow."

Fuller and other felonious fakes were ideal for city-slickers, who do not comprehend what the farmer concluded in one sentence. Now congregations and their bullying overlords are drowning in chlorinated tap water while being denied the Word of God, which has Three Promises.

A. The Word will never return to God empty - which means, the Word is never lacking in effect. Get that - DMins or Demons of Dogmatic Demagoguery?

B. The Word will always accomplish God's purpose (not man's). This is rather simple but absolutely lost on the entire Church Growth Industry.

C. The Word will always prosper God's will. So not only does God work through the Word alone, but also so powerfully that no one can doubt it.

 WELS, LCMS, ELS, and ELCA pastors spend $30,000 or more to forget this passage. One ELS pastor was totally smitten and joined ELCA. He had been on the ELS doctrinal committee, examining future pastors! 

 

 Judging and ignoring the Isaiah passage means certain failure on all fronts. 

"We did everything we could, and spent all your money, but your parish died anyway." The Church Doctor - he does post-mortem for reduced prices. Whadda-guy!

If the Boomers Are So Smart, Why Have Their Synods and Seminaries Floundered

The graphic may seem inadvertently positive, but the proven results of apostasy are evident to many people today. 

God is not going to allow His Gospel to be mocked forever. The events leading up to this debacle can be outlined. 

• German rationalism was appealing to many intellectuals, who had little or no faith (like WELS today). The Social Gospel was a tool for replacing the Gospel with the Law. They were Woke! before most of us were born. 
• Getting all denominations united led to building a headquarters in New York City, which became the base for the Federal Council of Churches (Marxist). For public relations, the FCC  was renamed the National Council of Churches. 
• The unionists meet at Fuller Seminary today - better funding, easy degrees, and a bonus - the Roman Catholic Church in attendance. ELCA-LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC! - they all love Church Growth, teaching the same fads, and saying, "The others are floundering too."
• The seminaries realized that they were wasting time teaching Hebrew and Greek, so they switched to dummy practical classes taught by synod cast-offs. Few have the capacity to address a Scriptural issue. Instead, they repeat their Fuller slogans and delusions of their Holy Mother Synod, each one far superior to the others. Ha!

The Church Growth Movement Has Done Its Magic! Seminary Graduates Are Fewer and Fewer. But Look at Their Beautiful Empty Buildings! And Their Trojans - Trojan Horses

Two LCMS Seminaries - 92 Calls Total!

This past week  Concordia Seminary, St. Louis issued Calls to 59 Pastoral Candidates.

Also Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne issued Calls to 33 Pastoral Candidates.    

This makes a total of 92 Pastoral Candidates available to parishes in the LCMS in the Spring of 2021. As one ELDONUT pastor said, "There's Ft. Wayne and the other one."

The Same Schools Next Year - Maybe 70 Calls Total?

Concordia Seminary, St. Louis assigned 38 seminarians for vicarage and Concordia Seminary.

Ft Wayne assigned 32 seminarians for vicarage.  

This makes a total of 70 vicars available this year to LCMS parishes.

I contend that the Church Growth Movement in LCMS-WELS-ELS has nothing to do with increasing numbers or saving souls. It continues to be nothing more than Trojan Horses to infiltrate Objective Justification, Universalism, Calvinism, and Unionism into their inbred sects.

The Roman Catholics are just as keen about Church Growth as the deceiving, lupine Protestants are. They are equally successful in advancing what is wrong by anyone's standards.

Three things prove my case:

1. Church vocations are collapsing in all of the church bodies, mainline, Lutheran "conservative," and Roman Catholic.

2. Numbers in worship have become catastrophic, and mask removal will make little difference.

3. The ELCA-hugging, priest wannabees on the ALPB Online Forum address the problems with sociology, marketing, and peeking into other denominations' numbers. 

When He comes, the Holy Spirit will convict the world of resisting change and bad numbers? That is the part in the movie where we walked in - odd couple Waldo Werning and Kent Hunter screaming that everyone had to graph their church numbers and fix the problem!

 "Porkers! Everyone meet at Fuller Seminary to prevent losses and increase money and members. Holy Mother Thrivent will pay part of it! Fuller is failing too? Willow Creek has blown up? Let's go to the Crystal Cathedral? What? It is Catholic? OK, OK, HerChurch - they are on the cutting edge. Sorry, that was insensitive, a bad pun, if you ever lost someone to bacon or pulled pork."

For Those WELS-ELS-LCMS Pastors and Executives Who Imagined Fuller Was Conservative

LCMS and WELS Church Shrinkers bragged that more of their seminary classmates went to Fuller Seminary for "graduate work" than attended their own seminaries. Maybe that was because the Fuller classes were even easier, though they cost more. 

After signing a letter expressing disappointment with the new administration, a pro-life evangelical scholar who voted for President Joe Biden said that while he would vote for Biden again if the 2020 presidential election were held today, he would not make his support public.

 

In 2020, Mouw retired from Fuller and returned to Calvin University, becoming a senior research fellow at the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics.^[3]

In 2007, Mouw, who sees Abraham Kuyper as a personal hero,^[4] was awarded the Abraham Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life at Princeton Theological Seminary by the Abraham Kuyper Center for Public Theology.^{[5] (Wikipedia)}

Richard Mouw, president emeritus of Fuller Seminary in California and a member of Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden, spoke to The Christian Post Tuesday, days after his group issued a statement in response to the president's support for a coronavirus relief package that did not include a longstanding provision that prevents the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions.

"We are very disappointed about the COVID-19 relief package's exclusion of the Hyde Amendment, a longstanding, bipartisan policy," they wrote. "We're even more upset that the Biden administration is supporting this bill."

As a result of Biden's support for the bill, the group contended that they feel "used and betrayed."

Mouw told CP that he and other members of Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden group knew that Biden had been "shifting" his position on the Hyde Amendment when they released a statement in support of Biden's candidacy last October, one month before the 2020 presidential election.

He maintained that conversations they had with campaign officials who now help the administration with faith outreach were reassuring.

"We made ... clear that we would offer support with the understanding that they would urge the White House to have serious conversations with Catholics and evangelicals who are right-to-life people," he recalled. "The problem is that we haven't had those conversations, and leaving the Hyde Amendment out of this particular package, this latest COVID package, is a signal that ... there really ... is no room for that kind of conversation."

Mouw confirmed that an official from the Biden administration reached out to him on Monday.

"We're going to have a meeting later this week," he said.

Mouw and Ronald Sider, another member of Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden, will sit down with two members of the White House faith outreach office to address their concerns.

When asked if he would vote for Biden again and issue a statement in support of his candidacy if the 2020 presidential election was still forthcoming and he knew that Biden would support a coronavirus relief bill that excluded Hyde Amendment protections, Mouw responded that he would "vote the same way" while adding, "I would not give my public support."

Mouw indicated that while he disagrees with Biden's position on abortion, there are other areas where he has found common ground with the new administration, specifically on the issues of global warming and immigration.

Acknowledging that he received "a lot of angry messages from right-to-life people," some of whom called him "naive" due to his support for Biden and subsequent feelings of betrayal, Mouw still defended the object of his previous remarks in support of Biden. He said they would be necessary to provide reassurance to the "many younger evangelicals who are not happy about ... the way in which their parents and grandparents have endorsed and defended the Trump administration."

"We ... don't want to lose them to evangelicalism because of what is perceived as a mean-spirited, highly partisan commitment on the part of the older generation of evangelicals who voted 81% ... in the presidential election before this last one for Mr. Trump," he said.

"We thought it was important to hold up the right to life position and at the same time, say it's OK to be concerned about a broader range of issues such as global warming and children at the border separated from their parents and those kinds of questions. And so, we wanted to use our own access through the Biden campaign people to at least get them to stay in conversation with people like us."

In addition to explaining that he was "less optimistic" about the possibility of Biden and the Democratic Party building a "bigger tent" to accommodate pro-lifers, Mouw expressed concern about the president's support for another major legislative initiative: The Equality Act.

According to Mouw, the legislation puts "the rights of Christian institutions to preserve commitments to traditional biblical teaching regarding sexuality without being penalized in terms of federal grants, federal loans for students" in jeopardy.

"A lot of Christian colleges and universities are well over 50% dependent in their tuition income on students getting federal loans," the Fuller Seminary president emeritus added.

Mouw warned that making "the sexuality issue" an eligibility requirement for "receiving students with federal loans" would deal a "huge blow" to faith-based schools.

Leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Biden had vowed to push for the Equality Act's passage within his first 100 days in office. Biden indicated that he would work to codify Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide, into law.

Biden's documented public support for policies widely opposed by evangelicals has led some conservatives, like former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, to conclude that "'Evangelicals' for Biden are getting exactly what they voted for."

44 Years of Church Growth! - Don't tell Wayne Mueller.