Instructor - "You Are My Favorite Demographic." The Synods Knew the Demographics Years Ago, And Skimmed the Cream

 

HAL, a tribute to IBM, knew the future of synods.

I signed onto my class - toward an online teaching degree (MA, Adult Education) and read this greeting from one of the instructors. "You are my favorite demographic." She read too many statistics, and that sounded ominous.

Decades ago, the LCA was projecting the future using statistics. They said, "It used to be that half the babies baptized would be in confirmation. Now there are very few to stay in the same church where they were baptized." I looked up the figures of my first call. Earlier, half the baptized members were there for confirmation. Later, very few. America was mobile and having fewer children. Christina and I attended a big LCA conference where one staffer predicted everything from statistics.

The LCMS, WELS, and others did the same thing. AAL/Lutheran Brotherhood naturally used statistics to gain from the synodical trends, just as they did with mortality. Large numbers do not lie. The synodicals were afraid, so they latched onto the worst possible influencers - Robert Schuller (covert), Fuller Seminary (Paradise on earth), Trinity Divinity (a WELS fave), and others. The executive managers (no real leaders spotted) were eager to pretend future prosperity when they should have known they were thieves and robbers claiming to lay up treasures in heaven. They were quite willing to keep the farce growing while they poured out millions to give themselves a better future.

When I plant roses, I use all the best organic ingredients to provide rich soil without the poisons from the chemical business. Anyone can dose the plants, often fatally, but the successes come from God's Creation and all the things done to grow beautiful roses. Moreover, the Creation combinations bring even more good to the garden. John 15 is strikingly like this parallel.

 KJV John 15 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.

2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.

3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.

4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.

5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

8 Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.

9 As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.

10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.

11 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.

The synods bet on fakey gimmicks fermented in the limited minds of useful idiots (Evangelism committees, mandates, programs, posters, films, and slide shows). They never thought about faith in Jesus Christ because they were there for the loot, the bonus for being close with the most obnoxious managers (district and synod presidents). Those are the charlatans who built brand new gyms for the ELS and WELS, knowing their student bodies would shrink as fast as the synod waistbands expand. 

WELS famously spent $30 million on merging Dr. Martin Luther College with Northwestern College. Add their gym and other luxuries - where does one start?

The ELS is finishing a gym worth $15 million - or is it $17 million - for a demographic that will demand more shuffle board room for the last few players.

7,700 United Methodist Congregations Have Voted To Leave Holy Mother - American Spectator

 Conservative Methodist Exit Nears End Point

As deadline approaches, about one-fourth of congregations have left Protestantism’s second-largest denomination.

In the largest U.S. church schism since Civil War times, nearly 7,700 churches of the roughly 30,000 in the United Methodist Church (UMC) have voted to take their property and go elsewhere.

The issue of contention in the 19th century was slavery. Today, in the UMC, it’s LGBTQ-related issues. Liberals have been defying denominational rules banning same-sex marriages and the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals,” and conservatives have been taking advantage of a temporary rule passed in 2019 that allows their congregations to vote on whether to leave, taking their property and buildings with them.

The number of leavers is greater than expected — Methodist insider Mark Tooley earlier this year put the low-ball number at 3,000 leavers, with an upper limit of 5,000. In actuality, a massive rush for the door by 5,642 departing congregations in 2023, the last year the deal is in effect, brings the current total to 7,659.

How Things Got to This Point

The UMC, as a church body, has resisted the tsunami of LGBTQ fervor that has swept through the rest of liberal Protestantism. Indeed, it has endorsed at every general convention since its initially passing in 1972 a stricture in the denomination’s Book of Discipline that declared the practice of homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

***

GJ - Religious journalists fail to trace this debacle back to the Methodists embracing the Social Gospel Movement, political activism, and rationalism. Just like ELCA, LCMS, and WELS - the Methodists protected their apostates and railed against anyone who dared murmur against the trendy usurpers. 

In Three Giant Steps -

I. Repudiating the Traditional Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible, followed by "translations" from idiots, illiterates, and snake-oil salesmen.

II. Replacing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with activist causes, always careful to finesse doctrine into the latest Left-wing fad.

III. Tossing the basics of the Scriptures aside, except for raising money, the managers suddenly abandon the Creation, normal clothes, and traditional marriage.

In 1987, my wife and I left the Lutheran Church in America: everything was that obvious... 36 years ago.

The Wizard of Oz Poppy Fields Are Reality Today

 

"Oh Lawrence, Paul, Wayne! I can see Fuller Seminary from here!"
Little did they know that they would succumb to poppies, the source of opium.

The Wizard of Oz is an expression of the occult. The author Frank Baum was a member of the Theosophy Society and openly proclaimed the virtues of his group. The occult groups associate with one another and have similar claims. Masons also describe The Wizard of Oz as based on the Masonic Lodge.

 "So many secrets are revealed to us. Let's tell the folks back home in the Midwest!"

The LCMS, WELS, and future ELCA managers went as groups to Fuller Seminary in Pasadena. They came back enchanted by the anti-Christian dogma of its stars. Synod funds and Thrivent loot were used to make this easy and unified. The dates published by WELS are a good standard to show when this addiction began. Paul Kelm was used as the cool guy in wolving (not shepherding) the poorly-trained seminarians at every opportunity. 

WELS was spreading their Church Growth virus already in 1977. The LCA and Missouri Synod were doing the same, starting from the top down, as cleverly designed by Fuller Seminary.

The so-called conservative Lutherans were no different from LCA/ALC. They loathed the King James Version of Bible, hated the concept of inerrancy, and loved every deception injected into their brains by the crackpots at Pasadena. Most importantly, they made the least important part of congregational work the most important:

1. Graph the total numbers of members each year! Vital and effective!!
2. Listen to Waldo Werning, D.D., Lutheran Church Growth Expert!
3. Aim at having "Happy Campers" in the parish!
4. Treat the congregation as a business and ignore the fuddy-duddies. They are bitter!
5. Avoid the hymnal in favor of current Babtist-Pentecostal pep songs.
6. Set aside the historic liturgy and make up cool stuff.
7. Spend money like there's no tomorrow. "Go big or go home!" (an actual battle-cry by one LCMS pastor)
8. Hide the synod name, then hide the Lutheran identity, then invent a weird and inappropriate name to replace the old one - Pathway, Grace Place, Family Center.

 Funny how so many false teachers provide enticing and flashy ways to reach their little paradise.

 Professor Little-Brain is pleased to gather the like-minded sheep and slaughter them.

I can look back on 50 years and see the changes, not unlike Yale Divinity School, where I finished an STM in 1973. The Lutheran professors - and others - were dedicated to the Christian Faith, the liturgy, and the Scriptures: 

Paul L. Holmer, Nils Dahl, Sydney Ahlstrom, George Lindbeck, Jaroslav Pelikan (all members at the church where I worked - Bethesda). They were replaced with radicals once they retired.

Robert Wilson and Abraham Malherbe were excellent and faithful Biblical exegetes. 

Roland Bainton (Here I Stand, A Life of Martin Luther) was definitely liberal but a great historian. I enjoyed all our opportunities with him, active though retired many years. 

YDS wanted us 50-year graduates to write something about our study there and what we have done since then. I wrote that I was extremely disappointed about where YDS had gone. They keep delaying the great memory book - to be filled with gushing responses, pictures and honors. 

Spineless Blockheads - Not Leaders, Not Lutherans, Not Faithful

Alec the Publisher says, "Do not call them leaders. They are not leaders, only managers." The fear and perplexity of the group below is symbolic of the managers of ELCA-WELS-ELS-LCMS-CLC today. 

The only route is not the fools-gold Yellow Brick Road, but the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows, repenting of their apostasy, their lust for estate gifts, their rejection of Faith in Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, born of the Virgin Mary, miracle worker, teacher, healer of the blind and deaf and mute, raising the dead, dying on the cross for our sins, rising from the tomb and ascending to heaven - so we might know the righteousness of faith in Him.

 "What have we done?"

PS - The LCA-ALC, LCMS, WELS, and ELS have been known to benefit from welcoming Masonic Lodge members, though most of them deny it. Although St. Paul WELS in German Village (Columbus, Ohio) said they were no longer Masonic, the sainted circuit pastor welcomed one and gave him private Holy Communion. A previous ELS president grew his congregation with Masons. Professor John Brug at Mequon took in Masonic members in his first call because there were so many of them in that area. Etc.

50 Plus Years of Pride - ALC/LCA/AELC/ELCA -

From LGBTQ Exhibits

Lutheranism

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) experienced a slow and steady transformation in terms of LGBTQ+ inclusion. Scholar of queer religious history R.W. Holmen refers to the activist movement within Lutheranism as being "subtle" (231), but revolutionary nonetheless. ALC Pastor Jim Siefkes was a leader of the movement toward affirmation and inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals. He demonstrated true allyship to the LGBT+ community, first by developing a ministry program called Matrix which tackled the subject of human sexuality, alongside other potentially controversial topics, forthrightly and openly. 

In June of 1970, Siefkes helped organize an experimental seminar discussing human sexuality in a theological context. The University of Minnesota medical school was enthusiastic about the programming Siefkes had designed, and began running a similar program under its own institutional auspices. As Siefkes became more heavily involved in the university's programming, he also aided in the formation of a Committee on Religion and Ethics at the university's medical school, reinforcing his original goal of tying sexuality and religion together in a meaningful fashion. Many people affiliated with religous communities at the university were appalled by the programming's sexually explicit materials and objected vehemently to church finances backing programming they considered lewd and inappropriate. However, many others found the programming illuminating, and were willing to enter into an open conversation about homosexuality and faith. 

Jim Siefkes

The foremost organization pushing for LGBT+ inclusion within the Lutheran Church, called Lutherans Concerned for Gay People, was formed on June 16, 1974, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Lutherans Concerned for Gay People's first newsletter was released a mere month after the group's formation. The organization's viewpoint was neatly encapsulated within this very first issue, as the authors wrote, 

As gay Lutherans, we affirm with joy the goodness of human sexuality which God has given us. We are to be found in the pulpits and pews, the schools and offices of Lutheran churches and organizations throughout the land. We have received the sacraments, listened to the preaching of God's word, taught in the schools, and worked in the committees and organizations of Lutheran churches.

The organization faced almost instant backlash in 1975, as indignation over the success of Pastor Siefkes' request for financing for Lutherans Concerned for Gay People spread among a conservative element within the Lutheran church. The headline "Dollars for Disobedience" was disseminated within the church, condemning the use of the church's funds for LGBT+ advocates. 

Pastor Chuck Lewis was responsible for forming a particularly active chapter of Lutherans Concerned in San Francisco, California (the organization's name evolved to Lutherans Concerned, and then Lutherans Concerned/North America, frequently abbreviated to LC/NA). 

Chuck Lewis

In 1980, the LCA and ALC both released statements dealing with human sexuality. Both statements condemned homosexuality as contrary to God's plan. The church still had a long way to go towards full inclusion. 

However, in 1987, it was reported in the Los Angeles Times that three out gay Lutheran seminarians were certified for call and ordination. These seminarians were Joel Workin, James Lancaster, and Jeff Johnson. Yet, the case was not at all open and shut, as the Times seemed to imply. The candidates for ministry were asked if they would vow to remain celibate for the rest of their lives. Jeff Johnson answered that, while he was currently celibate, he couldn't promise that he wouldn't fall in love with a man one day. His fellow ordinands answered similarly. As R.W. Holmen wrote, "The courage of the candidates stood in stark contrast to the timidity of the church. The integrity of the candidates embarrassed the church that reneged on its agreement" (253). Sadly, these three men were denied ordination.

Jeff R. Johnson

The church has since made tremendous strides, as Dr. Guy Barron, a Native American and gay man, was elected as a bishop within the Lutheran church in 2013. [Guy Erwin is the correct name.]

Richard Jungkuntz, WELS, was a pioneer. He was fired for being a historical-critical professor, taught at Springfield's (future Ft. Wayne) seminary, served as the head of the doctrinal board in the LCMS, became chairman of the board of the breakaway Seminex seminary, which sponsored the Metropolitan Community Church (gay) Seminary at their location.

Guy Erwin was a professor in ELCA, then a part-time pastor, then a bishop, and now the President of United Lutheran Seminary, Philadelphia.

From the New York Post - Bishop Megan Rohrer Is Suing ELCA

Anders Nelson did his trans dance at Luther Seminary's chapel, his/her friends laughing and clapping. ELCA ordained him and gave him/her a call.

The giant Central Lutheran Church - Twin Cities -was the scene of the famous 2009 vote. Six ELCA bishops resigned and started a mini-synod.

Anita Hill, center, was part of the Mark Hanson (below) move away from the Scriptures.

ELCA Bishop Mark Hanson, promoted to Presiding Bishop from the notorious Minnesota district - "Brett, I never knew it was going to go so far."

 Rev. Dr. Bishop Megan often smirks for photos.

 This is the orans position, which ELDONA copies in its clumsy manner.

Church harassed trans ex-bishop for months before firing: lawsuit

I wondered where Heiser and crew got their high church costumes + masks. Megan started a trend.

By 

Katherine Donlevy

"The first openly transgender Evangelical Lutheran bishop filed a lawsuit against the church Wednesday alleging he was pushed from his post after enduring a year of discrimination and harassment.

The Rev. Megan Rohrer claims the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America forced him to resign in June — a year after he was elected to his post– after letting him take the fall for alleged racist behavior

In his lawsuit, Rohrer alleges he only resigned from the San Francisco-based post because the high-ranking members of the church created a “hostile work environment” from his first day on the job in May 2021.

He claims he was deliberately misgendered, ridiculed for featuring drag queens at his ordination and harassed for being transgender."

This is Central Lutheran Church, where ELCA gathered in 2009 and voted to self-destruct.

 

Liz Eaton became Presiding Bishop in 2013, defeating Mark Hanson, behind her.

Four bishops and three are women. No I am not counting. 

 This was an ELCA transgender ordination.

Former ALC President David Preus, cousin to Jack and Robert Preus, had a very strange funeral here not long ago. Former LCA/ALC leaders agreed that they acted stupidly in forming ELCA in 1987.

Some Reflections about Seminex - The Faux-Exit from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis

The Seminexers did not "walk out." They just walked around and came back.

Nobody died. Seminexers either got back into the LCMS or joined the LCA/ALC as pastors. Some of them took their parishes out of the LCMC and into the LCA or ALC.

This is far too funny - histrionics from insincere actors. They risked nothing and their big drama was a flop, a lump of lead that poisoned the future ELCA - 1987 and 2009. ELCA made John Tietjen the Chicago bishop. He quit immediately because he demanded a female Seminex assistant. Hmm.

Watch the numbers collapse at all the seminaries, Lutheran included.

The hyped Seminex break was the result of John Tietjen (new St. Louis president) using his media contacts to make the so-called exile a national religious news story.

I am three out of four here, having met Jack Preus, Robert Marshall, and David Preus, a cousin to Jack and Robert.

Jack Preus was the new LCMS president, and he played the conservative knight on a white horse, even though he had much in common with the LCMS liberals.

The Objective Justification that  Jungkuntz (WELS, then LCMS, then ALC) taught was no different from the Universalism that ELCA taught. Jungkuntz was kicked out of WELS for revealing his love for the apostate historical-critical method (ditto Gehrke, WELS, kicked out first). But WELS was already promoting the NIV, which is based on rejecting the KJV and Majority Text in favor of the historical-critical method in editing the Greek text. (Example - Westcott-Hort erased "Son of God" from Mark 1:1, in their secretly published Greek New Testament. I own a copy, if you care to deny Mark 1:1.)

Jack Preus promoted Martin Chemnitz and let the liberals tangle themselves up about Jonah and the whale, JEDP, and Barth/Bultmann. His brother Robert Preus was a fanatic Objective Justification advocate until he published his book Justification and Rome, a posthumous repudiation of OJ.

 WELS-ELS-LCMS got this completely wrong, by teaching justification is the same as the Atonement.

If we look seriously at all these who taught and jousted during their peak years, they were no more Lutheran than any Calvinist. They simply argued the liberal versus conservative sides of the Geneva hoodwinker. They did NOT teach Justification by Faith, but - in the Preus, Gehrke,  and Jungkuntz cases - a pathetic Pietist pot of Universalism, 

• World absolution without faith in Jesus Christ, called
• General Justification
• Justification of the World
• Objective Justification, and
• Universal Objective Justification. 

No Lutheran entity can last long without falling prey to Calvinistic rationalism, denial of the efficacy of the Word, and rejection of the Means of Grace. That is why WELS-ELS-LCMS-CLC(sic) are no less apostate than ELCA, and also why they all work together through Thrivent Insurance and Abortion Promotions.

PS - The Lutheran patriarchs I knew and spoke with were:

1. Conrad Bergendoff, Augustana College and Seminary President,
2. Robert Marshall, LCA President
3. James Crumley, LCA President
4. Herb Chilstrom, ELCA Bishop
5. Robert Preus, Ft. Wayne President
6. Jack Preus, LCMS President
7. Kurt Marquart, Ft. Wayne Professor
8. David Scaer, Ft. Wayne Professor
9. Pastors Peter Preus and Klemet Preus
10. Waldo Werning, LCMS-WELS-ELS
11. Jack Cascione, Cascione Synod nee LCMS
12. WAM II, Ft. Wayne Professor [character assassination and slander from the Preus brothers and David Scaer because he taught Justification by Faith!]
13. David Valleskey, WELS Seminary President and Fuller student
14. Wayne Mueller, WELS CG denier
15. Father John Neuhaus, one of the few on this list making fun of Church Growth - but not exactly a Lutheran
16. Pastor Herman Otten, who played both sides of Church Growth and Objective Justification
17. John Johnson, President, Concordia St. Louis

The Electric Car and Truck Fad Reminds Me of Other Disasters

 

ELDONA joined in fellowship with the Rolf Preus Objective Justification sect.

Here is a tip from Almy - "Do not let your belly button protrude through the robe. The pulpit leads the world - not the belly."

The electric car and truck fad reminds me of another misfit. The EVs, as they call them, are not very useful when stuck in a snow storm. Even worse, they can burst into flames in a flood. The batteries, if they can be found, cost from $15,000 to $20,000.

When the Lutheran Church in America caught the bishop buzz, the newly anointed bishops bought their duds and posed for pictures. They showed up in The Lutheran magazine looking unusually uncomfortable. They had embarrassed smiles and awkward poses when trying to look as Episcopal as possible.

The ultimate misfits are the corporate congregations and denominations. They continue to assume that their jobs are to assume that Peter Drucker was right in his emphasis upon objectives and strategies. He aligned himself with Fuller Seminary and suddenly the LCA, WELS, and LCMS were having conferences that sounded like Drucker pep rallies.

In contrast, the Bible is based upon the efficacious Word, teaches this doctrine throughout, and exemplifies it by identifying Jesus as the Word, the Logos who executed the commands of God the Father. Roman Catholics make the infallible Holy Mother Church the foundation. Calvinists divorce the Holy Spirit from the Word, so they teach the Word is dead unless some clever clergy make it lively, germane, appealing, and reasonable - a big stretch when starting with "dead" as the main description. 

Fortunately, for the Lutheran apostates, Rome offers gowns, frowns, and clowns to replace the efficacy of the Word and Sacraments. The Lutheran apostates, who have no faith in the Word, can glory in the smells, bells, and saints. I noticed as the LCA began to shrink, that saints days became all-important, liturgical garments more colorful and expensive, and the Apocrypha the most important part of the Bible, though it never made the grade in the first place.

Luther only matters when the neo-papists can cite some examples of his earlier days, but somehow never of his consistent teaching from the Scriptures.

The true Church is the creation of the Word, but the corporate cartels are nothing more than mockery, a slide from papal glory to circus entertainment.

 

Bishops Jim Heiser and Matt the Fatt Display Their Roman Glam Gowns

 This C. H. Almy cope costs $2531.

 

The bishop in the Philippines. Where are all the Finland photos?

The late Randy DeJaynes - Lutheran Church in America - made himself a bishop and created the Lutheran Confessional Synod. The ELS and WELS joined in fellowship with the LCS. Heiser began his Repristination Press there, which morphed into ELDONA after he took his LCMS parish - Salem, now Salem Cathedral, Malone, Texas - out of that synod.

Matt the Fatt wore the superfluous cope or chasable in Europe. No crosier or miter so far. His cassock was probably $371.

Like Stephan and DeJaynes, Heiser (on the far right) made himself a bishop. Here he has an alb, stole, pectoral cross, and ill-fitting cope. On the left is a chasuble costing about $700 for each of the colors in the church calendar, which now include sky blue and rosy pink.

Heiser wore a bishop's miter for his enthronement and carried a crosier.

An Almy miter costs $700, but various colors are needed to match the paraments and associates' stoles.

 

Heiser modeled the Almy Roman bishop's cassock and sash with a pectoral cross. The first two items cost $450 total. Long beards, like hay bales, seem to be spiritually significant, but scholars remain divided about their true purpose.