Gloom and Doom from Richard Neuhaus' Nephew - Ovaltines Update.They Brought It All Down, Collecting the Demolition Fees.

Richard Neuhaus graduated from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, backed Seminex, joined the LCA, and became a Roman Catholic priest. That is also the mix at the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau Discussion Group.

Pastor Peter Speckhard (above)

ALPB Contribution Leader, Neuhaus Nephew

"I agree with the "change and decay" sentiment as sentiment of my generation, but I am heartened by the rising generation that never knew an institutionally strong and growing LCMS with mainstream aspirations and take the challenges of the world for granted as part of the bargain.  A lot of younger pastors have no illusions about salaries and fully expect to be bivocational. They see it as, in some ways at least, a feature of rather than bug in our current context. And they have no worries about not being mainstream. The question is whether they can convince any parishioners to join them in sufficient numbers to actually have congregations. But heartened as I am by their zeal, I can't join them except as a cheerleader. I was formed by a different world. I liked having a lot of Concordias. I like Valpo as an LCMS-centric Lutheran university. I appreciate a highly educated, professional clergy. I feel as though I have to focus on the next sermon and trust that the kingdom is advancing not because I am particularly faithful but because I am not really equipped to do anything else."

***

GJ - Christina and I met Neuhaus father when we were in Ontario and visiting that LCMS congregation. I corresponded with Richard Neuhaus and he quoted me in the ALPB Forum Letter, and we met him at the Ad Fontes (Come to Rome!) conference. There he spoke with the LCA President James Crumley, and we ate lunch with Crumley, a kindly person who wanted to know about my move to WELS.

LCA President Crumley attended the synod's conference for communication in Seattle. I paid for Christina's ticket. He would have been a good ELCA leader, but the radicals were already in charge before the gavel came down. WELS and the LCMS thought hordes of ELCA into their corrupted bosoms, but hey! - The Faithless Five - ELCA-LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic) worshiped and learned together - WELS' Ron Roth and others were at Fuller Seminary from 1977 onward. ELCA did not officially start until New Year's 1983.

How about Snowbird ELCA-WELS-LCMS, 1991? -
"At the Snowbird Ecumenical Conference, the best ever,

according to Rev. James Schaefer, our council of presidents

and other leaders, 25 in all, were taught how to manage the

church by a woman.  They were taught what St. Paul says about

ministry by a Trinity Seminary professor, an advocate of the

historical-critical method.  They were told by a liberal

Reformed theologian that the radical left mainline

denominations were not becoming "sideline" denominations.

George Barna, Who's Who in Church Growth, also taught our

leaders at Snowbird, but they seem to know Barna's work quite

well already.  When Columbus WELS pastors invited ELCA to

discuss inerrancy, no one from Trinity Seminary showed up.

They understand fellowship.  But our synodical president

posed for photos with Rev. Herb Chilstrom, former Pietist,

who advanced himself by promoting the cause of homosexuality

and pornography-as-sex-offender therapy as bishop of the

LCA's Minnesota Synod.

 

As chairman of the board of Seminex, Jungkuntz approved this school for training future Metropolitan Community Church (gay) pastors. Many Seminex leaders were graduates of Northwestern College (WELS), where he taught earlier. 

The Ovaltines Have the Notes from the 2009 ELCA Convention

 

We cannot predict the future very well, but we can certainly study the past. The Ovaltines - ALPB Online Forum - have preserved their discussions about big events. I thought they skipped the 2009 ELCA vote, but I found it on the list. This is the link to all the discussions about the 2009 ELCA Convention.

One person observed that ELCA had already lost 500,000 members, and I hasten to add, they used the Church Growth ninnies as much as LCMS and WELS. 

How could they lose even more members? That is correct! You are astute. The convention was a done deal before Mark Hanson, the Presiding Bishop, began the event. He was all for a change away from the old ways, men marrying women, having children according to God's Creation. 

The LCA and ALC were already infiltrated with the Left Wing when they birthed the ELCA in 1987. The AELC (Seminex) was even more so, proud of their departure and their seminary board chairman Dick Jungkuntz. 

Jungkuntz went from WELS to the LCMS to Board Chairman of Seminex, providing a nest for a gay seminary, side-by-side with Seminex. Fuller Seminary promoted a similar gay shift in 2013.

The 2009 convention was not a debate, but the tripwire to carry out officially what they had been doing since 1987 and before. Trexler, the editor of The Lutheran magazine, said (paraphrased) "The LCA has been ordaining homosexuals for years." WELS and Missouri are not different - they just keep it to themselves.

Stay tuned to the Ovaltines' conventions. They have plenty to say. One might compare and contrast ELCA with ELCiC in Canada. The Canadian version more Left than ELCA, and they have a long-term lady Presiding Bishop.

Denominations are the only vessel where the ship is wrecked, sinking, and the remnants are chipper.

As the language goes, so goes the doctrine, down down to goblin town.

Seminex Started at the Dinky Little College Called Northwestern - Post from 2007.Jungkuntz Chaired the Seminex Fiasco And Partnered with the New Gay Seminary, 50 Years Ago!

Richard Jungkuntz taught many future pastors of WELS at Northwestern College, Watertown, before moving to Concordia, Springfield, and finally to the ALC. Each time he was bumped up, from college instructor in Watertown, to seminary professor in Springfield, to Provost at Pacific Lutheran University, 1972. He was even acting president of PLU in 1974!

The Wisconsin sect is far more radical than most people realize. Trying to look more retro than the other synods, WELS has pursued a radical apostate streak for many decades.

Two packages brought that home to me. One was from a woman who was excommunicated for objecting to their new budgeting plan, many years ago. She thinks the plan preceded the LCA plan, which was similar in its manipulative schemes. Anyone can recognize today how abused the fudge-it figures are. One minute the sect is in receivership and needs to sell Michigan Lutheran Seminary for $1. The next day they are building a $7 million chapel at MLC (nee Dr. Martin Luther College), sending a new team of missionaries to Africa, and building a new student center in Madison, Wisconsin for $6 million or so.

The other package came from another state, another person (Grey Goose). That contained material for the congregational self-study, another man-centered Fuller-inspired stunt. The details are too tedious to list. Organizational navel-gazing is a sure sign of decline.

As I mentioned months ago, WELS was the birthplace of Seminex. My friend, a WELS pastor, tells me that Northwestern College reunions often have cars with Seminex stickers on them. When the break with Missouri came, a number of Northwestern graduates joined the Seminex faction.

Richard Jungkuntz, PhD, was teaching the historical-critical method (HCM) to the future WELS and LCMS pastors. No one knew this until the student submitted papers they wrote for Jungkuntz to another instructor, I believe at Mequon. The instructor raised holy heck and Jungkuntz was ousted. WELS pastors laugh, "They only found out by accident." That confirms the legend of WELS: sniffing out false doctrine everywhere but never seeing it under their own noses.

At some point another Watertown instructor left for supporting HCM. According to a favorite student of Jungkuntz, Richard egged on his partner in crime (Gehrke) and left him hanging on a limb. Clever man, that Jungkuntz.

So the two apostate instructors influenced a number of classes of WELS pastors, whose bone-breaks and secret ritual humiliations united them by the time they were graduated from the Sausage Factory at Mequon. Those are the same classes in control of the Love Shack's machinery today. I can pick them out easily from my source (not a friend, but a CG fan) who got tears in his eyes over Jungkuntz being the best teacher he ever had. All I have to do is locate the Jungkuntz fan and look over the Mequon classes below him. That is where the Church Growth stars shine brightest.

Jungkuntz went on to become divisive at Concordia Seminary, Springfield, when Jack Preus was the president. According to legend, Jack supported the apostates and also the conservatives, depending on who was talking to him in his office. One famous Jack Preus quote: "Help me gut Jungkuntz." Nevertheless, Preus eventually finessed Missouri into a temporary return to basics. Preus' style was to ease people out of positions, which launched Jungkuntz into a higher orbit. It pays to apostacize, in the short run.

The introduction of the fraudulent historical-critical method of Biblical interpretation as the essential groundwork for Church Growth in WELS, Missouri, the Little Sect on the Prairie, and ELCA. HCM teaches that the Bible is just another book, to be eviscerated like Homer's Iliad, Marco Polo's Journals, and Moby Dick. The difference is that Melville argued for the Book of Jonah being accurate in Moby Dick, while the HCM professors made fun of the same book of the Bible. The difference is that Melville knew whales while the HCM gurus memorized lecture notes from skeptics. (Nonetheless, Jonah reveals God constantly at work in fulfilling His will, whale anatomy aside.)

The historical-critical method is sterile and fading away, but its damage will not pass away so quickly. The nexus with Church Growth is simple. HCM thinking was foundational for Fuller Seminary's repudiation of its former (albeit weak) inerrancy stance. Once pastors and theologians think of the Bible as another book, a pretty good book but still just a human creation, then every other error can pour in unabated.

The Jungkuntz classes from Northwestern College had no problem going to Fuller Seminary, where Church Growth started after inerrancy was repudiated. Church Growth is sociology and marketing, not neutral but anti-Christian in substance.

***

Read this from the New York Times

EDUCATION: LESSONS
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LEAD: Richard Jungkuntz flew across country this week to sit in conference with some of higher education's most powerful leaders. It is the last time this provost of a small Lutheran college will formally attend such a gathering. This spring, at the age of 70, he plans to end his 30-year career as an educator and retire to the tennis courts.

Richard Jungkuntz flew across country this week to sit in conference with some of higher education's most powerful leaders. It is the last time this provost of a small Lutheran college will formally attend such a gathering. This spring, at the age of 70, he plans to end his 30-year career as an educator and retire to the tennis courts.

Mr Jungkuntz is a self-described conservative, a minister and educator who holds, as he put it, ''old-fashioned ideas.'' In an age and at a conference where the expression of some of those ideas might be misconstrued as, say, sexist or otherwise offensive, the provost decided to ''hold my darn tongue.'' Often, hearing something that seemed nonsense to him, he would just slip out of the meeting rooms into the corridors for a smoke.

But at one point here at the 70th annual meeting of the American Council on Education, a gathering of presidents, chancellors and deans from academies across the country, Mr. Jungkuntz listened to a panel debate the difficulties of training teachers and he could no longer maintain his silence.

Psychometrics, budget shortfalls, poverty and social structure aside, the failure of American education, the argument goes, begins with the hand that puts the lesson on the blackboard. Thus, in a room full of college administrators, many from schools with teacher education programs, the subject was bound to raise professional passions.

Robert Corrigan, Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, said, ''We still see teachers as if they were members of a blue-collar profession. They have no control of the classroom, the curriculum or their working conditions. They are treated like people in a factory milieu.''

A dean from San Antonio complained that his State Legislature changed teacher certification requirements so often, that professors of pedagogy could not figure out where they were ''supposed to go or how to get there.''

Another insisted that the problem was ''content versus process.'' That is, too much emphasis on the methods of teaching and not enough on what teachers were supposed to be learning.

A third voice suggested that bad teachers, in all likelihood, were once bad students, so the solution was to attract bright people to the profession. To lure such candidates, Joan Straumanis, dean of the faculty at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., had in mind ''a huge Federal loan program'' in which the brightest students in the country would be guaranteed low-cost loans if they they became teachers.

There also was talk of ''turfism,'' institutional ''musical chairs,'' ''flawed paradigms'' and, in the words of one administrator, ''that wonderful piece of heresy that there is indeed a relationship between the way students learn and the way faculty teach.''

It was about this time that Mr. Jungkuntz, from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash., raised his hand, cleared his throat and asked for the floor.

''We haven't taken a historical look at the problem,'' he began. ''Let me put it this way: What would you say was the quality of elementary and secondary schooling in the first quarter of our century and before that? I think it was an age in which the quality was superior. What were the incentives to going into teaching in those days? Lousy. Salaries were worse than the worst salaries are now. But what was the communities' preception of the teaching profession? Relatively high.

''My father in 1921 was addressed as professor by people. He was a grade-school teacher and a good one and he was regarded highly, at the same level as the clergy in town and perhaps somewhat higher than the mayor.''

The place was Jefferson, Wis., and the classroom was in a three-room Lutheran school, where teachers went heavy on the basics, the classics and homework. The provost knew that for a fact. He, after all, had been one of his father's students.

***
Books by Jungkuntz:

The gospel of baptism by Richard Jungkuntz (Unknown Binding - 1986)
12 Used & new from $9.85
Other Editions: Unknown Binding

2.
El Evangelio del Bautismo / The Gospel of Baptism by Richard Jungkuntz (Paperback - Sep 2001)
2 Used & new from $4.88

3.
A project in Biblical hermeneutics by Richard Jungkuntz (Unknown Binding - 1969)
5 Used & new from $7.00

4.
Christian approval of Epicureanism by Richard Jungkuntz (Unknown Binding - 1962)

Currently unavailable

5.
The analogy of faith: A historical study by Richard Jungkuntz (Unknown Binding - 1963)

Ralph David Gehrke was born on October 4, 1919 In New London, Wisconsin and died on January 4, 2011 in Tacoma, Washington. He was preceded in death by his parents, Rudolph and Alma, and his brother, Howard. He is survived by 'his sister, Lois Mae Hannewald (Norman), his sister-in-law, Ruth Gehrke and nieces, Betty Geiger (Roger) and Irene Hintz (Darwin). Ralph earned a B. A. from Northwestern College (Wisconsin) in 1941, a B. D. from Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary in 1944 and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1959. As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, he was awarded the prestigious Shorey Fellowship in Classics. Ralph was ordained as a Lutheran Pastor in 1944 and recently celebrated the 65th Anniversary of his ordination. He served in the Wisconsin Synod, Lutheran Church---Missouri Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Dr. Gehrke came to PLU in 1975 after teaching for 24 years at Northwestern College in Wisconsin and Concordia Teachers College in Illinois. At PLU, he was as a professor in the Religion Department until his retirement in 1990. His most noteworthy scholarship stemmed from his knowledge of multiple languages and cultures as well as his lifelong study of the Old Testament. In particular, his research and teaching were informed by extensive travel in Biblically referenced lands. In his years at PLU, he taught regularly in the academic program currently identified as the Honors Program.

Various Apostates Took Pokes at LSTC Here

 

This stunning, iconic, Gospel-centered edifice was perfect for selling to the University of Chicago. Its wide arms welcomed its neighborhood from the start, until they found it useful to close it off with the fourth section for the Leftist McCormick Presbyterian Seminary. Take a tour, if  the University unlocks the door, and imagine what it was like to have Seminex grace its sanctimonious classrooms.

Seminex Profs and the Downfall of LSTC and the ELCA

Colleagues,

On the Lutheran Forum website these days Crossings shows up in the conversation. The line is drawn back to Seminex, and that offbeat seminary, which closed shop in St. Louis way back in 1983, is portrayed as the villain that ruined the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in 2009. I kid you not!

But it was not all of the Seminex community that did this. It was just ten of the professors, dismissed as false teachers by their mother church (Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod), who were then welcomed into the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago (LSTC). Welcomed as an attractive treasure–but really a Trojan horse. For once inside the guarded citadel, these teachers stepped out to fling open the gates to liberal theology, especially its virulent anti-nomianism (=disrespect for God’s law), thereby eviscerating the “L” word in LSTC–and even more mind-boggling–decimating the entire ELCA! Once more, I kid you not.

What triggers this LF website extravaganza is the Fortress Press book by James Burkee: “Power, Politics and the Missouri Synod-A Conflict that Changed American Christianity.” Burkee has unearthed documents that expose the seamy side of the “Wars of Missouri” back in the 1970s. He tells all.

Robert Benne (prof at the ELCA’s Roanoke College, director of the Center for Religion and Society) was asked for a pre-publication blurb for the book, and that has led to what he’s now put on the LF website. It is Benne’s own version of what happened in Missouri in those days, culminating in the dire consequences that conflict had for the ELCA, consequences coming from the seminary-in-exile (Seminex) that came out of that Missouri Synod conflict.

Benne claims (see the citations below) that these Seminex profs, “refugees” who migrated to the LSTC, are the ones who did it. Namely, wrecked the ELCA. Their Trojan horse strategy first infected LSTC with anti-nomianism and its libertine ethics. Their venom then spread far and wide throughout ELCA leadership folks. So wide in fact that it finally succeeded in conning the majority of the delegates at ELCA assembly 2009–hundreds and hundreds of them–to say Yes on the homosexual-hot-potato when they should have said No.

Carl Braaten has said the same thing in the several pages he devotes to Seminex in his recently published autobiography. Braaten too portrays the Seminex profs who came to LSTC as the ones who swept the ELCA into thumbing its nose at God’s law. They engineered the anti-nomian takeover of the denomination.

The Seminex profs who came to LSTC in 1983 were Mark Bangert (Music and Liturgy), Paul Bauermeister (Pastoral Care), Robert Bertram (Systematic Theology), Bob Conrad (Christian Education), Bill Danker (Missiology), Frederick Danker (New Testament), David Deppe (Practical Theology), Kurt Hendel (Reformation History), Ralph Klein (Old Testament), Edgar Krentz (New Testament). By now some have died. So I asked those who remain–all but one of them retired–about the Benne/Braaten claim. Is it true?

So far two have responded. I have their permission to pass their words on to you. But first I’ll copy below some of Benne’s statements.

Peace and Joy!
Ed Schroeder

---

Bob Benne’s words on the Luth. Forum website:

when I survey the damage done to the ELCA by the Seminex/AELC [=Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, LCMS congregations also dismissed from the LCMS during those days] leadership that migrated from Missouri to the church bureaucracies and seminaries of the ELCA. it has made a “long march though ELCA institutions” that has given a significant push to the ELCA’s journey to liberal Protestantism. the Missouri liberals lost one skirmish to powerful conservative insurgents in Missouri, but were crucial in winning another from powerless conservatives of the ELCA. Now they are free; they will have no more enemies from the right.The home-grown radicals of the LCA and ALC were joined by the Seminex/AELC contingent to overwhelm the staid old voices of the LCA and ALC. The latter didn’t have a chance against the young radicals. The “march through the institutions” radiated from Chicago to many synods, agencies, colleges, and seminaries. Just as I was leaving the Lutheran School of Theology in 1982, an interesting conversation took place in Carl Braaten’s Irving room. The question before the group was: in view of the demise of Seminex, how many of its professors should LSTC take? I argued that taking more than two or three would dramatically alter the seminary. LSTC wound up with over a half dozen, if not more. Before long they were the dominant faction.

the seminary’s faculty-led democratic tradition soon became a top-down chain of command, fully attributable to the new faculty. Their liberalism gradually pervaded the seminary. not one of the deployed former Seminex faculty wound up on the side of the traditionalists in the run-up to the Churchwide Assembly to 2009. Except for Paul Hinlicky, I cannot think of one theologian from the Seminex/AELC stream that did not support the revisionist pressures working within the ELCA. there is something about those Seminex/AELC types who have taken leadership positions in the seminaries, colleges, bureaucracies, and synods of the ELCA that has bent them toward the revisionist side. Was it because their tormentors were from the right and they could recognize no dangers from the left? Was it that they had become battle-hardened by earlier struggles and were very adept at maneuvering for power? Was it those German genes? Or was it because they were liberals from the very beginning. . . .?

---

HENDEL

Dear Ed,While I have had a series of email conversations with Carl Braaten about the ELCA’s ministry decisions, I have never engaged him regarding the claim that he makes in his autobiography and which Benne is apparently repeating now.

I will not speak for my colleagues. They can obviously do that for themselves. In my teaching and preaching I have focused on the centrality of Christ and the gospel. While I have never espoused or promoted an antinomian position, I have stressed that the second use of the law is particularly crucial, both for the effective proclamation of the gospel and for our understanding the Lutheran heritage. I also explore the Formula of Concord’s third use of the law. I am clearly not denying the efficacy or necessity of the first use of the law by focusing especially on its chief function. As I affirm the significance of the law and its necessary dialectical relationship to the go spel, I do emphasize that the gospel is God’s ultimate good news to humanity. I have also stressed Luther’s insistence that the gospel is the hermeneutical key to Scripture and, hence, also of the law. None of this indicates that I am either a gospel-reductionist or an antinomian. Rather, I believe that I am faithful to the Lutheran understanding of the purpose and efficacy of Scripture, to the Lutheran confessional heritage and to Luther’s own faith convictions and theological method.

I really have no idea why Braaten ascribes so much influence to us in shaping the assumed heretical stances of LSTC or of the ELCA. We have, of course, taught at LSTC for a good number of years, and we have made our voices heard. We have also been active within the ELCA, but not in unusual or normative ways. I suspect, therefore, that leaders within the ELCA and our other colleagues at LSTC would describe our roles and impact in ways that differ significantly from Braaten’s assertions. I would hope, of course, that they would characterize our contributions in a much more positive way.

Bob Benne had, of course, already left LSTC by the time we arrived, and I do not think that he has engaged us or our theological perspective in any significant ways over the past quarter of a century. It may be, therefore, that his perspectives are shaped largely by Braaten’s.

I doubt that a response to Braaten or Benne will have a positive impact or change their perspectives.

---

KLEIN

Dear Ed:Thanks, I think, for alerting me to Benne’s piece on the Forum website. That led to Hinlicky’s review, which I had seen before.

First, on the dissertation on LCMS to be published by Fortress. I read this piece several years ago since an electronic copy was making the rounds. It is a wondrous piece, but totally devoid of theology–by intention. Hence the absurd criticism by Benne that there was no theological defense by the moderates in Missouri is nonsense. This bloke teaches at Concordia Milwaukee and hence he had to avoid theology if he wanted to keep his job. The dirt he dug up and the connections to right wing political extremism are amazing.

Second, on how “we” took over LSTC. The ten of us have had an enormous impact on LSTC although we have not taken it over (and I promise not to take over the ELCA). I suspect that impartial observers would say that if anything the Seminex contingent was centrist at LSTC, at times even conservative. In the early 90s part of the faculty wanted to call Elizabeth Bettenhausen to the faculty and the other part wanted Reinhard Huetter. The issue was the Lutheranism of the two candidates, sadly lacking in the former, with Braaten strongly an advocate of Huetter, and I think all of the Seminex faculty voted with him. It was a long, drawn out battle, and the decision was finally to call Huetter on a non tenure track. Braaten was fed up with LSTC at that time and walked off in a huff.

Ironically, Seminex was his ally on this issue. Without Seminex Bettenhausen would surely have been called. Ironically, again, Huetter eventually left LSTC for Duke, where he became Roman Catholic! So much for his great Lutheranism.

Third, on the third use of the law [=ethical guidelines for the Christian life]. I still am affected by my Harvard mentors who saw the Decalogue at least as a guide to the redeemed. The top two professors were both Presbyterians. Of course 8 of the ten commandments name a specific thing you can’t do, leaving much of life to “living righteously” loving God and the neighbor, or faith active in love. E.g. all the sixth commandment prohibits is the sleeping with another person’s wife–hardly a comprehensive guide on sexuality. The only positive commands are the Third–rest on the Sabbath day, which none of us observes (however much we may honor preaching and the Word) and the 4th, which I think was addressed to adults and admonished them to care for the elderly–good news for our aged bad situations.

A classmate of mine recently attended a symposium at Concordia Seminary, Fort Wayne, and heard ELCA denounced for denying the third use in its sexuality decisions. The question before the ELCA house was what seven biblical passages meant back then and what help they might give us today in wrestling with homosexuality and other sexual issues. [Rejecting] Third use in the LCMS means–IMHO–that you don’t buy our legalism.

When the Concordia Seminary (St. Louis) presidency was vacant a few years ago, I offered myself as a candidate with a promise to bring back the good old days. Somehow that plan fizzled.

Seminex Returns - Tietjen Reborn - Matt the Fatt Slugs the Tarbaby

 

They came back for lunch at the seminary - the same day! "An army travels on its stomach." So did these mighty martyrs, and many became ELCA bishops. Really!

From the LCMS Reporter:

On Aug. 8, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) Board of Directors (BOD) reached out to the Concordia University Texas (CTX), Austin, Texas, Board of Regents (BOR) seeking a board-to-board meeting in keeping with the spirit of Resolution 7-03, adopted on Aug. 1 by the Synod in convention. In that letter, the LCMS BOD also asked the CTX BOR:

To recognize and seat the four CTX regents elected by the Synod convention on Aug. 3; and

Not to seat anyone who has not been elected or appointed to the CTX BOR under Synod Bylaws.

The next day, on Aug. 9, CTX President Dr. Donald Christian notified the LCMS BOD via email that the four CTX regents elected by the Synod convention would not be seated on the CTX BOR.

Attached to Christian’s email were copies of letters from Christopher Bannwolf, CTX BOR chair, that previously had been sent to each of the four newly elected regents. Those letters referred to the regents’ “purported election” to the CTX BOR. They also claimed that the current CTX Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws “do not allow for Regents to be elected or appointed externally by someone else,” including by the LCMS convention.

The Synod BOD has been informed by Bannwolf that the CTX BOR will meet soon to discuss its response to the Synod BOD’s Aug. 8 letter requesting a meeting.

Having Fun with Falsehoods

 

KJV Romans 5: Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: 2 By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; 4 And patience, experience; and experience, hope: 5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

I saw a post on Facebook which was from Romans 5. I was curious because he was an advocate of Objective Faithless Justification and used to be an atheist. He did not include the first few verses of Romans 5, so I could imagine him going over the same nonsense as before, excluding the Apostle Paul verbatim to prop up the OJ of Pietism at Halle University. Most remember that Halle University moved quickly from Biblical Pietism to Rationalism. The Rationalists are the stars of ELCA eggheads. Fortress Press even had a series of books honoring them.

WELS-LCMS-Seminex-ALC: Jungkuntz pollinated the Lutheran sects and as chair of the Concordia Seminary split, sponsored the gay seminary at their location - Metropolitan Community Church. The irony is - WELS tossed him out when they were false exegetes and false teachers on steroids,.

 Rambach - Halle University - Easter grave absolution of the world. 

If Romans 4 is the perfect discussion of Justification by Faith based on Abraham, the Father of Faith, then the opening of Romans 5 must frame the ultimate conclusion.

The answer is simple - faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is access to grace. That forgiveness gives us peace.

The "former" atheist quoted Romans 5 from verse 5 on, excluding Romans 5:1-4.

The thrice-blessed-holier-than-the-Bible LCMS Brief Statement of 1932 teaches that Romans 4 is Objective Justification! They have been hanging onto this falsehood for almost 100 years. Thanks be to their Father Below, they have consolidated this OJ claim as pure Gospel in the LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic) and ELCA.

But -

KJV Romans 4:23 Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; 24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; 25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.

Ever since, the OJ cults (listed above) have taught verse 25 by itself, excluding what is clearly revealed in verse 24 - the righteousness of Christ is imputed if we believe.

Lenski

Our congregation is very involved in knowing more about RCH Lenski. In looking up his bio in Wickedpedia, I noticed a bizarre form of editing, footnotes without the context in the main part.

By the way, a Google search of Lenski's name picks up the cover of Lutheran Library's Kings and Priests, published by LL.

Lenski is accused of not having sympathy for the Calvinists (James White) and therefore being an Arminian. The humorous definition of Arminian is "someone who disagrees with Calvin." The entire Wiki post is a rave against Lenski, using the label Arminian repeatedly and with rancor. 

This is less subtle than the typical OJ repeat-after-me dogmatics (Webber, Rolf Preus, Scaer, etc). Both OJ errors are examples of using a phrase or a concept to obscure what the Scriptures reveal. 

OJ Lutherans will toss out the term Arminian as derogatory because they cannot get their lying lips to say "He believes in Justification by Faith - I don't!"

 Mrs. Kilcrease is rather fond of this graphic.

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

Pretzel Pastor and Yeastologist Graduated from the Late, Great Seminex But Is Now an LSTC Alumnus

 

Rev. Ron Glusenkamp named one of 2021's Distinguished Alumni at LSTC

"The Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC) has named five 2021 Distinguished Alumni, including Rev. Ronald Glusenkamp, who is currently serving as Interim Pastor at Desert Hills Lutheran in Green Valley. Learn more at the LSTC website.

The Rev. Ronald Glusenkamp (Christ Seminary-Seminex, 1980, MDiv), who recently celebrated 40 years of ordained ministry, will receive the Called to Lead Award.

He has faithfully served successful, healthy congregations in Wichita, Kan., Kansas City, Mo., St. Louis, Mo., and Denver, Colo. with growing ministries and outreach. He has served the greater church with positions at the Board of Pensions in Minneapolis and at the ELCA Churchwide Office in Chicago.

Under his leadership as director, The Campaign for the ELCA: Always Being Made New, focused on congregations, hunger and poverty, global church, and leadership, exceeded its campaign goal of $198 million by more than $50 million.

Glusenkamp is an outstanding communicator of the gospel and is a frequent guest preacher and speaker at synod assemblies and other gatherings. He excels at connecting the national church to individual congregations."

***

GJ - I lived in the era of Seminex, so I am puzzled that the failed Seminex - by dispersing some of its faculty to the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago - could by hocus-pocus make the Pretzel Pastor an alumnus of LSTC.

However, that star-crossed seminary awards its name to anyone who went to a previous school. Augustana Seminary graduates are now LSTC graduates. Maywood graduates (ULCA) are LSTC alumni, etc. I counted up seven (7) previous schools that contributed to the dying LSTC.

+ + +

 But the kids came back the very next day,
The kids came back, we thought that they were goners.
But the kids came back, they couldn't stay away, away, away.

Oh the drama! So many self-righteous frauds and phonies lost (for several hours) to Concordia Lutheran Seminary in St. Louis. I am choking back the tears, tears of laughter.

 My English may be crippled by grading too many assignments - but - How were students exiled when they took upon themselves, with faculty guidance, the burden of leaving for a few hours and coming back to deluxe dorm rooms and tasty food?
They did not take up the cross but double-crossed the nation with tawdry publicity.

Seminex

A large majority of the seminary's students voted on the morning of February 19 to continue their education under the targeted faculty at an off-campus site. Immediately after the students passed their resolution, they and the majority of the faculty staged a dramatic walkout, inviting the local press for the event.^[18][19] Singing "The Church's One Foundation" [Methodist], they processed out of the seminary grounds, where students had planted white crosses bearing their names. The event attracted a great deal of media attention. However, the seminary's Board of Control subsequently accused the students of disingenuous posturing, noting that the students had returned to the seminary cafeteria for lunch immediately after their supposed departure and continued to live in student housing for the remainder of the term.

 

Ronald GlusenkampView Ronald Glusenkamp’s profile 

• 3rd+3rd+ degree connection

PretzelPastor & Yeastologist

United States

Current: Pretzel Pastor & Yeastologist at PRETZELPASTOR

Jungkuntz became the chairman of the board of Seminex, and they became the official seminary of the Metropolitan Community Church, which no longer mentions them. Many WELS pastors of that era still remember Jungkuntz with great fondness, one with tears in his eyes. Few realize that Northwestern College - RIP - WELS - is one of the key sources for Seminex leaders.