Patterson Is the Problem - And WELS Rewarded Doebler for Apostasy

If Patterson was one who contacted you, it would not surprise me. How pathetic. People like you are not the ones who hurt the church when they bring the evil wheeling and dealing to light. They are the ones hurting the church by continuing to enable the behaviors of those who are unfit for the ministry, which in essence makes them unfit for their 'calls'.

In 2009, we approached the Circuit Pastor and Patterson about the way the then pastor at Christ the Rock (where Ski is now) was interpreting scripture and his emphasis on the emergent church model instead of the Holy Ghost for 'success' of the church. That pastor remained and recently got a call to the WELS Asian Seminary as a professor. Heaven help them!

We left CTR and joined Holy Word where Patterson was since he assured us that the situation was being taken care of. (We weren't the only ones who left. Many of the core members of the mission also left.) Long story short, it wasn't long before we realized who the problem really was. Patterson. Worship and practice at Holy Word were becoming less and less Lutheran and more and more like American Evangelicalism. Even his teaching of Justification was off. And this is where a lot of these guys go off the tracks. They take the extreme view in regard to forgiveness that it skews into some kind of Antinomianism. (The Ski issue is a perfect example) We took issue with this and found ourselves kicked out. I admit that the stand I took made me sound like a synergistic freak a couple of french fries short of a happy meal, but that was the extreme I needed to try and counter the error. But the real travesty was the lying and smoke and mirrors presented to the congregation to discredit us. When we attended the voters meeting concerning the disposition of our membership, I wasn't allowed to speak; it wasn't the time for a theological discussion since they had offered it to me previously and I refused. (which I did) The fact was they offered a discussion concerning fellowship previously. But that wasn't the issue. What they refused previously was a discussion of Justification. So they lied to the congregation about us.

I would encourage you to stay the course (with the help of others) to either force a change of heart in these individuals or get their calls terminated. Rest assured, they aren't all bad as you have discovered. There are solid ecclesiastical supervisors in the WELS as I know this from a recent experience. These fellas need to step up and rebuke their brothers.