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| Without a treat - Like the property, the title, the cash, the endowment funds. Learn from Walther, who took 120 acres away from his bishop. |
New sects like to begin by leaving with the congregation's property and money. Where that is difficult, some have borrowed heavily on their equity, put it in a trust fund, and left the denomination's property with a big debt and few members. ELS Pastor Kincaid Smith bragged abot doing that in Brownsville. I do not remember if that was leaving the LCA for LCMS or leaving the LCMS for the ELS.
No one can dispute whether the established denominations are apostate. Just attend the next conference at Fuller Seminary, Willowcreek, or Trinity Divinity. Those beehives are the places where apostates learn secular methods in how to be leaders.
But another question is whether the separatists are better.
Bishop-for-Life Randy DeJaynes began the Lutheran Confessional Synod (sic) with one LCA/ALC church and a fairly large group of people. The ELS and WELS declared fellowship with him, which meant they could pray with him (yippee) and commune with him (even better). That congregation is where Jim Heiser began Repristination Press, although it is not clear who really owned the stock. That was about 20 years ago, or around 1996, and the LCS blew up.
Bishop-for-Life Randy was arrested in 2008 for child porn and making his privates public. Jim Heiser obtained a call to a conservative LCMS congregation long before that. .
Heiser obtained a call from Salem in Malone, Texas.
Salem is a conservative, independent Lutheran congregation. From January 1, 1922, until July 18, 2004, Salem was a member of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. The year 2004 was marked by the Malone Statement about Benke's unionism.
The LCMS was unionistic for decades. No one seemed to notice that Missouri was teaching UOJ, Church Growth, Pentecostalism, and who knows what else. Yankee Stadium was a big deal for the signers, who were largely the founding ELDONUTS.
Heiser, Heimbigner, and later Handrich obtained their property from the LCMS, so one could truthfully say, "You didn't build that." Those five pastors who joined later or join now will probably have to leave all the property and money behind - or borrow it out the back door, as Smith did.
Oddly, Heiser did not even attend Clark Brown's installation, though Brown was one of the signers of the Malone statement. That congregation took their parish back to the LCMS and extended Brown the Left Foot of Fellowship.
All this material about church property is complex, reminding me of the fast fish discussion in Moby Dick, one of his hilarious asides in a novel where most of the text is comprised of asides.
Shunning and Pietism
The main issue is shunning, fellowship, and Pietism. Babtists do it best. If someone has the wrong attitude toward Ken Ham - for instance - the iron curtain in the Babtist brain slams shut. The individual who dared to question a Ken Ham is on the no-fly list.
ELDONA makes much of their purity of purpose, thanking God daily they are not like the others. But in establishing their credentials they leave out many germane facts.
Item. Jim Heiser's parents have been members of a WELS congregation, Steve Spencer's in Arizona. EDONA is not in fellowship with WELS and supposedly rejects UOJ, which is just about the only doctrine in WELS. Nothing else is needed, really. How could Heiser's parents go to a congregation opposed to ELDONA? Spencer expressed the thought that no WELS pastor wanted to join the Heiser cult.
Item. Heiser's sect-minders are quick to make certain erroneous, defamatory, and foolish statements, without the IQ to check their facts. They are not keen to face the facts about themselves. The ones who could not slip money and property away from the LCMS are stranded with a handful of members. Even with adroit moves, one has the old church property but almost no members and plenty of debt. His former members meet elsewhere.
Item. ELDONA makes a lot of noise about sound doctrine, but for almost 20 years, Heiser and ELDONA had no outward problem with UOJ. As far as I can determine, all the ELDONA pastors were ordained in UOJ and continued to teach that false doctrine until about 2013. Although Heiser seem to have seen the light in 2000, when he was reading and selling Thy Strong Word, he was content to be in fellowship with the ardently UOJ Rolf Preus Synod for a number of years. The precipitating change seemed to have come from Paul Rydecki, who earlier argued for UOJ on the Intrepid Lutherans blog and finally saw the light, teaching Justification by Faith and being kicked out of WELS for it.
Meanwhile, the Rolf Synod ran back to the ELS, guided by Jay Webber. They said something like this, "Yes, we left the ELS but not really, more like a multi-year coffee break. Yeah, that's it. A coffee break."
Item. ELDONA is crying about the adverse publicity they stirred up for themselves, without ever checking their facts, apologizing for their behavior, or showing an ounce of common sense. They even think I make money from more page-views. They do not gain many page-views for this blog (that "no one reads") because few know or care about ELDONA.
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| You didn't build this - Charity Lutheran Church. |