http://spectator.org/archives/2013/07/26/the-future-belongs-to-religiou
Norma Boeckler presents me with a dilemma daily - how to use her newest graphics.
This one reminded me of that time when America thought church meant worshiping the Triune God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I found a Universalist hymnal on the Net that was far more Christian than the pablum being tossed out by Shrinker entertainment gatherings.
First the mainlines pursued political activism, a movement started by a tiny group of men, the Brotherhood of the Kingdom. They were the backbone of the Social Gospel Movement, which invaded America through the National Council of Churches and its mainline denominational supporters.
The Social Gospel Movement was a clever ploy to replace the Gospel with Leftist activism. The more it took over, the faster its congregations pruned up and disappeared. Take stock of the giant Methodist churches near your home. Most are empty. They pioneered the Social Gospel early, women's ordination, gay and abortion activism later.
Lutherans are always a day late and dollar short, to quote Stan Hauerwas. They joined and remain united around the altar to Pan at ELCA headquarters. Missouri and WELS offer pan-denominationalism, pan-ecumenism, pan-sexuality, and pandemonium in doctrine.
The Lutheran solution, once again, is to replace the Gospel with entertainment, Pentecostal pop, and other distractions.
The LCMS managed to hold a convention without facing its seminary student loan fraud. Strange - the Missouri Synod business model is run by graduates of its seminaries, but they defunded their seminaries long ago. That way, every potential pastor gets to borrow money to keep the overbuilt schools afloat, to pay the overpaid professors and excessive administrators. Many of those men are tossed out with partial degrees or completed useless degrees.
The priestly class of the LCMS got their education for very little, with heavy subsidies from mission offerings. Now they skim the offerings for their salaries and benefits. Question that and no call - or perhaps a quick extension of the Left Foot of Fellowship.
Left unsaid - the LCMS (like WELS) does not have a decent seminary professor left. Not one of them can teach basic Biblical, Lutheran doctrine. How many shepherds reward the predator for slaying and scattering the sheep? I do not know of a better comparison for the current state of LCMS-ELS-WELS. But they never resist the temptation to look down on their partner in ministry, ELCA, to make themselves look good.
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The three synod presidents who love to work with ELCA should apologize to their members and church workers for the abuse handed out to so many - members, pastors, and teachers alike. My relative worked with a woman who received an ELCA call so she could be the mistress of the senior pastor. She did more than write a letter, the WELS non-solution. She met with the bishop several times. He was deaf to her, so she left church work and became an accountant.
Multiply that example by the hundreds in the Synodical Conference and see how productive that has been in driving people away.
I chose the ELCA example because the ones I know from WELS-ELS-LCMS correspondence are too revealing of the sources, and I keep that information private.
The ELCA-WELS-ELS-LCMS leaders refuse to teach the Gospel and openly despise Luther.
KJV Romans 1:21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were
thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing
themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an
image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do
the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
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| No wonder the Lutheran leaders shun Luther. |