Called to “Test all things”

Eight days ago, we blogged about the opening of Faith Lutheran Church – a new, independant Lutheran congregation in the Portland, Oregon, area, formed by some 17 Lutherans who were recently compelled to leave WELS for a variety of reasons, and have now chosen to be served by pastors of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America (ELDoNA). We also mentioned that these Lutherans now also feel compelled to provide a public explanation for their departure from the WELS. Last Monday, we posted the first such explanation: No Longer Alone: Perspective of a Confessional Lutheran Woman. Today, we post the second.

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Called to “Test all things”
by Mr. Vernon Kneprath
The intent and agreement among those who chose to leave our WELS congregation was to leave peacefully and quietly. Concerns had already been expressed to the appropriate individuals over months and years, regarding what was being preached, taught and practiced throughout the synod. Most of those resigning their membership had stopped attending our local congregation weeks or months prior. When our common goal to return to confessional Lutheranism was realized, and a road to that end became available, it was determined to be prudent to resign our membership in our WELS congregation before working toward organizing a new congregation.

A simple, one sentence letter indicated the undersigned were resigning their membership. The letter was sent by certified mail to the pastor and president of the congregation. It was considered by our group to be more kind and considerate to send one letter rather than many, so that those receiving it would not be in a position of wondering when the next letter would arrive.

For nearly two months we generally avoided initiating dialogue. Some of us were contacted by various members and leaders of our local congregation. We listened carefully, and responded respectfully. Out of the communications that occurred during that time, there was a single individual who approached many of us in a respectful manner, and showed genuine care and concern for us.

The previous Intrepid post gave one individual’s reasons for leaving the WELS. While each of us had our own specific reasons for leaving, there were many shared concerns. Therefore, some of what follows may seem redundant. Unlike the author of the previous post, I had been a lifelong member of the WELS. I was instructed and confirmed with the Gausewitz edition of Luther’s Small Catechism, and remain convinced that it properly represents and teaches the truths of Scripture. But it had become increasingly clear in recent years that I was a confessional Lutheran in a Lutheran church body that seemed to no longer appreciate or desire to be confessional Lutheran.

The Bible teaches that we are to point out error where it exists, and to defend the truth of God’s Word at every opportunity.

”Test all things; hold fast what is good.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21 NKJV)

Over time, and with a great deal of attention to what was going on among Lutherans in this country, it became apparent it wasn’t necessary to accept the deliberate changes being made to the teachings and practices of churches within the WELS. There is an alternative.

New Bible translations that glorify man and his wisdom rather than honoring God’s unchanging Word do not need to be tolerated or accepted. There is a Lutheran church body that recognizes the potent efficacy of God’s Word in teaching AND in practice.

Contemporary worship, or blended worship, or whatever the latest worship fad, does not have to be tolerated or accepted. There is a Lutheran church body that unabashedly uses the historic liturgy without change or reservation.

An obsession with money, and a link to Thrivent and Planned Parenthood does not have to be tolerated or accepted. There is a Lutheran church body that focuses on teaching and preaching Law and Gospel, leaving it up to God to determine how and when the saints will be blessed.

Man-made gimmicks to fill the pews and the offering plates do not have to be tolerated or accepted. There is a Lutheran church body that preaches the Means of Grace, and only the Means of Grace, as the way in which God grows the church.

Decisions to remove “Lutheran” from a church name, school or website, or other efforts to distance a church from the Lutheran Confessions need not be accepted or tolerated. There is a Lutheran church body that eagerly teaches the contents of the Book of Concord to its members.

The teaching of objective justification, which proclaims that “everyone has been justified, everyone has been forgiven, everyone has been saved,” does not have to be tolerated or accepted. There is a Lutheran church body that preaches, without hesitation or contradiction, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.” (Acts 16:31 NKJV)

There is an alternative to a Lutheran church that no longer desires to be confessional Lutheran. The Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America, (ELDoNA) is the Lutheran church that I have found to be unapologetically confessional Lutheran, in teaching AND in practice.


The Lutheran Hymnal - Hymn 260 verse 2 (verse omitted from the WELS hymnal, Christian Worship)

With fraud which they themselves invent
     Thy truth they have confounded;
Their hearts are not with one consent
     On Thy pure doctrine grounded.
While they parade with outward show,
They lead the people to and fro,
     In error's maze astounded.

 

No Longer Alone: Perspective of a Confessional Lutheran Woman

Yesterday, we blogged about the opening of Faith Lutheran Church – a new, independant Lutheran congregation in the Portland, Oregon, area, formed by some 17 Lutherans who were recently compelled to leave WELS for a variety of reasons, and have now chosen to be served by pastors of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America (ELDoNA). We also mentioned that these Lutherans now also feel compelled to provide a public explanation for their departure from the WELS. Today’s post is the first such explanation.

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No Longer Alone
Perspective of a Confessional Lutheran Woman
I felt so alone. Not from God. God had adopted me into His family at my baptism when I was only days old. My faith had been nourished and strengthened regularly with His Word and the Sacrament of Jesus’ body and blood. I knew God would never leave me nor forsake me. But I missed the fellowship of like-minded believers.

God’s House no longer felt like a sanctuary. It had the look and feel of an auditorium, the altar area dominated by a large screen. A steady stream of “announcements” and “not-so-hushed” conversations over cups of gourmet coffee made it difficult to prepare my heart for worship.

The historic liturgy had been deemed old fashioned. The use of hymnals was considered out of date. Music and text changed weekly, printed in “service folders” of greater and greater length.

It seemed that we had grown uncomfortable with God’s teaching on Holy Communion. So afraid to offend, we chose to forego Holy Communion on Easter Sunday out of fear that the Bible’s teaching of close/d communion would make us “look bad” to visitors.

Mid-week Bible studies became less frequent, then absent all together.

Vacation BIBLE School was marginalized with talk of replacing it with a soccer camp because “that’s what a lot of other churches do.” “The B-I-B-L-E” was replaced with songs about pinching cheeks and other things WE do.

A special “Mafia Night” activity was held for our youth on the night before Easter.

Sunday School was “updated,” and no longer focused on a Bible lesson and the memorization of Scripture. There was no offering basket with which to teach about stewardship.

Some things were worse.

Teaching justification by faith as “just as if I’d never done it” was replaced with the child-friendly terms of “objective justification” and “subjective justification.” If I finally understand it, “objective justification” means that everyone is declared “not guilty” regardless of faith, and “subjective justification” means that I believe I am part of everyone. Of course we need a special term to say that “I” am part of “everyone.” And never mind that this doesn’t fit with Scripture, “IT’S OUR SPECIAL MESSAGE THAT NO ONE ELSE HAS!!”

A special Reformation Sunday School lesson includes the text, “God’s Word says that all people are saved.” Where does the Bible say that?

A gender-neutral translation of the Bible is promoted for use in our churches because “no translation is perfect.” Yes, but some are less perfect than others.

I felt so alone. But I wasn’t silent. With each change, God provided the courage to express my concern to pastors, elders, and presidents of two congregations over the past 15 years. I wish I could say that I received assurance that my concerns were valid. I wish I could say that I was commended for “searching the Scriptures” for God’s will in my life. Instead, I was characterized as old fashioned, too critical, or as one simply refusing to appreciate our “Christian freedom.” The decisions had been made, and there was no turning back.

I felt so alone.

It wasn’t the first time. I had journeyed through the synods, each time moving toward one that was smaller, and in my viewpoint, more consistent in practice with what God’s Word taught. But I was at the end of the alphabet; seemingly, the end of the road. Where else was there? What was I supposed to do?

There are faithful Lutheran pastors who provide sermons and even conduct services online. But I wanted to meet together with like-minded believers. I wanted my children to keep the habit of attending church every Sunday.

God is so faithful.

Sometimes, when your faith is challenged, your eyes are opened to things you would not have otherwise seen. Through some of the issues mentioned above, I became aware of others in my congregation who felt the same. We connected with a group of confessional Lutherans who had traveled the same path prior to our experiences. They reached out with love, encouragement, support, and especially the promises of God’s Word as we organized as an independent Lutheran congregation. Pastors of the group made commitments to fly in for weekends of Bible study, instruction, visitations, and services.

God’s goodness and faithfulness is overwhelming. Thank you, God, for Your infinite grace, and thank You for the pastors and members of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America (ELDoNA).

“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Psalm 23 (NKJV)

Washington Post Editorial: “The trick isn’t to make church cool; it’s to keep worship weird.”

On April 30, 2015, the Washington Post published an editorial by Episcopalian blogger and author, Rachel Held Evans, entitled “Want millennials back in the pews? Stop trying to make church ‘cool.’” This editorial points to mounting evidence of what should have been predicted by Lutherans all along, who — already knowing that the Holy Spirit works only by His appointed Means (i.e., the “Means of Grace,” the “Gospel in Word and Sacrament”), calling, gathering and enlightening His elect, and through these Means also keeps them in the faith — should have known that the Holy Spirit does NOT work by means of the false doctrines and false practices of the Church Growth Movement (CGM); thus it is no wonder that $500 billion of investment in the manipulative gimmicks of CGM, over the course of a full generation, have produced no evidence of His working, especially in terms of the one thing so ardently sought by those who practice them: numerical growth in the Christian church. Instead, among Millennials, “a solid quarter claim no religious affiliation at all, making [Millennials] more disconnected from faith than members of Generation X were at a comparable point in their lives and twice as detached as baby boomers were as young adults.”

The author of this editorial cites, in a few paragraphs, recent statistics and compelling thoughts and quotations, no doubt drawn from and expounded upon in her recent book, “Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church”, which forcefully suggest that, far from drawing people to the Church, CGM is actually driving them away from the Church. Using the same recent statistics, along with elements of her own story of leaving and returning to the Church (and those of others), the author further points out that, if Church practice is any aspect of drawing the unchurched, especially Millennials, into the Church, then “what works” is simply what the Church has been doing for the past 2000 years: “What finally brought me back... was the sacraments... you know, those strange rituals and traditions Christians have been practicing for the past 2,000 years. The sacraments are what make the Church relevant, no matter the culture or era. They don’t need to be repackaged or rebranded; they just need to be practiced, offered and explained...”

Some excerpts from this editorial follow. Headings and emphasis are all mine. Hyper-links appeared in the editorial. Readers are encouraged to read the editorial in full. Noticing, of course, how some of the political concerns of the author may have colored her judgment and influenced her choice to join the Episcopalians, notice also how (in the editorial, at least) this is separate from the influence of the sacraments.

[NOTE: And I see now that Dr. Gene Veith has picked up on this article today (5/4/2015), too: Church growth tactics don’t work with Millennials. And again, today (5/5/2015): “The sacraments are what make the church relevant”.]

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Disillusionment continues to Skyrocket, Church Growth Gimmickry continues to Fail...
“Church attendance has plummeted among young adults. In the United States, 59 percent of people ages 18 to 29 with a Christian background have, at some point, dropped out. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, among those of us who came of age around the year 2000, a solid quarter claim no religious affiliation at all, making my generation significantly more disconnected from faith than members of Generation X were at a comparable point in their lives and twice as detached as baby boomers were as young adults.

“In response, many churches have sought to lure millennials back by focusing on style points: cooler bands, hipper worship, edgier programming, impressive technology. Yet while these aren’t inherently bad ideas and might in some cases be effective, they are not the key to drawing millennials back to God in a lasting and meaningful way. Young people don’t simply want a better show. And trying to be cool might be making things worse... [A]ttendance among young people remains flat.”

Are Millenials leaving the Church because of Church Growth Gimmickry?
“Recent research from Barna Group and the Cornerstone Knowledge Network found that 67 percent of millennials prefer a ‘classic’ church over a ‘trendy’ one, and 77 percent would choose a ‘sanctuary’ over an ‘auditorium.’ While we have yet to warm to the word ‘traditional’ (only 40 percent favor it over ‘modern’), millennials exhibit an increasing aversion to exclusive, closed-minded religious communities masquerading as the hip new places in town. For a generation bombarded with advertising and sales pitches, and for whom the charge of ‘inauthentic’ is as cutting an insult as any, church rebranding efforts can actually backfire, especially when young people sense that there is more emphasis on marketing Jesus than actually following Him. Millennials ‘are not disillusioned with tradition; they are frustrated with slick or shallow expressions of religion,’ argues David Kinnaman, who interviewed hundreds of them for Barna Group and compiled his research in You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church... and Rethinking Faith...”

Insightful Quotations from Millennials
“I want a service that is not sensational, flashy, or particularly ‘relevant.’ I can be entertained anywhere. At church, I do not want to be entertained. I do not want to be the target of anyone’s marketing. I want to be asked to participate in the life of an ancient-future community...” (friend of author and blogger, Amy Peterson)

“When a church tells me how I should feel (‘Clap if you’re excited about Jesus!’), it smacks of inauthenticity. Sometimes I don’t feel like clapping. Sometimes I need to worship in the midst of my brokenness and confusion — not in spite of it and certainly not in denial of it.” (millennial blogger, Ben Irwin)

“When I left church at age 29, full of doubt and disillusionment, I wasn’t looking for a better-produced Christianity. I was looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity... I felt lonely in my doubts. And, contrary to popular belief, the fog machines and light shows at those slick evangelical conferences didn’t make things better for me. They made the whole endeavor feel shallow, forced and fake.” (the author, Rachel Held Evans)

Church Growth Gimmickry: Announcing to Prospects that you Think they are Shallow.
“While no two faith stories are exactly the same, I’m not the only millennial whose faith couldn’t be saved by lacquering on a hipper veneer. According to Barna Group, among young people who don’t go to church, 87 percent say they see Christians as judgmental, and 85 percent see them as hypocritical. A similar study found that ‘only 8% say they don’t attend because church is “out of date,” undercutting the notion that all churches need to do for Millennials is to make worship “cooler”’... Our reasons for leaving have less to do with style and image and more to do with substantive questions about life, faith and community. We’re not as shallow as you might think.”

What “works” now is what has always “worked”: Authentic Christianity
“If young people are looking for congregations that authentically practice the teachings of Jesus in an open and inclusive way, then the good news is the church already knows how to do that. The trick isn’t to make church cool; it’s to keep worship weird.

“[C]hurch is the only place you can get ashes smudged on your forehead as a reminder of your mortality... [C]hurch is the only place that fills a sanctuary with candlelight and hymns on Christmas Eve... [C]hurch is the only place where you are named a beloved child of God with a cold plunge into the water... [O]nly the church teaches that a shared meal brings us into the very presence of God.

“What finally brought me back, after years of running away, wasn’t lattes or skinny jeans; it was the sacraments. Baptism, confession, Communion, preaching the Word, anointing the sick — you know, those strange rituals and traditions Christians have been practicing for the past 2,000 years. The sacraments are what make the church relevant, no matter the culture or era. They don’t need to be repackaged or rebranded; they just need to be practiced, offered and explained in the context of a loving, authentic and inclusive community.

“Church attendance may be dipping, but God can survive the Internet age. After all, He knows a thing or two about resurrection.”

UPDATED! — Organizer of 2015 Christian Leadership Experience (allegedly): “The only thing wrong with Lutheran churches is pastors who want to be Lutheran.”

On July 12, 2014, we featured content that was referred to in a post on the blog Polluted WELS. This blog was created in the middle of June 2014 by a WELS pastor writing under the pseudonym “Matthias Flach”, who was evidently frustrated with rapidly disappearing Confessionalism in WELS, with false unity among the clergy, threats from leadership, and overbearing laity in his congregation who boasted of “family connections.” The title of that June 12 post was Time to Spill the Beans, and we introduced his blog, as follows:

I stumbled across the following, rather old, exposé this morning while visiting the blog Polluted WELS. The author of that blog, a current WELS pastor who, understandably, finds it necessary to remain anonymous, included a link to [what follows] in his post, 'Conformity over Confession'. While the details are dated, as a WELS pastor, he indicates that “all of the basics are absolutely accurate,” and that he “can personally verify that it’s true...”

Yesterday afternoon, after ~20 posts since mid-June, one of which received over 150 comments, and over 20,000 page reads, Polluted WELS turned up missing.

Or deleted, rather.

He had been running a multi-part series critical of the 2015 Christian Leadership Experience -- which features Rev. Mark Jeske (WES) as the star of the conference, but who is also joined by many of his friends, followers, collaborators and other supporters in far less prominent speaking roles -- under the title “A Travesty Examined.” Many of these posts, now deleted from the blog Polluted WELS, have been preserved by Dr. Jackson on his blog, Ichabod, the Glory has Departed, at the following links:

A Travesty Examined, Part 1
A Travesty Examined, Parts 2 & 3
A Travesty Interrupted
A Travesty Examined, Part 5

Yet another pock marring what was once a reasonably sound Lutheran church body, this Conference, which bears none of the standards or identity of Confessional Lutheranism, is not only decidedly favorable to the Church Growth Movement, but drives Lutheran and Confessional thresholds even further south by swinging doors wide open to the teaching authority of women over men, inviting open ecumenism with heterodox who entirely reject the Lutheran Confession, and even flirting with pagan religiosity. In our recent post, What is the 2015 Christian Leadership Experience?, we exposed and concluded many of these points.

The final post of “Mathias Flach,” the author of Polluted WELS, was a response to one of his critics. In it, we discover the attitude of a person connected with one of the Organizers of Experience; it is exactly the attitude that we at Intrepid Lutherans have been describing and warning of since 2010, exactly the attitude our critics have denied exists, exactly the attitude which is now, in fact, normative in the Wisconsin Evangelical Synod, that is, if “pastors who want to be Lutheran” are those pastors who desire to demonstrate their Confession through church practice which is, in fact, manifestly “Lutheran” and decidedly non-Sectarian -- i.e., historical, liturgical, catholic and evangelical. We include his final post below, Kelm'ed from Dr. Jackson's blog (Proof That I Am Not the Author of the Polluted WELS Blog), following which we include links to other articles related to the Church Growth Movement for the interested reader.

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My Response
(the final post from the now deleted blog, Polluted WELS)
Here's a comment I received, with my responses interspersed.

First, I am not sure who Lillo is, but this comment did not come from him. I do not know if your post can be edited, but that false testimony should be removed.

Lillo is Joel Lillo, a pastor from the Appleton area who (like you) wanted me to shut-up but (like you) didn't want to discuss the actual issues. I never said that you were Lillo, I said that I was reproducing your comments in pink in honor of Lillo. It's a joke from about a month ago on this blog about how colors are adiaphora. Before you start accusing people of sinning against the Eighth Commandment, you should get your facts straight, lest you yourself break that very commandment.

Matthias, I am your brother in Christ. It is also true (regardless of whether or not you want to admit it) that the leaders and presenters of this conference are your brother and sisters in that same Lord. Yes, I know many of the leaders of this conference personally.

No, the organizers of this conference are not my brothers. See, I know them personally too. One of the speakers at this conference, when he still with Parish Assistance, sowed discord in my home congregation and almost caused it to split. Another of the speakers has made attempts to personally undermine my ministry. Another person associated with one of the sponsoring organizations once said, in my presence, "The only thing wrong with Lutheran churches is pastors who want to be Lutheran."

These men are not my brothers. They are enemies of the gospel. They actively work to thwart the preaching of the gospel. I don't care how personally you know them. Jesus said, "By their fruit you will know them." These are wolves in sheep's clothing.

It is easy to know who is organizing - the hosting organizations are listed in numerous places.

That's not the same thing. How can I personally contact an organization?

This blog has become a tabloid because you are more concerned with sensationalism than truth.

What have I said that's not true? All of my posts on this conference have included direct quotations from the conference's own website.

I do not know what the Matthew 18 maneuver is. I know the chapter well, but I did not quote it.

Oh, come on. You know exactly what it is -- trying to shut down public debate by claiming that one must speak privately to a person first. As I said, Matthew 18 is about private sin, not public sin.

You are a WELS pastor with legitimate concerns about this conference. You chose to blog rather than speak to anyone. 

Yeah, you better believe it. These sponsoring organizations own the DPs. Two of the DP who are supposed to be the most Confessional are preaching at this conference. If I dared to voice my concerns, I would [be] automatically labeled "divisive" and blackballed. Anonymous blogging is the only recourse Confessional Lutheran pastors have.

Fine. But why do you choose to be the Enquirer?

How am I being the Enquirer? I'm not exposing personal information. I'm not calling people aliens.

Why not open a conversation by sharing legitimate concerns and asking the blogging community if they have more information or if they share the same concerns?

That's exactly what I am doing.

You had an opportunity to establish the style and substance of this blog a couple weeks ago. You slid into sensationalism and snide judgment. Any opportunity for positive influence or change slips right down that same slope. Your posters from now on will be the few who already share your thoughts. The inflated view count will be those who enjoy the guilty pleasure of a Lutheran tabloid.

Here's another tactic of the "synod-minders" -- whine about the tone. Guess what? When you're exposing false doctrine, you can't do it gently. The Law cuts and destroys. These are all grown men that I'm talking about, and they most certainly know how to dish out the "snide judgment" against others. They should be able to take some too.

Mathias, the members of your church need the love, instruction, and shepherding that you are trained and called to provide. My hope is that you pour abundantly more energy into that call than you expend in this online endeavor.

Why would you assume anything else? Are you trying to undermine my ministry too?

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Here are some additional posts related to the Church Growth Movement, the real meaning of Change in the Church, and the recourse of laity, from previous posts on Intrepid Lutherans:

• The Church Growth Movement: A brief synopsis of its history and influences in American Christianity
• ‘Church Growth’ Inroads in the WELS: An Analysis of the Website Home Pages of Ninety WELS Congregations
• ‘Church Growth’ Inroads in the WELS: An Analysis of the Website Home Pages of Ninety WELS Congregations – Part 2
• ‘Church Growth’ Inroads in the WELS: An Analysis of the Website Home Pages of Ninety WELS Congregations – Part 3
• WELS Synod President Mark Schroeder issues scorching rebuke of Church Growth Movement
  
  
• The Theological Disciplines, and the nature of theological discourse in WELS from a layman's perspective
• Theological Discourse in the post-Modern Era
• The 'Tone' of polemics: Thoughts regarding vigorous public discourse
• Why We Must Speak Out
  
  
• What on Earth could the CoP possibly have meant by THIS?
• C.P. Krauth explains how orthodox Lutheran Synods descend into heterodoxy
• The Descent of the Contemporary Church into Cultural Narcissism
• The Average Layman is Defenseless!
  
  
• John Schaller gives advice on distinctively Lutheran practice
• C.F.W. Walther: Filching from sectarian worship resources equals "soul murder"
• An Explanation of Lutheran Worship: For the Lutheran who asks the Meaning of the Beautiful Liturgy of His church
• The Catechesis of the Lutheran Worshiper: An antidote to the “itching ears” and “happy feat” of CGM enthusiasts?
• Lutheranism and the Fine Arts: Dr. P.E. Kretzmann and the Necessity of Continuing Catechesis
• A Brief Explanation of Lutheran Hymnody: For the Lutheran who asks regarding the Beautiful Hymns of His church

Rev. Rydecki was once personally criticized by one of the Experience speakers for his post, A refreshing church growth strategy: Get smaller and die. In that post, he concludes:

So, God save us from the successful church. Give us churches who shun sentimentality and pragmatism and aren't afraid to face the inevitable shrinkage which comes as a result of following Jesus. God save us from church leadership strategies. After all, it takes zero faith to follow a strategy, but incredible faith to pursue the kingdom of God and leave the rest in God's hands. If I've learned anything as a pastor, it is this: faithfulness flies in the face of sentimentality and pragmatism, and if you pursue it you have to expect small numbers.

And so do we.

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UPDATE 8/4/2014, approx 2:21pm: The blog Polluted WELS is back online. The author's explanation follows:

I'm Back

After publishing my last post, I was contacted by one of the people I mentioned. He was able to figure out my identity based on the details of the conversation that I related. He indirectly yet clearly threatened me and my ministry. I panicked and deleted the blog.

After taking a day to think about it, though, I've decided I can't compromise the truth for selfish reasons. Despite the threats, I will continue to publish here.

The person who threatened me is very well-connected within the synod. He has the right last name and I have the wrong one. Be sure to watch the call reports in the coming weeks for my removal from the ministry.

What is the 2015 Christian Leadership Experience?

What is the 2015 Christian Leadership Experience?
by Mr. Vernon Kneprath

2015 Christian Leadership Experience has been a topic of posts and comments on at least two other blogs in recent days:

• Read, Weep
• Money Changers at the Religious Conference
• Build a Customer-Centric Church Business To Make More Money... Even Better - Listen to Pagan Gods Teaching You How To Be Rich!

The topic is no longer new, and some of the information and conclusions presented here may sound familiar. But the topic is significant enough to merit a post on Intrepid. I will strive in this post to make clear, conclusive statements about Experience, and provide supporting evidence, some of which may not have yet been touched on at other blog sites.

If the information at the website for the 2015 Christian Leadership Experience (www.christlead.com) is to be considered representative of the event, I would conclude that Experience:

1. is ecumenical, interfaith, and interdenominational, even though it specifically targets WELS and those in fellowship with WELS.
2. is theology of glory; with its primary focus on man’s works, not the Gospel or the Means of Grace.
3. is endorsed by some high-level WELS and ELS leaders and pastors, as evidenced by their participation and roles in the event.
4. bears no standards of or identity to Confessional Lutheranism.

I will explain some of the reasons for my conclusions shortly. But before that, consider the information taken from the FAQ section of the website regarding the target audience and the claims of Experience.

The 2015 Christian Leadership Experience and its organizing partners are specifically inviting the people who make up our constituency, which is primarily WELS/ELS or CELC. However, the event is open to whomever is interested in building their leadership skills.

As the objectives of the Leadership Experience were identified, we committed to identifying and presenting the best possible speakers on each leadership topic. A few of the speakers who are well-regarded as experts in their field are from outside the CELC (WELS/ELS) fellowship. We pray these speakers will bring value to attendees which has not been previously available to leaders and aspiring leaders in our fellowship.

Conference attendance is not an act of fellowship. The one "fellowship" activity is the worship at devotions and the closing service. Just as we welcome our friends and visitors to our congregations' worship services so also we welcome them to the conference's devotions and closing service.

As shown by these statements, Experience:

1. specifically targets WELS and those in fellowship with the WELS for the purpose of teaching skills pertaining to ministry.
2. involves worship and prayer.
3. involves speakers both inside and outside of WELS fellowship.
4. includes the prayer that those outside WELS fellowship bring value to those to whom Experience is targeted.

Regarding the latter point, since this prayer is for secular and interdenominational participants to "bring value to", that is, have an influence on the attendees, this is arguably a violation of what Scripture teaches regarding fellowship, even though the claim is made to the contrary.

Returning to my conclusions regarding Experience, I will refer the reader to hyperlinks of various locations on the website www.christlead.com, and to other websites. In some cases, I will provide some of the content found at the hyperlinks I provide, to save the reader the time and trouble of having to search those hyperlinked webpages. These hyperlinks will provide what I consider to be supporting evidence for my conclusions.

1. Experience is ecumenical, interfaith, and interdenominational, even though it specifically targets WELS and those in fellowship with WELS.
   
   There is much evidence for this. I will provide two examples.
   
   Example 1 -
   Refer to http://www.christlead.com/speakers.php and find “Speaker - Dr. Ravi I. Jayakaran.”
   
   Now refer to http://www.christlead.com/jayakaran.php for more information regarding Dr. Ravi. Here you will find the following:
   
   Dr. Ravi I. Jayakaran has more than 37 years of experience in poverty reduction and strategic development programs. Currently he is Vice President of Global Programs for MAP International (medical assistance programs), providing supervisory oversight and strategic support for all of MAP’s global programs. Dr. Jayakaran is also currently the Senior Associate for Integral (Holistic) Mission for the Lausanne Global Movement.
   
   The Lausanne Global Movement, as evidenced by the “Lausanne Covenant”, is an effort to “enter into a solemn covenant with God and with each other, to pray, to plan and to work together for the evangelization of the whole world”.
   
   Example 2 -
   The speaker web page,http://www.christlead.com/jayakaran.php, has the following footer:
   
   ©2014 Global Leadership Summit: All Rights Reserved.
   
   The Global Leadership Summit is associated with the Willow Creek Association. Read about the Willow Creek Association at http://www.willowcreek.org/aboutwillow/willow-creek-association
   
   Founded in 1991, the Willow Creek Association (WCA) is a not-for-profit organization that exists to help local churches thrive. The WCA stirs up and calls out the core leadership of churches around the world, encouraging them to follow their "holy discontent" as they build life-changing communities of faith. The WCA serves pioneering pastors and leaders around the world by curating inspirational leadership, intentional skill development, and experiences. Each year, the WCA serves more than 18,000 churches in 90 countries with vision, training, and resources.
   
   Experience is laced with references and linkage to ecumenical evangelical organizations and people.
   
   
   
2. Experience is theology of glory; with its primary focus on man’s works, not the Gospel or the Means of Grace.
   
   Again, there is much evidence. I will provide two examples. Both examples relate to designated speakers of Experience. Refer to http://www.christlead.com/speakers.php.
   
   Example 1 -
   Keynote Speaker - Ann Rhoades
   Ann is a Corporate Executive with over 25 years experience in a variety of service-based industries, is President of People Ink, her consulting company that helps organizations create unique workplace cultures based on values and performance and author of “Built on Values”.  She held the position of Vice President of the People Department for Southwest Airlines, and EVP for Promus Hotel Corporation and most recently, JetBlue Airways where she currently remains as a Board Member.
   
   Ann has a respected reputation in the industry for her creative approach to creating customer-centric cultures and is a popular speaker on the subject of customer service and how to build a strong high-performing culture.
   
   Example 2 -
   Speaker - Sharon Buck
   Sharon will discuss the perks and pitfalls of leading others when you have NO authority in their business/career. She will also discuss the importance of GODLY leadership and how it affects relationships for now... and in eternity. Truly, leading a volunteer army is challenging, sometimes frustrating but always rewarding. The lessons discussed will be helpful for ALL leaders!
   
   Notice the focus of these speakers:
   
   
   1. “customer centric” cultures, as if the Church can be treated as a business with the chief concern of satisfying customers.
   2. discussing “Godly” leadership, with no confession defining the basis of that Godly leadership.
   
   Experience is not about using God’s Word or the Means of Grace. This becomes very apparent when you view the event schedule. The presentation topics do not focus on what God has done for us, the true Gospel message, and the theology of the cross. “Experience” focuses on business techniques as if the Holy Spirit, through the Means of Grace, can no longer be effective in today’s culture.
   
   
   
3. Experience is endorsed by some high-level WELS and ELS leaders and pastors, as evidenced by their participation and roles in the event.
   
   Again, there are many examples. I will provide three. Refer to http://www.christlead.com/speakers.php (worship leaders)
   
   Example 1 -
   Rev. Jon Buchholz is District President of the CA-AZ district of the WELS.
   
   Example 2 -
   Rev. Charles Degner is District President of the MN district of the WELS.
   
   Example 3 -
   Pastor Don Moldstad is Chaplain, Director of Campus Spiritual Life at Bethany Lutheran College (ELS).
   
   As evidenced by representation from the high levels of leadership in WELS and ELS, this event implies the full backing of these synods’ leadership.
   
   
   
4. Experience, based on the information provided on the website, bears no standards of or identity to Confessional Lutheranism.
   
   Why do these event organizers and participants, WELS and ELS leaders and pastors, choose to use things other than God’s Word to train leaders of the church? The evidence of the conclusion that this event is non-confessional is found in the absence of the Word and the Means of Grace. Evidence abounds of Church Growth and fund raising objectives, but there is no evidence of God’s Word.
   
   Perhaps this can be explained by the “bait and switch” technique commonly used by Church Growth advocates. That is, focus on what culture values, and sometime later, once the subject has been “hooked”, the Gospel will be revealed and the Holy Spirit can then be allowed to do His work.
   
   

According to the information at the website www.christlead.com, Experience is a gold mine of man-made business techniques, but a barren landscape of Scriptural truths.

DEEDS or CREEDS?

DEEDS or CREEDS?
by Mr. Vernon Kneprath

‘Deeds or Creeds’ is the title of one application for the Sunday School lesson about Rahab in material published by the WELS publisher, Northwestern Publishing House.¹ The application is a lesson in itself; one that is applicable to all who are confronted with the question regarding what should or must be included in worship services.

A question is posed in the lesson…

“Which do you think is more important, deeds or creeds?” Or, in other words, what is more important? Is it the things you say you believe, with words, or is it the things you do, based on your beliefs?

The lesson goes on to teach (paraphrased)…

We may think that deeds are more important because they show what we believe. But our deeds cannot bring anyone to faith.  Only the Gospel can. That’s why our creed – a confession of what we believe – is important to share with others.  We confess our faith in church as we say the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed and when we sing the liturgy and hymns. We confess our faith at home, work, and school when we talk about God and what he has done for us.

Our deeds (good works) do not help to save in any way. They are simply our thankful response to what God has done for us through His Son, Jesus. The Holy Spirit uses our creed (confessions of faith in God’s Word) to lead unbelievers to faith and to strengthen and encourage fellow believers.

This Biblical teaching is from WELS material published 15 years ago. Some might argue it is outdated. Some might argue that the culture has changed so much that the lesson should be changed to reflect something more real, more relevant. As some WELS congregations turn toward contemporary worship services they are commonly changing or even removing the Creeds from worship in an effort to become more “user-friendly.”

When teachers who teach this lesson (and students who learn it) notice that the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds are omitted from worship, they are confronted with the inconsistency of teaching and practice. A church which fails to practice what is taught to the youth soon loses all credibility. The likely conclusion is that neither the words (creeds) nor the practices (deeds) matter.

The Gospel message in the Creeds is the means by which God creates and strengthens faith. That message is timeless and indifferent to culture. That’s why the Creeds have been a part of our worship service for centuries. Remove the Creeds from worship service? Outdated? Irrelevant? The Gospel of the Creeds is what all people need to hear.

------------
Endnotes:

1. Week 8, Lesson B, Page 114. Grades 5-6 Old Testament, Christlight. Northwestern Publishing House. 1999

In Whom Do You Trust?

In Whom Do You Trust?
by Mr. Vernon Kneprath

… “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves” (Matthew 7:15). When people hear the words – prophet, pastor, minister, reverend, priest, pope, elder, deacon, monk, nun, religion, church – many automatically assume that whatever these people and groups say and do is God-pleasing truth. Not so fast Jesus says – don’t be fooled by outward appearances – watch out. Just because a person comes to you bearing the title pastor, just because a group of people claims to be a church or a religion, just because the music and pastor are hipper and trendier – that doesn’t mean they are providing eternally soul nourishing truth to those who are listening to them. Watch out for false prophets Jesus says and for good reason. “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:14-15) …

These words are taken from a sermon preached by a WELS pastor in recent weeks to his congregation. The words of this pastor sound familiar to me; and for good reason; they are familiar because they faithfully reflect the words of Scripture.

Compare the words above to the words from a WELS Devotional Essay and Discussion, “Outreach That Any Congregation Calling Itself ‘Evangelical Lutheran’ Will Do”, dated May 18, 2011:

… Evangelical Lutherans who are united in faith, trust one another. I trust my brothers in the WELS. Like me, they have been trained in the Word by the Word – all blessed by the Holy Spirit. They have been Called by God to serve in different communities as gospel-sharers to different cultures – ministering to a variety of Calling bodies. I can’t begin to know how they wrestle with the unique challenges in their congregations and communities. I trust they understand our Savior’s mission to preach and teach the gospel to those inside and outside their church’s walls. I trust they grapple with balancing their ministries and family lives like I do. I trust they, like me, work to nurture and reach out with the gospel – doing one without leaving the other undone. When I hear that a fellow pastor uses different worship styles than I do – I trust their use of Christian freedom and rejoice that they are sharing the gospel in a way they feel is best for their circumstances. When I hear that a fellow pastor is having a pumpkin-fest, a children’s carnival or some other unique gathering – I don’t think for a second that he believes pumpkins are creating faith or that his cleverness can make the gospel more powerful. I know exactly what he’s doing – he’s being shrewd in dealing with his community’s unbelievers so he can gather an audience. In time he will unleash the power of the gospel for the salvation of everyone who believes. I trust him. In the rare event that he gets a tad careless in his practices, I know he has a circuit pastor and a district president. I trust them too. And I trust that should these leaders offer loving cautions to a pastor/missionary that he would humbly take their cautions under advisement …

These words in this essay are unfamiliar to me, because I find no supporting Scriptural references. I see claims made to trust, but I find no evidence or basis upon which to place that trust.

Trust ...

… is not blind.

… is not automatic.

… is the result of evidence seen and actions experienced.

… is earned.

The Bible is clear that we are to put our trust in the Lord.

The Bible is clear that we are to test what we hear from men against what God has said in his Word.

Does membership in the WELS exclude anyone from the warnings Jesus gave? Surely we still recognize that there are hypocrites in every visible church - even the WELS.

Is association with a visible church body the basis for a “blind” trust?

Should variations in practice within a visible church, whether it be with regard to worship or any other church activity, not be tested against Scripture?

What are the lessons from Scripture regarding trust? How trustworthy did Israel prove to be throughout the Old Testament, in remaining faithful to God and his promises? How trustworthy did many of the Jews prove to be in Jesus’ time? History, whether it be recorded in the Bible or in history books since then, give us many examples of the visible church straying from God, over and over again.

There is only one deserving of our complete trust, the One and the Almighty. We have all the evidence we need for the basis of that trust in Holy Scripture. But, like the Thessalonians, we need to use God's Word to test everything of and from men, rejecting the harmful and holding on to the good (paraphrase of 1 Thessalonians 5:21).

The Descent of the Contemporary Church into Cultural Narcissism – a dialogue joined by Reformed and Lutheran Christians

In April of 2011, I had written a rather lengthy post, entitled, Money, Ministry, God, and Mammon: How “love” binds them all together – a Case in Point ...or... The “love bug” bites Answers in Genesis... on the arse.. It was written following the scandal of Ken Ham’s permanent dismissal from speaking engagements with Great Homeschool Conventions, Inc.. Apparently, he was “being unloving” toward Christians who accepted the theories of Biological and Cosmic Evolution as compatible with orthodox Christian teaching, by publicly warning of their errors. Even though Great Homeschool Conventions, Inc., was informed by Answers in Genesis that Ken Ham would identify another speaker on their docket (specifically, Dr. Enns of the Biologos Foundation) and would warn those attending his own lecture that this person taught contrary to the Scriptures, even though Great Homeschool Conventions, Inc., affirmed Ken Ham’s intent to warn of these errors as their expectation, and in a way that nevertheless welcomed and encouraged him as a speaker, he was, nevertheless, “permanently fired” quite suddenly following the first convention that year: “Ken Ham was not removed for his message,” they put in writing afterwards, “Ken Ham was removed for his spirit” – whatever that means. Not buying weak explanations of this sort, many in the homeschool community smelled a rat – a political rat – and remain suspicious of, and disenfranchised from, Great Homeschool Conventions, Inc.

That post attracted quite a bit of attention at the time, from outside Lutheranism, especially. As a result, one commenter was prompted to ask concerning the differences between Lutheranism and her own Presbyterian church. So I wrote a followup article, entitled, Differences between Reformed and Lutheran Doctrines – a post that has remained popular since that time. I concluded it with the following sentence: Finally, if you’re interested in what confessional Reformed and Lutheran dialogue sounds like, a good radio program to listen to is The White Horse Inn Classic, a program in the weekly line-up of Pirate Christian Radio.

Today’s post features a recording of The White Horse Inn from May of 2012, entitled, Growing in Grace & Knowledge. The title of the broadcast was taken from St. Peter’s admonition to “Grow in the Grace and Knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pe. 3:18), admonition which is impossible to heed without deliberately engaging the intellect. But many Christians, including many Lutherans, have been taught to distrust the intellect – “Reason is the enemy of faith,” after all. Even though Luther meant by this the use of Reason over and against the clear teaching of Scripture, many, in my recent experience, choose to chuck reason entirely out the window rather than give it a foothold, and immediately resort to the accusation “But that’s reason,” when one of their cherished falsehoods is challenged by a thoughtful, Scripturally sound and persuasive argument. They forget that Luther more famously said

Unless I am convinced by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures or evident reason... I am bound by the Scriptures... my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God, and I am neither able nor willing to recant, since it is neither safe nor right to act against conscience.”

(Schwiebert, E. (1950). Luther and His Times. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House. pp. 504-505.)

Conscience. We’ve used that term many many times here on Intrepid Lutherans. Indeed, three titles worth reviewing with respect to this term include the following: The Theological Disciplines, and the nature of theological discourse..., Theological Discourse in the post-Modern Era, and “Relevance,” and Mockery of the Holy Martyrs – Conclusion. In these posts, and others, it is emphasized that Conscience is the seat of human identity and the source of one’s Public Confession. Conscience comprises those Truths from which one cannot be separated without ceasing to be who he is, those Truths which one is compelled to cling to, even in the face of his executioner. Luther emphasizes this fact as well, as he faced the Emperor and certain death, by calling upon human conscience – what he was convinced was True – as the basis for standing in the face of error and refusing to recant that Truth. And Christian conscience is founded on what God has given to mankind: His Word and human faculty, coordinate, the latter in submission to the former.

“What have you to live for?” is supposed to be the question one is encouraged to consider, as he counts his blessings and in them finds the motivation to continue onward in life. But it is a question which cannot be sufficiently considered at all, apart from the more serious question, “What are you willing to die for?” It is only in this latter question that one is brought into direct contact with his conscience and fully engages his self-identity, as he is forced to grapple with Truth and Falsehood in their grandest conception, in their most objective and meaningful reality. For the true Christian, that identity is defined by his identity in Christ, baptized (Ga. 3:26-29) and redeemed (Ga. 3:11-14), standing, through faith alone, within the shelter of God’s Saving Grace (Ro. 5:1-2).

Grace. Knowledge. Growth. As the Church not only succumbs to post-Modernism, and other forms of Cultural Narcissism, but fully embraces worldly thinking, it is being denied a collective Christian conscience with the courage, confidence and capacity to identify, confront and repudiate the errors hurled at it by the world, and individual Christians are being robbed of the cultivated faculties necessary to adequately consider and react to the withering attacks of the world against Christ, the Church, and against them, individually. The following dialogue is filled, from start to finish, with keen insight into the state of the Western world today – not of the sort that is usually shoveled under the noses of Christians, and even confessional Lutherans; not of the sort encouraging Christians and their congregations to embrace worldly methods and perspectives “for the survival of the church”; but of a less common, disappearing sort, the sort of insight with the courage, confidence and capacity to identify, confront, and repudiate worldly seductions and faith-killing perspectives. Over the past generation or two, as confessional Lutherans have wantonly retreated from cultural significance, the conservative voices among the Reformed have consistently been a couple decades ahead of us, in their understanding of the state of the World today and in sounding the warnings. They identified post-Modernism as the danger it is, soon after it broke onto the scene, and have been sounding the sirens ever since. Some confessional Lutherans are only now beginning to awake to the danger. They rediscovered the Great Tradition of Classical Education – a Lutheran birthright, no less! – and have actively promoted it as a Christian antidote to the proliferation of what is more and more being revealed as not just irreligious but militantly anti-Christian pedagogy. Some confessional Lutherans, are only now realizing that their entire school systems may be invested in ideologies that militate against basic ideas necessary to holding and retaining Christian teaching with any fidelity – ideas like objective truth and ownership of knowledge – and instead promote an experiential collectivist ideology of knowledge that inculcates no personal responsibility for knowing anything in particular. I have found that conservative voices among the Reformed have consistently been far more helpful in identifying worldly threats to Christianity, and the following dialogue is no exception.

White Horse Inn dialogue “Growing in Grace & Knowledge”

 

Quotes from the White Horse Inn dialogue “Growing in Grace & Knowledge” Dialogue participants: Dr. R.C. Sproul (PCA), Dr. Rod Rosenblatt (LCMS), Dr. Michael Horton (URNCA), Rev. Ken Jones (Glendale Missionary Baptist Church) and Dr. Kim Riddlebarger (URCNA) Knowledge and Truth have fallen on hard times in contemporary American culture. We’re distracted in many ways from thinking deeply about anything because we’re too busy focusing on ourselves, our gadgets, our schedules and our entertainment. But sadly this problem isn’t merely “out there” in the world. Overnight, many churches have become entertainment centers, and purveyors of a kind of narcissistic spirituality. We desperately need to follow the advice of the Apostle Peter who encouraged believers to “Grow in the Grace and Knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pe. 3:18). And that’s what we are focusing on in this edition of the White Horse Inn... When people think of sanctification, and the Christian life, sometimes not only “thinking” is put on the back burner, but sometimes it is even seen as inimical to the life of faith... [as if when] “thinking goes up, piety goes down.” We had the distinction between “head knowledge” and “heart knowledge” – the people who read books had “head knowledge” and the people who loved Jesus had “heart knowledge.” Alot of the problems, I think, have been caused by us... in our past, and it’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but there was a strong anti-intellectual strain in American Fundamentalism, but we just have to cop to it. The people who were many times most against the intellect were seen as the most spiritual. And it’s coming back to get us. Back in the middle of the 20th Century, a prominent Anglican apologist by the name of Casserly, had a chapter in one of his books called the “Treason of the Intellectual,” in which he documented how the Church had been betrayed, chiefly through the influence of 19th Century Liberalism, which was carried by the intellectual community. And as a result, he said, the people, have come to the place where, first of all, they don’t trust the intellectuals, because they’re the one’s who betrayed them. They’ve taken their Lord away and they don’t know where they can find Him. This is why he called it the “Treason of the Intellectual.” And so once they became distrustful of the intellectuals, the next step was to obviously distrust the intellect altogether. So we’ve had this weird antithesis between mind and heart... that is totally contrary to Scripture. There has been an anthropological crisis, I think, in our day, where with the advent of television and the way the media has shaped the culture... that people seem to think that if we’re going to have meaningful worship, meaningful church services, we have to understand that human nature itself has changed in the last fifty hears. Now you don’t get to the heart through the mind, now you go straight to the heart – which is mind less. This is fatal to the Christian faith. And it’s killing the Church everyday. [In addition to the history of ideas and how it shows the ways in which the Church has succumbed to secularism], there is also the kind of world we swim in, in technology for example – the fact that you can’t go to a restaurant without a TV being on, you can’t go to a public event without cellphones going off. Nicolas Carr, this is from The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our Brain, he says “We are too busy being dazzled or disturbed by the programming to notice what’s going on inside our heads.” And the point he’s making is that it’s not just the content, or missing the point, it’s what the medium itself is doing to us as human beings. He says, “Now, I spent my life reading and writing, but these days my concentration starts to drift after a page or two. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words, now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.” And here are a couple examples. He says, “A University of Michigan professor says, ‘I can’t read War and Peace anymore. I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.’” Another person, “‘I don’t read books,’ says Joe O’Shay, a former president of the student body at Florida State University, and a 2008 recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship, ‘I go to Google and I can absorb all that information quickly.’ O’Shay, a philosophy major, doesn’t see any reason to plough through chapters of text when it takes but a minute or two to cherry pick the pertinent passages using Google. ‘Sitting down and going through a book, cover to cover, doesn’t make much sense to me,’ he says, ‘It’s just not a good use of my time. And I can get all the information I need faster through the web.’.” Think of all the knowledge we have lost in information, and all the wisdom we have lost in knowledge. Christian publishing, for example, is a barren wasteland... You go to the Christian bookseller conventions, and you see the stuff that is peddled, and you wonder how anybody ever was able to secure a literary contract for this stuff, which is so poorly done, and yet, publishers are looking for new material all the time and so they publish this stuff that is so dumbed-down – and we wring our hands about that. But NOW, stuff that couldn’t even get published in that arena is on Facebook every day! Everybody is an author, everybody is a theologian... There is a kind of dumbing-down occurring where, children, for example, were once expected to learn the Westminster Catechism, or the Heidelberg Catechism, or Luther’s Small Catechism, as part of their education at home – it was just taken for granted. And NOW, some pastors look at that and say “This is too hard for ME to teach ADULTS!” I think, as you talk about technology and the spread of pseudo-communication, and pseudo-information, because that’s what it is – every opinion that a person has isn’t worth saying out loud. But since people are actually saying it out loud, what that does is trivialize genuine information. So that that which is actually significant becomes trivial! – And it also means that the old books lying there on the shelf, which are still there and are still published and are still on shelves because they actually have survived the ephemeral and the trivial, are not going to be part of the shared wisdom of our culture anymore. Hearers of the Word, we’re prejudiced already in favor of the Word, and of hearing and of reading. Mind renewal doesn’t happen simply by having a succession of experiences. We have experiences of something other than our own experience. So what happens to growth in Grace and Knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ if there is no time for studied, contemplative, meditative thought? ...You can’t Google that. And how can you know the mind of Christ, unless Christ has been portrayed and presented to you in public worship? And if worship is about you and what you have to say about God, rather than about God and what He says about Himself, His Salvation and you, then there is not going to be much room for developing this mind of Christ. Our cultural context for thinking about God... Pragmatism. The narrowing of the sense that knowledge is valuable to only that which is calculable – you can weigh it, measure it, you can calculate how much it can improve your life, as William James the philosopher said, “The test of a truth claim is its cash value in experiential terms” (typical American way of putting it) – and this seems to be for a lot of people what they are demanding in terms of what [a church] is feeding them. “It’s all a matter of relativity”... This is NUTS. People are relativists only when it suits them to be relativists. AND WE SHOULDN’T SURRENDER TO THAT! People will say that “You don’t have to be rational anymore”. You speak irrationality to people, and that may entertain them for a few moments, but you will get a lot further if you try to give a sound cogent reasoned presentation – people still are put together the same way God put them together in the original Creation. So we should have confidence that... WE know that they are – on the basis of Scripture – what God says they are, and that we should appeal to them as rational beings... And that’s why I say it is such a mistake to change the character of worship to accommodate that kind of cultural sensation as if, they’re telling us, that the classic presentation of the Word of God, [with its] content... and the sacraments, and the normal things that have gone on for 2000 years, where God invested the power of the Holy Spirit in the proclamation of the Gospel. THERE IS NO REASON TO ADJUST THAT! That’s why Martin Luther said, “The worst, most impoverished student in the universe is God, because everyone thinks they can do it better...” Everybody wants to change the Gospel, make it more palatable, make it more relevant – THERE IS NOTHING MORE RELEVENT TO THAT DYING MAN’S LIFE THAN THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST. WHAT CAN I DO TO IMPROVE IT?! The tragedy is not that we see this lack of commitment to knowledge and truth in the culture. We expect that. But the Church is supposed to be a “heavenly outpost.” That’s where you are supposed to hear something different. And when the Church accommodates the methods as well as the mindset and perspectives of the World and continues this mindless drivel, then we are doing the people of God a great disservice. THIS IS WHERE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO HEAR WHAT THEY ARE NOT GOING TO HEAR ANYWHERE ELSE... We have to have confidence, as preachers and as the Church, that God is creating the appetite. We can give them the Word of God, but we can’t give them an appetite for it. So once they have been detoxed from the culture, and also from bad church, we have to assume that underneath all of that... there is a genuine appetite for the Word of God, because wherever there is genuine saving faith, there is genuine love of the Saviour and a desire to know Him. Paul also says (warning Timothy), “In the last days people will be lovers of themselves, boastful, proud, lovers of money, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God...” – which pretty much describes our culture, but we can deliver it more quickly today, and give people the impression that their felt needs are their real needs. How much of “cultural narcissism” determines in churches what we are allowed to say, and how relevant we need to make the Truth, as if it weren’t relevant itself? For example, I am thinking of Bible studies, where people say “This what this means to me,” and immediately you have to go to... “What is the cash value?” in experiential terms, “How can I use this?,” not “What is God saying?” To the narcissism... having lost the idea of what the purpose, that the communication, that what takes place in the Church is different from what’s going on in the culture, we approach the Biblical text in the same way we approach self-help books, and not understanding that this is a different text! ...Having gotten away from the idea that the Church is speaking a different language and is using communication toward a different end, people come with worldly expectations... which is [where the] narcissism comes in, because everyone else in the world is telling you that you are the most important person, so why wouldn’t you think that it is all about you? When people say that “You are only about the intellectual stuff,” that is really just slanderous. God gives me a mind, and holds me accountable for a mature understanding of His Holy Word. He didn’t give us Billboard, or a Jingle, or a Bumper Sticker. [He gave us the Bible.] Look at the size of that book! ...I am ashamed of how much I have not mastered. I’m going to say something outrageous... The tendency is this: The larger the church, the less likely it is to be sound. And there is a reason for that. We’ve seen the serious problem of Christian television. Christian television is so expensive to underwrite, that the only way you’re able to do it is if you have an extremely broad base, and the only way you can have an extremely broad base is to simplify simplify simplify, and move away from the serious content of the Gospel, and, to use the language, to dumb it down. And that happens not just on TV, but it happens in our churches, as well. Beware of the man that everyone speaks well of... [Of course,] we want churches to grow like the Lord added thousands to the Church in the 1st Century, but to sustain that, they were sustained by the Word.

‘Church Growth’ Inroads in the WELS: An Analysis of the Website Home Pages of Ninety WELS Congregations – Part 3

Five weeks ago, we published Part 1 of this analysis, and three weeks ago we published Part 2. Today, we publish the third and final Part of this series.


“Our history is the sum of all our stories.

What’s your story?”
It is human nature to give the glory that belongs to God to someone or something else. God is glorified by His Word, the Gospel, and the Sacraments. In the absence of these things, the void that results is often filled with things that glorify men. The “What’s your story?” quote above was the central message of one WELS church website home page, with the font of the last three words dominating the screen, similar to the way it is displayed above.¹ The secular world has no place for the glory of God, so it is natural for the world to focus on the glory of man. But Confessional Lutheran churches have a God-given message to bring to the lost:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” Matthew 28:19-20

More examples of content found on WELS website home pages in the absence of the Gospel, the Word, and the Sacraments included invitations for root beer floats, cookouts and volleyball after the worship service, stock photos of flowers and scenery, photos of school sports teams, videos of remodeling projects, biographies of the pastor, and human centered statements such as, “a place to belong,” “we want to be your church home,” and “worship services offer life-related messages.”

A church website home page provides the opportunity to reach people who may or may not enter the doors of a particular (or any) church. God’s Word is the only means by which faith is created or strengthened:

“So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:11

The survey of 90 WELS congregations found evidence of Confessional Lutheran standards prominently displayed on the home pages of a number of church websites. Examples are provided below where WELS churches displayed Confessional Lutheran standards of the Gospel, the Sacraments, God’s Word, the name “Lutheran,” the Lutheran Confessions, and the liturgy.


The Gospel
“When we were still sinners, Christ died for us!” Romans 5:8

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

“...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God ... the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” from Romans 3

“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 1 John 4:9-11

...and more.


The Sacraments
“...God uses the Word of God and the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion to strengthen the life and faith of our members...”

“We assemble around God’s Word and Sacraments for spiritual growth.”

“Our Communion Practice It is taught in scripture that through communion we build our intimate relationship with our Lord and God. God also makes known to us that our relationship with one another as believers is strengthened and that we become as one in our confession...”

A photo of the altar with the elements of the Lord’s Supper displayed


God’s Word²
“Show me your ways O Lord, teach me your paths...” Psalm 25:4a

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross.” Hebrews 12:2

“Jesus said, ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.’” Matthew 28:19-20

“Our hope in Jesus is an anchor for the soul.” Hebrews 6:19

...and more.


The Name Lutheran
The word “Lutheran” existed with the same font size as the rest of the church name, and as part of the church name.

“Our church identifies itself with the name of Martin Luther, the great Christian pastor and teacher of the sixteenth century who worked to reform the church according to the teachings of the Bible. Martin Luther pointed Christians to the Bible alone as God's inspired Word from which all the church's beliefs and practices are to be drawn.”

“The name "Lutheran" comes from the great reformer Martin Luther. In a period in history when the Church had lost sight of its Savior and the truth of his Word, Martin Luther boldly challenged these errors and preached Jesus Christ as Savior. We are proud to remember his work in bringing to light the truth of God’s Word by using his name to identify ourselves.”


The Lutheran Confessions
The Apostles Creed

“Confessing the Christian teachings of Martin Luther and the Lutheran Confessions. We stand on Grace alone, through Faith alone, revealed in Scripture alone.”

The words “The Lutheran Confessions” with Luther’s Seal of the three sola’s.


The Liturgy
“What is liturgical worship?” (Those words were positioned next to a small wooden cross, and hyperlinked to a more detailed explanation of liturgical worship on another page of the website.)


Consider this:

—It takes two to three lines to communicate a Gospel message.
—It takes a photo or a short paragraph to identify the Sacraments.
—It takes a line or two to include a verse from Scripture.
—The name Lutheran can be included with the rest of the church name.
—A paragraph, a few words, or a picture can identify the Lutheran Confessions.
—A liturgical service can be identified with four words.

“Church Growth” methodology uses “things of men” to attract people to a church with the hope that they will attend church and hear the Gospel. As Confessional Lutherans, WELS churches can offer something better. We have the “things of God”, specifically the Gospel, the Sacraments and the Word of God. And we have the Lutheran name and Confessions and the liturgy. These six criteria together are not “required”, but are simple, straightforward ways that a church can communicate its identity as a Confessional Lutheran church. As shown above, they can all be easily communicated on the home page of a website. Their absence on the home page leads to “things of men” and “Church Growth inroads” in the WELS. Using the “things of God” to communicate God and His message gives glory to whom it belongs – to God.

May God guide and bless you as you identify with the standards of a true Confessional Lutheran Church through the home page of your church website.

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Endnotes:

1. With some additional research, it was learned that the “What’s your story?” theme can be found, exactly as it was portrayed on this WELS church website home page, down to the font style and graphics, at other Evangelical church home pages. One of these was the New Apostolic Church USA.
2. In those cases where God’s Word was used as the Gospel message, it was credited in both cases.

 

Heralding the Gospel: The Evangelical Function of the Church Steeple

NOTE: The following article was originally published in May 2010 on the blog, The Finkelsteinery. It is reproduced here by permission, with only minor revision.

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The Steeple and the Cross
The church steeple is that part of the Romanesque and Gothic church architectures which include the tower – often housing bells for announcing

Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Strasbourg Strasbourg, France

Located at the center of European commerce, from 1647-1874 the Strasbourg Cathedral was the tallest structure in the world (466 feet). Lutheran during the Reformation, it alternated between Roman and Lutheran control as the Alsace was exchanged by successive military conquest between France and Germany. One can see how high the steeple rose above the city-scape in the this 19th Century color image: 19th Century Strasbourg city-sccape

Liturgical Hours, the Divine Service, and various other aspects of church life to the countryside – atop of which was often mounted the spire. In congregations not suffering from the poison of iconoclasm, the spire would support a large Cross, visible from the ground and all over the countryside. Here is a technical description from one of my favorite authors, Dr. P.E. Kretzmann:

A tower should never be omitted in building a Lutheran church. And if this is crowned with a spire, the symbolism of which has always been recognized, the effect will be all the greater. There is a certain factor of incompleteness about a mere tower, even if surmounted by slender turrets, which somehow renders it incongruous. The battlemented towers of many churches with Norman characteristics remind one more strongly of a castle or of a fortress than of a church. A graceful spire rising from a strongly-built tower is always a pleasing, and often an inspiring sight. The tower will, of course, be an integral part of the church, although it will not be built flush with the facade, but stand out one-fourth to one-half its width. "The tower, as a sign and summons, stands properly over the chief entrance, at the west..." (Mothes, quoted in Horn, 112). ...In larger churches, two towers of equal height and identical construction are erected at the two western corners. If the work is properly done, the effect is most imposing. The cost, however, is an item which is apt to discourage many congregations, for towers and spires are very expensive. The entire tower must be buttressed very firmly, since in most cases it is intended to include the belfry and must bear the weight of the bells as well as that of the spire. The careful anchoring of the spire in the walls of the tower is an essential point, since the stress to which it is exposed, even in a mild wind, is one whose force is generally underestimated. The belfry of the tower, if it is to serve the purpose well, should be situated above the roof, in order that the sound of the pealing bell or bells may travel without hindrance in every direction. It is hardly necessary to add that the architecture of the tower must harmonize perfectly with that of the rest of the building. It will usually be a strong test of the architect's ability to plan the tower in such a way as to give it the appearance of an integral part of the church and also preserve its solidity and beauty.

The Cross of Christ and the Harvest of Souls
Who is it that Christ has sent us to harvest? Answer: those whom the Holy Spirit has prepared for harvest.

Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour; other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours (Jn. 4:35b-38).

Those who have laboured before us, making public use of God’s Word to communicate the Gospel’s message to “gather fruit unto life eternal,” have employed the Means through which the Holy Spirit has also begun the work of drawing the unregenerate unto Himself and into fellowship with other Christians in the Body of Christ – that is, in the Church.

Spring Creek Lutheran Church Clarkfield, MN

This old Norwegian Lutheran church, like many others on the Minnesota prarie, stood tall against the barren landscape for over a century, announcing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the entire countryside. Symbolic of the times we live in, the building was demolished a few years ago.

“He that reapeth” is merely “entering into the labours” of many Christians who have gone before, some whose use of Law & Gospel has served to plant, others whose use of Scripture has served to tend budding faith, until the soul has been fully prepared by the Holy Spirit for harvest. This does not mean that, in the evangelical task, some go planting, some go tending, and some go harvesting. No one knows, after all, where any given person is at in the Holy Spirit's calling and gathering process. Rather, all go harvesting, as these are the tools with which God has equipped us, but such use of the Means of Grace serves to plant and tend as well.

The Cross is the single perfect heraldic icon for the purpose of evangelism, for in the Cross is simultaneously the message of the Law – symbolizing the punishment of death and separation from God that we deserve on account of our sin – and the message of the Gospel – symbolizing Christ’s innocent suffering and death on our behalf and on behalf of all sinners. Mounted high atop the steeple spire for every eye to see and for every soul to consider – upon the highest point in the local landscape – the Cross is seen to cover all. Such a location is the perfect place from which to herald the cross of Christ. Just as the life and work of Jesus Christ was done on behalf of all, the Cross and its full meaning is for all. The repentant sinner, including the soul ready for harvest, is drawn to the Cross and entrance to the Church of Christ. Those who come to the cross, have been compelled to do so, drawn to it by the work of the Holy Spirit who has worked in them by Means of the Message of Good News. They are His work, through the simple message of Law & Gospel.

Over the years, the steeple and Cross has fallen out of favour, ridiculed for being passe, and it seems to me that the decline of Christianity in America has accompanied these opinions. Perhaps truly evangelical churches should once again consider returning the Cross of Christ to a place of prominence in America’s landscape? Using the building as a herald of the Gospel is good evangelical stewardship.



“Programs” in Place of the Cross: Harvesting Green Tomatoes?
Yet, these days, many people fret that the simple heraldic preaching of the Cross fails to produce a harvest of souls, fails to adequately “build the Church,” in their opinion. Assuming faithful and rightly divided preaching of the pure Word, why would this be the case?

Hohe Domkirche St. Petrus Cologne, Germany

The dual spires of the Cathedral in Cologne rise to 515 feet.

The answer has already been provided above, but is worth repeating: the souls to whom the message is preached in these cases are simply not ready for harvest. We are equipped with tools of harvest, to reap that which has been prepared by the working of the Holy Spirit. But, if such preaching fails to reap, then, is this preaching in vain? Hardly! Similar to Christ, in the words of John 3, above, Paul explains in his first letter to the Corinthians:

Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon (1 Co. 3:5-10).

At first glance, it may seem that St. Paul is using essentially the same analogy as Jesus, who was talking about the harvest of souls into the Church. But this is not so. Rather than the harvest of souls, rather than the Holy Spirit's work through the Means of Grace to bring the unregenerate into new life in Christ, St. Paul is here, speaking of the Church and her ministers. He does so using two figures: one, a field, and the other, a building. When St. Paul speaks of planting in this reference, he is referring to planting the Church at Corinth; such planting can be considered roughly equivalent to both sowing and reaping in the analogy used by Jesus in John 3, above. When St. Paul speaks of watering, it is referring to keeping the fruit after the harvest Christ spoke of in His analogy. One man plants, another waters, and God uses this labour to grant the increase. Jesus indicates likewise: one man sows, another reaps. The one who realizes numeric increase has no basis for pointing to something he has done – he has entered into the labour of many labourers who have preceded him, and together they rejoice in God’s work of increasing his Church, Who uses such labour merely as an instrument of the Means of Grace, through which God works to give, and keep, increase. The tools for planting and watering in the example of Paul are the same as they are for sowing and reaping in the analogy used by Jesus: faithful and rightly divided preaching of the pure Word. Indeed, recognition is deserved NOT for “success,” but for the “labour:” every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour

In this reference, however, it is interesting to note that St. Paul transitions from the picture of the minister as gardener, to the minister as builder.

Église Saint-Paul de Strasbourg Strasbourg, France

Originally Lutheran, the Church of St. Paul, was built as a Prussian military church during their last occupation of France. It was finished in 1897. The dual spires rise to 249 feet, and can be seen for quite some distance in the city Strasbourg.

Emphasizing in the first picture that those who come to faith and stay in faith are God’s work not man’s, he shifts in the second picture to give dire warning: how the minister participates in the work of God is no trivial matter. Paul continues:

For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is in Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. (1 Co. 3:11-13)

When Christians get impatient with the Holy Spirit, lose trust in the Means of Grace, and begin to doubt the efficacy of the Word, they resort to laying a foundation other than that which is laid in the simple preaching of the Cross, other than the foundation laid in Jesus Christ. In their impatience for the Lord to prepare His harvest, and “grant them their wages,” they exclaim:

– Merely preaching the pure Word does not work!
– Merely telling the message of Law & Gospel to our neighbors does not work!
– Articulating and holding dogmatically to true Scripture teaching does not work!
– Maintaining an orderly, reverent, christocentric liturgy which shows forth the Marks of the Church and elevates the Means of Grace, doesn’t work!
– We must do something different!
– We must do something more!
– We must do something more exciting!
– We must do something more meaningful!
– We must do something more real, more relevant, and more relational!

And so these impetuous Christians busy themselves with laying a foundation other than Jesus Christ, as He is found in the faithful preaching of the pure Word in Law and Gospel. They really have no choice: those not prepared by the Holy Spirit for harvest will not be harvested by these reaper’s tools. To harvest souls not yet prepared for harvest, the reaper must use tools not given him by God for this purpose. He must use his own tools. He must lay a foundation other than Jesus Christ, alone. He must rely, not on the “foolishness of God,” but on the “wisdom of Man.” In doing so, he pick’s fruit otherwise not intended for harvest. He’s intent upon plucking Green Tomatoes. These unripened fruit don’t care about the preaching of the Cross or pure doctrine, nor would they respond to it; they respond to programs for the family and children. They are not drawn as a matter of conscience, by the Holy Spirit’s working, to the Church of Christ; they are drawn by titullating Sunday morning entertainment. The foundation laid by such approaches makes use of man’s tools: popular and common devices used by commercial enterprise to stimulate consumer patronage. But the structure built on this foundation does not look like the Church.¹


The Place of the Cross in Western Society
In a recent lecture I attended, the Rev. Dr. Frederic Baue (LCMS) commented rather poignantly (and I summarize from memory):

The monuments erected by man are an indication of his culture’s priorities.

Lecturing from aspects of his book², The Spiritual Society: What Lurks Beyond Postmodernism?, he was drawing from the recently “rediscovered” writings of Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin and highlighting the nature of cultural transition as they oscillate from Ideational to Sensate to Ideational modalities.

St. John Lutheran Church Popple Creek, WI

St. John Lutheran Church (WELS), Popple Creek, WI. Still heralding the Cross of Christ.

According to Sorokin, transitional periods between these modalities are marked by cultural upheaval of various sorts. For example, the First Advent of Christ occurred deep in the sensate Roman Era. As happens in Sensate cultures, over time, they become more sensate as they progress toward their demise, making way for Ideational change. With the fall of Rome, the Roman Era gave way to the Mediaeval Era – the most previous era of Ideational modality, an era dominated by Christian thought. Following this, the Renaissance – a “rebirth” of ancient cultural priorities – was a transitional period back to an era of Sensate modality, an era known as the Modern Era.³

The Rise and Fall of Modernism
Christian influence from the previous era dominating this transition and leaving the distinct mark of Christian thought upon the foundations of Modernism, the Visible church largely oversaw and was an influential participant and contributor to this cultural change; and in nearly every quarter her theology followed suit – with one peculiar exception: the Lutheran Reformation in Germany. While the Roman Church was the primary sponsor of the Renaissance transition, and the forward looking Swiss Reformation under Zwingli, Calvin, Beza and others was responsible for developing distinctly Modern theological systems, the Lutheran Church looked back⁴. The Lutheran Church preserved the teaching of the apostles, which teaching preceded and prepared for the rise of the Mediaeval Era. Resting in conscience, standing on Confession, embracing the mysteries of the Sacraments, the hypostatic union of natures in Christ, and the Holy Spirit’s work through the Means of Grace, the Lutheran Church, in her theology, remained distinctly Mediaeval, distinctly “Ideational,” and preserved this character over following generations, though in ever diminishing influence as the withering onslaught of heterodoxy and pragmatic political machinations worked against her. By the time of the Prussian Union and Evangelical mergers of the early 19^th Century, true confessional Lutheranism, and the mediaeval theological perspectives she preserved, had nearly been extinguished.

The late 19^th Century, however marked the beginning of a transition to a New Ideational Era – and the beginning of the end of Modernism. We see this in the dramatic changes that occurred in the arts, and in political ideology beginning at about this time.

St. John Lutheran Church Hermansfort, WI

The Golden Steeple of St. John Lutheran Church (LCMS), Hermansfort, WI. Drawing all eyes to the Cross of Christ.

We see this in the political and social upheaval that resulted and intensified into the 20^th Century, and in the increasing diffusion of academic focus through this time. The Holocost, while horrifying solely for the sake of the peoples involved, was particularly galvanizing for a larger reason, also: it permanently extinguished any optimism for Modernism, and marked the end of the Modern Era.

We see the result of this upheaval in greater Christianity today. As Christian perspectives based on Modernistic, “sensate-oriented” cultural modalities slink into irrelevancy, we witness among them the marks of flailing confusion. Modern Evangelicalism is one example. The pragmatic clarion call of the pop-church Evangelical, “We must be Real, Relevant, and Relational,” is incoherent nonsense when placed next to the clear teachings of Scripture, and is itself a recipe for failure. And fail it has. Barna Research – a Christian research firm formerly dedicated to the theories of the Church Growth Movement (CGM), whose mission it was to provide Evangelicals with marketing data and analysis to assist congregations in their implementation of CGM – declared in 2005, after a string of very shrill warnings regarding the demise of the American Church over previous years, that the theories of the Church Growth Movement are a statistical failure. Having invested over $500 billion dollars implementing the methods of CGM over the course of 30 years, no evidence of growth was discernible in American Christianity. None. Denominational shift is all that can be observed or attributed to these methods. In an effort to understand and pragmatically react to cultural change, Modernistic Christians, still stuck in the previous cultural era, reveal that they are oblivious to the real and monumental changes that have occurred in the past century, and are continuing to occur right now.


Confessional Lutheranism, Liturgical Expression, and the Rise of the New Cultural Era
We see the beginning of the end of Modernism in the late 19^th Century in two other respects. One is the collection and emergence of organized efforts among Christian remnants of the previous Ideational Era – that is, the return of a forceful and learned articulation of confessional Lutheranism. The Confessional and Liturgical movements we observe today, which, more and more, we Christians are attaching ourselves to, didn’t just begin a few years ago.

St. Nikolai Kirche Hamburg, Germany

A 19th Century church of Gothic Revival5 architecture, The Church of St. Nikolas in Hamburg, Germany was destroyed in the bombings of WWII. Yet, the steeple remains as a monument, elevating the Cross of Christ 483 feet above the landscape.

They are an extension of what was renewed by the Henkel’s (Tennessee Synod), Walther’s (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod), Preuses (Norwegian Synod), Krauth’s (General Council), Bading’s and Hoenecke’s (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) and the Pieper’s (WELS & LCMS) of the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries. In point of fact, “relevant” Christianity in our new Ideational cultural era will be informed by and take its direction from the perspectives of the previous such era, of Mediaeval Christianity, while Modernist systems, outside of the most resilient and tenacious of the Reformed confessions, will mostly just go away⁶. Adopting and incorporating increasingly irrelevant Modernist perspectives into Lutheran teaching and practice is, more than it ever was before, theological suicide.

Cultural Change marked in the Monuments of Man
A second respect in which we can see the beginning of the end of Modernism, is revealed in the increasingly “sensate” nature of the most prominent monuments of Modernism. From the late Mediaeval Era forward until the beginning of the close of the Modern Era, the largest, tallest and most impressive structures built by man were monuments to God: Christian Churches, with steeples reaching as high as 525 ft, atop of which were mounted the Cross of Christ, as a herald of Law & Gospel to the entire countryside, and an announcement that the Word of Peace and Reconciliation with God could be received, along with all of its eternal benefits, in His Church.

But what happened in the late 19^th Century? The most impressive of man’s monuments, far from being reserved for the special honor of God, were instead directed to man himself, boasting of his achievements, and proclaiming that his priorities were no longer his faith in God and his acknowledgment of gratitude toward God, but of accumulating wealth and honor for himself.

St. John Lutheran Church Emerald, WI

Located along a well traveled highway, the building of St. John Lutheran Church (LCMS), Emerald, WI, though sparsely attended on Sundays, continues to remind sinners of their need for forgiveness, and to point them to Christ.

From A.D. 1311 to 1884, the tallest, most adorned, and most impressive structures in the Western world were churches. In 1884, the Washington Monument became the tallest structure, and then in 1889 the Eiffel Tower was built to kick-off the World’s Fair in Paris, completely dwarfing all other structures in the Western world. From 1930 onward, the worlds tallest and most impressive structures have been office buildings – monuments of man to the priority of commercial enterprise and the accumulation of wealth and power⁷. Accompanying the dramatic decline of Modernism in the 20^th Century, we see that man’s priorities became dramatically more “sensate.”

Today, throwback modernistic Christians consider the church steeple to be passe, impractical, and more expense than it is worth – and then boast of their stewardship. Yet these same Christians will line up to throw away $500 billion dollars over thirty years on worthless entertainments and other human inventions, to build anthropocentric organizations on a foundation of hedonism. They call it “church” but what is it really? Emptied of Scripture teaching, shunting aside the Marks of the Church, rejecting the straightforward preaching of Law & Gospel and reliance on the Means of Grace, removing Christ from His central position and replacing him with the priorities of man, these organizations look and sound nothing like “the Church.” Their work is being tried, and revealed for what sort it is: after a generation of trying to pluck “Green Tomatoes” using tools contrived by man, and succeeding mostly in just robbing “harvest fruit” from other church bodies, while little by little depriving it of preservative preaching of Law & Gospel, Christians find they have indigestion. Thus, these church-like organizations are now in dramatic decline – precipitous decline – as spoiled fruit oozes out from the organizational structures they have built.

And yet the old stone church buildings remain. Even though some are emptied of people, and others are emptied of sound teaching, these monuments to God continue to herald the Cross of Christ, to focus the eyes of all on Him and His Gospel message, and to draw people to Christ and His Church. The people may be mute, but the stones still conspicuously cry out, publicly assigning worth to God.

St. John Lutheran Church Milwaukee, WI

An historical landmark listed in the National Registry of Historic Places, Evangelische Luth. St. Johanneskirche in Milwaukee, WI, was a congregation formed in 1848 and led by Rev. Johannes Bading – the second President of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), and the leader responsbile for bringing WELS out of doctrinally ambivilant pietistic ecumenism, into a strong Confessional stance. Symbolic of the times we live in, St. John's now lies dormant, as intrigue and corruption seem to have conspired to dispossess the congregation of its building. Nevertheless, the building itself continues to witness to the city of Milwaukee, lifting the cross of Christ for all to see at almost 200 feet.

Built on the Rock the Church doth stand,
Even when steeples are falling.
Crumbled have spires in every land,
Bells still are chiming and calling
Calling the old and young to rest,
But above all the soul distressed
Longing for rest everlasting.

Grant then, O God, wher’er men roam,
That, when the church bells are ringing
Many in Jesus’ faith may come
Where He His message is bringing
“I know mine own, mine own know me,
Ye, not the world, my face shall see:
My peace I leave with you, Amen”

Built on the Rock, v1&7
TLH 467, ELH 211, CW 529, LSB 645

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Endnotes:

1. Indeed, see the following Intrepid Lutheran posts for vivid examples of this: The Catechesis of the Lutheran Worshiper: An antidote to the “itching ears” and “happy feat” of CGM enthusiasts? and Real? Relational?? Relevant??? O THE HORROR OF IT ALL!!!
2. This book is necessary reading for any Christian who would be a student of culture.
3. This is, of course, Sociological theory, which, in the end, probably holds about as much water as Psychological theories. There are so many different theories because of the difficulty in testing hypothesis, each theory is found wanting by observation. Nevertheless, the recent “rediscovery” of Sorokin’s writings has generated much interest in his ideas, and given a boost to Social Dynamic theories, which for the most part have been based on demographic rather than cultural/ideological criteria. He is considered a “giant” of 20^th Century sociological research.
4. See the following Intrepid Lutheran posts and resources, for more details on the Differences between Reformed and Lutheran theological systems, and how the past functions as a very real and necessary foundation of Lutheranism
5. All of the structures featured on this page were constructed either in the late Mediaeval Era, or are structures built in the late 19^th Century during the later Gothic Revival, coinciding with “Ideational” influences as they are thought to have been showing their influence.
6. Once again, indeed. As one example, New Life Church, a Colorado megachurch formerly led by Ted Haggard, recently began their return to historical, Christocentric practice. Read New Life After the Fall of Ted Haggard in Christianity Today, and A New Era in American Evangelicalism? by Martin Noland on Steadfast Lutherans.
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_tallest_structures#History_of_record_holders_in_each_CTBUH_category