The Nihil Rule

Fashionably late as always, here are a few photos I took of the eclipse using my wife's DSLR through a small telescope.

  Our final post in the WELS  Women's "Ministry" Conference series will look at the presentation " The Power of Partnerships " with Dr. Kristi Meyer & Rev. Eric Schroeder. Let's read along with the description, shall we? Many congregations have vibrant and thriving women’s ministries: natural places for female congregation members to volunteer and get involved. Female congregation members. Where I come from, we call them women. However, it can be difficult for women to participate in and contribute to other aspects of a church’s ministry, especially if the congregation’s governance model follows a typical male-only board structure. Ahhh, we've found a way to sex up governance models . In these situations, partnerships are key—partnerships among all congregation members but especially partnerships between female members and their pastors. The reason Dr. Meyer is presenting is because she has a M.A. in Theological Studies from MLC. Her thesis paper is

    (within the context of theology...) "Some people are supposed to be ivory tower people, and some people are also supposed to raise the Jolly Roger" -C Jay Engel, Contra Mundum

Part two of our look into the WELS Women's "Ministry" Conference takes us to a presentation by Hannah Schermerhorn entitled " How to Stop Surviving and Start Thriving in Singleness " Luther had much to say about celibacy, of course, given his context: Roman Catholic priests were not allowed to marry, and monasticism was promoted as a more blessed estate than marriage. Luther recognized celibacy as a rare gift: "such [celibates] are rare, not one in a thousand, for they are a special miracle of God" - Martin Luther (LW 45:21) particularly in women:  “Though womenfolk here are ashamed to admit this, nevertheless Scripture and experience show that among many thousands is not one whom God has given grace to keep pure chastity. A woman does not have control over herself. God has created her body to be with man, to bear children and to raise them.” - Martin Luther, “To Some Nuns,” Letter No. 756 (6 August 1524) (Forget OTJATL : how has the feminist-sympathiz

“How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth. Every day new sects spring up, and what St. Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (Ephesians 4:14) comes true. Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be “tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine,” seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one

The WELS Women's "Ministry" Conference takes place July 28-30 at the Ingleside Hotel in Pewaukee, WI. We are going to take a few weeks and dig into what is on offer at this conference. Let's start with one of the keynotes, " A Candid Conversation about Women in the WELS ", featuring Rev. Jonathan Hein and Dawn Schulz. You might remember Rev. Hein from such great hits as the WELS Lutheran Leadership Conference featuring Dr. Joan Prince , consensus-model governance restructuring,  and " Less Churches, More Ministry! " Dawn has "taught women’s bible studies, hosted retreats, counseled women through crisis situations, mentored young Christian women, and shared the love of Jesus at Christmas with the 100+ women who attend Advent by Candlelight each year." The description of the keynote starts with the sentence In the heart of every woman beats the desire to do what God created her to do. It is abundantly clear we are putting women on a pedest

"A sermon that does not terminate in bringing us to communing with the Christ who is, in fact, present and giving himself to us in and through Holy Communion is a sermon that has failed..." - Rev. Dr. John Bombaro

Christian Worship: Hymnal, Hymn 453 Once again, the WELS is gunning for the title of "Laughingstock of Confessional Lutheranism." Hymn 453 in our new hymnal is composed by one Sylvia Dunstan; a woman who calls herself a pastor, deceived by means of ordination by the United Church of Canada. Not only was she a woman claiming to be a Pastor, but she was also a lesbian . The  United Church of Canada 's page on "What We Believe" leads off with "The Bible is the shared standard for our faith, but members are not required to adhere to any particular creed or formulation of doctrine." In that light, verse 2's "He lives again / In all your galilees" takes on a chilling tone of relativism: "Your Galilee is not my Galilee - perhaps you think He lives, but in my Galilee it's his memory that lives on..." (And on a day that sleepy Joe Biden woke up long enough to declare a " trans day of visibility ," no less!) Why is the WELS

"In an earlier time, the idea that language is incapable of mapping reality would have been considered nonsense, if not a form of mental illness. In fact, it is a form of mental illness" - Neil Postman, Building a Bridge to the 18th Century In retrospect, I was too kind of Dr. Michael Berg in my original critique of his presentation " Critical Theory: The Good ,The Bad, and the Absurd " in the "run" example. Allow me to quote my original critique: "Berg's thought experiment with the word 'run' is not indicative of a problem with language it is indicative of different people with different experiences. This, to my understanding, is a different problem than Derrida's proposed instability: were Derrida correct, this would be a universal problem extra nos. Berg's example is something different, showing that different brains with different experiences will make different initial associations. In the natural and fair use of language, we