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

The dean and the members of the theological faculty of the University of Jena greet the saintly reader in the Lord. "A double calamity as befallen our age in the form of an overabundance of literary production. In the first place, the frightful maliciousness of the writing wears out most readers, and the pens of many are so contentious that they scarcely understand their own writing.... From this results a twofold detriment to the state of public letters. First, the earth is buried by such a flood of useless new books that nothing as become more worthless, nothing more contemptible, nothing more despicable than the very book which were at one time of the greatest value. In fact, the same thing has most deservedly happened to this generation as befell the mad people of Athens under the tutelage of Thales. For just as he, in the brightness of the noonday sun, lit a torch in the midst of a raving mob of people and explained that he was looking for men, so today each piles up books fo

"Justice is turned back, And righteousness stands afar off; For truth is fallen in the street, And equity cannot enter."  -Isa 59:14

Universality and ethnicity in Paul’s churches - Dr, Koontz (madpxm.com) Continuing on the thought of last weeks post, "why does this section of scripture matter" ...  Quoting Dr. Koontz once again: Likewise the worship practices of the Corinthians are to be brought into harmony with universal church practice (1 Cor. 14:26-36). Women were speaking “in the churches,” but Paul commands silence for women in the churches so that they are not participating in the public proclamation and overriding the necessity for submission (1 Cor. 14:34). The command to silence harmonizes with the command to wear a head covering in that Paul seeks to inculcate a universal practice of female submission to men “in all the churches.” The distinctive for our purposes is the Pauline reminder that “in all the churches” or “in all the churches of the saints” something is the case.  So we don't just snip out the headcoverings pericope as a standalone doctrine, but we see how the practice of head cov

WLHS saw LPS posting cringe and said " here, hold my beer! " A perusal of Myles' Instagram  reveals a woman who regularly drops profanity and curates books on gay sex and race activism. I'm not sure how this aligns with the Christian values a WELS High School should be pouring into their students, but it sure does align with WLHS' Black History Month , chapel sermons on antiracism , and WLHS President Ken Fisher's desire to have us examine the presence and role of "whiteness" . As soon as a questioning reply appeared on the WLHS Facebook page, the post was locked down to restrict comments and some pertinent details were removed, including direct links to Ms. Myle's Instagram and references to her "woke" credentials.

Universality and ethnicity in Paul’s churches - Dr, Koontz (madpxm.com) This article is an excerpt from Dr. Koontz' PhD thesis which I am really interested in digesting when it becomes available. I'm sure we've seen many glimpses of it in the  Against the Stream: Paul's Missionary Gospel in Hard Times  lecture series. But I want to focus in today on head coverings and cultural relevance. Quoting the good Doctor: There is a uniformity on which Paul insists in certain distinct cases, especially among the Corinthians whom he finds to be so often arrogantly distinctive in their practices. After explaining the rationale for how and why women should cover their heads (1 Cor. 11:2-15), Paul explains that should anyone object to this practice and find it unacceptable, there are two other factors that should be considered. First, “we have no such practice,” that is the apostolic group for which Paul is speaking does not inculcate a practice of women being bareheaded. Not coincid

  "What is done to the consecrated elements of the bread and wine is done directly to Christ Himself" ... "Dogmatically speaking, 'individual cups' are as adiaphorous as the divinity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." ... "As we go out of our way to put up with the idiosyncrasies of each other, there is no room for compromise when the honor of Christ Himself is at stake" -John R. Stephenson, "A Retraction Issued Thirty Years Too Late", Gottesdienst , Christmas 2023

  If you go to the WELS Congregational Services site and click on the bright yellow " The Foundation " button, you will discover (and you probably already knew) that synod puts together "themes" for each season in the church year corresponding with the three-year lectionary. (The season after Pentecost, of course, gets broken up into five or so themes because we have to keep things "fresh" and "relevant").  The resources include not just artwork but a podcast sermon for each week, "publicity checklists", worship planning resources including summary paragraphs and hymn recommendations, and so on. I encourage you to dig for yourself and see whether your pastor is merely parroting synodical recommendations and cribbing off the podcast for his sermon, or if he's just utilizing the art and doing his own homework. Certainly, there is value in "walking together" and listening to brother pastors may add a wrinkle to sermon develop

" herstory "

So there's a really fascinating book entitled "Martin Luther and the Jewish people" by Neelak S. Tjernagel. Tjernagel graduated from our Thiensville Seminary in 1932. He taught for a number of years at what is now Concordia University, Chicago, and authored the 1984 Synod Convention Essay for the ELS. You can read a brief biographical sketch written by none other than Herman Otten at Steadfast Lutherans . His book was published by Northwestern Publishing House, the publishing arm of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. This book provides and antidotes to the common refrain among some that Luther was an antisemite, that Luther was senile in his old age when he wrote On the Jews and their Lies. (One thing I should mention up front: the version of the on the Jews and their Lies you probably read, or more likely didn't read but are talking about it, was an abridged version. Yes, that includes the version published in Luther's Works. Additionally, regarding the t

  "the small catechism of Dr Luther held us together in German for 500 years and in English we fell apart in one generation" - Rev Fisk

God be praised! I've been able to confirm from multiple sources that the WELS COP (Conference of Presidents) has decided not to replace the current Man and Woman Roles document with the proposed restatement " God's beautiful and balanced design for male and female ," I know many including myself wrote letters to the COP on issues with the proposed restatement which include: - The repeated use of "complementary" (24x) exceeding "head" and "headship" combined, as well as "submit" and "submission" combined. This might lead some to infer that the WELS are complementarians, which we are not. - The fact that the language is not rooted in Lutheran theology (the original document goes through creation, the fall and justification as pretexts to headship; the new document does not) and instead latches on to the modern catch-phrase of servant leadership (which is derived from the business world). - It is conciliatory and limp-wr

2023 Biblical Worldview Conference (sainttimothy.org) I commend to your consumption the Biblical Worldview Conference linked above. This conference took place on November 4th of last year at St. Timothy Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELS) in Lombard, IL. It was recently made available online for free.  Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller (LCMS)  presented on the Theology of Pronouns, an updated version of a presentation he gave in 2022 and shared on the podcast. One of Pastor Wolfmueller's insights is that historically martyrs have been made such for defending the second article of the Creed (John the Baptist excepted) while today martyrs are and will continue to be made for defending the first article of the Creed. Another interesting point on how our mentality has changed with time: looking back at the writings of 1917 (the 400th anniversary of the 95 theses) most commentators wrote about Luther and the Holy Spirit with only one mention of Gutenberg's printing press. In 2017 at the 500th

Jeff Bezos has a quote, "You don't get to choose your passions, your passions choose you." Apparently WLHS drama has chosen me.  So your humble host has managed to obtain several documents of interest... Truth be told, no Bothans died. These documents were intended for a "pre-read" ahead of the next WLHS delegate meeting which would seemingly  give legs to my pious speculation that this was not merely pandering to the feminists but a power grab. If you recall, the organization chart I shared last month showed how there was an all-male governance committee consisting of five men that would deal with 'headship issues' on the board which would include women by taking those issues from the board and dealing with it themselves. My speculation was that this was actually a power grab by Ken Fisher while pandering to 'the base'. Part of that pandering potentially could be bringing on Joan Prince as a board member to encourage innovations like the DEI

https://cplaction.com/wp-content/uploads/unmasking-teacher-standards.pdf Following up on BLC's letter and the Minnesota District's report , Allen Quist (former 3-term Minnesota state legislator and retired professor from Bethany Lutheran College) has written a six-page memo reacting to the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) standards. Read the whole thing. I'll leave you with the closing paragraph The newly adopted Standards for Effective Practice are a smokescreen for indoctrination into the beliefs of cultural Marxism... Colleges that wish to maintain their academic integrity must refuse to teach the PELSB standards and establish their own certification based on academic integrity. They should inform the public they are genuine institutions of higher learning devoted to academic excellence and have not been bullied into becoming pawns of the political left. Private schools at all levels need to demonstrate that they remain cities set

Rev. Dr. Michael Berg is a professor a Wisconsin Lutheran College and a co-host of the podcast Let the Bird Fly . Last year at about this time he gave a presentation on Critical Theory at the 2023 WELS National Conference on Lutheran Leadership, which you can view here .  I'm engaging this content (a year late) because it's clear this presentation was not a flash in the pan.  He's been taking it on a road tour having presented at  Hillsdale  and at various WELS district conferences. Let's go! Introduction (first 13 minutes) Berg's introduction from Heraclitus to John to Descartes and Kant is fair, as far as I understand those individuals. I feel that Berg begins by soft-pedaling Derrida. Ultimately, he reaches the correct conclusion that Derrida is attacking the Christian worldview, but it takes him awhile to get there. Just to be clear, this is Derrida's view of Scripture: 'For me, there is no such thing as "religion." Within what one calls relig