The Nihil Rule

  "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 ...