The Nihil Rule

... a guest post... you, too, can submit a guest post to layman@nihilrule.com ... I just read your "Merge for Mission" article, a week after watching the WELS Connection for February 2025, which featured the WELS 100 in 10 initiative ( https://wels100in10.net/ ). I told my wife at the time that it seemed odd to me that they would take young guys right out of the seminary to do these church plants. Why not look at guys who have already been in a parish for a few years and gotten some measure of experience under their belts on the day-to-day stuff, rather than throwing a raw seminary graduate into both trying to pick up that experience and simultaneously undertake the mission thing? Is it because they think inexperienced men will be more pliable with regard to perceived mission needs? Is it because they think there will be fewer consequences for men who don't yet have families -- or that such a perception will make family men proportionately less likely to take such calls u...

You may have noticed that the blog was offline for about a week. Last Monday I received - at my personal email address - a lengthy email by someone from the Synod office culminating in a request for me to delete the blog. I affirmed, and did not deny, I am the author. But as to deleting the blog, this I believe is beyond my control at this point. Let me explain.  When I started this blog about 3 years ago, I was looking for an outlet to write. I am a very mathematical mind, and writing has never been a strong suit. I started a blog on a whim. I picked a domain name based on Peter's dissertation  on the nihil rule I was reading at the time, and the avatar of the preeminent Wisconsin Synod theologian and started writing stuff. I had no intent to be 'that' guy. I did not anticipate the turn that would take place after the Lutheran Leadership conference. A few posts asking question and poking at things and I had several people emailing me and group chats were formed along with...

(please don't make me explain: this is a meme.  If it didn't make you giggle you weren't the target audience. Move along!)

(2025/03/212 UPDATE:  Removed the memes to focus on the content, strikeout reflects updated information not available at the time of posting. Minor edits for clarity and 'snark reduction'.) "Mission Together Meeting" (Archived) ... But there's more! Three more "Merge for Mission" videos available on the YouTubes, to be specific. First, we have Pastor  Joel Gaertner's presentation   ( Archive )   to the congregations of Immanuel, Shirley (WI) and surrounding congregations. Pastor Gaertner let a few things slip where Jon had been a little more tight-lipped. Joel tells us there are 24 conversations "in one phase or another." Note: these are not 24 churches discussing merger, but 24 mergers with two or more churches involved! In the case of Milwaukee it's something like 7 churches, at least five in MSP. If we assume an average of 3 churches per merger (and assuming the average merger is a consolidation) we are going from 72 churches to 24 c...

Rev. Charles Porterfield Krauth in his 1871 The Conservative Reformation and its Theology, ( the CRT I gladly affirm ) pages 195-6: "When error is admitted into the Church, it will be found that the stages of its progress are always three. It begins by asking toleration. Its friends say to the majority: You need not be afraid of us; we are few, and weak; only let us alone; we shall not disturb the faith of others. The Church has her standards of doctrine; of course we shall never interfere with them; we only ask for ourselves to be spared interference with our private opinions. Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are two balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ, and any favoring of the truth, because it is the truth, is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold...