Canadian Rockies Theological Conference

THE ORDER OF CREATION is the theme of The Canadian Rockies Theological Conference which will be held April 16 through 19, 2012. Featured speakers at this Conference are Rev. Dr. James Nestingen and Dr. Nathan Yoder. For more information search for "Canadian Rockies Theological Conference" on Facebook.

Failure of Dissent and New Beginnings Conference Comments

The following are comments that have been made regarding the Failure of Dissent and New Beginnings Conference held September 21^st in Calgary:

“I felt it was very beneficial to myself personally, and to the pastors and Lutheran members there to have attended and have our concerns heard and answered with solid teaching from the word of God. We were also spiritually fed, which my pastor found to be lacking at the ELCIC conferences, as well as encouraged that biblically we were doing the right thing in looking for options to join the Lutheran reform movement rather than try to change things within the ELCIC. I also saw first-hand how the ELCIC has bullied and badgered the clergy in its efforts to control the future of the church and change the constitution, Augsburg Confessions, etc. to fit their agenda to include same sex blessings and gay ordination. It’s become clear which direction we need to take now, and we are grateful to Solid Ground for having kept the faith, written clear and concise articles in response to ELCIC error, and paved the way for others to follow. Many thanks to those who have kept the torch burning.”

God bless, Helen Harris, Peace Lutheran, Fort St John, BC

 “The Solid Ground meeting in Calgary was a faith-filled, inspiring day.

It was very refreshing to be with like minded clergy and fellow Lutherans.

The presentations reminded us that God is in control, the scriptures are the

inspired, infallible word of God and that God will never forsake us.

We feel betrayed by the ELCIC who has placed a wedge in our lives, our

faith and our congregation.  That wedge has challenged the authenticity of

scripture that places us on a slippery slope.”

Garnet and Faye Altwasser, Trinity Lutheran, Brooks, AB

Discipleship under the Lord of All, Jesus the Christ

Pastor Jaynan Clark gave a stirring presentation at the Calgary Solid Ground gathering, challenging us to refocus on discipleship under the Lord of All, Jesus the Christ. As his disciples we will be constrained to reach out to others, sharing the message of his love and salvation through word and deed. Unfortunately, Pastor Jaynan did not have a script suitable to post on the web site. Two weeks later, Pastor Jaynan gave a sermon of similar content at the LCMC Convention. This talk was livestreamed, making it possible to share the main thought and inspiration with you.


At about the 25 minute mark,  Rev. Jaynan Clark begins her talk. 


View Presentation

The Failure of Dissent and New Beginnings - Rev. D Haugen

Rev D. Haugen was one of the featured speakers at the Solid Ground hosted meeting in Calgary on September 21^st.   

View PDF

Closing Meditation for the Solid Ground Conference

Beloved in the Lord, grace and peace be unto you from God our Father. and from our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and from the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of

life!

I will begin this closing meditation with a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer from a wedding sermon from his prison cell in Letters and Prayers from Prison.

“Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God’s holy ordinance, through which he wills to perpetuate the human race to the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to his glory, and calls into his kingdom. In your love you see only the heaven of your happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal – it is a statute, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes a king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you to another in the sight of God and man. As you first gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage comes from above, from God. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of marriage above the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains 

your love.”

A few years ago I had a telephone call from a woman telling me what had happened to her. She had been married for around 20 years and had two children, who were then moving toward the end of their teens. Her husband had informed her, three months previously, that he wanted a divorce, having had and still carrying on an affair with another woman.

The woman told me that when she heard the request of her husband and found out what had been going on, she simply could not deal with it. She went to bed and stayed there for days on end. She did not eat for that whole period of time and drank very little fluids. She lost over 30 pounds during that sojourn in bed.

At the end of that sojourn in bed alone, she cried out to God and told God that she simply could not take it. The next morning she woke up with a deep sense of peace and began to eat and to drink and to live again.

When she spoke to me, three months after the ordeal began, she had still not told her children about the unfaithfulness of her husband, and was actually being blamed by her daughter for the mess she was in. But though the despair was real, her marriage no longer sustaining her love, she was, by the grace of God, at peace and starting to move ahead to face all the difficult challenges that moving into the divorce process would bring.

The distinguished father in the faith, Martine Luther, always spoke clearly and effectively about the three orders of creation; the State, the Church, and the first order of creation, the sacred family. Though they are separate orders with clearly defined areas of responsibility, they share a unity in their various responsibilities and mandates, to fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over all the creatures of the earth. They were to do so in obedience to the Lord, honouring, his will, his way, his word, his design, and the image of God in which humankind was created, male and female, husband and wife, co-creators with God.

The State has the responsibility to honour and protect the family, permitting it to rear their children in the fear and love of the Lord, and indeed fill the earth and subdue it. The state is to rule with the authority given by God, under the supervision of the Law, the law both engraved on our hearts and the law given by revelation.

The Church, in its visible form, has the responsibility to honour and protect the family, so that its members can hear and live under God’s gracious moral law embedded in the ten commandments, and most important, to hear and live under the call of the Gospel, becoming new creatures in Christ, rightly distinguishing between the Law and the Gospel.

Both Church and State, each operating in its own clearly defined area, has the responsibility to honour and protect the family, within God’s design and intention. The very well being of the Church and State are themselves very much affected and influenced by the well being of the family they themselves have been charged to honour and protect within their own spheres.

God’s design for human kind, in all three orders of creation, is as beautiful and magnificent and holy as is God’s design for creation and the universe, as we see it. God knows what God is doing. But sin and evil still poison our world, and when we depart from God’s intentions and design, sin and evil are given the opportunity to wreak much greater havoc in all three orders, and they do.

The husband, we referred to earlier, when he told his wife that he wanted a divorce, was essentially stating that God’s design for his family was faulty and invalid. His own love of another woman was more holy and more to be desired than the Holy order of marriage established by God in the beginning.

It is not at all strange that the wife could not deal with it and went to bed and stayed there for days on end without food and very little fluids. She had lost the love of her life. But even more precious, she had lost the support of that Holy order of creation coming from above, and the sanctity and rights and love that it brought. She could not deal with it and relied on God to bring peace as she attempted to live with a wound that would never go away.

We probably all remember the time when our Canadian State chose not to honour and protect the family within God’s design, and decided to extend the privileges attached to the Holy State of Matrimony to same sex couples, and declare it to be a legitimate and holy marriage. There were some who spoke against it but our Church was not among them, and certainly not our Bishops and Pastors. We chose not to be heard speaking in opposition, concerned about civil rights for all our citizens, irrespective of sexual orientation.

And we remember the time, two months ago, when our church in convention, decided that God’s design for the sacred family, from the beginning, was literally flawed, and that we needed to repair it, following the example of the State. Can you imagine a church literally leading its people in paths of idolatry?

Now, the three orders of creation are in disarray, and the chaos that we see all around us is increasing rapidly. Our society is under the judgment that comes when God’s design is blatantly ignored and dishonoured.

Not many of us have stayed in bed for days on end without food and with little fluid. We are distraught to be sure, but that is mitigated by our own sense of responsibility and failure. We failed to see it coming until it was too late. We have allowed our Lutheran tribalist propensity to render us ineffective. We share in the responsibility for the debacle that we now face.

There are times to declare Status Confessionus. This may just be that time. There are times to repent and acknowledge our own failures with fasting, and prayers without ceasing. This is that time. There are times to acknowledge that we simply cannot deal with it on our own and rely on God to lead us. There are times to wait on the Lord, for the way into the future will only become clear as we wait for the Lord’s direction. But this also is the time to rejoice in the privilege of suffering for the sake of the Gospel and the Church and the truth! This is the time to fear, love, and trust God above anything else and really let God be God, and let God’s Word be God’s Word. God is in charge and God will lead us in paths of righteousness for his own name’s sake. Thanks be to God!

Lord have mercy! Christ have mercy! Lord have mercy!

AMEN!

Rev. Tim Johnson Presentation

The first presentation at the Failure of Dissent and New Beginnings Conference was by the Rev. Tim Johnson, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Dawson Creek, BC. His presentation will included:

• Brief critique of the convention decisions 
• Prerequisites for institutional church unity 
• A reaffirmation of the ultimate authority of the Scriptures for faith and life 
• A renewed emphasis on evangelism and world missions

View PDF of presentation

The Voice of a Dissident

Dr. Lothar Schwabe

Presented at the Solid Ground Conference “THE FAILURE OF DISSENT AND NEW BEGINNINGS”, Calgary, Sept. 21, 2011                                         

Take heart.  Be of good cheer

John 16: 33

“In this world you will have troubles. But take heart (be of good cheer, KJV) I have overcome the world.”

At this conference on “The Failure of Dissent and New Beginnings” I am with fellow dissidents who, like me, have failed to have our ELCIC remain loyal to the Bible and treat it as the only source of its doctrines and actions.

We are totally dependent on what God has chosen to reveal to us in what we know about God. That is why the Bible is so important for us.

I believe that our God is so enormous, so unimaginable, and so multi-dimensional that our human mind is incapable of objectively perceiving and analyzing God. We simply cannot comprehend God. I agree with Paul,

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” Ro. 11:33-34. (NIV)

God reveals himself to us in the inspired Word of God. That is all we have.

What God has revealed to us in Holy Scriptures does not even make much sense. It does not make sense to humans because it comes out of the mind of God which is far greater than any human can comprehend.

- Grace does not make sense.

- God’s love for sinners does not make any sense.

- Forgiveness does not make any sense.

- Miracles do not make any sense.

- Christ’s death on the cross for our sins does not make any sense.

- The Trinity does not make any sense.

- God’s mercy does not make any sense. The laws of nature do not reveal any mercy to us. Just try to jump off a twenty story building and hope for the law of gravity to show you some mercy.

Holy Scriptures have a message that is radical, amazing, and defies all human logic. Human wisdom could never come up with something like “Saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.”

What God has revealed to us often does not make any sense to us because God, like his peace, passes all understanding. We cannot comprehend this mind-boggling divine reality. We can only believe.

Actually, it is the heresies that make sense. All heresies are products of the human mind and therefore always make sense. Arians made sense in their claim that Jesus was just a human being. Antinomians make sense.

It also makes sense the church should be inclusive and not exclude homosexuals from being ordained, even though some parts of the Bible have something else to say about homosexuality. Jesus did not talk about homosexuality. Therefore it makes sense to ignore all that Jesus said about marriage being between a man and a woman. This all makes sense and sounds reasonable. The problem for us is that the revealed Word of God has something different to say about homosexuality.

Sin makes a lot of sense. It makes no sense to tell the truth all the time because it gets you into deep trouble. Greed makes sense and not only on Wall Street.

My point is that what makes sense and sounds reasonable is not always right before God.

On the other hand, teachings from the Word of God that may sound foolish are right.

That all is very confusing to intelligent people who have been trained to reason and think logically. Our choice is to follow the wisdom of the world and human intelligence or to believe what Holy Scriptures say.

Paul must have confused a few intelligent scholars when he said,

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,

But to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;

The intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar?

Where is the philosopher of this age?

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

1 Corinthians 1:18-20 (NIV).

The human mind has a great way of messing things up. Humans can rationalize anything. Luther knew that and cautioned about “die Hure des Verstandes”, the whore of reason.

Unfortunately many of our brothers and sisters in our ELCIC have decided to follow the wisdom of this world. 

God is not an object that can be studied objectively. Theology must approach the Word of God with humility and respect and stand under the Word and not over it. The wisdom of this world must not take control of Holy Scriptures. Article II of our Constitution is good and it is very Lutheran.

We are totally dependent upon Holy Scriptures to know anything about God.

No theological tower of Babel can penetrate the heavens to get a glimpse of God.

That is why Lutherans (Sola Scriptura) along with Christians of other denominations have such high respect for the Bible as the inspired Word of God. Yes, God spoke through people and also through a mule.  But it was God who spoke.

Luther insisted that we have to let the Bible speak for itself and take the Word of God for what it says.

Those who won the vote told us, “but we have to interpret the Bible”. True.

However, anybody who knows more that one language and is able to interpret will know

that an interpretation is not valid if the translation says the opposite of what it means in the other language. It is simply a wrong interpretation when it says the opposite of what Romans 1:26-33 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 say.

                                                                                                                                   

There are four critical “Ifs”:

- If the Bible is the revealed Word of God, then we cannot mess around with it. We have to take it or leave it.

- If the Bible is not the revealed Word of God but a human product, then the teachings of the church do not carry any divine authority.

- If our knowledge of God is not based upon the revealed Word of God, then everybody can make up their own God.

- If reason is the ultimate authority, then faith has no substance and you can believe whatever you like.

The Constitution of the ELCIC (Article II) treats Holy Scriptures as divinely inspired (Article II, Section 3) and authoritative for what we believe and do. But our current ELCIC treats Holy Scriptures as either a human product that can be decided upon by a single majority vote at a National Convention or at best as a mixture of divine and human products which gives the National Convention the right to decide which is which. This is the critical point at which we, the dissidents, tell our church, “You are wrong and our Constitution is right.”

To say that this is just a work in progress and that our individual congregations can state their own position in this matter is simply a political ploy. It is an act of damage control in an attempt to prevent congregations from leaving the ELCIC. There has been a paradigm shift in the ELCIC. It is no longer the church we knew. That is why we are here.

Our ELCIC did not hate homosexuals when it refused to ordain homosexuals or marry them until the last National Convention. It did so because of our understanding of Holy Scriptures. As a pastor of the ELCIC I have never witnessed a refusal to minister to homosexuals.  We wanted to be faithful to the Bible.

Our National Bishop and Synodical Bishops were not homophobic when, in 1991, they affirmed the Social Statement on Sex Marriage and Family (1970). They took their stand because of Article II of the Constitution of the ELCIC which confesses the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the “only source of the Church’s doctrine and the authoritative standard for the faith and life of the Church.”

Like our former Bishops, we are not homophobic; we just want to be faithful to the Holy Scriptures. That is why we are here.

With its new theology, our church has become less of a Lutheran church and more like the United Church of Canada or even the Unitarian Church. It must be a real problem for other Lutheran Churches like Lutheran Church Canada to relate to the ELCIC as if it were still a Lutheran Church in its confessions and actions.

So we are now in a church that consists of two groups of people:

Those who believe what the Word of God says and those who believe what the Word of God should have said, according to their opinion.                                                                                                                  

With its recent decision, the ELCIC no longer takes the Bible as the sole source of the church’s teachings and actions. That cuts to the very core of what we believe.

                                                                                                                                   

What hurts is that we all had so many social relations through our church; so many friends and connections. Now even some families are divided.

The vote was 61% to 39%. People like us are in the minority. Can the majority be wrong? In Nazi Germany the majority of Christians were wrong and people like

Bonhoeffer were right. Group-think can do marvellous things. People have a psychological need to belong to the majority and to please their superiors.

Yes, we are a minority. But the majority that voted for the changes at the last convention is a huge minority among all the Christians in this world.

The 5.6 million strong Mekane Jesu Church of Ethiopia is cutting its ties with the ELCA and forming a strong relationship with the North American Lutheran Church. Worldwide, our ELCIC is on the outside of Lutheranism and of all Christianity.

Many of us are grieving. I have even shed tears. What shall we do now? Where shall we go? Some dissidents may stay with the ELCIC and test the claim that the ELCIC is a loving and welcoming church, open to embrace diversity with hearts filled with love.

You might then conclude that this love includes us dissidents who enrich the diversity of the ELCIC.

Many others simply cannot do that anymore. They are looking for a new beginning. The greatest loss to the ELCIC will not be the congregations which will now take their votes to leave the ELCIC. The greatest loss will be the individual faithful members who will now leave their ELCIC congregation and find another church home, or who will simply give up on their church. No amount of damage control can prevent that.

As a dissident member of the ELCIC, my message to leaders and pastors of my church is, “You have abandoned the Word of God and are on a path of destruction. Repent or you will perish.”

My prediction is that, unless my church repents and returns to honour its Constitution, the ELCIC will dwindle and end up merging with the Anglicans. This may be the only way to get rid of Article II in our Constitution. That article is unalterable and cannot be changed as long as the ELCIC exists. A merger with the Anglicans requires a new constitution and would be a way to get rid of Article II. That is a very attractive solution to the constitutional problem.

What does the Word of God have to say to us who are likely gathered like this for the last time?

Be of good cheer. The real church, which is a spiritual and not an organizational entity, is as alive as ever. My ecclesiology has changed. Leaving a denomination does not mean leaving the church. It may simply mean a fresh start as it was in the case of Martin Luther. Those who left the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation did not leave the Church of Jesus Christ. We are not dividing the real invisible Church.

The Holy Spirit is active, still calling and leading and guiding those who gather in the Name of Jesus; building the real church.

Be of good cheer, take heart, have courage!

Jesus promised not to leave you. You may go different ways and seek different church families. Some of you want to be in a Canadian Lutheran Church like CALC or LCC. Some will find a home in NALC or LCMC. It is important that we do not compete but support each other in the cause to stand up for the authority of Holy Scriptures. We all need each other and must work together.

These are good times for the Church of Jesus Christ. Our congregations will not have all that many lukewarm Christians anymore.

You will be with people who are not going to church because it is a tradition. Yes, there will be some hurt. That always comes with disturbed human relations. I personally find that to be true.  Smile. Be of good cheer.  God is with you! There are good days ahead for you because they are God’s days.

The failure of dissent? Perhaps our witness was not in vain. New beginnings or another reformation, a reshaping, forming something different, a forming of a new wine skin?

If it is God’s will, the Holy Spirit will guide you. May God have mercy on us all.