Lutheran (EL
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
Be rooted in Christ!
Posted on 07/01/2012 10:06:22 AM PDT by lightman
Or how about 12 steps for ELCA dissenters? (With some apologies to my friends who are in recovery, knowing they will not take offense.)
1. We admitted that we were powerless over ELCA Assemblies and our churches had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a power outside the ELCA could restore us to orthodoxy.
3. We made a decision to turn our lives over to the care of this power as we understood it, whether it be NALC or LCMC.
4. We made a searching and fearless inventory of our constitutions, looking for escape clauses.
5. We admitted to our Bishop, the synod council, and all our members that we wanted out.
6. We were entirely ready to have NALC and LCMC remove all of our defects.
7. We humbly (or not so humbly) asked them to fix our churches.
8. We made a list of all persons we had to break fellowship with and became willing to do so in all Christian charity.
9. We broke fellowship instantly when possible, except when to do so would bring our congregations into civil courts.
10. We continued to take measure of our orthodoxy, and when we strayed, promptly admitted it.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation and our mission support to improve our conscious contact with God through the NALC or LCMC, asking only that they keep us out of the clutches of the ELCA.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carried the message to other ELCAers and get them to come with us.
http://www.youcanbuildasandcastle.wordpress.com
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
Be rooted in Christ!
1) You come to realize and accept that any time you let an ordinary man start a new Christian denomination and interpret scripture on their own, your church will inevitably have some errors on faith and morals.
2) You join the Catholic Church and take comfort in the fact they will NEVER change their stance on abortion, gay bishops, etc.
;-)
Yes. These twelve steps don’t make much sense to me.
1. You turn to God and ask for His grace and enlightenment to find the true Church.
2. You read up on the Bible, the Church Fathers, theology, and history.
3. You follow God’s guidance to the true Church.
That took me from the Episcopal Church to the Catholic Church. I hope that those who disagree with that outcome will at least agree that you do not find God or his True Church by consulting with committees of bewildered ELCA members.
Church= let's read it and talk about it.
I was sitting in my ELCA church in Middleburg Huights, Ohio this morning, and a guest speaker was called to the podium to speak on her three weeks spent at Trinity Seminary in Columbus, Ohio.
The three weeks spent at Trinity is to bring in those high school students who may be interested in becoming an ELCA pastor after completing High School.
This your female speaker talked about what a moving experience it was to go through classes covering religion, theology, and politics, as well as to work with MENTOR groups.
So what mentor group was she assigned to? The LBGTQ, (Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Gay, Transgender and queer), mentors of course! The LBGTQ mentors spent a day mentoring the young lass over the homeless situation in Columbus Ohio.
Right.
I about fell out of my chair when she said LBGTQ from the PULPIT, and was further moved to vomit when I looked across the silver haired crowd and saw nothing but smiles on the unknowing faces of my congregation.
I do not want my children involved with the ELCA’s systemic institutionalization of these degenerate lifestyles. This church has been my wife’s family church for generations.
Pulling her from the church council and out the door will be no simple task.
Disgusting.
Fortunately in central OH you are surrounded by many fine LCMC and NALC congregation. National NALC office is in metro Columubus in the Upper Arlington area.
Swim the Tiber!
Gosh, lightman, the “ignore” function on Forum Message Board doesn’t protect me at all when you post Austin’s ravings on FR. Just sayin . . .
I simply could not resist...the perennial ECLA apologist at his best (worst)?
I lurk there very infrequently for the same reason...
Bosporus*, more likely, but yes, I truly understand.
*Can't do Greek characters in a tag line, though.
You mean like the inquisition.
The Catholic Church was "wrong" about the inquisition the way Joseph McCarthy was "wrong" about the red scare. McCarthy was a nasty and self-agrandizing drunk but those of us who know the facts know he was right about communists infiltrating government, regardless of how the media has convinced the public otherwise.
The Catholic clergy at time resorted to cruel and overzealous measures, but they were right about crypto-Muslims infiltrating Spain at the time. I'd like to see what Protestants would have done if they had just taken back a country that had been under forcible Islamic rule for centuries.
Wrong is wrong. Why would I trust the interpretation of scripture to a fallible, human, institution which has alwasy done so in a manner specifically intended to enhance and increase its own worldly power?
Just keep trying and praying. It took me a good 3 years to leave the ELCA once I realized that they were going downhill.
It took my father 6 more years after that. Even after he called me up one day and ranted about how disgusted he was with the ‘sermon’ that he’d recently heard about some guy getting into the pulpit and ranting about how conservatives didn’t care about world hunger.
And then there was the response when he told them that his son—me—is an LCMS seminarian. It was, “I’m sorry,” in a very condescending tone of voice.
I prayed and tried to talk to him for a long, long time after that, trying to get him to leave that place and go to a church that HADN’T lost its lampstand. But eventually he did. He went to a local LCMS church for one Sunday service. And when he heard the Gospel being preached and taught there, he called me up and basically told me that he never wanted to go back to the ELCA.
Just keep praying.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.