Territorial Bloggings

The truest indicator that there was really something to the whole “Issues, Etc. Revolution” thing was that yours truly got elected to Synodical office — on the first ballot, yet! — last Friday.

It’s true. The coattails of President-Elect Matt Harrison’s Issues, Etc.-stoked run to the top were wide & strong enough to get me onto the Board of Regents of Concordia University – California (Irvine).

Not too shabby, eh?

Perhaps the most shocking outcome of the convention was the result of the balloting, from the top-spot on down. As Mollie Hemingway stated several times during her daily convention updates on Issues, Etc. this was a land-sea change. The United List, populated with many names known by Issues, Etc. listeners, got 77.7% of its nominees elected. 77.7%!!!

Included in that shockingly high percentage:

• Synodical President
• Synodical Vice-Presidents 1, 2, 4, & 5
• 5 of 6 open slots on the Synodical Board of Directors (including all 4 lay members; and the 1 ordained member was a floor nomination who just happens to be Todd Wilken’s Sr./Admin Pastor…)
• 16 of 20 members on the two new Mission Boards (that Res. 8-08a restructured into existence, replacing the old program boards…)

This was a hugely significant electoral event. I’m still processing everything that we did – good and bad – over our week in Houston. I’m hoping to wring several good posts out of it, at the very least. Some will be more substantial than others, but hopefully they’ll all be as interesting to read as they were to live.

I’ll do my best…

-ghp

Once in a while, amongst all the frustrations of congregational life, you get a win. This past Sunday, I got one when the Voters Assembly approved spending $1000 to become a member of the Issues, Etc. 300!

It wasn’t unanimous, and it took our pastor giving a strong endorsement to help overcome some sentiment that “not everyone has access to computers and/or iPods…”, but a year+ of talking the show up & including weekly blurbs in the bulletin paid off.

Now that it has official buy-in the fun starts, because we can start to more openly use IE material (e.g., Dcs. Nielson’s series w/our SS staff, or some of the Confessions Roundtables when I lead a class on the Confessions starting this Fall…). It’ll also be good reason for us to get to work on refreshing & updating our web site so that any traffic we get isn’t lost/wasted.

I’m just thankful that it finally came to pass. I know Todd & Jeff will make good and proper use of the money. Now we just need to hold up our end of the bargain (’cause I want to make sure this happens again next year!).

-ghp

Now that I’ve finally finished watching & taking notes on all 15 talks in the ALPHA DVD set, the next step is processing those notes into a more cogent & thoughtful format for your consumption. As I continue to do that, I thought I’d put a little teaser out, particularly after I listened to the first hour of Issues, Etc. on 9/11 (Listener Email & Issues, Etc. Comment Line)

Starting at 38:04, emailer Joshua from Tuscon, AZ brought up a great point, related to an earlier discussion about Gospel Reductionism, that dovetailed amazingly well with something that I observed in ALPHA. He posited that, in Evangelical circles, Gospel Reductionism takes the form of “Relational” or “Relationship” Theology.

“Jesus wants to have a relationship with you, and that relationship is the first and most important need in people.” “This is a potent form of Gospel Reductionism.”

(Paraphrasing…) Further, under a “Gospel of Relationships,” the need to differentiate from others (key to the Puritan heritage of Evangelicalism) manifests itself in lifestyle – i.e., the desire to look and act like a Christian, complete with all the markers brought down from Puritanism (no drinking, no questioning authority, no condemnation of non-sanctioned things, etc…) so as to be able to tell who’s in & who’s out.

Recently, however, among 2nd Generation, “Relational” Evangelicals (Rick Warren, the Emergent/Emerging crowd, etc…) there is a tendency to rail against legalism, such that judgments & strong statements/stances (against, say, homosexual marriage/clergy, etc…) are no longer held in as much favor as differentiating markers. (End Paraphrasing)

The linkage to ALPHA is this: This type of “Relational Theology” and “Gospel of Relationships” is very much in line with ALPHA and what it teaches. IOW, ALPHA is quite consistent, both in how it confesses the “Relationship Gospel”, and how it applies & espouses it throughout the whole course.

More details will, of course, be forthcoming, but I can (perhaps too) succinctly summarize ALPHA in the following PRO & CON statements…

PRO: It is internally consistent in hewing to it’s core principles throughout the course.

CON: It is of a different spirit/gospel than Sacramental, Christocentric, Christianity.

-ghp

Long time, no post.

Issues, Etc. has been back for a while now, and it’s better than ever. If you haven’t checked it out yet, do so. Now.

Of particular note is their regular pattern/schedule on Fridays of answering listener email, picking a blog post of the week, and soliciting feedback to determining the Issues, Etc. “Soundbite of the Week”.

I subscribe to the podcast feed via ITunes, and am one of the “on-demand” listeners that they love so much. ;^) I’m at least a week behind, in that I begin each Monday by listening to the past Friday’s email, blog post, & soundbite selections, and then move on to the other good stuff. If/as I have time, I’m then working my way back through the rest of the archives.

Good, good stuff.

-ghp

Long live Pirate Christian Radio!

If you would like to receive email notifications regarding the resurrection
of this Christ-Centered, Cross-Focused program, please email
your name and address to IssuesArising@PirateChristianRadio.com

w00t!

[HT: Weedon]

-ghp

Something that’s come up more often of late is the idea of maintaining an anonymous, or pseudonymous, presence on the ‘net. Largely, my awareness of this has been driven by the spike of activity in the Lutheran blogosphere generated by the Issues, Etc. contretemps.

Rather than deal with the wide-ranging implications of anonymity on the Internet, let me preface my comments by putting them within a slightly more limited context – i.e., that of anonymity within religious communities (e.g., discussion forums, email lists, & the blogosphere).

Beginning with the secondary arena — anonymity & the use of pseudonyms in discussion forums & email lists — I’ll just say that I’m against it. Why? Well, in a nutshell, these forums & lists are largely known & controlled environments. They are not free-for-alls. Take, for example, the CAT41 family of email lists, or the ALPB forum. The CAT41 lists are unmoderated, but do not (with very limited exception) allow anonymous participation. The ALPB forum is moderated, and discourages, but ultimately allows, anonymous participation. Both allow “lurking”, whereby you can read all you want & never let anyone know you were there.

I prefer the CAT41 approach, as difficult as it can be to enforce. If you really want to be anon/pseudonymous, you’re gonna be, especially if you’re willing to skirt the edges of honesty. And being online, who’s to know, right? It’s just that being on religious sites, especially controlled and/or moderated communities, you’d hope that such skirting wouldn’t need to happen. These communities should be safe places to engage in discussions.

I know, there’s that “S” word — should. It’s a loaded word, isn’t it? But if we can’t model good discussion practices in our online communities, doing so in an honest, upfront, and non-anonymous fashion, then do we really have a chance at doing them in our face-to-face communities?

Thus, whenever possible, and with only rare exceptions, I think that anonymous/pseudonymous participation in email lists & discussion forums should be avoided, if not outright banned.

Now on to anonymity in the blogosphere…

I have a little softer line about certain anonymous/pseudonymous blogs. Much like anonymous pamphleteers during Revolutionary War days, and other gadflies throughout history, the anonymous purveyor of objective fact — facts that can be inconvenient to the-powers-that-be — can serve a valuable purpose via the cloak of their anonymity. That cloak need not diminish the import of the facts they provide us. This type of anonymity, then can, and does, serve a good & beneficial purpose, despite the indigestion stirred up in those who would prefer that certain facts not come to light.

Two other types of anonymity in the blogosphere, however, do not escape equally unscathed. Many folks equate anonymity with cowardice. In the previous paragraph, I hope that I showed that for whistleblowers, such is not the case. For another class of anonymous bloggers, however, it most definitely is the case. Many anonymous bloggers are cowards. They hide behind their keyboards & their lack of discernible identity, while they lob grenades at other people. They hurl invective. They weave lies out of whole cloth. They say things with impunity, because, after all, on the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog!

A sub-category of the cowardly anonymous blogger is the anonymous commenter. I know folks are hyper concerned about identity theft & all that, and that’s well & good. But that doesn’t really excuse you from lobbing anonymous blog comment bombs. There are acceptable, ethical ways around it. Worrying about email spam isn’t that much of a worry, because many/most blogs (like mine, or say, WorldMagBlog) don’t publish the email address. What they will publish with your name is a link to a website. So, either man up & put your full name, or (do what I do most of the time) put your initials & link to your website/non-anon-blog — then you can truly stand up & let you yes be your yes & your no be your no!

These last two categories of anonymous blog posters/commenters I would like to see gone, both in the limited scope I laid out at the start of this post, as well as from the larger blogosphere. There’s just not that much discernible value that they bring to the table, as far as I’m concerned, not compared to the amount of hurt & negativity that they routinely inject into the festivities.

As far as the recent Issues, Etc. discussions are concerned, I certainly understand the emotion driving much of the posting & commenting. Frankly, the posting (i.e., that being posted by the bloggers themselves) hasn’t been the biggest problem for me. No, the more worrisome stuff, from a “what were they thinking?” standpoint, has come from the comments to some of those excellent posts. Some of the most out-there, conspiracy-minded, damaging-to-the-cause stuff has been from anonymous commenters.

Being angry is ok. Being stupid isn’t. Clicking send/ok without thinking isn’t.

Anonymity lends itself to all of that, which is why it’s not ok.

-ghp

One of the big, controversial topics at last year’s LCMS national convention was the big push for a special convention in 2009 to deal with a massive restructuring of the synodical constitution. After encountering more resistance than initially anticipated, the special convention was tabled & will now be folded into the next regular convention in 2010.

Over at Extreme Theology, Chris Rosebrough has put out a post — Changing the LCMS — that is, I think, sadly prescient about the current, and future, state of leadership & affairs in the LCMS. In a nutshell, Chris shows that SP Kieschnick is following a large-organization change management guide almost step-by-step. And the next key step is the special convention topic of the radical constitutional restructuring.

It’s really pretty simple. And I’m not even attributing ill intent, no matter how much I disagree with the course of action. I don’t think it’s evil. I think it’s mistaken & ill-advised, but I don’t think anyone is trying to destroy synod out of nefarious intent. No, SPK believes he’s doing the right thing. He’s just wrong in that belief.

It’s all the more interesting to see this in the light of the unfolding controversy surrounding the Issues, Etc. debacle, which is spinning up again today following some new statements by SPK & the Council of Presidents, both of which were heavy on the passive voice bemoaning of conflict & calls to move on, but light on actual answers & claiming of responsibility. If you haven’t already, you’ll want to check out the usual suspects (Augsburg1530 & Weedon’s Blog for good info.

When it comes to writing in general, the passive voice is an ill-advised choice. But when it comes to a controversial situation like this, where mistakes were made & responsibility needs to be taken? It’s downright cowardly & sinful. It’s like I wrote elsewhere earlier today:

It smacks of the all-too-common use of the passive voice to minimize & make a crisis go away.

“Mistakes were made. We need to move on & get past this.”

Yes, but who made the mistakes & why? What will be done to fix these mistakes? To ensure that similar mistakes won’t happen again in the future? What about all of the other related issues & questions that have cropped up as a result of these “mistakes”?

Forgiveness can only be given once repentance has been offered. Even then, forgiveness does not obviate consequences & responsibility for actions.

What was done, and what has come to light certainly seem to be worthy of responsibility and consequences – not blind trust (for that would not be good stewardship on our part, nor does the 8th Commandment demand blind trust…)

I’m just wondering now, how in the world, if at all, a God-pleasing result can be found in all of this. I’m not sure that one can. I think that the best we can do might just be to find the least sinful endgame & play that out…

-ghp

So, I get home from work to day to find the April issue of the LCMS monthly house organ, The Lutheran Witness, in my mailbox. I continue to get it out of an almost morbid curiosity to keep ‘in the know’ about what synod is putting out there as the party line. So its arrival tends to be a relatively uneventful thing, as I don’t expect too much from it, and thus am rarely disappointed. Usually, I buzz through it rather quickly, checking out the letters to the editor, all the official notices, and give at least a cursory glance at the articles, at least to see how Ablaze! they are. Most months, I even get through SPK’s column of inspiration & leadership.

This month, however, as I was paging through, I noticed the graphic at the top of this post, on the bottom of page 25. I said to my self, “Self, this just ain’t right! The very first issue after Issues, Etc. gets killed off of KFUO-AM, having never (to my recollection) been touted in The Lutheran Witness, they have an advert for the COMMERCIAL SIDE of the radio station, NOT THE SIDE ENGAGED IN MISSIONAL OUTREACH, MUCH LESS THE PROGRAM THAT SPECIFICALLY ENGAGED IN CHRIST-CENTERED, CROSS-FOCUSED OUTREACH?” Really?

And, yes, I shouted at myself inside my head. I really did.

Boy, and if all this wasn’t bad enough, I just noticed something that will really make you techie gearheads shake your heads — you’ll note that the link to the Witness’ website has a .asp extension. That got me curious, so I looked up the LCMS family of websites at Netcraft, only to find that the main LCMS website is being run off of a Windows 2003 server box! Yikes!

This all just gets uglier & uglier with each passing day…

-ghp

The whole Issues, Etc. debacle keeps rolling along & picking up steam. I’m not going to try to summarize things here, one because it’s too big & wide ranging for me to pull it off, and two because I think most of the folks who read my stuff are already plugged in to the best sites.

I will say this: Largely because of these three posts

• Issues, Etc. and the Ideology of Hybelspongism
• About that letter to the editor, President K.
• BREAKING: Political motives exposed

I think that we’re getting very close to the point where we will be unable to use rank incompetence as the best-construction explanation of events. Treachery is fast becoming the only feasible explanation, as sad as that is to contemplate.

I hold no illusions that this will cause some grand reformation of the LCMS. It’s too big a corporate entity, with too many folks who depend on (and believe in) it, to go away. This whole sordid tale, however, might just serve a good purpose in that it will open the eyes & hearts of enough folks (lay and clergy) so that good, salutary organizations like the Augustana Ministerium & the Augustana Confraternity can gain critical mass.

-ghp

Now things might start to get really interesting.

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway — LCMS congregation member, former LCMS Board of Communication Services member, and current nationally published writer of news, politics, & religion — has published an article about the whole Issues, Etc. controversy on WSJ.com, the website of the Wall Street Journal.

In the article — Radio Silence — Mollie lays out in devastating fashion just what has transpired over the past week and a half.

And by doing so in a very public way, she could be starting a second wave of controversy – one which might actually hit the Purple Politburo so they’ll take notice, because it’s negative publicity. The outside world might start to ask about all this, and the powers that be aren’t going to look too good when all is said and done.

Here’s a particularly interesting excerpt:

“Despite the show’s popularity, low cost and loyal donor base, Mr. Wilken and Jeff Schwarz, the producer of “Issues, Etc.,” were dismissed without explanation on Tuesday of Holy Week. Within hours, the program’s Web site — which provided access to past episodes and issues of its magazine — had disappeared. Indeed, all evidence that the show ever existed was removed.

So what happened? Initially, the bureaucrats in St. Louis kept a strict silence, claiming that the show had been canceled for “business and programmatic” reasons. Yesterday the synod cited low local ratings in the St. Louis area and the low number of listeners to the live audio stream on the Web site. But the last time the synod tracked the size of the audience was three years ago, and it did not take into account the show’s syndicated or podcast following. The synod also claimed that the show lost $250,000 a year, an assertion that is at odds with those of others familiar with the operating budget of the station.

The Rev. Michael Kumm, who served on three management committees for the station, said that the explanation doesn’t add up. ” ‘Issues, Etc.’ is the most listened to, most popular and generates more income than any other program at the station and perhaps even the others combined. This decision is purely political,” he said.

He may well be right. The program was in all likelihood a pawn in a larger battle for the soul of the Missouri Synod. The church is divided between, on the one hand, traditional Lutherans known for their emphasis on sacraments, liturgical worship and the church’s historic confessions and, on the other, those who have embraced pop-culture Christianity and a market-driven approach to church growth. The divide is well known to all confessional Christian denominations struggling to retain their traditional identity.

The Rev. Gerald Kieschnick, the synod’s current president, has pushed church marketing over the Lutherans’ historic confession of faith by repeatedly telling the laity, “This is not your grandfather’s church.”

Since Mr. Kieschnick narrowly won election in 2001, the church has embarked on a program, called Ablaze!, that has the admirable goal of “reaching 100 million unreached and uncommitted people with the Gospel by 2017,” the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Historically the church kept statistics on baptisms. Now, however, it keeps a tally of what it calls “critical events.” On March 17 a man reported discussing Jesus with his waitress — and the Ablaze! count went up by one.
…
While “Issues, Etc.” never criticized Mr. Kieschnick or his colleagues, its attacks against shallow church marketing included mention of some approaches embraced by the current leadership. It opposed, for instance, the emergent church — an attempt to accommodate postmodern culture by blending philosophies and practices from throughout the church’s history — and the Purpose Driven Church movement, which reorients the church’s message toward self-help and self-improvement.”

Wow. Just… Wow.

Mollie nailed it. Check out the full article and you’ll see.

Thanks, Mollie, for carrying the ball & doing something that needed to be done.

-ghp