We Can't Disengage
by Lawrence White*Our America is in deadly peril. The issues currently under debate among us will not merely determine what kind of future America will have, but whether or not America will have a future at all. That's a difficult concept for Americans to comprehend.
We are an incurably optimistic people. God has poured out His blessing upon us in such incredible abundance that we have come to imagine ourselves immune from the patterns of history, but we are not exempt from the judgment of God. Righteousness - exalts a nation, our sin is a disgrace to any people, and that includes America.
I have two sons: Adam, who is 23, and Aaron, who is 21. I had the opportunity a year ago to take my two boys to Germany. A few days after our arrival in Berlin, December 26, we drove out of the city into the countryside to a little country town called Oranienburg.
No one would ever have heard of this place except for the fact that Heinrich Himmler chose this little town as the site for one of his prototype concentration camps. A horrible place, ironically named Sachsenhausen-the home of the Saxons.
A Grim Lesson
It was a grim and a forbidding day, and the memorial at Sachsenhausen was empty. My sons grew quiet as we walked through the iron gates of the camp with the lying slogan there engraved, "Arbeit machtfrei," promising the inmates that if they cooperated, if they worked, they might get free. They didn't. They died in that place.
We walked across the vast expanse where the barrack once stood, through the museums that show the horrendous medical experiments conducted on living human beings, who were categorized as less than human because of their race. We saw the piles of human hair and children's shoes, and finally, at the northeastern corner of the camp, we walked through the ovens where the bodies of the dead were burned.
On this third day after Christmas there was a faded and withered Christmas wreath on the ground in front of the oven. The slogan on the ribbon beneath that wreath said, "From the Christians of Germany. We kneel before God in bitter regret, and humble repentance, and we ask His forgiveness for the death of the Jews and all the others who died in this dreadful place."
The Christians of Germany learned only too late that God's people in Christ cannot disengage from the culture in which they live. They retreated into the comfortable security of their sanctuaries, they sat in their padded pews, they kept their religion and their politics strictly separate from one another, and their nation was destroyed. That retreat was encouraged and facilitated by the endlessly repeated lie of the absolute separation of church and state.
Pastor Martin Niemoeller, one of the few Christian heroes who stood against the tide in those grim days, would later look back on a meeting that took place in 1934 in Hitler's Reich Chancellery in Berlin as the moment he recognized that his country was doomed.
Confronting Hitler
Hitler called together the most important pastors, the leading preachers of the land, to stifle their criticism, to calm their fears, to bring them into line. He moved through the crowd that day patting the preachers on the back, making them feel important, stroking their egos, promising them that their tax exemptions were safe and secure, that their state subsidies would continue, that the Church of Jesus Christ had nothing to fearfrom a Hitler government.
Finally, young Pastor Niemoeller had had enough. He pushed his way to the front until he stood eye to eye with the German dictator and he said, "Our concern, Herr Hitler, is not for the church. Jesus Christ will take care of His church. Our concern is for the soul of our nation."
It was immediately evident that the brash, young pastor spoke only for himself as his chagrined colleagues hustled him away to the obscurity of the back of the room. Hitler, with a natural politician's instinct, noted their reaction and recognized exactly what it meant. He smiled, as he said reflectively, almost to himself, "The soul of Germany-you can leave that to me."
And they did. They looked the other way, they minded their own business, they kept their religion and their politics separate from one another, and the innocent were slaughtered, and the nation was led down the path to destruction.
Time to Be Salt and light
My friends, it's happening again. It's happening here in our beloved America. Once again, the innocent are being slaughtered in a 26-year abortion holocaust that makes Hitler look like a humanitarian by comparison. Once again, every time a Christian, particularly a Christian pastor, raises his voice in a matter of public policy, the immediate hue and cry from the liberal media and the intellectual elite is, "Wait a minute, we have a separation of church and state in this country. You Christians, you keep your morality to yourselves." As history repeats itself, they smile reassuringly as they tell us, "The soul of America you can leave that to us."The Time Has Come
My friends, the time has come, and has long since passed, for us to stop listening to and being immobilized by these lies from the father of lies. The time has come for us instead, finally, to pay heed to the Word of the Lord God Almighty, and be what He has placed us here to be-the stinging salt that stops the decay of death, the shining light that dispels the darkness of doubt and despair, the gleaming city set high upon a hill that shines as a beacon light of hope and life to this nation and to every nation.
God has given us this chance to reclaim our country. He has given us the power and presence of His Holy Spirit within us in the revelation of His
Word- inspired and inerrant. He has given us this moment in history to be His people so that generations yet unborn may look back upon today and thank God forthe Christians of America who snatched their country from the brink of destruction.
Let us take heart and courage my fellow believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us be what God has called and enabled us to be. Let us stand arm in arm, united as one, and declare to this nation and to this world: "The soul of America- you can leave that to us,"Dr. Lawrence White is the senior pastor of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Houston. This warning to believers not to disengage from American culture was given in February to the 1999 Reclaiming America for Christ Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Unity And/Or Truth
Martin Luther
"The world maintains, as do many people whodo not understand, that we should not fight so hard about an article and thus trample on Christian love; rather, although we disagree on one small point, if we agree on everything else, we should give in and overlook the difference in order to preserve brotherly and Christian unity and fellowship."
"No, my dear man, do not commend peace and unity to me when thereby God's Word is lost ••.• The Word was given unto us for eternal life and not to further outward peace and harmony .... Therefore, do not talk to me about love and friendship if that means breaking with the Word or the faith, for the Gospel does not say love brings eternal life, God's grace, and all heavenly treasures, but instead 'the Word'."
- Luther's comments on 2 Cor. 13:8: "For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth."
What Are You Going to Do Now
by George H Muedeking, EditorAfter the Denver ELCA Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), my good friend Pastor Charles Austin challenged Attorney James Torgerson, the editor of the LUTHERAN COMMENTATOR, "My question to you now is, What sort of church people are you going to be? The church has chosen a path. Are you willing to walk it? Or - if this is a matter of status confession is for you (and I cannot imagine that the simple requirement that a bishop be the one to ordain into Word and Sacrament ministry could be that!) then will it break your fellowship with the ELCA? Austin was referring to the approval of the document CCM [Called to Common Mission] as the basis for future interrelations with the Episcopal Church USA. Since I subscribe to that newsletter, I suppose Charles would include me in the aspersion, "What sort of church people ... "
And my admired friend, Edgar Trexler, editor of the ELCA's official periodical, the LUTHERAN, is even more agitated. In his October editorial he reported the ominous news, "Now, at the time for healing, CCM opponents are planning 'what do we do now' regional gatherings this month and national gatherings in November and March." The Fellowship of Confessional Lutherans (FOCl), after earnest study for the last two years on how warm and helpful relationships with the Episcopalians could be advanced in a way most faithful to our Lutheran heritage, came to the conclusion that the CCM was a faulty, disloyal and disruptive way to achieve the goals of Christian fellowship among denominations. So we too will have earned Ed's opprobrium, "CCM opponents," who can be expected to show up at these questionable events he foresees across the ELCA.
THE WHAT AND THE WHY
What could possibly be the reasons that such "opponents" didn't just fawningly roll over and join in an hallelujah chorus over the Assembly decision? FOCl -POINT, the news letter of the Fellowship of Confessional Lutherans, owes its readers an assessment of why CCM won the approval of the 27 people-out a church membership of 5.2 million-whose affirmative votes pushed the CCM over the top. For it was widely predicted throughout the church, that CCM would not be supported at Denver.
What was passed and why it was passed, do still concern us. In this analysis we shall use the term, "WordAlone Alliance" for these so-called "opponents," because they contend that the Denver action violated the Lutheran Church's centuries-old insistence that it allows only the Word of God to determine its relationships with other Christians: 'The church is the assembly of saints in which the Gospel is taught purely and the sacraments are administered rightly. For the true unity of the church it is enough to agree concerning the teachings of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments. " (Article VII, AUGSBURG CONFESSION.). CCM's imposition of an "Historic Episcopate"(HE) upon the ElCA as the unconditional requirement to extract an approval from the Episcopal Church for continued official relationships with that church, is understood by WordAlone Alliance people to be in flat violation to that Article VII.
An HE doctrine claims that from St Peter on, an unbroken line of bishops passed on the special grace that sets a bishop off from the rest of the baptized members. So the bishop alone has the divinely given power to ordain and make priests for the church. These in turn alone have the power to make the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper happen.
A church like the ELCA which teaches the doctrine of the Universal Priesthood of All Believers, should have had no difficulty in recognizing the biblical deviancy which GGM introduced to our Lutheran faith. Paragraph 5, for example, states that GGM requires the office of bishop as an instrument "necessary to . . . safeguard the unity and apostolicity of the church." This is not Lutheran teaching, nor has it ever been Lutheran teaching.
THE NON-NEGOTIABLE HE
The historic actuality of that "unbroken succession" is itself highly suspect as an historical fiction, according to the great majority of scholars. So to demand it as a condition for church unity is to compromise the biblical witness that Jesus Christ, the Word of God Himself, is sufficient to identify the Church and to be its single basis for unity. As one observer noted, "Lutherans have traditionally held that because all people are sinful, no group in the church 'safeguards' the gospel. The gospel, Luther held, safeguards itself."
How could this essential disconnect be resolved by the Denver Assembly, the disconnect between the obdurate insistence that "full communion" had to include an HE (that, or nothing, said our Presiding Bishop in instructing the CCM authors), and the Lutheran doctrinal commitment to the Priesthood of ALL Believers? This disconnect represents the choice between sacrificing TRUTH for the sake of UNITY, or UNITY for the sake of TRUTH.
The CCM's solution was simple, as one of its authors suggested, "You don't have to believe it; you just have to do it." To begin an HE process, bring in an Episcopal bishop every time an ELCA bishop is put into office, and within a generation every bishop will have been lined up correctly. At that point, and only then, the Episcopal Church will graciously declare that "full communion" with the ELCA has finally been achieved. So goes the CCM.
Lutheranism through the centuries has been notorious for insisting on biblical fidelity and total theological integrity. Even the proponents of the CCM hoped out loud that the ELCA would teach the Episcopal Church a few things about theology, if only we would get together in "full communion." Episcopalians might even get serious about removing its heretics like Bishop John Spong, Bishop JAT. Robinson, and Bishop James Pike. We could have fully expected then that the theological and administrative leadership of the ELCA would have taken extreme care to see that the Assembly kept faithful to its biblical roots and to its Augsburg Confession's witness of our ELCA beliefs.
What happened instead was that the doctrinally suspect aberration of an HE was foisted upon the ELCA as the "non-negotiable" (Presiding Bishop Anderson) price for "full communion."
THE MANY WHYS
We are left with the second question, "Why did this happen?" Why did the ELCA give up its understanding of TRUTH for the sake of UNITY?
That itself could be a non-question, in view of the pervasive cultural climate these days that all Truth is relative, in this case, relative to a society which values tolerance and pluralism above all else, and makes "Can't We All Just Get Along?" its mantra. But should it be so in the Church, which claims TRUTH Himself as its Leader?
As in every sociological event, a number of factors contributed, and what follows is a review of some of them, as enunciated by observers at the scene.
Of major importance is, first, "Who were the actors who voted in the CCM?" This question involves both the ELCA beliefs about what Christ's Church is, and the platform of representational democracy upon which the ELCA governance is presumably based.
Those who acted to pass the CCM were not "delegates" to the Assembly. This the ELCA administration pronounced, before the sessions began. They were only "voting members," according to the ELCA constitution. They did not represent the people who had sent them to Denver. That is, they owed no accountability whatsoever to those who sent them to Denver from the 65 synod assemblies which elected them.
How could such an egregious assertion have been honestly promoted? A theological rationale was offered that it was the ELCA itself which was gathering at Denver, not representatives of the 5.2 million ELCAers. The Denver Assembly is the "church-wide expression" of the ELCA. All by itself, the Denver Assembly was all of, and the only, ELCA there was, for those seven days.
Of course that means that the ELCA for that week was no better than the famous Cheshire cat-it just went out of existence and disappeared forever when the "voting members" went home. That Church-wide Assembly left nothing but its slowly fading smirky smile. It owed no accountability to anyone except itself when it was first called to order; it also had no accountability for any continuing relationship with the ELCA members after its final Amen.
What an utter contrast this is with the Savior's assurance that even the gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church Eternal, a Church which never can nor will go out of existence. With a magician's wand of parliamentary fiat, that particular ELCA appeared for seven days, and then disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again.
One can therefore understand why Editor Trexler and the ELCA officials are so exercised by the prospect of WordAlone Alliance meetings across the church to plan for "What Are We Going to Do Now?" If Denver had no accountability to the ELCA membership, then the ELCA membership has no accountability to Denver either.
AND SO, OVER THE HUMP!
The manipulative declaration that delegates were not delegates and so should "vote only their conscience" enabled persuasive mechanisms to be put into place to get CCM over the hump. Five pro-CCM platform speakers against one anti-, for example. Or an array of high-powered executives from the Episcopal Church, the Lutheran World Federation, and the ELCA's Reformed Church partners, all on one side of the issue, were paraded before the so-called "non-delegates." In his editorial, Trexler assessed this maneuver as, "[These] speeches ... probably turned the tide." As a result, "voting members," like one dear lady from the NE Iowa Synod were persuaded to vote for CCM because as she put it, "All we were voting on was to be able to exchange pastors and to worship in each other's churches, and that was all."
That all convention bureaucrats like to have washable brains seated in front of them is nothing new. But in this case the issue had profound results. According to Dr Mark Granquist of St Olaf College, as of August 3rd, only 13 days before Denver, 60 of the 65 synods had met. Twenty of them had rejected CCM, while 19 had affirmed the document. The remainder had not taken a position on the issue. Of the affirming synods only 12 approved CCM by more than the two-thirds needed for eventual approval. The 20 rejecting synods represented approximately 35% of the ELCA's total membership, while those affirming CCM represented but 25% of ELCA members.
And Pastor Mark Richardson reported that already by June 22nd, the synods which passed a resolution supporting CCM by more than the required 66%, and/or defeated an alternative resolution-which did not require an Historic Episcopate and was called the Mahtomedi Resolution represented 1,185,158 baptized members (or 23% of ELCA baptized membership). The synods which considered CCM, but REJECTED IT (via Mahtomedi) or FAILED TO SUPPORT IT BY MORE THAN 66%, represented 3,112,851 baptized members (or 60% of the ELCA baptized membership).
With lopsided reports coming in like that, it was small wonder the ELCA administration wanted the Denver gathering to believe they were "voting members" rather than "delegates." They could then the more easily be persuaded to vote against the express wishes of what was surely a majority of the ELCA members, let alone not being near the required 2/3rds approval.
So 716 people, with their defined "no-accountability-to-anyone" except themselves, and no responsibility for their actions to anybody at all after the last Denver Amen was said, voted in favor of CCM. And thus they put the ELCA into conflict with its own Confessional declarations, and beat down the clearly expressed preferences of their ELCA fellow members.
VESTED-(MENTS) INTEREST
WordAlone Aliiance people see a second problem with the manner in which the CCM was presented for vote. Before Denver, only two bishops came out as publicly opposed to the CCM; the rest either went public with their approval, or in a few cases, played their cards close to the vest. In view of the fact that this was a vote which would totally impact their position as bishops, one would expect-as in the most secular of occupations-that they would one and all have refrained from voting. To vote would be a "conflict of interest." Not a legal question, of course, but certainly a sensitive ethical issue.Sixty-five bishops-courteously not voting in order to avoid a conflict of interest.
But CCM won by only 27 votes. Does anyone see a connection between those two numbers, 65 minus 2, and 27? At the least, there would seem to be connection enough to warrant some meetings on the topic, "What Do We Do Now?"YOU WANT MISSION?
Ostensibly, the CCM was to be approved because the ELCA could "advance Mission." Even the title of the document championed that idea. A few isolated and struggling parishes were repeatedly cited (as in the LUTHERAN's August editorial), to show where Episcopal or ELCA clergy could be substituted in otherwise vacant parishes. As the NEW YORK TIMES reported, "A major reason cited by Lutheran and Episcopalian supporters of the proposal was that it would allow the denominations to pool resources, particularly in rural and inner-city areas where congregations are often small and financially hard pressed." Proponents somehow always forgot to mention that under the terms of the Interim Agreement between ECUSA and the ELCA, which has been in force for more than a decade, such vacancies were already covered.
This third impulse toward approving the CCM-for its "mission" potential has a peculiarly hollow ring to it, however. The ELCA's performance for mission outreach, both at home and abroad, has been anything but stunning. Its example has been surpassed only by the Episcopal Church itself, which lost 30% of its membership since the 1960s, and by the United Church of Christ with which the ELCA entered so eagerly into full communion two years ago. It lost 50% of its membership in the same time. Might the ELCA's passion for mission, wishfully to be expressed by passing the CCM, actually be burdened by a death wish, hooking up with other losers like that?MAKING HISTORY
When the news reports of the Denver Assembly are surveyed, it comes clear that to the reporters at least, a single most powerful idea had captured the "voting members'" decision to support the CCM. It was that their vote would change church, yes even world, history. In fact, that was the very word of the Presiding Bishop, H. George Anderson, after the vote was announced, ""Today we have made history."
How so? Because up to this moment, the Anglican (Episcopal) Church has proudly accepted the name, "The Bridge Church." It's liturgy and administrative structures were similar to Roman Catholicism; its repudiation of papal headship made it similar to Protestantism. At Denver, that bridge metaphor was successfully challenged. From now on-world-look to the ELCA to be ecumenism's bridge, the new history-maker! .
As one ELCA seminary president put it to the Assembly, "No one would have picked Lutherans as likely to be ecumenical leaders. Now others look to us for our leadership." The ELCA had already reached out to pure Protestantism with the denominational relationships it established with the Reformed churches at its previous Philadelphia Church-wide Assembly. It had at that time also cozied up to Roman Catholicism by approving a statement that says it no longer disagrees with the Roman Catholic doctrine of "infused grace" and the necessity of good works for salvation. It did this by agreeing that the condemnations which had been pronounced by Roman Catholicism at the Council of Trent against the central and foundational biblical doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone, were no longer applicable. Surely, the ELCA could get along with anybody. So why not include the Episcopalians too? "Today we can make history!"
At this moment, red danger signal lights should have been flashing over and flooding the voters' hearts. Ecumenical agreements, for which the shrinking main-line protestant churches have bargained so desperately in these last years, might also be seen as a last ditch stand by those churches to make history before they become history. If there is anyone thing the Bible warns clearly about, it is to beware of hubris, the sin of pride.
That the ELCA, with its paltry 80 million dollar budget, would become church history's ecumenical paragon by the simple act of voting to approve the CCM, was heady wine indeed for 716 voting members. But it is infinitely dangerous to the ELCA's humble walk with God. From the days of Martin Luther we know it as the contest between "the theology of glory" and "the theology of the cross."
So, "What are you going to do now?" One ELCA seminary president proposed an answer, as he gloated to the SEA TILE POST-INTELLIGENCER reporter that he hoped all the whimperers would now shut up. FOCl will not whimper, bless your soul, Mr. President. But FOCl will continue to encourage a return to the biblical, evangelical and confessional heritage of our church. Which means it may even have to show up at one of those ominous WordAlone Alliance meetings, and/or support the word-alone internet website at: www.wordalone.org. May God bless FOCl's commitment and forgive any inadequate performance.
A BETTER WAY:
While Hollywood and Spike Lee have now dirtied us with another take ("Summer of Sam") on the gruesome account of the murder spree of "Son of Sam," the continuing story of David Berkowitz is a glorious testimony to the power of Jesus Christ. Ten years ago, and serving a non-parole sentence of 150 years, another inmate told him that Jesus Christ both loved him and had a purpose for his life. Berkowitz didn't believe it, but alone in his cell he read Psalm 34 where 'this poor man cried out and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.' "I poured out my heart to God," Berkowitz said. After 11 years, he remains committed to Christ, with a "burning desire to reach as many as possible with the Good News of Jesus Christ, and with a warning that the devil is a liar, a killer, and that everything he promises comes to nothing." Today "Son of Sam" has become the "Son of Hope," a name he believes God gave him to mark his profound transformation in Christ. "The WORD is more powerful than any two-edged sword!" (Heb.4:12)
I WANT TO BE PRESIDENT WHEN I GROW UP:
Judge Wright's contempt ruling against Clinton in the Paula Jones trial said that sanctions needed to be imposed against him, who "undermined the integrity of the judicial system." So she imposed the sanction of contempt, "to deter others who might consider emulating the president." Ponder that! All children who aspire to be president of the US someday, must now be cautioned against "emulating the president."
HOW'S THIS FOR IRONY:
The chief guardian of the laws of this nation responded to Littleton by imploring parents to "shield our children from violent images and experiences that warp young perceptions and obscure the consequences of violence." That same guardian vetos bills banning three-fourths-birth abortion in which the mother acquiesces in having the back of her baby's neck pierced with scissors while being born, the brains sucked out, the skull crushed and the lifeless form extracted by forceps and thrown away. Parents shielding children from images of violence?
THE CHURCH AS AN ADVOCACY GROUP:
At this year's Associated Church Press convention in Portland, its keynoter was Senator Mark Hatfield. One of the Church's Evangelicals most appreciated in Washington and a staunch advocate of Christian values in government, he startled the assembly with his opinion that as a Christian he thought churches would have more influence in Washington, D.C. if they were to make more pastoral visits, rather than advocacy appearances, at Congress "There are a lot of hurting people on Capitol Hill," he asserted.
?The Trial:
The spectacle of pompous Republican senators in the impeachment trial of William Jefferson Clinton, breathlessly jumping through the hoops held before their noses by an utterly skillful minority Democrat party, should not be forgotten. It will rank as one of history's prime examples of a failure of moral persuasion to motivate. As carefully as the "separation of powers" doctrine was crafted by
our Constitution's fathers, in practice it was not able to blunt the greediness and lust for power which it was designed to hold in check. With no single negative Democrat vote in either house of Congress, and despite their own effusive laments and asseverations of loathing over the lies and perversions by the holder of America's highest office, politicians put their politics first.
As many a commentator noted, it was no less than remarkable how totally in sync were the consciences and the prospects of survival in office. Led around by the media polls that said the American public was uninterested, bored and dismissive of the issue of honesty and integrity in the White House, the self-described statesmen with theirvotes acquitted the guilty and denied the link between private and public behavior.
It is difficult to describe a more ominous future for this nation than to have a citizenry which claims overwhelming majority church-membership to be so indifferent to demanding accountability for moral integrity and decency in our leaders. Remember, the bulk of that citizenry claim church membership. Simply stated then, "Where were all these numerous Christians who profess allegiance to the Ten Commandments while they stayed mute from December through February while that trial was going on? Or did pollsters pick only non-Christians to interview?"
Pollster George Barna (Focl-Point,v9#3) indicated the probability that the church member's voice-if it was to be heard at all-as Soren Kierkegaard would say, was not "Christianly." We have reached the point in the history of the Church in this land where the Christian word and deed is virtually indistinguishable-because it is no longer distinguished. There is no appreciable and marked difference between the thoughts and behaviors of believers and nonbelievers. If we needed more confirming evidence than Barna provided for us, the Clinton trial will suffice.
Satis Est Scholarships Awarded
Mrs. Dee Posey, chair of the scholarship awards committee of the Fellowship of Confessional Lutherans announced the1999 theological scholarships winners at the board's September meeting. Recipients forthe $1000 stipends were Pastor Ken Sundet Jones from St Paul, MN, and Pastor William Wiecher from Platz, NY.
Dr Herbert Schaefer, President of FOCl explained, that the Satis Est scholarship program of FOCl is to "further the equipping of pastors to preach and teach the Scripture as the source and norm of all theology and life, and rightly to administer the Sacraments in accordance with the Ecumenical Creeds and the Lutheran Confessions. Our program for the theological enhancement of ElCA clergy has been so named," said
Schaefer, "for this is the only principle (Augsburg Confession, chpt. 7) according to which the Lutheran Church is to determine its partnership with other churches in the outreach of the Gospel-'It is sufficient' (salis est).
"The scholarships," Schaefer continued, "are intended for those who profess the infallibility of the Scripture for our salvation. and who hold the Lutheran Confessions to be a true exposition of the Holy Scripture which serve as a guide and test for the study and pursuit of theology. By enabling confessionally faithful pastors to continue their education," Schaefer said, "it is hoped this scholarship program will further 'encourage biblical, evangelical and confessional faithfulness to our Christian heritage within the ElCA,' as FOCl's mission statement affirms. The annual grants are another of FOCl's efforts to help bring the ElCA once again to a strong proclamation of the Gospel of Christ's mission in the world,"
He added, "Persons applying for Satis Est scholarships must be pastors serving ElCA congregations and be between the ages of 30 and 55."
Addressing FOCl supporters across the nation, Schaefer said, "If you want to be part of this worthwhile endeavor, send a contribution to FOCl, 333 EI Molino Way, San Jose, CA 98119. We feel that there is no better way to help the ElCA to be a confessional church than by investing in the training of competent confessional pastors."