Monday, November 29, 2010

Sweet to address LCMS educators in Cincinnati, March 2011

Will Sweet's biggest fan be there to listen and learn?
"Beam me down, Klaatu."



Sweet to address LCMS educators in Cincinnati, March 2011


Sweet is addressing educators again, it’s looking more apparent that the Missouri Synod is heavily invested in  Post Modern Emergent philosophy.
This is the fourth time that Dr. Sweet is speaking to educators.  If you input  Sweet’s name in a search engine it delivers 657,000 hits,  many of them very critical of his work and theology.  
The man is a human theological piƱata  and poster boy for everything wrong with modern Christianity.  It’s not a big secret,  he’s been stigmatized for quite a while. The LCMS looks really stupid retaining this speaker, I’m embarrassed for them. Well, they’re not stupid people, they PREFER SWEET over Luther.  

It’s as if the hoi polloi are saying to the people to whom doctrine still is important... “I KNOW WHAT I WANT TO BELIEVE, AND I PREFER IT,  EVEN IF IT ISN’T COHERENT IN A LUTHERAN ENVIRONMENT.” 
And, that’s why the LCMS has all these bizarre practices and weird pastors,  DP’s, and a strange Director of Church Theology and Church Relations (CTCR), Dr. Samuel Nafzger who works to make all this strange stuff fit together.

On another tack, I wonder if the LCMS is Sweet’s biggest client? 
He should write a book on his experience with Lutherans, a good title would be: 
“How finding leaders in the Lutheran religious community, who can’t think critically, will pave your way to a bestseller and provide lucrative speaking engagements”.


I read the following clip and thought to myself, (knowing what I now know about the LCMS), if I had a child in the LCMS educational system, I’d be pulling them out right now even if the semester wasn’t over.   

Leonard Sweet has agreed to keynote the 2011 Convocation. His presentation content and style are guaranteed to make you think—and think a lot!  Online source

My child, in a public school, would have a better chance of avoiding incoherent thinking skills associated with the PoMo culture because we would already be aware that the public school is a hostile environment and be prepared for it. Plus, the public schools have to avoid promoting religion, that is regulated by law.  

It’s one thing to have a secular teacher attempting transformational consensus philosophy upon your child and another thing to have a religious authority or Lutheran organization doing the same thing.  The religious aspect makes it all rather reprehensible.

The PoMos  Transformationals are mostly concerned about ‘behavior’ as opposed to truth, fact or being grounded in reality.   The anti-thesis of Post Modern thinking is logical, rational, linear, and propositionally based thinking.  

I’m certain there are probably many good Lutheran educators that care and aren’t captive to incoherent PoMo Emergent thinking, but there is a weird and growing pattern emerging.  Sweet gave two presentations in Wisconsin, another appearance scheduled for January 2011 in Florida, and now this LEA conference in March, 2011,  this is a growing trend. 

I have to question the motives and the discernment practices of LCMS educational administrators,  the very people in control of the strategic educational planning for Lutheran youth who make decisions that would not be in the best interests of my offspring.  

I have to question the motives and intent of the  Director for the LCMS Council on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) Dr. Nafzger and SP Kieschnick even more. These were the first people who sanctioned this person and put him among Lutherans. 

The current administration tacitly approves, since by their silence this goes forward without an objection.

The debate that will never happen in our Lutheran community is the one that should, and it all centers around how far away from historical, sound Lutheran doctrine the synod has drifted or how sinners are justified. 
  
The pastoral fraternity will never allow it----too many relationships and that is valued more than truth. The LCMS is a federation of sects often referred to as ‘affinity groups’.  Bill Hybels may be the de facto bishop of the NID.

  
The fraternal loyalty among the clergy, seminary and administrators is stronger than loyalty to Biblical Truth which is a good example how false doctrine, cohort learning (Sweet) and his EPIC model prevails over doctrine and Scripture in this present day anthropocentric church environment.   


“Postmodernists believe that truth is myth, and myth, truth. This equation has its roots in pop psychology. The same people also believe that emotions are a form of reality. There used to be another name for this state of mind. It used to be called psychosis.”