Ablaze!
I do not believe I have ever publicly expressed my thoughts on this program. I think I'll say something brief tonight.
Ablaze is a parasite, leeching off the potential for missionary work by the LCMS. It is a budget black hole. It reads like an ill conceived corporate scheme, and I daresay that any corporate scheme this ambiguous, poorly structured, poorly managed, and unrealistic would end in bankruptcy...wait.
Worse than the fact that this sounds like some loony business craze, it is pillaging the coffers that should be used to spread the Word of God where it cannot be found in its truth and purity. Instead, we are spending it on the aforementioned hair-brained scheme. To find a Lutheran pastor in the United States is no great task. There are lots of us here and we have the ability to receive the sacraments just about anywhere. The church is here; God will provide the faithful.
How many places in the world are there no missions? In how many places are the peoples cut off from the church? Have we recalled missionaries to fund this Willow Creek style debacle?
Bureaucrats dazzled themselves with charts and numbers and slogans, but they neglected the charge which was laid on them. They are commanded to tend God's sheep, but since some of the sheep would not eat their own feed, they took the feed from the hungrier poorer sheep to see if they could tempt the finicky sheep with it. Some eager sheep are left to starve while they shove the hay at a bunch of uninterested goats.
Preach the Word and administer the sacraments, and do so for as many people as you are able. God will supply increase for his church; pastors are merely to position themselves as to readily receive the increase and care for them. We have a paucity of men abroad and a program here that--to all appearances--is no more than weak competition with evangelicals, and an asinine money-pit to boot.
Just my first thoughts. I could be talked into believing that Ablaze$ is a device that has done far more mischief than good.
(Late Edit)
Nah. It's evil.
Ablaze is a parasite, leeching off the potential for missionary work by the LCMS. It is a budget black hole. It reads like an ill conceived corporate scheme, and I daresay that any corporate scheme this ambiguous, poorly structured, poorly managed, and unrealistic would end in bankruptcy...wait.
Worse than the fact that this sounds like some loony business craze, it is pillaging the coffers that should be used to spread the Word of God where it cannot be found in its truth and purity. Instead, we are spending it on the aforementioned hair-brained scheme. To find a Lutheran pastor in the United States is no great task. There are lots of us here and we have the ability to receive the sacraments just about anywhere. The church is here; God will provide the faithful.
How many places in the world are there no missions? In how many places are the peoples cut off from the church? Have we recalled missionaries to fund this Willow Creek style debacle?
Bureaucrats dazzled themselves with charts and numbers and slogans, but they neglected the charge which was laid on them. They are commanded to tend God's sheep, but since some of the sheep would not eat their own feed, they took the feed from the hungrier poorer sheep to see if they could tempt the finicky sheep with it. Some eager sheep are left to starve while they shove the hay at a bunch of uninterested goats.
Preach the Word and administer the sacraments, and do so for as many people as you are able. God will supply increase for his church; pastors are merely to position themselves as to readily receive the increase and care for them. We have a paucity of men abroad and a program here that--to all appearances--is no more than weak competition with evangelicals, and an asinine money-pit to boot.
Just my first thoughts. I could be talked into believing that Ablaze$ is a device that has done far more mischief than good.
(Late Edit)
Nah. It's evil.
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