Well, seems the sad saga now continues with CUW and Apprising Ministries over this foolish (at best) video “Virgilicious” which was made by some ill-advised Pre-Seminary students. It seems that since I am the one the Lord used in His providence to break this story in the first place, and I have continued to receive letters of a threatening nature from CUW students, then I need to keep my readers up to speed. I was asked if I would refrain from placing the video link online pending a so-called and supposed disciplinary hearing for those involved. Of course I readily agreed.

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. (1 Corinthians 13:11, NASB)

Tyler Wiilams And The Concordia Beacon Re-Open The Door

I had fully intended to let this matter rest. However, last night the Master led me across some disturbing information which is causing me to rethink the whole sorry matter. Amd this was later compounded when I was sent the link today to a post by Pastor Paul T. McCain where he says:

I posted a link to a YouTube video, called “Virgilicious,” created by students at Concordia University in Mequon. It features students dancing and prancing around, in church, in the chancel, at, and in front of, an altar, etc. to a rap song being sung by a guy dressed in vestments, wearing a crucifix, and engaged in various liturgical acts, such as making the sign of the cross and kissing an icon, and praying at the altar, and standing in the pulpit, even engaging in suggestive behavior with a young woman. The young people in the video were shown writhing on the floor around him, and at the communion rail while he used incense. It was, I’m told, supposed to be funny, a spoof, etc. I saw no humor in it, only disrespect, irreverence and sacrilege. (Online source)

This would not be all that surprising for those of us who are familiar with a video called Fergalicious by Fergie, who is “front woman” Black Eyed Peas. Although the video, which has also been nominated for “sexiest video,” is a somewhat cleaner look at what Sodoma and Gomorrah must have appeared like it is still too risqué for me to include a link to it. That aside for now, it was also the above post where I read the following comment which, though I am not a Lutheran, I find myself in total agreement with:

From the standpoint of a Lutheran layperson who has suffered for years under the shallow, 12 minute devotional sermons offered by Lutheran pastoral hirelings these days, I have to say that this video confirms what many of us have suspected for a long time. There are far too many pastors in the pulpit today who do not possess the faintest clue of what it means to hold the Office of the Holy Ministry. There has been a marked decline in the quality and piety of pastors in the last 30 years and it is growing worse all the time. When you compare the Lutheran preaching of the distant past with what passes for “preaching” today, it is downright alarming.

The fire and biblical authority of the old time pastors, preaching the Word has been replaced with video clips from popular movies, to make the sermon “relevant”, constant references to Hollywood and the world’s entertainment as sermon illustrations, and redundant, inane and shallow sermons that most lay people could write with half their brain tied behind their backs. My kids call these kind of pastors we have experienced, “bearded ladies”. All dressed up and nothing to say. Sadly, my kids are too close to the truth. The lack of virility and muscular piety in preaching is the result of a spiritual declension that can be seen in the fruit of the lives of the kids at Concordia in the video that was posted to the world.

The doctrine of sanctification seems to be completely forgotten today in our Lutheran seminaries and churches. Scripture’s injunction in Ephesians to not engage in coarse jesting, foolishness and filthiness was completely and utterly disobeyed in the video the students made. Dr. Maschke showed the video twice in his classes until he was called on the carpet. I fear for the future of this denomination, half of which has sold its soul for man-centered church growth initiatives, the other half far gone on life support in an environment of dead orthodoxy. Neither is the what God intended. Time for another Reformation. (Online source)

The Ecumenical Emergent Church and the Anti-Reformation With Rob Bell

Here in this Part One I’m going to cover a couple of issues, the first of which would be the “man-centered church growth initiatives” that apparently would cause CUW–a Lutheran school–to use the teachings of rabbi wannabe and Reformation-reversing Rob Bell of the neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church. It’s not a huge stretch of the imagination to think that Martin Luther–who when faced with possible death spoke of his mind being held captive by Scripture–would have just a bit of a problem with a supposed Christian Pastor who says in marvelous man-pleasing fashion that he and his wife have long ago begun:

questioning their assumptions about the Bible itself – “discovering the Bible as a human product,” as Rob puts it, rather than the product of divine fiat. “The Bible is still in the center for us,” Rob says, “but it’s a different kind of center. We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it.” (Online source)

Can’t you just see Luther standing there at Worms as he is charged with heresy, which was virtually a death sentence, and the Emperor’s voice thunders at him for the last time: “Will you recant!” Luther takes a deep breath, swallows hard, looks up at him and says:

Now you must understand that I am trying to embrace mystery here and it’s big enough for both of us. After all, we mustn’t try and conquer it for that would be pride. Now the Scriptures are still in the center for me, but it’s a different kind of center. You see, I’m a new kind of Christian who is discovering the Bible as a human product rather than a product of divine fiat.

I cover this further in Rob Bell in a Nutshell: The Bible, but perish the thought because if he’d had been as mealy-mouthed a milquetoast as Rob Bell you wouldn’t even have a Bible in your hands from which to misquote to me for the zillionth time: “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” Uh-huh, and since Luther bravely stood up against the false religion trying to pass itself off as the Lord’s Church, I say to you go back and look in your Bible at John 7:24.

And Rob Bell is currently involved with bringing God’s people back into the self-righteous religious bondage of the apostate Church of Rome. Um, CUW is still a “Protestant” school, right? Bell is doing this, along with the Emergent Church, through so-called “spiritual disciplines” and the contemplative spirituality that flowered in the antibiblical traditions of Roman monasteries. I wrote about this further in Rob Bell in a Nutshell: Contemplative Mysticism and this man-loving semi-pelagian garbage has no place whatsoever in a Lutheran school.

In fact, here is what the great Church Reformer Martin Luther himself had to say about these stupid spiritual disciplines:

Yet all these seeming holy actions of devotion, which the wit and wisdom of man holds to be angelical sanctity, are nothing else but works of the flesh. All manner of religion, where people serve God without his Word and command, is simply idolatry, and the more holy and spiritual such a religion seems, the more hurtful and venomous it is; for it leads people away from the faith of Christ, and makes them rely and depend upon their own strength, works, and righteousness. In like manner, all kinds of orders of monks, fasts, prayers, hairy shirts, the austerities of the Capuchins, who in popedome are held to be the most holy of all, are mere works of the flesh; for the monks hold they are holy, and shall be saved, not through Christ, whom they view as a severe and angry judge, but through the rules of their order.

Have I Now Become Demonic Because I Have Shown The World The Truth?

And now we come around to the other issue I wish to address as I begin to close out this piece. Rev. Dr. Timothy H. Maschke, who is “the Harry R. and June J. Rouse Professor of Pre-Seminary Studies and Recruitment at Concordia University Wisconsin,” and thought by many on campus as Concordia’s finest theologian, and who also appeared in that travesty of a video called “Virgilicious” called me “demonic” for exposing it to the world. And yet when confronted with the information that his reaction to the video had been “” he said this was a lie. However we just read above that he had played this video in his class twice.

Over at Slice of Laodicea in her post “Concordia University Students: ‘Context’ of Blasphemous Video is Everything” Ingrid Schlueter adds:

Their student newspaper (pdf file of the articles here) quotes students as saying that it’s all a matter of context. The video wasn’t intended for the public but for private yuks among the students. That is, in fact, what Dr. Maschke told me personally in a phone call. It was never intended for the public. With what I can only describe as poorly concealed hostility towards me, Dr. Maschke, a participant in this video, claimed he had no idea why, the students wanted him to sit in a chair, fully vested up as a pastor, so they could get a video shot of him. He claims he was “appalled” when he saw the final result. Is that why he reportedly showed the video to students in his class for laughs before it all hit the fan, so to speak? A student reported that Dr. Maschke laughed so hard at the video he was crying. Maschke states that this was a lie. (Online source)

I will have more on this later but for now to whomever it may concern at CUW I suggest that there had better be apologies and discipline forthcoming for that travesty of a video because the your school paper – The Concordia Beacon – put the following spin on the events concerning “Virgilicious”:

Members of the Department of Theology said that the video was promptly removed when some brought it to their attention that the video was available for public access, indicating that the video’s intended audience was not the general public.

“ ‘We made it for…CMLT (Campus Ministry Leadership Team),’ said [Andrew ‘Virgil’] Gerike, who said that the video was viewed at a Leadership event. According to Gerike, Smith told him that the video was being viewed out of context by some who found it inappropriate,…”

So, apparently we are to believe that there is a “context” for this after all and therefore it becomes ok for these “leaders” to mock the ministry and to blaspheme along with CUW’s CMLT as long as you –“the general public” – doesn’t see it. Now I guess you can see why God alerted me to show it to you. Also the portrayal of Ingrid – and particularly me – by the people involved in this article is uncalled for. For now I leave this but I will have more in Part Two about the unrepentant and mocking attitude of Tyler Williams, author of the articles in CUW’s paper, and concerning the people involved.

Being that it all of this is now in the public domain and I have saved a copy of “Virgilicious,” it would seem to be wise to the leadership of CUW to quickly take appropriate action and to publicly discipline these other “leaders,” the two theology professors and their Campus Ministry Leadership Team for producing and encouraging this scandalous skybala.