Details about the “Issues, etc.” return

Ditto. Or Amen.
I sure hope friends of the Cranach blog will tune it in and give it a try.
The best thing about the program, among so many best things, is the listener’s access to some of the greatest minds in Chrisitianity today; giants in knowledge and understanding. Yet they generally take your question AND thank you for asking.

Does anyone know if the new show will be pod cast? Todd and co made my 2 hour commute bearable (although some times infuriating)

Yes, it will be podcast.

I had no idea that KSIV was an evangelical but it makes sense. Let those who have ears…

Can we just send a check to KSIV, will that get into the hands of Todd & Jeff? Thanks!

CRB – donate here:

http://www.piratechristianradio.com/

This will help advance confessional Lutheranism in a positive way…..I am new to the LCMS, and have to say, I never met a confessional Lutheran that shared their faith w/ me or even the “Lutheran difference”. When I lived in Seattle, the only Lutherans I knew were ELCA and pro-abort and pro-homosexual marriage. And the European Lutherans I knew were the same. I never knew there was a distinction, although I had been a Christian for over 10 years (became a believer in college).

Even today when we tell friends we’ve left a non-denom for the LCMS, they are confused. I get asked, “Arent’ they Catholic-lite?” ALL the time.

I wish the LCMS did a better job getting the word out….we might have gotten here sooner.

Perhaps a survey could be done of all LCMS members and present your query to them, that is, *why* do those of ELCA, et al *not* know what we believe, teach
and confess? I have a hunch that many in the LCMS do not even *know* what they believe and would agree with those who think we are “Catholic-lite”!!

Ruthie,

I agree with you. I was raised in Lutheran country — but all I ever really knew was ELCA. Now we’re confessional Lutherans, and I agree — it’s the best-kept secret in Christendom! I want to shout it from the rooftops, especially as I see nondenom/evangelicals around me crashing and burning on the Law.

My other comment is about “Issues, Etc.” I still feel badly that Todd and Jeff were treated so poorly at LCMS headquarters. I hope the Purple Palace People Eaters
get their act together sometime soon. People are more important than budgets and foisting agendas on unwilling people.

I suggest that the LCMS leadership acted quite shrewdly in shutting down Issues, etc.

While there was short-term protest, there were and will be no long-term consequences for the synod. To my knowledge, no protestor left the synod; even the synod pastors who yelped and signed the online petition, still ensure that their churches financially support the LCMS.

Meanwhile, Issues, now broadcasting without LCMS financial support, still proclaims confessional Lutheranism, which encourages many to seek out LCMS churches or to buy materials from the LCMS publication arm, CPH, and by so doing to pour money into the LCMS.

Thus, by cancelling Issues, the LCMS has retained the program’s capacity to earn money for it, without having to bear any of the program’s costs. Also, the LCMS can now disclaim anything said on the new Issues, since it has no LCMS sponsorship. The LCMS goes along, relying on support from its confessional churches without offending its “this-isn’t-your-grandfather’s-LCMS” churches.

The only way this could have gone wrong is if enough protestors had left the synod and taken their wallets with them. But I think that the LCMS leadership shrewdly counted on the fact that many confessional Lutherans are passive and quite proud of that passivity; more prone to gripe and sign petitions than to act.

I say this, by the way, as a confessional Lutheran, who has and does financially support Issues, etc.

— jb

I hope your tongue was in your cheek, J B. I don’t think anyone was being merely ‘passive’, but perhaps hopeful that, by not breaking away, they can preserve and even turn around our erring synod.
Anyways, breaking away entails a lot more than just taking down the sign and changing one’s affiliation. In order to leave the synod, you have to have somewhere else to go, and new confessions aren’t born overnight, just as old ones aren’t destroyed by one administration.
And how would you know that, as you wrote, the pastors ‘who yelped and signed the online petition, still ensure that their churches financially support the LCMS’?
That sounds suspiciously like an accusation made by a presumption, and, rather than tongue-in-cheek, and worse than cynical, it sounds downright bitter.
If we can’t all just get along, we who are served by a confessional pastor who stays out of the political fray while keeping his people fed; we who are grateful for this new birth of Issues, Etc. will also be glad that this is so, and hopeful for the future of our synod.
There’s not a pastor alive and in the pulpit who can take the blame for hdqtrs getting its way, or coming out ahead, as you suggest.
I really hate that this Issues issue has come down to, for many, a hope for one side to win and the other to lose. It’s really about so much more than that, and, frankly, if hdqtrs got what it wanted (which I doubt), then ‘our side’ got what we wanted as well, namely, Wilken on the air.
Contented I am, as contented I can be, taking good news where I find it.

Miss Organshoes, you could not have illustrated my point any better.

You began by denying being passive, then impugned my motives, but ended by, may I say, passively expressing contentment with “good news where [you] can find it.” As long as Issues, Etc., is on the air somewhere, all is well.

I’m convinced that LCMS leadership understands its confessional members better than such members understand themselves.

Goodness. Step away from those bitter pills.
All is not well nor will it ever be here in time.
Do you know of some Synod Superman who’ll save the day?
Me neither.
So, here I sit, waiting for Issues, Etc. to come on again.
You sound as though some conspiracy succeeded, relieving Synod of its budget-busting issues, Etc.
Fuhgeddaboudit! Conspiracies take planning and subtlety. And brains.

If indeed the new show brings more to the LCMS then that is a good thing, with or without synod financing. However our cause does not end there. We have to have more good confessional, liturgical congregations to send the new converts to or they might as well stay as they were. We are truly unique in our understanding of the Gospel. I don’t want to lose that.

Miss Organshoes: You keep using that word [bitter]. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I’m hoping they go on the air like Dr. Johnny Fever did on WKRP.

JB,

I think you give much, too much credence to the Purple Palace People eaters in St. Loo.

They’re not half bright as you ascribe them to be. That was obvious from how they handled the whole “Issues, Etc.” thing. Like a bunch of bumbling bureaucrats. They didn’t even have the smarts to trademark the show’s name. Doh.

There are several good alternatives to the LCMS. I’m getting really tired of the LCMS triumphalism I see in a lot of the old-timers. I’m a new convert to Lutheranism. I’m not married to the LCMS — I will only stay as long as they confess the true faith.

I think the “Issues, Etc.” thing, with nearly 8000 signatories, has created a new confessional ecumenism that transcends the clumsy and out-of-touch LCMS leadership. The effect of the “Issues, Etc.” episode. isn’t over. Far from it.

And what’s even more fun is that Todd and Jeff are free to speak their minds. The synodocrats tried to tie their hands with a “no speak” clause. Nice try.

Hello!,

Good day!,

Hi!,