They're Here

Well, I knew this was coming. I told you so. We now have women ministers in the Missouri Synod. We just don't know it.

Here's how they did it. For the past thirty years, we've had the notion drummed into our heads that you can't ordain women, it's against the Bible, etc. So the SOW* folks decided to change their tactics in order to get the women pastors they always wanted.

Step one: convince everyone that ordination is an adiaphoron, an indifferent thing. Never mind that the Lutheran Confessions permit you to call it a sacrament, it's nothing more than a nice apostolic custom which we are free to take or leave. By the way, to any idiot who wants to retort that the Confessions do not require us to call it a sacrament, I'd like to say that I dont require it either: but in permitting such a designation, the Confessions are at the least affirming that it is an act of God. I wouldn't want to call an act of God an indifferent thing, would you?

But the SOW* crowd accomplished the first step, and now synodical types everywhere are convinced that ordination is really an adiaphoron, in spite of the fact that the Church has never designated someone as a minister without it.

Step two: reintroduce the historic diaconate, something the Synod should never have abandoned in the first place. I remember the haughtiness of the committee at the last convention which, when asked to consider an ordained diaconate, declared, oh no, ordination is a term reserved for pastors. Sure it is: as of 1853 in our synod alone. Talk about parochial!
Anyhow, now deacons are popping up here and there without ordination, and in fact the duties of a deacon, given for example in the Mid-South District, are pretty good ones (for which click here). Only trouble is, they're not ordained!

Oh, and this: there are females among them! Want to see one? Just check out the Mid-South newsletter, click on July-August, and go to page five (thanks to Fr. Larry Beane for the heads up on this). So now you have what I knew you were going to get: women in the ministry, women preaching, women administering the Sacraments. But it's all OK, because they're not ordained! You synodical types will just never get it, will you? You've been duped into this, and you never knew what hit you; the SOW* crowd can just give a quiet aside to its members: don't worry, ordination is no big deal anyhow. After all, we can even arrange for you to get your holy tax break, like we did for our "commissioned ministers"!

Now instead of this nonsense, can we please get serious about having a proper diaconate, complete with proper ordination? Like I said, they have a very nice explanation of what a diaconate does (and, unintentionally, why it should be an ordained diaconate), which, once again, you can see if you click here.

*Synodical Organization of Women, which actually doesn't exist as such, but is definitely a crowd of people who think the Biblical mandate against women preachers doesn't apply to them. They, like the NOW crowd, seek to impose their brand of feminism on the rest of us.