Update from Houston – Insight on President Kieschnick’s Approach to Convincing Delegates, by Pr. Rossow

One of our BJS folks here in Houston noted that he heard President Kieschnick getting his microphone test over at the convention hall. In the bit of the speech that he heard, President Kieschnick asserted that “this is our grandfather’s church.”

This is a clever but misleading tact. President Kieschnick has made it a point during the nine years of his presidency to move the LCMS beyond our grandfather’s church. Apparently he has figured out that folks like the Brothers of John the Steadfast are convincing – instead of changing our grandfathers church we need to preserve and extend our grandfather’s church. Christianity is after all a conserving, and thus a conservative institution. We Christians are not to make it up as we go along but are to take what we have learned from our grandfathers and pass it on to our children. Of course, our grandfathers got what they learned from their grandfathers and they got it from the apostles, and they got it from the Spirit and He got it from the Son and He got it from the Father. That is why we are essentially conservative – God has asked us not to lead and create but to follow and conserve.

So now President Kieschnick has apparently figured out that this movement away from our grandfathers’ church is not a move people want to follow and so he is going to try to convince the delegates that he is indeed in favor of preserving our grandfathers’ church. As another of our intelligent BJS readers has pointed out, this is consistent with the video released last week about President Kieschnick by one of his supports. It is apparent that President Kieschnick is trying to recover from a significant misstep that he made when he promoted the idea that “this is NOT your grandfathers’ church” by using the very phrase that has come to encapsulate the debate. We encourage those of you in Houston to speak to your fellow delegates and help them to see that President Kieschnick is indeed the purveyor of a new church and that this is an interesting move but ultimately just a clever ploy. Those of you who are back home should contact your delegates and let them know of this interesting turn of events.

 On one level we are pleased that President Kieschnick is promoting our grandfathers’ church. To truly promote our grandfathers church in Houston is to vote against the Blue Ribbon proposals and to elect candidates that know it’s time to uphold the church Christ has given us and extend the kingdom of God.

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