As reported every day in Refugee Resettlement Watch, all the major Christian denominations in the USA are neck-deep in collusion with the federal government — and specifically the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) — in settling thousands of Muslim immigrants in America every year.
The Feds contract with “faith-based organizations” — a.k.a. “Voluntary Agencies”, or VOLAGs — to manage the logistics of resettlement. The VOLAGs receive millions of dollars for their work, and get to keep a nice chunk of that to pay for salaries and “administrative overhead”. The rest goes to the maintenance of the culture-enrichers in their new homes. The initial grants typically cover the first six months of expenses. After that the localities are on their own, and have to support all the resettled migrants — many of whom are illiterate, have no skills, and speak minimal English — on the local taxpayer’s dime.
One of those VOLAGs is the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS). The folks at LIRS are seeking a candidate for a top position in their organization. The job offering below includes this thumbnail description of the VOLAG:
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is a national faith-based organization with a 77-year history, a budget of approximately $58 million per year, and over 100 headquarters staff.
How much of that annual $58M comes from the Feds, and how much from the collection plates in Lutheran churches? Your guess is as good as mine. But one thing is clear: the LIRS is not proclaiming its faithfulness to the word of God, or its devotion to the Great Commission. The words “God”, “Jesus”, “Christ”, and “Christian” do not appear anywhere in the following text. Instead the LIRS proclaims “its expertise in implementing federal programs on behalf of refugees and migrants.” Wow, that’s true religion! It reads more like a corporate want ad or a federal job listing than anything involving the Christian faith.
Below is the entire job offering. It’s full of rich, meaty, multicultural material that cries out for additional analysis. But my time is limited, so I’ve just bolded a few sentences and phrases for further discussion:
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is seeking a Director for Advocacy to be the lead LIRS strategist on advocacy, ensuring that the organization achieves its key overall advocacy goals. S/He establishes the advocacy priorities through a consultative process and deep listening so that they reflect cross-departmental and network-wide advocacy needs. S/He informs, inspires and engages colleagues and networks and maintains strong coalition partnerships and effectively leverages coalition action. The Director works to influence policy-makers in the Executive and legislative branches of the federal government to promote integration, protection and justice for migrants and refugees.
Duties:
- Provide strategic leadership in LIRS advocacy. Identify and build strategy and support to bring about desired change in policies and practices. With clarity regarding the strategic landscape, identify and pursue priorities and approaches that will have the greatest impact
- Supervise Advocacy staff. Provide ongoing supervision of work, allocate responsibilities and adjust priorities for better impact, assess progress, provide and receive feedback, coordinate work, plan for the future
- Maintain excellent ongoing communication and coordination with the LIRS Baltimore office and especially with Outreach, Communications and the President’s Office.
- Ensure that internal LIRS responsibilities are met by the Advocacy unit, including contributions to planning, compliance with established procedures, provision of regular updates, provision of input into relevant decisions, etc.
- Meet and communicate with Congressional and Administration staff and officials, advocate that they promote and implement fair and humane refugee and immigration laws and policies, advance LIRS advocacy priorities, build LIRS credibility on key issue areas, raise up stories of migrants and refugees, serve as a resource to policy-makers
- Ensure that LIRS is represented in nonprofit advocacy coalitions, align with other nonprofits in promotion of LIRS advocacy issues, broaden consensus amongst other organizations, build and solidify support for the policies we endorse, prioritize and leverage coalition power to influence decision makers, the media and the public
- Ensure that LIRS is represented in working groups that address issue priority areas and where LIRS will have an impact; establish appropriate priorities for such participation
- Empower LIRS staff members to be advocates, channel their expertise to inform LIRS policy positions and improve advocacy recommendations, understand how laws and policies impact refugees, migrants and children, as well as our network partners
- Lead the Stand for Welcome campaign, educate empower and mobilize a growing number of Lutherans, refugees, migrants and other constituents around protection and integration of migrants and refugees
- Draft statements, letters, web site content, or resources on refugee and immigration policies or legislation targeted at Congressional committees, policy-makers and the public
- Plan advocacy convening’s [sic], collaborative events, workshops and advocacy meetings to facilitate constituent and partner participation and leadership in advocacy
- Serve as the primary liaison between LIRS and the ELCA Washington Office, ensuring a strong, effective and well-coordinated working relationship that builds on each other’s strengths.
Qualifications:
- Deep commitment to LIRS’s core values and the ability to model those values in relationships with colleagues and partners
- Bachelor’s degree in political science, international affairs, or other related field; law or master’s degree or equivalent experience strongly preferred and seven years of increasingly responsible advocacy work experience with a demonstrated track record of success; expertise in federal legislative and administrative advocacy
- Expertise in immigration law and policy, and an interest in and passion for advocacy on behalf of refugees and migrants
- Ability to maintain and nurture collegial relationships with congressional staff, administration officials, coalition partners, non-profit partners and constituents
- Track record of successfully mobilizing constituents to take action
- Significant experience in successful nonprofit coalition work
- Excellent communication skills, especially writing and public speaking, and demonstrated ability to adjust communication styles to be clear and persuasive with different audiences
- Experience in training and supervising staff, interns and volunteers
- Ability to work collegially across departments and units
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications and relationship management software
- Experience with and commitment to working in a diverse workforce
- Ability to work well with others in small teams; effective meeting facilitation skills
- Travel domestically (up to 10%) to meet and learn from LIRS constituents, church leaders, network partners and migrants and refugees
- Flexibility and a sense of humor
Organization Summary:
Headquartered in Baltimore’s beautiful Inner Harbor, with offices in Washington, DC, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is a national faith-based organization with a 77-year history, a budget of approximately $58 million per year, and over 100 headquarters staff.
LIRS is widely-recognized for its expertise in implementing federal programs on behalf of refugees and migrants living within the borders of the United States. Working with and through partners across the country, LIRS resettles refugees, reunites children with their families or provides loving homes for them, conducts policy advocacy, and pursues humanitarian alternatives to the immigration detention system.
Now let’s consider some specifics of what the LIRS says about this plum position (Their phrases are quoted in bold; the rest is mine):
“LIRS advocacy”
The Lutherans don’t just take care of refugees, or assist them, or show compassion for them: they advocate for them. That is, they take up the refugees’ cause, whatever it might be — in many cases, Islam — and make it their own. They intervene on behalf of refugees.
This puts them in accord with the current policies of the federal government, of course, which aims to import as many Muslim migrants as it can. And it serves the institutional needs of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which needs to enlarge itself and expand its domain.
“Meet and communicate with Congressional and Administration staff and officials, advocate that they promote and implement fair and humane refugee and immigration laws and policies, advance LIRS advocacy priorities, build LIRS credibility on key issue areas, raise up stories of migrants and refugees, serve as a resource to policy-makers”
In case you were in any doubt that VOLAGs such as LIRS are arms of the DC bureaucracy, this should make it completely clear. The Lutherans engaged in this earnest work must consider themselves a resource available to federal policy-makers.
“prioritize and leverage coalition power to influence decision makers, the media and the public”
The LIRS considers “influencing decision makers” as part of its mandate. Not just monitoring their decisions and acting accordingly, but influencing them, as well as the media and the public. To that end they ally with other VOLAGs to swing their weight around.
“Draft statements, letters, web site content, or resources on refugee and immigration policies or legislation targeted at Congressional committees, policy-makers and the public”
The Lutherans want to help Congress do its job by influencing the content and crafting of legislation. Sausages must be made, so the LIRS wants to be part of the sausage-making.
Since its goal is to expand its own structure, that means that the aims of the LIRS and other VOLAGs will be written into legislation — if it is successful.
“Deep commitment to LIRS’s core values”
But what are “LIRS’s core values”? Spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Serving God, and rejecting Satan?
Or are they mainly out to maximize the number of “refugees” resettled, thereby expanding their agency and their power base?
“Expertise in immigration law and policy, and an interest in and passion for advocacy on behalf of refugees and migrants”
There’s that “A” word again. You must not only be skilled and diligent, you must be an advocate on behalf of the migrants. You must make their goals yours. And you must know all the ins and outs of the law and policy in order to do that.
Forget being an honest broker — that’s so 19th century.
“Flexibility and a sense of humor”
Do applicants for this job need the flexibility to consider that it may not be a good idea to import hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern Muslims into communities all over the United States?
No, probably not that much flexibility.
As for a sense of humor — I don’t know about the job applicants, but I sure need one to help get me through all this dreadful bumf. Given the accelerating destruction of the American social fabric by programs such as this, and the somnolence of the American public, a good laugh is an urgent imperative.
That, and a bottle of single-malt Scotch.
Judas Iscariot sold Jesus for much less.
Well, Judas wasn’t a bureaucrat, was he? Without all the supportive bumpfety-bumpf poor Judas was left to his own meager devices. So of course he killed himself.
These folks sleep untroubled about their traitorous behavior. They are well-trained: look at the education and experience required to be an advocate for immigrants – some of whom are jihadists, some of whom will spread disease and/or disorder. None of whom will be anything but a drain on the Americans around them.
If you need a VOLAG to set you up, eventually you’ll need a social worker when the VOLAG “advocate” boogies on down the road to the next group and leaves you to the inadequate small town staffs in social services, public health, and schools. I remember when Manchester NH tried to beg off having any more of these parasites dumped on them. They already had 60 languages in the public schools. That was a few years ago and now they’re up to EIGHTY languages.
The cities and towns in America need their own VOLAGs to fight back. Now there’s a niche market for a retiring politician. Set yourself up in office to help people in your state fight off these VOLAGs…there has to be a solution to this Obama-inflicted mess. Yeah, and the other presidents before him; but Obama is putting Muslim immigrants on a special greased track, using only his mighty pen and his beady-eyed stare. He found the key to “transforming” America. He’s so keen to do it that he’s staying in Washington to make sure Hillary does it right.
I remember when Manchester NH tried to beg off having any more of these parasites dumped on them.
Fox took a sober moment from the elections hubbub to look at the drug overdose disaster in Manchester NH. http://video.foxnews.com/v/5187280094001/?#sp=show-clips
Figure there is any connection, somehow between 600 cases of fatal or near fatal OD in Manchester NH and all this migration? I know in Israel the vast majority of drug-trafficking is in the hands of Muslim gangs, closely associated with gun-running and other nefarious etc… And this is in a country with guarded borders. great future for Clinton’s America
This and – what this clown (I mean Pope) is doing -, is the end of organized Christian religion. But to think of it, why do you need an organization to keep a relationship with God? Of course you need your priest (a good one) in your community, but nothing up from that. The priests can be supported directly by the community for their services, – they are after all the original therapists -, but no big organizations!
There is great inertia in huge bureaucracies, and I doubt there is any bigger than the Roman Church. One of the strengths of America used to be the numerous small churches in the many small towns across the length and breadth of the country. Their ties to their synods or dioceses were loose; the main focus was the church community. Now we have the phenomenon of mega churches with thousands of members, which in a way are like the huge R.C. network, but they’re stand-alones.
We live in an area full of small churches. No Lutherans to speak of, no Jews, no Catholics. Any of those must commute many miles to find their groups. We have just Baptists and Methodists left standing (if you don’t count the ashram in the next county, or the Muslim terrorist compound in the county after that). They may belong to larger alliances but they sure don’t advertise it.
America’s religious history includes three, perhaps four, “spiritual awakenings”…the movements are peculiar to American spirituality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening
[Don’t forget that at least two out of what would grow to be thirteen formational colonies were religiously-based]
What happened to the Jews?
Christianity needs organization because organization is how things get done. Leftists know this. That is how they conquered the media, education and entertainment in America.
Christianity will fly off into a million different bizarre ideas; people using it for whatever they want to get. Want to have sex with all the women around you? Hey! Proclaim polygamy!
There needs to be a central belief system. Right now we have churches all over the world becoming New Laodiceans; proclaiming that “Jesus would have performed a gay marriage!” (Because I guess Jesus couldn’t find any gay people back then among the Romans, or the people who wrote the New Testament didn’t know anything about homosexuality what with living during the reign of Caligula, or something.) They’re getting more and more devoured by the culture.
It’s a very romantic notion to say “I can connect with God all by myself,” and it’s true, yes, but it’s not all. Without a set belief system, you will eventually rationalize yourself into feeding your wants, instead of straightening yourself against what must never be altered.
Without organization, Christianity will be rudderless.
Catholic church is not Christian
Sure … and I guess that makes you a theologian, too!
I showed the future Baron this post, and here’s what he said:
————
I would love to see a parody video of an organization devoted to integrating Lutherans into American society:
“No, see, you can’t show up to every potluck with an aspic.”
“Oh, eh?”
“Also, your coffee really shouldn’t be the consistency and general nutritional level of asphalt.”
“Ya sure?”
Lutherans: They’re Not Our Enemy. They’re People, Too.
“Ya betcha!”
One of his favorite childhood dinners was what I called “Lutheran Covered Dish Potato Casserole”…come to think of it, I never actually told him my name for that potato, ham and cheese dish. It would have been too complicated to explain…
…I remember well the covered dish suppers at our Catholic parish when I was a kid. There was this so-called “salad” which consisted of green jello with cottage cheese, pineapple, and pecans. I think I was the only one who liked it, but I never knew what it was called. The mom who brought it along for every occasion would always save the extras for me. There were always extras.
The same malaise affecting Sweden also affects Lutherans in Minnesota. The Law of Jante(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante), is alive and well here. This problem causes the locals to be unable to be critical of others and be overly critical of oneself. I have a hard time even going to a Lutheran church anymore. The pastors are full of neo liberal thought, and the members equally so. Self destructive fools. It was not always like that. The older Lutherans have that tremendous self pride that only comes from self determination and hard work, and they had a firm belief system. I wish I could say the church will become a rallying point, but that would be false. There is however an unease among people where they are finally recognizing that all is not well, and Minnesotans have a great hatred of disorder, so any forces that create chaos are not tolerated if they become too destructive. Populations cannot survive in a cold climate if you do not have a cohesive society.
You’re rght about climate driving social structure. But other forces impinge on it, too. The fact that Lutheranism replaced Catholicism (and the Catholicism of the North was NOT the same animal as that of the Mediterranean countries) meant the inevitability of the small-minded “Law of Jante”. Thus, the spread of totalitarian democracy succeeded so well in Scandinavia. The old joke about God inventing whiskey to keep the Irish from taking over the world could be modified to use Scandinavians in place of the Irish, and the Law of Jante instead of “poteen”. The idea that one may not stick his neck out has served to prevent the rise of too much curiosity. And killing curiosity in the young in turn kills individuality and innovation. Curiosity is loud, messy, and chaotic, but absolutely necessary – at least in small doses – for group survival.
I wonder if a group of Scandinavians could survive a brain-storming session – i.e., that process of problem-solving where all ideas are considered without censure (no matter how off the wall) in order to arrive at innovative, truly creative solutions to systemic trouble within the group itself. “Thinking outside the box” seems very difficult for Viking descendants.
I think I have had some of that coffee.
More reasons for Trump to win and cut off the funds to these traitors. No money no Muslim refugee invaders. Trump 2016! 😉
Beware the leaven of this brood of modern day vipers.
“Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is a national faith-based organization with a 77-year history, a budget of approximately $58 million per year, and over 100 headquarters staff.”
Lutheran Immigration AND Refugee Service (LIRS) is a national faith-based organization with a 77-year history, a budget of approximately $58 million per year, and over 100 headquarters staff.
If they used the full acronym, they are simply LIARS.
Good spotting!
Very good observation
How appropriate to have Lutheran news at this time of year, just a few days before Halloween, the 499th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the cathedral door. WWLD: What Would Luther Do? What is LIRS planning for the quincentennial next Halloween?
“Here I stand, I can do no other”.
“How appropriate to have Lutheran news at this time of year, just a few days before Halloween, the 499th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the cathedral door.”
What’s all this talk of endangered Theses?
[/Emily Litella]
What few people – even people of faith – understand is that within Christendom, the various denominations and also the Catholic church, there are a substantial number of false prophets, i.e., tares. These tares burrow in and corrupt the gospel of Christ and lead many unsuspecting churchgoers into the snares of Satan.
The snares of the serpent, whispering the same half-truths half lies which beguiled Eve, corrupt many a good-intentioned church-goer. So complete is this beguiling that many denominations have some Bible-believing bodies and some (or many) heretical bodies.
The Lutheran church and the Presbyterian church come to mind. Within each of these denomination the preponderance of membership belongs to the liberal, i.e., the heretical variety. The Bible-believing Lutherans and Presbyterians are in the minority.
So when you read about Lutheran, or Baptist, or Catholic agencies gorging themselves on the milk from the federal teat in the Refugee scam, know that those specific denominations milking us taxpayers while endangering our lives and destroying our national sovereignty with their reckless and greedy lust for filthy lucre are of the heretical variety. They think by their “good works” they will gain heaven; or equally bad, they are totally sold out to the social justice meme. Both roads lead to hell.
LIRS is an agency of the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America — and one of the several reasons I left the ELCA Church I’d been attending.
Good for you!!
I’m a WELS Lutheran. Come on over ?
Thanks for the invite, but I’ve already joined the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church and I like it.
These are Plantations, “Seed Communities” for the “fundamental change” of USA, as in “Hope and Change”.
Notice the word association, all pre-prepared and presented without so much as a “by your leave”: “Immigration and Refugee Service….migrants and refugees …..refugees and migrants”. This is all to conflate the two categories so that the sleeping populace perceive them as joined at the hip – “to influence the media and the public”. Goebbels would have been proud of it. It echoes the UN’s “Office of Migration and Development”, the baby of the tainted Peter Sutherland. Come along, now, sheeple. Refugees, migrants, resettlement, development: they are all blurred together and we must celebrate them.
Interestingly, the vocabulary is sailing rather close to the wind of the bogey-concepts of the Left. These newly arrived outsiders will be in “settlements”, and they will be “occupying” zones or “territories”. Where have we heard those before? They are the fashionable Left’s terms of reproach.
“These are Plantations…”
As in, mendicant voter plantations that the Democrats love and know so well.
I will not forget the first time I saw a Muslim woman in a powder blue burqa. She was completely covered, even the eyes had a screen. Her husband (I guess) and little boy wore western clothing. This was about 12 yrs. ago in the old part of the city of Vienna, Austria, were I grew up.
I was clearly shocked as they were walking right in front of St. Anna church. Please understand the churches here and in Europe are indeed part of the invasion of Muslims in Europe and the United States. This is not done out of Christian values, it is strictly about money and power.
We are doomed. Out in western Kansas, there is a large-ish population of cultural enrichers. They are illiterate. On and on and on. They are mostly on welfare, rather obviously since they have no skills. Why are they here? Oh, just so our tax money has a destination I suppose.
I live in central Kansas.
A small minority of them will make something of themselves. Similar to Mexicans and don’t crucify me. I spent several years of my life tutoring a young lady from Mexico and I went with her when she finally gained citizenship. She is hard-working and most definitely a benefit to our country. But not all of them are and in our hearts we know that. We are just not allowed to say it.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that I think our current Pope is totally useless.
Sounds like a great career move – which probably comes with a good pay packet, and a nice “inside view” of the whole refugee resettlement business… maybe some GoVers should apply? 🙂
Not only is there no mention of any Christian requirement or belief, the horrid “A” word is not used once – Assimilation.
I cannot help be notice how the left first infiltrates an existing organization (ANY organization of ANY type) and then converts and twists it to its own nefarious ends.
Food groups.
Exercise classes.
Church organizations (natch!)
Garden clubs.
Environmental groups (The most. The worst.)
‘Organized’ churches are the easiest and most dangerous converts. The have a ready-made organizational structure–actual buildings that can be used, and a DESPERATE NEED for revenue since its leftist/homosexualist/cultural revisionism cleared the pews.
That One-World leftist goal is now and always has been the destruction of what’s called ‘Western Civilization’ and its post-WW II era of civilization and relative peace.
(Remember all that $$$$$$$$ sent to the Mideast??–It’s coming back to BITE ya! BITE US ALL!!)
That churchly do-gooder aura lends excellent camouflage to this Islamic assault on Western Culture.
Their goal: One day we wake up to our new masters, and wonder–“Where did THEY ALL COME FROM?”
By then–it’ll be too late.
I’m speaking as an atheist, but it seems to me a church or congregation focused on values and community would not need a huge flow of revenue, and would have a sustainable, though not an exploding, membership.
But, when you get palatial, gigantic structures with stained glass, domes, mortgages, and a gigantic heating and lighting bill, you focus on membership rolls and dues, rather than values.
Similarly for education: education itself is fairly simple, especially now, as the written resources of the world are literally at your fingertips for the price of an internet connection. But, once you build Versailles-compliant estates and manors, with subsidiary campuses all over the world and huge edifices, you require massive subsidies and huge tuition. Any college that doesn’t have a massive enough infrastructure or large-enough collection of (outdated) physical manuscripts is decertified.
Bankers and industrialists fabulously wealthy by any measure try to increase their wealth by centralizing finance and production so they can take a larger cut. Trump takes advantage of the laws, but at least gets his money through genuine business. But, the real money is Geoge Soros, whose lifeblood is sucking money from the inefficiencies of centralized, socialized economies and financial institutions. Soros is the perfect parasite, draining the energy of the host, destroying it.
Social institutions are perfectly able to function without having to grow. Actually, the quality of life associated with some open space more than makes up for the increased revenues accruing to the people taking advantage of an “expanding” economy. Obama constantly brings up the increasing GDP, while ignoring the fact that the wages of most people are flat, the benefits go to a very small layer of elite, and the increased velocity of human commerce degrades the quality of life.
“I cannot help be notice how the left first infiltrates an existing organization (ANY organization of ANY type) and then converts and twists it to its own nefarious ends.”
Not that this is in any way a conscious conspiracy — just the standard life cycle of natural parasites.
Robert Conquest’s second law: “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” It’s no different than the universal destiny of communities that fail to adopt sanitation practices.
Beyond the comprehension of Americans who still have a brain stem. You can’t make this Scheiss up.
Martin Luther would’ve said “if I could bring a million Muslims from the Middle East and relocate them to Germany, it would be awesome for the economy….and if I could convert just one Muslim to Christianity… it would be more than with it!” So in my eyes, Frau Merkel is doing the work of God and Martin Luther….surely you all agree with this.
[strongly expressed deprecation of commenter’s assertions].
Perhaps you should read Luther’s “On War Against the Turk,” 1529, available in Volume 46 of Luther’s Works — American Edition.
“When I have time, I must put it into German so that every man may see what a foul and shameful book it is.”
Martin Luther on the Koran
I get your parody, but you don’t have it quite right yet. The assertion has to be a bit more outrageous, and the denouement a tad more connected to the set-up, not to mention a bit more obvious to those paying attention.
Mark chapter 8 verse 36: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Thanks again for reading, and blessed for those who believe.
Please be careful & enjoy your day.
The church leadership is pocketing a bunch of money with this scam, you can bet on it. All religion is when you get past the goodness of the people who are the religion, is a leadership ripe with corruption and ready to serve the devil whatever that is if it makes them a few dollars more. The scum of the Earth is always crying out to ‘the Lord’ while inside they are scamming the next sucker for all they have. On the hate scale, religious preachers are right up there with the Federal Government Politicians in my book. The whole lot of them should be shipped of to a desert Island somewhere, there they could collect sand and brag to one another that I have more sand than you, haha. Worthless [effluvia] they are, all o f them. Don’t forgive them this time.
Won’t be long now before ALL your wives will be wearing head to toe BURKAS. Just check our Dearborne Michigan.
ALL things considered including rapes which appear to be wholesale in nature in Germany due to muslim immigrants,It is obvious some legal requirements need to be forcefully put to new immigrants that rapes are not legal and are a crime which will not be accepted […]. Also the mosques must correct the idiotic idea of paradise awaiting muslim killed in name of allah even when killing christians.