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- 1972
- Earlier context
At a meeting in Fulton, Michigan, letters about the preacher Usko Petäistö are read, along with Apostolic Lutheran Mission Board minutes stating that the mission cannot tell a congregation which speakers to use. Most of the tape is a debate over whether the American congregations need a central body like Finland’s SRK: some speakers favor one, while others warn it would take authority away from the local congregations.
Topics: Earlier context“the mission does not have the authority to tell any congregation which speaker can or cannot be used”
- Earlier context
Called by the Minneapolis board and chaired by Peter Nevala, a two-day meeting of ministers and board members hears visitors from Finland, among them Heikki Saari. It centers on the preacher Usko Petäistö and on Walter Torola, the Mission chairman, who is urged to repent of “leniency” and replies that he does not feel he is in a wrong spirit. No decision is heard on the tape; near the end one speaker regrets that none was made.
Topics: Earlier context, Minneapolis“You will have an heresy and the one that will be cared for is Walter Torola. There is not question of Petaisto, it is only a small branch in this tree.”
Key details
- Chaired by Peter Nevala: the meeting’s first business is to “choose a chairman for this meeting … I would suggest Peter Nevala. Peter Nevala has been carried.” In his own turn Nevala reads, against Walter Torola, Torola’s own 1946 article on separating from those who have turned away. Part 1, 00:12:37
- Nevala’s turn: “I found one precious letter, which Walter himself has written, in the year 1946, which affected me importantly.” Part 2, 00:42:45
- 1973
- Earlier context
In 1973 the Laestadian congregations in North America that had worked together under the Apostolic Lutheran Mission divided. LLC speakers still call it “the heresy of 1973” or “the last heresy,” and some name it after Walter Torola. A speaker at a 2018 Minnesota meeting said it “basically split the American Zion in half.”
Topics: Earlier context“But before these things could be taken care of, we came to 1973 and there was a heresy in North American Zion that basically split the American Zion in half.”
- Earlier context
In the division, congregations on the Minneapolis side form a new central body, the Association of American Laestadian Congregations (AALC). The LLC dates its founding to June 9, 1973. Its own millennium history describes a first meeting in Minneapolis at Pentecost (June 10), a second at Pelkie, Michigan, on June 23, where the name was chosen, and a third in October, when a 15-member board was selected. The AALC was incorporated as a Minnesota nonprofit on February 12, 1974, and published the first Voice of Zion in January 1974.
Topics: Earlier context, LLC board“The Laestadian Lutheran Church (LLC) was organized on June 9, 1973 under the name “Association of American Laestadian Congregations” (AALC).”
Key details
- Who led it: a later history by Warren Hepokoski, written from outside the LLC and critical of it, says the minority that “remained loyal to the SRK” was “led by Peter Nevala, Elmer Alajoki and others.” The LLC’s own exhibits name no organizers or first board for 1973; its earliest board list, from 1980, includes Peter Nevala.
- 1970s
- Earlier context
In the 1970s, soul-care gatherings known as caretaking meetings spread through the Conservative Laestadian movement in Finland. The SRK board later wrote that from the middle of the decade they produced doctrinal errors and abuses, among them a “spirit doctrine” that required people to repent of spirits of different names. Its 2011 statement does not mention North America, but the caretaking of the 1970s and 1980s comes up again and again in the LLC’s meetings after 2015.
Topics: Earlier context, SRK & Finland“Regrettably, beginning in the middle of the decade, characteristics foreign to Christianity began to appear, such as doctrinal errors and the abuses they brought about.”
- 1979
- No doctrine named Earlier context
Heikki Saari, a member of the SRK board and its working committee and a lay preacher since 1930, had been the leading figure of the caretaking meetings. The SRK’s own historian writes that he took part in nearly half of the meetings the SRK sent representatives to. In November 1979 he was removed from the SRK board and from his task as a speaker, and the wave of caretaking meetings ended. In the summer of 1980 he made a public repentance of his wrongful conduct and his doctrinal errors. Seven years earlier the SRK had sent him to America and told the Americans that he “enjoys the trust and love of all of Finland’s Zion.” The SRK’s 2011 statement on the era names no one.
Topics: Earlier context, SRK & Finland, No doctrine named“The flood of caretaking requests to the SRK stopped after Heikki Saari was relieved of his positions of trust. … In the summer of 1980 Saari made a public repentance of his wrongful conduct and his doctrinal errors.”
- 1981
- Forgiveness Earlier context
At a Minneapolis congregation meeting, Ken Huotari, a member who held no office, asks whether his short, neat beard is wrong; brothers sent by the board had visited him about it. Speakers answer that Christianity “is not beard Christianity” but that the congregation has taken a stand against beards and long hair. Speakers including Elmer Alajoki then tell him the issue is deeper, a “Kosolainen spirit,” and the discussion ends with him asking for that spirit to be forgiven.
Topics: Earlier context, Minneapolis, Forgiveness“It is this kosolainen spirit, for this rebels against the kingdom of God and against the orders of rulership of God, and which you have rebelled against.”
- 1995
- Earlier context
Delegates to the 1995 Annual Meeting vote to change the association’s name to Laestadian Lutheran Church; by the LLC’s own account the change was implemented in 1996, and the new name was entered with the Minnesota Secretary of State on August 12, 1996. It is the same corporation under a new name: the LLC’s 2000 Constitution reads “LAESTADIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH, formerly Association of American Laestadian Congregations.” Member congregations followed, among them Rockford, which named the Laestadian Lutheran Church as its central body in March 1997. Some older LLC web pages give the year as 1994.
Topics: Earlier context, LLC board“Later the word Lutheran was included for clearer identity, and the delegates to the 1995 Annual Meeting voted to change the name of the organization to Laestadian Lutheran Church (LLC). The change was implemented in 1996.”
- 2000
- Earlier context
The LLC’s Constitution, approved by its board on June 30 and by the delegates on July 1, 2000, opens: “The name of the corporation shall be LAESTADIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH, formerly Association of American Laestadian Congregations.” It confesses the faith “founded on the Holy Word of God,” the three ecumenical creeds, the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, and Luther’s catechisms. Section V makes the Word the only measure of doctrine. Its Bylaws (Article II, Section 9) allow a member congregation to be expelled only where it fails to act in accordance with the Constitution and Bylaws and fails to comply with the LLC’s decisions. Restated Articles were filed with the State of Minnesota on May 18, 2001.
Topics: Earlier context, LLC board“the Holy Word of God is the highest authority and only measure according to which all doctrines and teachings in said Corporation are to be examined and judged.”
- 2011
- Forgiveness Earlier context
Meeting at Siikatörmä, the SRK board issues a position statement on the caretaking meetings of the 1970s. It names the “so-called spirit doctrine,” public confession, “withholding forgiveness,” and the “wrong concept” that a board could form a “government of the House of God,” and expresses regret for the errors and abuses.
Topics: Earlier context, SRK & Finland, Forgiveness“We regret the errors in doctrine and the abuses that occurred.”
- Forgiveness Earlier context
At the yearly meeting of the Midwestern Area boards and speakers at the Rockford church, Keith Waaraniemi of the LLC gives a presentation on the difficulties of the 1970s and 1980s in America and Finland, drawing on material the SRK had just published in Päivämies. In the discussion that follows, the question turns from whether the gospel was wrongly withheld in those years to whether there could ever be a time when it could not be preached, and, by his account, “Brothers gave scriptural examples of such times.” Who asked the question is disputed: in 2021 the Menahga board wrote that members of the Wolf Lake board had “first raised” it in 2011, while Wolf Lake’s Bruce Johnson said the original question was whether the withholding of the 1980s was right or wrong, and that “somehow it got turned into, is there ever a time?”
Topics: Earlier context, Wolf Lake, Other congregations, Forgiveness“But then the question was specifically asked, well, could there ever be a time, not now referring to the 70s and 80s, but could there ever be a time when the gospel could not be preached? And Brothers gave scriptural examples of such times.”
- 2012
- Earlier context
In the SRK’s 2012 yearbook, Valde Palola writes, following Luther on Galatians, that the congregation “is pure, but it is sinful at the same time,” and that believers gathered as a congregation can make incorrect decisions. In January 2023, as SRK chairman, he would teach that “the congregation cannot err on any point of doctrine either.”
Topics: Earlier context, SRK & Finland“As humans, even as a Christian congregation gathered together, incorrect decisions may be made.”
- 2015
- No doctrine named
After the 2015 Summer Services, years of meetings follow on justification, the office of the Holy Spirit, the Word and the congregation, forgiveness, and confession. A continent-wide LLC meeting in May 2021 asserts that there are “two groups” in North America. When the LLC did set out its own position, at Monticello in May 2021, Minneapolis and Wolf Lake agreed with it. To this day the LLC has never said how its position differs from what those congregations confess, has never stated a position on the two points they named (whether forgiveness may ever be withheld from one who asks, and whether the robe of righteousness can be stained), and has never said what explanation those congregations actually gave.
Topics: Minneapolis, Wolf Lake, Forgiveness, No doctrine named On July 4, 2015, at the LLC Summer Services in Outlook, Saskatchewan, Darwin Lake of Wolf Lake preaches on 1 Corinthians 7, the chapter that allows a married couple to abstain “for a time” by consent. Those who heard it later said he stated several times that he was not promoting birth control. Some LLC staff and board members remove the sermon from the LLC’s online archive, the only sermon of those services missing from it, citing its sensitivity for a mixed audience and one example, not an error in doctrine. LLC representatives meet the Wolf Lake board at Stony Lake Camp on July 19, 2015, then at Wolf Lake on September 30, 2015, at Menahga on March 16, 2016, and with the Minneapolis and Rockford boards on April 8, 2016; by the LLC’s own account “unity of understanding was not restored.” In 2019 LLC chairman Jim Frantti said: “I don’t question how Darwin believes about … the matter of abstinence,” and LLC board member Keith Waaraniemi said “much of what Darwin said in the sermon was correct.”
Topics: Wolf Lake, LLC board, Minneapolis“I don't question how Darwin believes about the matter of Darwin. It's a matter of abstinence. And I agree with what Bruce said earlier.”
- 2016
- Scripture treated as a fault
At the LLC ministers’ camp at Stony Lake, LLC board chairman Jim Frantti puts the 2015 Summer Services sermon, the forgiveness question, and complaints that the LLC was “heavy-handed” on the agenda, and Keith Waaraniemi reads his account of the meetings held with Wolf Lake since July 2015. His text says the forgiveness question “is not a question the LLC brothers have raised,” tracing it to an unnamed board member at the 2011 Midwestern boards’ meeting and to Wolf Lake’s 2015 request to discuss it again; Darwin Lake traces it instead to “when Keith presented that topic” in 2011. After two days Frantti concludes that “we can’t make such a blanket statement” that the gospel can never be withheld, adding “if we’re going to err, let’s err on the side of preaching the Gospel.” Darwin Lake asks forgiveness three times in open session. The LLC’s later written synopsis goes further than the tape, calling the “always preached” position “a wrong doctrine,” and by 2019 Waaraniemi said the joy of that weekend had “evaporated.”
Topics: Wolf Lake, LLC board, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault, Forgiveness“This is not a question the LLC brothers have raised, nor is it pressing the minds of believers in general, but when some have wanted an answer and even pressed for an answer, we have tried to answer.”
Key details
- What the LLC wrote afterward: “We ended the camp with a mutual understanding that to state that the gospel must always be preached regardless of circumstances is a wrong doctrine.” The same summary says “the stance on the issues supported by the Wolf Lake ministers and some of its board members needed correction.” (Written summary signed “LLC Brothers,” forwarded June 28, 2016.)
- What the chairman said on tape: Jim Frantti: “we can’t make such a blanket statement that it can never happen that God does not allow the gospel to be preached … if we’re going to err, let’s err on the side of preaching the gospel.” He did not call either position a wrong doctrine. (Saturday 7:00 p.m. session, 01:36:46–01:38:35.) 01:36:46
- Read from a prepared text: the LLC’s account of the Wolf Lake meetings was not spoken from the heart. Frantti asked LLC board member Keith Waaraniemi “to read from a summary he prepared,” and he read his written account on Friday and again on Saturday (Friday session, 00:35:06). Later, those who questioned the LLC were faulted for doing the same: for bringing “their own research and prepared speeches” (Minneapolis, 2018), for “the stuff that is continuously quoted” (Waaraniemi himself, 2018), and for reading “a lot of prepared statements” (Phoenix board chairman, 2022). 00:35:06
- A planned, directed discussion: Frantti called the “current conditions or concerns” the “second part of this assignment” (Friday, 00:07:22); Waaraniemi’s account had been written in advance for the April 8 meeting in Minneapolis and was read again here (Friday, 00:35:06); and on Saturday he said “the Pastoral Committee has considered this as Jim pointed out last night” (devotion session, 00:28:50). The 2015 sermon, the forgiveness question, and complaints that the LLC was “heavy-handed” were all put on the agenda by the LLC side. 00:07:22
- Darwin Lake asks forgiveness three times in open session (Saturday 1:00 p.m., Saturday 7:00 p.m., and Sunday). Saturday 1:00 p.m., 01:54:41
- The charge once ran the other way: Jim Frantti reports that the LLC office’s advice to visiting ministers to choose familiar texts had been called, at one meeting, “a very dangerous and wrong piece of advice … It means that we're not trusting in God's Spirit.” The tape does not say who said it. (Friday session.) 00:34:10
- Listen: Frantti puts the concerns on the agenda, Friday, at 00:07:22
- Listen: Waaraniemi reads his account, Friday, at 00:35:06
- Listen: Frantti: “let’s err on the side of preaching the gospel,” Saturday 7:00 p.m., at 01:38:35
- Listen: Darwin Lake asks forgiveness, Sunday, at 02:20:40
- All seven camp recordings with transcripts
- Listen: Waaraniemi: “the joy evaporated,” Dec. 7, 2019, at 03:27:16
- No doctrine named
The Rockford congregation holds a three-hour discussion on forgiveness. A Rockford minister reads a paper on the forgiveness of sins from a December 2015 ministers’ meeting in Finland, then argues from Joshua 24 and Luke 17:3 that forgiveness is conditioned on repentance, while saying he has never withheld it himself. Most members who speak say it is not for believers to judge the penitence of one who asks. A member asks whether the withholding of the late 1970s and early 1980s was right; the minister called on to answer does not address it. In closing, a minister says the pendulum then “swung too far,” but that the meetings he attended “have not felt we can say never.” No motion, no vote, and no doctrinal error charged against any person.
Topics: Other congregations, Meetings, Forgiveness, No doctrine named“would there ever be a time that forgiveness would not be preached to one who asks for it … the meetings that I've attended, have not felt we can say never.”
- Ministers removed
Board members and ministers from Minneapolis, Cokato, Rockford, Elk River and Monticello discuss forgiveness for more than two hours, with no presentation and no motion. The first question is whether there is a “withholding doctrine,” which others were reportedly calling a “new doctrine.” Speaker after speaker holds that the gospel is freely preached but that the Holy Spirit may sometimes “direct us not to preach the gospel”; one board member answers that the Word of God is the “highest authority and only measure” and that “we can’t build our faith upon examples.” Darwin Lake, Wolf Lake and “continual forgiveness” are never mentioned, and no person or doctrinal error is named.
Topics: Other congregations, Meetings, Ministers removed, Forgiveness“When it is asked in this way, it kind of demands an answer of yes or no … some have felt that … no, there would never be a time, and others say, well, you know, we can’t say absolutely.”
- No doctrine named
The evening after the November 19 meeting of the Midwest Area boards at Rockford, the congregation holds an open discussion opened by a presentation on the Holy Spirit, read by a Rockford minister. Speakers report “disturbing speeches” and “different understandings” at the boards’ meeting on whether the robe of righteousness can be stained by sin, and members ask what the dispute actually is. On forgiveness, some hold that the Spirit can close the preacher’s mouth; others say they have never heard of “a stop to forgiving” and that “it’s not an error to forgive.” Several leaders decline the “two spirits” label but warn that differing understandings “can turn into different spirits.” No doctrinal error and no person is named.
Topics: Other congregations, Meetings, Forgiveness, No doctrine named“there have been times and there can be times when the gospel is not preached and I think that if you're struggling with that, in my mind, you're not hearing … how the Spirit is taught in this matter.”
- 2018
- Scripture treated as a fault
Walt Lampi of the LLC staff rereads to the Rockford congregation the report he gave at the November 2017 ministers’ teleconference: a list of “positions individuals have taken” on forgiveness and confession, birth control, a “carnal view of God’s kingdom,” the caretaking of the 1970s and 1980s as a “prism” for viewing American Zion, and “contacts with Finland.” Each charge is framed as “some say”: that “there can never be a situation in which the gospel could not be preached,” that those who say so are reluctant to forgive the errors of the 1970s and 1980s, that some sermons leave out the words of absolution, that some hold “we are always forgiven,” and that some believe “the spirit can reveal to an individual differently than to the congregation.” No person or sermon is named. Lampi tells the room they may never have heard any of it, calls the unrest “the successful planting of the seeds of doubt by the enemy,” and in the same talk reports of the LLC and SRK leaders: “There was no difference between us.” Gary Lehtola of the Minneapolis congregation answers with quotations from Finnish writers and Luther on living “in forgiveness every moment,” and John Lehtola, a Minneapolis minister, asks where the report’s claims come from. No answer is on the recording. Late in the evening Jouko Haapsaari, an LLC shared pastor, reports that Finnish ministers told him withholding absolution “has happened” but is “very rare,” and adds: “We should not be bold in disagreeing with the mutual understanding.”
Topics: Other congregations, LLC board, Meetings, Minneapolis, Scripture treated as a fault, Forgiveness“I'm curious about the statement that some ministers are reluctant to preach the gospel at the end of their sermon. I guess I haven't noticed this at all. And I listen to tens of sermons each week, both from Finland and America. So I'd be curious to hear and know where this is coming from.”
Key details
- A Rockford minister believes it: Rick Nevala: “The term continual forgiveness, I understand theologically what that means and I believe that. That is what we believe.” He was later elected to the LLC board. 01:55:27
- Partial quotes: Opening the discussion, a speaker not named on the tape: “One thing when I kind of hear like partial quotes … I do get a little, I suppose, cautious about that.” 00:05:58
- Listen: Lampi: “seeds of doubt,” at 00:30:52
- Listen: Lampi: “Some say…,” at 00:36:01
- Listen: Lehtola asks for the source, at 01:04:15
- Listen: “The mutual understanding,” part 2 at 01:16:52
- The LLC’s Own Book, point 2: the claimed unity with the SRK
- The LLC’s Own Book, point 3: continual forgiveness
- Transcript
- Forgiveness
Meeting at Cave Creek, near Phoenix, with a guest minister from the SRK present, the LLC board records that “questions continue to surface that bring into question teachings of old” across North America, and lists five topics: forgiveness, the robe of righteousness, continual forgiveness, the office of the Holy Spirit, and Christian freedom. The synopsis asserts “differing understandings on these topics,” but it does not say what the differing understandings are, who holds them, or which teaching departs from God’s Word. The April ministers’ camp is to “focus primarily on these topics.”
Topics: LLC board, Forgiveness“It was acknowledged that there have been some questions and differing understandings on these topics that have caused concern.”
- Scripture treated as a fault
The LLC board had said in February that this ministers’ camp at Stony Lake would “focus primarily” on the disputed topics. Opening them, LLC board chairman Jim Frantti asks the ministers not to “probe so deeply” or “understand every detail,” but to ask God for “that portion of understanding that he feels we need and that will keep us united.” On whether the gospel can ever be withheld from one who asks, he says: “rather than ponder this too deeply, why don’t we leave it in the past?” The aim he states is unity, not a settled answer on the doctrine.
Topics: LLC board, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault“Let's not try to probe so deeply. Let's not try to understand every detail and split hairs and become expert theologians on these topics. Let's just ask God, give us that portion of understanding that he feels we need and that will keep us united.”
Key details
- The term “feels odd,” the substance is “living under grace”: Frantti: “Maybe it means what I think of as living under grace. … if we fall into sin, He does not reject us. We don’t lose faith every time we fell into sin.” Then: “The term continual forgiveness almost implies to me like there’s no such thing as unforgiven sin. … So that’s why that term feels odd to me. Like I said, I’m not saying this to judge anybody who has used this term because I don’t know what they mean by it.” 00:16:20
- “We all agree with those quotes”: After Tom Huhta’s speech on Sunday, a speaker who sets the time for the discussion asks the ministers to “avoid long speeches. … We all agree with those quotes. And speak what you feel.” 00:23:51
- Reading a sermon is “acceptable”: Saturday guidance to ministers on the rites: “it's either reading those sermons or keeping an extemporaneous sermon. Either option is acceptable.” (Saturday 1:00 p.m. session, 00:06:19; archive recording, not on the site.)
- Scripture treated as a fault
The Minneapolis and Rockford boards and ministers meet in the evening at the LLC office, with many visitors present. The Rockford chairman frames the meeting as a discussion of unity and of caring for one another; the moderator says he was not aware of any plan to make it a caretaking meeting about John Lehtola, who does not attend. Eric Jurmu speaks of “two different spirits.” Late in the evening Keith Waaraniemi gives his concerns about John: the one particular is John’s reply “Show me a scripture where I'm wrong”; of the rest he says “I don't need to get into them here.” Visitors ask for the particulars (“Roll it out”); none are given, and no motion is made.
Topics: Minneapolis, Other congregations, LLC board, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault“John has answered, well, feelings don't mean anything to me. Show me a scripture where I'm wrong. But, brothers and sisters, the Spirit of God works in God's children.”
Key details
- “Continuously quoted”: Waaraniemi: “the stuff that is continuously quoted, I have to believe that that's where John's concerns lie.” 04:03:52
- Proof from Scripture refused as a test: Waaraniemi: “we can't dismiss it just because someone says that if you can't prove it with Scripture, then I won't listen to it.” 04:05:25
- Particulars withheld: “And there are other things as well, but more specific and I don't need to get into them here.” 04:12:19
- Scripture treated as a fault
After morning services the Minneapolis congregation holds the first of its 2018 meetings on John Lehtola. A written introduction on Ephesians 4:32 is read (by Markus Lohi, according to the minutes), and Russ Roiko reports on the April ministers’ camp. In the discussion John Lehtola lists what had been said of him (“my sermons are too academic. I use notes. I use quotes of others”), and Janelle Lehtola recounts that he had been admonished for preparing his sermons and using note cards. The moderator closes the morning: “The congregation in the end will decide.” No motion is made.
Topics: Minneapolis, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault“In others, my sermons are too academic. I use notes. I use quotes of others.”
Key details
- Faulted for preparing: Janelle Lehtola: “John was admonished for studying for sermons, prepping for sermons, researching for sermons, using note cards or outlines.” 01:25:36
- Ministers removed
His last sermon of record was on May 13, 2018. He was removed from speaking or stepped down. At the joint board meeting in Menahga on January 12, 2019, a Menahga speaker explains that the board had “concerns” about the minister Eugene Kumpula and had visited him, that he “hadn’t been free in Menahga or with our board and speakers,” and that he had asked “to be relieved of his speaking duties.” Asked what the difference was, the speaker says: “I don’t know what the question is … It seems like maybe there’s some questions around the forgiveness question.” Another reports that Kumpula told the visitors “I believe like Darwin and Phil,” and adds, “Well, I don’t know how they believe.”
Topics: Other congregations, Meetings, Ministers removed, No doctrine named“I don't know what the question is. And I think that's why we're here today. We're trying. It seems like maybe there's some questions around the forgiveness question.”
- Scripture treated as a fault
The Minneapolis congregation continues its discussion of John Lehtola. Russ Roiko opens by relaying Jim Frantti’s ministers’ camp presentation, “Current Work and Conditions in Zion.” Later a minister, describing his first camp, says the brothers there “didn't bring their own research and prepared speeches and thorough Bible knowledge” but “simply brought their hearts.” No motion is made.
Topics: Minneapolis, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault“They didn't bring their own research and prepared speeches and thorough Bible knowledge. They simply brought their hearts”
Key details
- A prepared presentation, relayed: Russ Roiko: “what I've been asked to attempt to do … is to use this presentation that our dear brother Jim Frantti kept at minister's camp.” 00:09:21
- Ministers removed
At a Minnesota-wide meeting of boards and ministers in Monticello, Walt Lampi of the LLC office staff says boards are questioning “whether certain brothers should any longer be in a position of trust as ministers or teachers,” and asks: “is it now time for congregation boards to consider this matter very seriously and take it to their congregations and ask, is there a change that should be made?” On what the difference actually is, he says: “maybe it’s not so much doctrine, but I can’t say that it isn’t doctrine. But at least in part, it is that pride or self-exaltation.” He names no minister, sermon, or teaching, and calls the request to be shown error from Scripture “a proud statement … a haughty statement.” This comes four months after the LLC board listed the disputed topics without stating its own position on them. Another speaker that evening says: “I don’t believe that there is evidence of clear wrong doctrine. For me it’s enough to know that there is unrest around the service of one of the ministers.” The removals of speakers that followed in Minnesota began within months.
Topics: LLC board, Other congregations, Meetings, Ministers removed, No doctrine named“I think that maybe it's not so much doctrine, but I can't say that it isn't doctrine that's the difference. But at least in part, it is that pride or self-exaltation that demonstrates itself”
- Ministers removed
According to a participant’s account, Rockford’s leaders met with their minister Joe Lehtola on a Tuesday evening within a week of the June 14, 2018 Minnesota-wide meeting, at which boards were urged to consider removing ministers; the next evening they tried to announce his “resting” to the congregation, and “got him down three months later (in September).” No reason is recorded, and no recording, minutes or letter of the decision is held. A year later, at Rockford’s meeting on Craig Kumpula, a member recalls that about twelve months earlier the board had been “discussing Joe.” By a speakers’ teleconference in November 2018, the same account lists him among the ministers “no longer speaking.” His last sermon in the LLC archive is February 18, 2018, at Monticello.
Topics: Other congregations, Ministers removed, No doctrine named“it was probably about 12 months ago, or maybe not quite 12 months, that I was standing in the same position and I was talking to the chair, and they were discussing Joe. Not Craig, but Joe.”
- Ministers removed
Three months after the LLC’s Walt Lampi urged boards to consider removing ministers, the Cokato board, through George Koivukangas, tells Phil Alajoki, a Wolf Lake minister and board member, that he is no longer invited to speak in Cokato. On September 26 the Wolf Lake board asks Cokato to state its concerns in writing. On September 30 Briar Siljander, then on the Detroit board, writes to the Detroit congregation as it weighs cancelling Alajoki’s youth-days trip after word that Jim Frantti had recommended it; no one, they wrote, had described any concern about how Alajoki believes or preaches. Koivukangas was himself a member of the LLC board: the delegates had re-elected him on July 7, 2018.
Topics: Wolf Lake, Letters & legal, Other congregations, Ministers removed“In summary, we ask you brothers to explain in writing; what are the issues that preclude Phil from serving in Cokato?”
Key details
- Last in the LLC archive: Phil Alajoki’s last sermon in the LLC archive is January 28, 2018, at Outlook, Saskatchewan; Darwin Lake’s is July 1, 2018, at Menahga. source
- Ministers removed
After congregation discussions on May 6 and May 31, the Minneapolis board calls a meeting on whether John Lehtola, a minister trained and ordained in Finland, should continue to preach; the board’s majority, chairman Jared Juusola and the ministers Keith Waaraniemi and Russell Roiko, has already said he should rest; two board members dissent and ask Waaraniemi and Roiko to state their spiritual concerns openly. Waaraniemi, a Minneapolis board member since the early 1980s, also sat on the LLC board, re-elected that July in the same vote as George Koivukangas, and worked for the LLC. A motion to end discussion and vote fails, and a second attempt falls short of the quorum the bylaws require. He was removed from preaching in October 2018.
Topics: Minneapolis, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault, Ministers removed“No matter how these discussions go, the majority of the board agree that John should take a rest from speaking, at least until the core issues impacting God's kingdom today are taken care of.”
Key details
- Waaraniemi’s concern was emphasis: “I feel like there’s an emphasis on love and grace to the point that the righteousness of life is not spoken of or very rarely spoken of.” No sermon or statement is cited. 02:07:55
- What he had read at camp: John Lehtola: “I read two statements on continual forgiveness. Well, the first one wasn't even, didn't even use the term continual forgiveness. It was continual grace.” 01:05:19
- When he was removed: A participant’s account says only that he “was removed from preaching in October” 2018, after a fourth Minneapolis meeting about him on October 28, at which Keith Waaraniemi relayed Don Lahti’s hope that he “would of his own accord ask to be relieved from speaking, because of the confusion that he is causing.” No recording of that meeting is held.
- The archive cannot date it: His last sermon in the LLC archive is a guest sermon at Rockford on November 19, 2017; Minneapolis’s own recordings were taken off the LLC website in July 2021, so the archive says nothing about when he last preached at home. From January 8, 2022 he preached at Wolf Lake. source
- No doctrine named SRK
The LLC board hears reports on “matters discussed in Southern Minnesota” and records its concern about a “different voice,” without naming the teaching. The visiting SRK minister Eero Nuolioja, welcomed by chairman Jim Frantti, brings greetings from the SRK board and staff and, in the synopsis’s words, “commented that they believe the same in Finland as we do here.”
Topics: LLC board, SRK & Finland, No doctrine named“There remains concern that a different voice and teaching is causing the unrest.”
- Forgiveness
In answer to “rumors and misleading statements” about what it believes, Wolf Lake sets out its confession in writing: on withholding forgiveness, on justification, the robe of righteousness, and confession. It closes by asking readers to “judge what we have written.” The SRK says it believes the same as the LLC. In 2022 and 2023 it was asked why, if it does not disagree, it endorsed removing congregations that confess the same doctrine it does, and the open letter of September 2026 asks again. It has not answered.
Topics: Wolf Lake, Letters & legal, Forgiveness“We believe that a believer can freely preach the gospel to anyone who asks without exception or condition of any kind.”
- 2019
- Ministers removed
The Brainerd, Cokato, Menahga and Wolf Lake boards and speakers meet at Menahga with LLC board members Jim Frantti, Sam Roiko, Keith Waaraniemi and Eric Jurmu. Cokato had already disinvited the Wolf Lake minister Phil Alajoki, and Brainerd had agreed not to call Darwin Lake. Answering Al Lake of Wolf Lake, Don Lahti of Brainerd says he is “not disagreeing with a lot of the quotations that you read from scripture. They are factual,” but asks “why doesn't something answer to the spirit?” No doctrinal motion is made; the meeting adjourns and the matter goes back to each board.
Topics: Wolf Lake, Other congregations, LLC board, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault, No doctrine named, Ministers removed“I'm not disagreeing with a lot of the quotations that you read from scripture. They are factual. But my question arises from the fact that why doesn't something answer to the spirit?”
Key details
- The LLC side reads from a book: Keith Waaraniemi, speaking of Al Lake: “I was going to read in a book here because I don't know how to remember things and speak them into mic.” Al Lake answers by reading 1 John 2:12. 00:29:49
- An LLC voice for reading: George Koivukangas: “I have always encouraged to read and study the Holy Scriptures,” while warning against “our own reading and our own deep study.” 02:57:06
- Not used “until it was resolved”: “Menahga was not going to use Darwin and Phil until it was resolved.” Darwin Lake’s last sermon in the LLC archive was at Menahga on July 1, 2018. 06:21:43
- Brainerd, “no good reason”: On Brainerd not calling Darwin Lake: “each meeting we said, we just don't have a good reason.” 01:07:45
- Scheduling, not a verdict: “I don't think this scheduling is saying that a speaker is not believing or not in faith, but I think we all have to admit there's still questions and concerns on the table.” 06:40:39
- Menahga’s own minister: On Eugene Kumpula: “he hadn't been free in Menahga or with our board and speakers and he had requested to no longer to be relieved of his speaking duties.” (See the separate Eugene Kumpula entry.) 03:13:30
- Letters & legal
Eric Skoog and Warren Raisanen put their confession of faith in writing, including a section on the “spirits” of the 1970s and 1980s and why that period should be spoken about. The letter is cited in board and congregation meetings for years afterward; at the December 7, 2019 meeting it is the one document an LLC minister calls “not even doctrinally correct” without saying where.
Topics: Wolf Lake, Letters & legal“It seems there is a fear or reluctance to freely visit about this time in God's Kingdom. Due to the parallels to our current situation, this time period should be spoken about.”
Key details
- On the 1970s and 1980s: “It seems there is a fear or reluctance to freely visit about this time in God's Kingdom. Due to the parallels to our current situation, this time period should be spoken about.” p. 1
- What the “spirits” did: “Several ministers were removed from their positions due to ‘spirits’. Those ministers were put back in use in God’s kingdom after these times passed.” p. 2
- Continual forgiveness, in their words: “continual forgiveness and grace are the same thing … A child of God can believe that their sins are forgiven at every moment, not only after asking for a blessing.” Keith Waaraniemi later said the letter had errors, “perhaps not even doctrinally correct,” and in May 2021 told the continent-wide meeting, “We live in the Forgiveness of sins every moment.” p. 3
- The Word as the measure: “The Bible is the ultimate authority” (p. 2), and: “If the voice of the spirit in the congregation begins to teach contrary to the Word of God, some other spirit is at work” (p. 7). p. 2
- Scripture treated as a fault
With Wolf Lake’s board in the room, Olli Vänskä, then living and preaching in Toronto, framed dissent in the language of Korah, “the earth opened its mouth and they were swallowed,” and of wolves that must be “chase[d] away.” In the evening session Don Lahti, an LLC speaker and former Board member, carried it further: “if they do not repent … they will also be swallowed up by the earth, which is the heresy. When they criticize the LLC, they are criticizing God himself.” The vocabulary of the later removals is set here, three years in advance.
Topics: Minneapolis, Wolf Lake, LLC board, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault“When they criticize the LLC, they are criticizing God himself, as we have heard so clearly today.”
Key details
- Scripture conceded, the Spirit denied: Don Lahti, in his evening turn: “The words that are spoken we cannot disagree with. They have quoted scripture, but so did the devil quote scripture.” 01:47:33
- Documents left unread: The moderator: “this idea of sending documents out and whatever, I think it's a very, very dangerous road to go down. … The Spirit told me that there's no reason to read this.” 01:17:58
- Ministers removed
At the annual joint board meeting of Menahga, Wolf Lake and Brainerd, the disinvitations of Wolf Lake’s ministers are defended on the ground that a fault need not be found in a sermon: “Sometimes it may be evident and sometimes it may not.” Roger Alajoki of Wolf Lake answers that the practice “was started by Cokato” and spread from congregation to congregation until, at Longview, “we don’t know the problem, we don’t know the man, we’ve never listened to his sermon … However, because five others have done it, we should do it.” No sermon is cited, and no motion is made.
Topics: Wolf Lake, Other congregations, Meetings, Ministers removed, No doctrine named“it was started by Cokato, and then later started to spread out, and then finally when it got to Longview, it was like, we don't know the problem, we don't know the man, we've never listened to his sermon, we don't know his life. However, because five others have done it, we should do it. That's dangerous business.”
- Ministers removed
The Rockford board had already asked its minister Craig Kumpula not to serve outside Rockford. At a congregation meeting it reports that “not all ministers in our congregation are of one mind,” and after about five hours of discussion, with no motion and no vote, it convinces him to step down from preaching. As he agrees, he says the matters “are not resolved here tonight.” The sermon he gave that morning is the last of his in the LLC’s archive.
Topics: Other congregations, Meetings, Ministers removed“So it would seem good that I would take that rest. But the matters that are troubling God's kingdom are not resolved here tonight, it's clear.”
Key details
- Already barred elsewhere: “the board had requested that Craig not serve outside of Rockford until the congregation can have more discussion on this. Craig agreed to respect this request. He also stated that he did not agree that it was the right decision.” 00:40:42
- After: His sermon that morning is his last in the LLC archive. From May 2022 he preached at Wolf Lake, and still does in 2026. source
- No doctrine named
A Colorado congregation meets on whether Randy Lake, a board member, should be given a rest from teaching Sunday school and Bible class, after a concern brought by a member “through one of the ministers.” The chair reports that the board cannot pinpoint the issue. No vote is taken; the chair announces that the board will “move forward with Randy not teaching Sunday School [and] Bible class,” and Lake offers to resign from the board.
Topics: Other congregations, Meetings, No doctrine named“We all agree that two spirits have been present in the recent discussions we have had. Through the hours of discussion, we haven't been able to pinpoint the specific issue or issues, so we're asking the congregation for help and guidance.”
- Scripture treated as a fault
During services at Elk River, after a visiting speaker named Harri presents on the Holy Spirit and the congregation as “mother,” the floor opens. John Lehtola (identified from context) quotes Luther and Finnish SRK sources: “We don't believe in the congregation,” but in Christ, and the visible assembled congregation can err, while the written Word “is the only authority.” The replies do not say which statement is false. One speaker warns him about “reading quotes from this mother [brother] or that brother”; another says “we certainly can't take man's word and pass that on as understanding”; another reminds him that Minneapolis “has asked you to rest.” No motion is made.
Topics: Other congregations, Minneapolis, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault“I think Brother John, when you're reading quotes from this mother [brother] or that brother, we want to be careful of that and not giving credit to them.”
Key details
- “Such a small portion”: “These articles that are quoted, I don't know the full context, quoting such a small portion of an article, what is the full context?” 01:07:31
- Earlier context
In 2019 the LLC board committed resources to a “more researched” history of the AALC and LLC since 1973, and on October 26 named Keith Waaraniemi, an LLC board member and staff minister, as its author, for release at the 2023 fiftieth-anniversary Summer Services. The 2021 draft table of contents included the 1973 division and a chapter on the “Soul Caring Discussions of the 1970s and 80s,” and promised to record the bad as well as the good. No book appeared in 2023; the anniversary exhibit and timeline sum up the caretaking era in one line, “Spiritual caretaking meetings were necessary.” In March 2024 Waaraniemi still hoped it would come “soon.” He retired that year, and later LLC operating plans no longer mention the book.
Topics: LLC board, Earlier context“Let us nevertheless record the facts in a factual manner, whether they seemed like good or bad things at the time.”
Key details
- Nevala’s editor: Waaraniemi had already edited the LLC’s earlier history, Peter Nevala’s memoir Unto This Day the Lord Has Helped (LLC, 2010, published after Nevala’s death; Finnish edition Peter Nevalan muistelmia). The new book was to continue it from 1995. Nevala had chaired the 1972 Minneapolis meeting and, by one account, led the minority that formed the AALC in 1973. LLC store
- Scripture treated as a fault
The Minneapolis congregation meets with LLC board members, staff and members of neighboring congregations. The board chairman reads the board’s written introduction, which he had also read to the LLC board members two days before: it lists examples of a lack of unity on both sides and says the board majority had contacted the LLC for help (“And you may remember we did not vote on that”). In the afternoon members ask why John Lehtola was taken down from preaching; Sam Roiko of Elk River answers by urging “humbly accepting the will of the congregation and the decisions of the congregation.” No decision on substance is recorded. Jim Frantti closes: “God's kingdom is a place of forgiveness.”
Topics: Minneapolis, LLC board, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault, Forgiveness“So I'm gonna read this introduction that we read at our last congregation meeting. I also read it with the … LLC brothers whom we met Friday evening.”
Key details
- Read, not spoken from the heart: The chairman: “So I'm gonna read this introduction that we read at our last congregation meeting.” 00:32:38
- Accept without understanding: Sam Roiko: “When the congregation has asked John Lehtola [to] rest, have I been able to accept, even if I don't fully understand, the wish of the congregation?” (The machine transcript has “not to rest”; ear-check.) 03:33:41
- Scripture treated as a fault
Asked in advance to state its doctrinal concerns in writing and to take one topic at a time, the LLC board declines both. The LLC’s pastor from Finland, Harri Vähäjylkkä, says he can call nothing he heard doctrinally wrong. The one minister who claims error, Keith Waaraniemi, himself a member of the LLC board and of its staff, will not say what it is. The day ends with no doctrine named.
Topics: Wolf Lake, LLC board, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault, No doctrine named“The issues aren't the issue. If you know what I mean. There's something else that's fueling it.”
Key details
- The chairman sets the phrase aside, not the teaching: Jim Frantti: “this phrase of continual forgiveness has come up now and then. It seems to be a burr in some saddles or something, and maybe it would be good if we could just not think about that phrase. But, you know, I think we believe, I think we all believe … that we live continually under the protection of God’s grace.” 00:29:46
- “Errors in the letter,” unnamed: Keith Waaraniemi on the Skoog–Raisanen confession, whose section on continual forgiveness says a child of God “can believe that their sins are forgiven at every moment, not only after asking for a blessing”: “there are errors in the letter … there are also things that are inaccurate and perhaps not even doctrinally correct.” Asked what they were, he did not say at the meeting. Seventeen months later he told the continent-wide meeting, “We live in the Forgiveness of sins every moment.” 03:36:17
- A letter condemned, nothing specific said: Warren Raisanen of Phoenix, who co-wrote the April 2019 confession of faith with Eric Skoog: the workshop speeches “condemned it, but for the most part, said nothing specific about it.” He then reads the workshop speaker’s words back: “I am reading from a transcript.” 00:59:05
- “You can't read the Bible”: Priscilla Ylitalo of Brainerd: “In Alaska I was told, oh, you, oh, you can't read the Bible, you got to have the Holy Spirit to … read the Bible. … It was a joy to read the Bible.” 02:12:33
- Read the Scripture after a sermon? Lori Alajoki of Wolf Lake asks a speaker from Finland: “Did you say that if a person hears the sermon and finds that they have to go read the scripture, that they're not trusting the spirit … ?” 03:00:31
- “We don't need to read the Scriptures”: Roland Keranen of Minneapolis recounts a discussion “where it was emphasized that we don't need to read the Scriptures.” 02:07:59
- 2020
- Ministers removed
His last sermon of record was on January 19, 2020. He was removed from speaking or stepped down.
Topics: Other congregations, Ministers removed - Scripture treated as a fault
At the Minneapolis annual meeting the board’s report, which nine of the eleven board members supported, is read aloud. It says the congregation had heard “a different voice, a dividing voice.” Members call the report one-sided and ask what the different voice or wrong teaching is: “it would be edifying to say what the voice is.” Paul Pylvainen defends the report: the board members “wrote, I believe, what was in their hearts.” Roland Keranen answers: “We don't need divisive letters like this that we just read.”
Topics: Minneapolis, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault“Sadly, we also heard a different voice, a dividing voice.”
Key details
- A written report, defended as from the heart: “The other board members that participated in that report, they wrote, I believe, what was in their hearts.” 01:40:47
- Name the voice: A member not named on the tape: “when you say there's a different voice, it would be edifying to say what the voice is, what the doctrinal, what the wrong teaching is.” 01:13:16
- Meetings
The Minneapolis board brings the congregation a letter of intent from a developer, United Properties, to buy the whole church property for $2.8 million or more. The chair says the offer arrived in February 2020 through a land-acquisition agent, sat unopened through the annual meeting and the COVID shutdown, and was discussed by the board in June and August, when the agent met with it; a board member calls it “an unsolicited offer.” The board does not say how the agent came to approach the congregation, and the chair mentions a “private conversation” with him about a likely $3 million price. A year earlier a transition committee had already had the property appraised after a survey in which some members suggested selling. One option presented is to sell and dissolve the congregation, in which case, under the bylaws, the funds would go to the LLC. Keith Waaraniemi, one of the congregation’s ministers and a member of the LLC board, says he feels it would be best to sell and join other congregations; many who speak are against selling, and one notes that no replacement property has been discussed. No formal vote is taken: a motion is withdrawn, and the chair concludes that the congregation is not ready to make a decision.
Topics: Minneapolis, Meetings“At this point, the congregation isn't ready to make a decision. That's what I hear.”
- Meetings
A week after the church-sale meeting, in which the congregation declined to decide on a sale, four board members, a minister, and other longtime members announce one after another, in about seventeen minutes, that they are leaving. A board member opens by reading three members’ letters and then his own, saying the previous Sunday’s meeting “showed clearly that I don’t serve a significant portion of this congregation”; nearly every speaker says the same thing, that they are moving to “another Southern Minnesota congregation.” The same leadership had insisted on majority rule when it held the majority: in 2018 Russell Roiko asked whether John Lehtola would “accept the decision of the board,” in November 2019 Sam Roiko of the LLC board urged “humbly accepting the will of the congregation and the decisions of the congregation,” naming the request that John Lehtola rest; and at the March 2020 annual meeting a board member said “we’ve had to decide on the basis of the majority.”
Topics: Minneapolis, Meetings“So for these reasons, I think it's no longer healthy that I serve on the board.”
- Ministers removed
At a congregation meeting in Glendale, Arizona, a board member reports that after a meeting in February 2020 “we met as a board and asked Eric to take a rest”; Eric Lahti’s last sermon in the LLC archive is February 23, 2020. The board says its bylaws let it ask a speaker to rest, but not for “an indefinite period.” The one concrete ground voiced comes from a member, who says Lahti had agreed “at least to some degree” with Warren Raisanen and Eric Skoog’s letter of April 2019, and asks “how can you possibly be a minister of the word in this church.” Lahti says the board told him it was “not comfortable bringing a list of concerns.” Raisanen says that “in every case, ministers being pressured to step down or taken down” have not been told what to repent of. A motion is made for a further meeting on “whether Eric should be speaking”; that meeting is not held. All 30 of his sermons that had been in the LLC’s public archive were taken out of it between June and September 2026.
Topics: Other congregations, Meetings, Ministers removed, No doctrine named“He said, the board is not comfortable bringing a list of concerns. And to me, that's where I've really, really struggled at.”
- Ministers removed
His last sermon of record was on October 25, 2020. He was removed from speaking or stepped down.
Topics: Other congregations, Ministers removed - No doctrine named SRK
Responding to messages Finnish believers had received from North America, the SRK board publishes a statement in Päivämies that it has been kept “well-informed” by the LLC, that the disagreements are to be handled locally, and that it has “full confidence in the operations of the LLC.” The statement does not name a single one of the disputed issues, such as forgiveness, continual forgiveness, the robe of righteousness, or the Word and the congregation, nor does it state the SRK’s own position on any of them. It speaks only of “mutual faith,” of “fellowship and one-mindedness,” and of the adversary seeking to break the love between believers.
Topics: SRK & Finland, Forgiveness, No doctrine named“The SRK and its Board of Directors have full confidence in the operations of the LLC.”
- Ministers removed
His last sermon of record was on November 15, 2020. He was removed from speaking or stepped down.
Topics: Other congregations, Ministers removed - 2021
- Ministers removed
His last sermon of record was on February 28, 2021. He was removed from speaking or stepped down.
Topics: Other congregations, Ministers removed - No doctrine named
The Menahga and Wolf Lake boards and speakers meet at Menahga. Menahga’s chairman, Mark Skoog, says there is no agenda, then reads four written points: (1) that the Holy Spirit and “the voice of the Good Shepherd” were heard at the meetings of the past five years, which those from Wolf Lake “believe otherwise”; (2) Wolf Lake’s “current position on the forgiveness question” first raised in 2011; (3) Wolf Lake board members’ statement that the LLC has “a different and wrong understanding of justification”; and (4) “the approach” of Wolf Lake’s letters. On forgiveness, every Wolf Lake speaker says God can close the mouth and that their intent is always to forgive, and a Menahga speaker answers: “I feel like we’re 99.999% in agreement on this.” On justification, Menahga reports Wolf Lake’s charge but states no position of its own. Of the differences behind the disinviting of Wolf Lake’s ministers, Skoog says “I don’t even know where they are, to be honest,” and that he assumed them “because our speaker brothers said that.” The meeting ends with no resolution and no motion, deferred until the LLC’s continent-wide meeting in May.
Topics: Wolf Lake, Other congregations, Meetings, Forgiveness, No doctrine named“Did they openly say there's differences? I said they said. At one time, I'm assuming they did, because our speaker brothers said that. And I have no reason to dispute what they said.”
Key details
- No reason needed. The only Menahga speaker to give particulars, Nick Ylitalo, also said none were required: “it’s not so that we need to have a specific reason … it might not be that we can come up with a black and white thing that they said something wrong.” In other words, no doctrinal difference had to be shown. 02:49:51
- Point 1: that “the Holy Spirit has with love spoken” at the meetings of the past five years and “we have heard the voice of the Good Shepherd,” while those from Wolf Lake “believe otherwise.” 00:16:13
- Point 2: Wolf Lake’s “current position on the forgiveness question that members of your board first raised in 2011 and then again in 2015. You took a different position than ours, the LLC’s.” 00:17:12
- Point 3: that Wolf Lake board members had said “the LLC and thus we as well have a different and wrong understanding of justification.” Menahga states no position of its own on justification. 00:17:42
- Point 4: “the approach that your board and members of your board have taken in several letters.” 00:17:42
- Wolf Lake on forgiveness: “I don’t deny the power of God to do whatever he wishes to do” (Joe Wuollet); “My intent would be to always forgive” (Bruce Johnson); “I can’t say that couldn’t happen” (Leland Lake); “God does what he wants to do. But we desire to forgive” (Esa Vilkama). 00:41:06
- Menahga agrees: “I feel like we’re 99.999% in agreement on this and that we want to forgive.” 00:53:17
- The chair doesn’t know the differences: Mark Skoog: “I don’t even know where they are, to be honest,” and he assumed them “because our speaker brothers said that.” 01:59:18
- The only particulars: Darwin Lake’s 2015 sermon, which Joe Wuollet says the LLC pastoral committee and Wolf Lake had agreed contained “nothing incorrect,” and a funeral visitation where, the speaker felt, “the gospel wasn’t preached.” 02:52:16
- Ministers removed
His last sermon of record was on May 2, 2021. He was removed from speaking or stepped down.
Topics: Other congregations, Ministers removed - No doctrine named
The LLC board calls ministers, board members and delegates from every congregation to Monticello; over 340 register. Board chairman Jim Frantti presents “how we believe” on justification, the office of the Holy Spirit, the congregation of God, forgiveness, confession, the Church Law of Christ, and the servants of the congregation. Minneapolis and Wolf Lake speakers agree with it point for point; the LLC’s own synopsis records that none of the differing speeches “expressed disagreement with Jim Frantti’s presentation.” Asked again and again what the “other voice” teaches, LLC-side speakers answer with general concerns, and none states a position on the two points Wolf Lake named: whether forgiveness may ever be withheld, and whether the robe of righteousness can be stained. The synopsis nonetheless asserts that “two groups exist,” calling this “broadly acknowledged.”
Topics: LLC board, Minneapolis, Wolf Lake, Forgiveness, No doctrine named“The question is not whether a minister is sent or not to a certain congregation, but the question is what has caused division between us.”
Key details
- Minneapolis and Wolf Lake agree: Patrick Kariniemi, Minneapolis board: “I felt that it perfectly reflects my faith. I don’t have anything that I would have added to it or taken away from it.” Tuula Mattila, Minneapolis: “My heart said amen. That is how I believe.” Sue Johnson, Wolf Lake: “Jim, I agreed with your presentation.”
- The LLC’s own record of it: “About a dozen speeches took differing positions on the spiritual problems of recent years, yet none expressed disagreement with Jim Frantti’s presentation covering central doctrinal questions.” (LLC synopsis, p. 2) synopsis
- Justification: “We are only justified by faith. … It is only by faith that God sees in us the merits of his Son. We cannot add anything to this.” Minneapolis and Wolf Lake said the same in nearly identical words.
- Living in grace, in the LLC’s own words: Chairman Jim Frantti: God’s children live under “the ‘continual protection of God’s grace’ … We do not lose faith every time we fall into sin. … But it does not mean that we do not put away sin.” LLC board member Keith Waaraniemi, the next day: “We live in the Forgiveness of sins every moment. … We are heaven-acceptable, not because of our own purity or keeping up-to-date so to speak In confession. We don’t lose faith when we fall into sin.” He then warned against “over-emphasiz[ing]” it and asked whether there was “a danger … of losing the fear of God,” closing: “Yes, we live in grace. We live in the forgiveness of sins every moment. But we need this precious gift of confession.” This is the substance of the “continual forgiveness” the two congregations were faulted for, and of the Wolf Lake confession Waaraniemi had called “perhaps not even doctrinally correct” in December 2019. (typed transcript, Frantti [58:38], Waaraniemi [2:48:28])
- Forgiveness: “Forgiveness happens through the preaching of the Gospel”; “God’s congregation is quick to loose and slow to bind.”
- The Word and the congregation: “God’s word is our highest authority. … The word is in the congregation.” And: “Does it mean that a board or a whole congregation can’t err? No.” That a local board or congregation can err is the premise Minneapolis and Wolf Lake had argued from.
- Confession: a “grace privilege … not forced and … not demanded,” “just as effective in private confession as it is in public.”
- Silent on the two disputed points: on whether forgiveness may ever be withheld from one who asks, Frantti said, “I don’t have time to go into a lot of detail on this.” On whether the robe of righteousness can be stained, the LLC stated no position, and the one LLC minister who spoke to it, Ron Simonson, agreed with Wolf Lake: “There is no way that we can as faulty human beings soil Christ’s robe.”
- The question never answered: Bruce Johnson, Wolf Lake: “The only other two items that we have ever discussed are forgiveness and the robe of righteousness … What is that ‘different voice’? The question was never answered.”
- “No one speaks what they believe”: Rick Nevala, Rockford: “The issues are talked about at a high level. No one speaks what they believe.”
- The synopsis’s “differences”: a list of concerns “expressed by many,” beginning “There is a concern that a different understanding on the doctrine of the congregation exists in our midst.” None says what that different understanding is. synopsis
- Six months later: Frantti reports “we have received no such request for help” and offers “one matter is the doctrine of the congregation.” (ministers’ teleconference, November 4, 2021)
- The objection was to emphasis: In the same speech Waaraniemi read Luther on the antinomians, who “always preach comfortingly about grace and forgiveness of sins in Christ,” and said grace and Christ were “emphasized in such a way that endeavor or the caring for the life of faith and the conscience are minimized.” He named no sermon or statement. (typed transcript, [2:48:28])
- Ministers removed
His last sermon of record was on May 18, 2021. He was removed from speaking or stepped down.
Topics: Other congregations, Ministers removed - Ministers removed
At the LLC annual meeting a Menahga delegate brings, as the last item of new business, the LLC website’s links to all broadcast and archived sermons of Minneapolis and Wolf Lake. The item was not on the agenda sent to congregations, which listed only Summer Services dates; Seattle’s delegates said they learned of it “just on Wednesday.” A Minneapolis delegate first moves that any removal be decided with “doctrinal and other reasoning” documented and given to the speaker, saying he had heard no reasoning that the sermons were against the LLC’s doctrinal foundation; that motion fails. The Menahga motion carries by online vote, with no tally announced. No sermon is played or cited by date; the board chairman says it is “not a question about archiving a particular sermon.”
Topics: Minneapolis, Wolf Lake, LLC board, Meetings, Ministers removed, No doctrine named“Now, in the proposal I did not hear reasoning that would support that these sermons or content of the sermons are against the LLC doctrinal foundation.”
Key details
- Reasons asked for, then voted down: Olli Kujala moved that “Doctrinal and other reasoning for removal will be documented and communicated to the speaker.” Result: “The voting for the motion from Olli did not pass.” 01:13:50
- Content did not matter: Jim Frantti, board chairman: “it’s not a question about archiving a particular sermon.” Rick Nevala, board member: “if we begin to just start working on details, I think we’ve lost the guidance of the Holy Spirit.” 01:38:16
- Not on the agenda: the published agenda listed one new-business item, Summer Services dates. Seattle’s delegate: “This was brought to our attention just on Wednesday, so we’ve only had a couple days’ notice of it.” 01:18:20
- How it was raised: Dave Keranen, Menahga: “like I brought the item, this question around archiving sermons and from Wolf Lake and Minneapolis … it causes some confusion with the fact that congregations are not sending speakers at these places.” 01:03:29
- The one particular: Dave Niemi cited an unnamed recent sermon on Revelation 7, then added: “I may have wrong understanding, but to me, it did not join with my spirit.” 01:16:19
- The motion as voted: “to remove links on LLC websites [to] sermons, broadcast or archived from Minneapolis or Wolf Lake”; result: “the vote to remove archived sermons carries.” part B, 00:18:02
- “Rebuke to entire congregations”: LLC board member Carey Simonson: “this meeting today has taken an action that has given not only rebuke to individuals, but rebuke to entire congregations.” part B, 00:47:05
- “Not an expulsion”: the recording ends: “It’s a pause … It wasn’t the LLC, it was the voice of the congregation. We didn’t expel the congregation.” A year later the delegates removed both congregations from membership. part B, 01:10:59
- Scripture treated as a fault
At the annual meeting of the Midwest Area boards in Rockford, the question is whether to keep greeting Minneapolis and Wolf Lake with God’s peace. John Lehtola reads a sheet posted at the Brainerd retirement home calling such greeting “sin upon the conscience of believers,” and answers it with a sermon by Seattle’s Tomm Stewart (“That is not for an individual to decide”) and a presentation by SRK board member Tapani Kinnunen (“We as an individual cannot sit in the seat of judgment”). Loren Ylioja of Dunblane calls this “cherry-picking,” and Nick Ylitalo of Menahga says those who differ come with “defenses prepared ahead of time.” Yet the majority’s own case that day is read from prepared notes and the written May synopsis, a book, and a Finnish meeting summary from 1934, and the charge against Wolf Lake is something Walt Lampi “had heard.” Minneapolis’s camp-board seat is left vacant. Six weeks later the Midwest boards write that without repentance the division “will end in heresy and permanent separation.”
Topics: Minneapolis, Wolf Lake, Other congregations, LLC board, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault“What John Lehtola was saying, I guess I would call it cherry-picking a certain portion out of a sermon to find that which feeds what I would like to hear.”
Key details
- What John Lehtola read, 1 – a posted sheet: A question-and-answer sheet posted at the Brainerd retirement home: “by continuing to greet those Who have been battling against God's kingdom or against the LLC, the local boards, speakers, and many individuals, … it would be sin upon the conscience of believers.” 01:48:24
- What he read, 2 – an LLC minister’s sermon: Tomm Stewart, Seattle, sermon of October 31, 2021: “That is not for an individual to decide. The reality is so. I could be the one that is messed up and not the other person that I refuse to greet.” 01:50:51
- What he read, 3 – an SRK board member: Tapani Kinnunen of the SRK board, presentation on the church law of Christ at Pornainen, Finland: “So it is a matter for the church or the congregation and not for the individual child of God to bind a person or to decide whether to greet that person or not. We as an individual cannot sit in the seat of judgment.” In 2026 the same Tapani Kinnunen tells the LLC annual meeting, “we believe in the same way.” 01:52:44
- The answer to quoting: Nick Ylitalo, Menahga: “And so it seems when some of you come to teach God's kingdom, you have your defenses prepared ahead of time, oftentimes.” 02:16:00
- Meanwhile, read from prepared notes: Keith Waaraniemi, LLC board: “And so I've tried to gather some thoughts together from things that have been said recently and discussions … The continent-wide meeting synopsis has these kinds of statements in it” He then reads the written synopsis of the May 2021 meeting as the list of concerns. 02:30:12
- Cited from a book: Don Lahti, Brainerd, on refusing to greet before the Kirkkokunta heresy of about 1930: “That is documented in a book, I think it's by someone by the name of Mäenpää.” 01:55:10
- A man’s summary from 1934, taken as the rule: Jouko Haapsaari: “And the chairman of the meeting kept a summary at the end of the meeting … he said that there are two ways to go wrong. One is to teach a wrong doctrine, and the other is to teach a right doctrine But to go to preach to those who battle against God's kingdom.” The board’s synopsis of this meeting repeats it, on the weekend Darwin Lake of Wolf Lake was serving Minneapolis. 04:39:16
- The Wolf Lake charge was hearsay: Walt Lampi: “I've heard that Wolf Lake has had a mutual Bible study with some other group. … I believe that that's what we mean when we talk about spiritual fornication.” 02:19:21
- Wolf Lake’s “no response”: About six hours in, under new business, the chair makes one call over Zoom: “Is Wolf Lake still online? Anybody from Wolf Lake wish to speak? Wolf Lake is still connected via Zoom. … We would ask Wolf Lake to unmute if they would like to make a comment via Zoom. No response.” The board’s synopsis turns this into “Wolf Lake representatives did not respond to requests to address this concern.” 06:02:05
- What was decided: The one decision: Minneapolis’s seat on the camp board is left vacant “until matters are cared for”: “leave the Minneapolis position open for now. Are there any opposed? There's one opposed, I see.” (The synopsis says “a few opposed” and gives the reason as “the current lack of unity.”) 05:33:09
- What followed: On December 7 the Minnesota board chairmen and ministers met at the LLC office on the question “has God’s time come to separate from Minneapolis and Wolf Lake?” On January 1, 2022 the Midwest boards wrote to both congregations: “Without repentance, we cannot continue in mutual work and fellowship and our current division will end in heresy and permanent separation.” The letter names “a different spirit,” not a false teaching.
- 2022
- Ministers removed
Before any congregation meeting, the Phoenix board had already decided to “pause Brett or not schedule Brett to serve.” Its chairman, Keith Hillukka, opens by saying that “over the past couple of years” members had brought the board concerns about the speaker Brett Rintamaki and that the board had made them known to him. Rintamaki says that as of mid-October 2021 he “still had not heard what the concerns were,” and a member asks why the board had heard about it for two years while Rintamaki had known for only six months. In October the congregation had preached forgiveness to him from the pulpit; board member Andy Kesti says the question of his serving “came up again … even after matters had been taken care of.” A motion to remove him dies for want of a quorum; at the annual meeting weeks later, though the agenda had promised a ballot, the vote is taken by show of hands and the motion to remove him carries.
Topics: Other congregations, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault, Ministers removed, Forgiveness“Over the past couple of years, congregation members have reached out to the board voicing concerns surrounding our speaker brother, Brett.”
Key details
- Removed from the schedule first: “we had decided that we would pause Brett or not schedule Brett to serve until we could meet as a congregation.” (Keith Hillukka, chairman) 00:22:36
- “A couple of years”: “Over the past couple of years, congregation members have reached out to the board voicing concerns surrounding our speaker brother, Brett … We have made these thoughts and concerns known to Brett.” 00:21:37
- Never told what the concerns were: Rintamaki: “this was in the middle of October and I still had not heard what the concerns were or been approached by anybody with any concerns.” 04:28:06
- Two years against six months: a member asks “how come two years the board has been hearing about Brett and only the last six months Brett's been known about it.” 00:53:54
- Forgiven, then reopened: Andy Kesti, board: after Rintamaki cared for matters from the pulpit, “the topic came up again … even after matters had been taken care of,” and he asks why some “could not just let … these matters be buried in the sea of grace.” 01:52:10
- The motion: “The congregation has concerns, so therefore, I'm making the motion to remove Brett from speaking.” No doctrinal error is named. 03:01:32
- Prepared statements discouraged: Opening, the chairman Keith Hillukka: “I know at times we read a lot of prepared statements and whatnot … so it'd be good if we could just keep it to what's on our heart and mind,” citing Matthew 10:19–20. 00:23:33
- “Most of it is just reading scripture”: Sheryl Simonson on Rintamaki’s sermons: “you can't say that that's wrong because every word in the Bible is true. … But there just was no life.” 02:51:47
- “Weaponized”: Molly Raisanen: “Regarding the Bible verses that are brought up here, I kind of am looking at those as the Bible sort of being weaponized.” 03:34:42
- Last in the LLC archive: His last Phoenix sermon in the LLC archive is November 14, 2021, on Hebrews 3:12–15. The archive also lists him at Ishpeming on December 8, 2021, the trip to Michigan during which, he recalls, the Phoenix board and speakers took him off the schedule. source
- No doctrine named
At an LLC workshop for congregation board members, delegates and ministers, chairman Jim Frantti reports that the board has written to Minneapolis and Wolf Lake asking to visit “yet one more time,” and says the visits are “not for the purpose of this kind of deep debate and discussion” of doctrine. Speakers in the room call the two congregations “a heresy” and “a different spirit,” and a delegate says it “would take the delegates to get together and recommend to the board … to remove those.” By this date the LLC had still not said where the two congregations’ teaching departed from its own, or answered their two stated disagreements, on withholding forgiveness and on whether the robe of righteousness can be stained.
Topics: LLC board, Minneapolis, Wolf Lake, Meetings, Forgiveness, No doctrine named“And in doing so, it was our feeling that we're not looking for some prolonged debate Or discussion over doctrinal issues or those kinds of things”
Key details
- No doctrine to be discussed: Frantti: “we're not looking for some prolonged debate or discussion over doctrinal issues or those kinds of things” … the visits are “not for the purpose of this kind of deep debate and discussion, but more for the purpose that we could share our perspective.” 00:42:05
- “A heresy”: Reino Kuoppala (Brainerd): “they have their own doctrine, they have their own faith, and therefore, according to dictionary definition, it is a heresy,” and it “would take the delegates to get together and recommend to the board … to remove those.” He names no doctrine. part 2, 00:29:11
- “A different spirit”: Randy Herrala: “we do believe differently. There's a different spirit … I'm happy to hear that this call to not further debate has come.” part 2, 02:02:05
- Still no stated difference: Jim Frantti had set out the LLC’s understanding of several topics at the May 2021 continent-wide meeting, and Minneapolis and Wolf Lake speakers said “amen” to it. But no LLC document or speaker had said where the two congregations’ teaching departed from it, or taken a position on their two stated disagreements: whether forgiveness may ever be withheld from one who asks, and whether the robe of righteousness can be stained.
- No doctrine named
Seven weeks before the annual meeting, five LLC board members, chairman Jim Frantti, vice chairman Jim Jurmu, secretary Sam Roiko, assistant secretary Carey Simonson and Marv Wittenberg, meet the Wolf Lake congregation, which had been told in writing that “continued discussion and debate” would not help. Frantti calls the members to repent and warns that without repentance the division “will become some kind of a formal separation,” but answers the question of what Wolf Lake must repent of with “nothing.” Members ask again and again what the error is and ask to be shown it from Scripture; no LLC speaker names a teaching of Wolf Lake as wrong, and Jim Jurmu says, “I don’t have a specific example today.” The meeting ends without a motion. The source is a typed transcript; no recording has been found.
Topics: Wolf Lake, LLC board, Meetings, No doctrine named“Sometimes, we have been asked this question, what must the Wolf Lake congregation repent of? And my answer has been nothing. A congregation doesn't repent.”
Key details
- The letter that set it up: the board’s March 24 letter: “We do not believe that continued discussion and debate will resolve the issues in question. We would now like to send representatives soon … to share with you our sense of where we are and how we move forward.” p. 4
- Repent of “nothing”: Frantti: “what must the Wolf Lake congregation repent of? And my answer has been nothing.” In the same talk: “without repentance and caring for matters, this current division will become some kind of a formal separation.” p. 5
- No example: Jim Jurmu: “There have been those times when representatives from Wolf Lake have spoken in a way that I could not agree with. I don’t have a specific example today.” p. 16
- What does “battling” mean? asked whether battling God’s kingdom means opposing something doctrinally, Sam Roiko answers: “I wouldn’t want to stand on what I think. But I would want to stand in the same love of what the other brothers and sisters think and feel.” p. 19
- No criticism heard on the board: Frantti: “from discussions on the board over the years, the LLC board, … I have not heard questions or criticisms of the Wolf Lake congregation.” p. 22
- Asked, not answered: a member: “If we have erred here in Wolf Lake, please show us with the word.” p. 27
- Expulsion steps
The next evening the same five LLC board members meet the Minneapolis congregation, whose board says it wants “to hear your concerns.” Jim Frantti repeats that he has told those who ask what Minneapolis must repent of “nothing,” and warns that without repentance the division “could sadly become a formal separation.” Members ask more than once what is wrong in how they believe; the board members speak of a “different voice” and a “different spirit,” one saying it is “the same doctrine in many ways,” and none names a false teaching. Asked who decides, the visitors say the board decides nothing and that it is “not a decision of a board.” The meeting ends after nearly five hours without a motion.
Topics: Minneapolis, LLC board, Meetings, Expulsion steps“Sometimes this question has been asked of us, what must the Minneapolis congregation repent of? And when it's been asked of me, I have said nothing.”
Key details
- The host: “Our desire is to hear your concerns.” 00:00:33
- Repent of “nothing”: Frantti: “what must the Minneapolis congregation repent of? And when it’s been asked of me, I have said nothing,” and then: “without repentance this kind of division that we have been experiencing could sadly become a formal separation.” 00:15:04
- Same doctrine, different spirit: “Many things are the same, the same doctrine in many ways. But there’s a different spirit.” 02:16:46
- “We could decide nothing”: “No LLC decision that we’ll decide. We could decide nothing. The LLC board doesn’t control God’s kingdom.” Frantti: “It’s not a decision of a board or of a person or of a small group of people.” Seven weeks later the delegates voted, with the board chairman telling them they were free to act. 02:14:55
- The question left open: a member: “what is it that is incorrect in how we believe?” No answer on the recording. 03:33:26
- A message to follow: a member: “I know there’s a message that your brothers are going to draft and bring forth to the other congregations.” 04:16:23
- Expulsion steps
The removal of Minneapolis and Wolf Lake was not on the meeting agenda. It was raised from the floor, and delegates voted by show of hands to remove both congregations together, with no prior written notice, no statement of reasons, and no citation of the Constitution. Minnesota law (Minn. Stat. § 317A.411) and the LLC’s own Bylaws (Art. II § 9) required all of these; none was honored.
Topics: Minneapolis, Wolf Lake, LLC board, Meetings, Scripture treated as a fault, No doctrine named, Expulsion steps“We didn't, of course, on the annual meeting agenda put this topic or any kind of action item”
Key details
- A motion to judge by the Word, never taken up: Mitchell Johnson of Wolf Lake: “So I make a motion before excommunicating Wolf Lake and Minneapolis that they be judged with the Holy Word of God before committing that action.” The chair: “I believe we can only have one motion on the floor at a time.” It was never put to a vote. 02:40:12
- Not on the agenda: Jim Frantti: “We didn’t, of course, on the annual meeting agenda put this topic or any kind of action item.” 02:03:57
- Prepared in the congregations: at Monticello on June 12, LLC vice chairman Jim Jurmu, one of the five who had visited in May, said “The questions are going to be brought there and it will be discussed there” (from a participant’s typed excerpt; no recording). On July 2 Monticello’s delegate reported that “the congregation has requested some discussion” of whether “it is a time to separate.” 00:03:57
- The motion: Mitch Loukusa, Rockford delegate: “that we formally remove the Wolf Lake and Minneapolis congregations,” saying he was “not super familiar with the bylaws.” 02:28:53
- The one doctrinal sentence: Frantti: “speeches that seem to separate the word of God from the congregation and place the word above the congregation in some way,” with no speech, speaker or date given. 01:59:52
- The bylaws objection, unanswered: Gary Lehtola, Minneapolis delegate: “Minneapolis complies with the Constitution and the bylaws of this organization. So based on that, it’s impossible to actually do this.” 02:44:37
- The vote: “Okay, let’s show hands for those that are opposed. Okay, so the motion stands.” No count spoken. 03:23:12
- Accurate, but “so does the enemy of souls”: Jim Moll: “you accurately quote God's word, but so does the enemy of souls.” 00:40:45
- “Quoting the Bible”: Timo Hotari, Toronto delegate: “One side is humble and is begging for grace. The other side is quoting the Bible and wanting to be a part of a group. … No reciting. Bible portions as a defense.” 01:18:52
- The Constitution as a crutch: Andrew Skoog: “The document is there just as a guideline. If you don't have the Holy Spirit, you have to lean on these things.” 01:47:31
- “Prepared statements”, and an answer: The moderator: “If you have some prepared statements, maybe you can email them in.” Ann Parks of Minneapolis, whose turn it was: “If we don't use the word to defend our faith, what do we use?” 03:04:07
- Rebuked for reading the Bible: Peter Ojala of Seattle: “Fellow believers, in a way, rebuking other believers from reading from the Bible. In some ways, I understand it. In other ways, I don't.” 01:41:51
- Expulsion steps
Five days after the vote, the LLC board chairman, secretary and executive director write to every congregation that the delegates “overwhelmingly approved” the motion to remove Minneapolis and Wolf Lake. The letter names no doctrine and no difference in belief; its ground is a “different spirit” and a “loving call to repentance” that “went unheeded,” without saying repentance of what. It does not say that the removal was not on the agenda, that the vote was a show of hands with no count, or that a motion to judge the two congregations by the Word of God before removing them was never put to the floor. On August 3, 2022, Briar Siljander wrote to the board and every congregation that the removal broke Minnesota law and the LLC’s own Bylaws.
Topics: LLC board, Minneapolis, Wolf Lake, Letters & legal, No doctrine named, Expulsion steps“A different spirit was plainly evident in the speeches from Minneapolis and Wolf Lake delegates and guests.”
Key details
- No difference stated: the letter’s only ground is that “A different spirit was plainly evident in the speeches from Minneapolis and Wolf Lake delegates and guests.” It names no teaching of either congregation as wrong. letter
- Not on the agenda, unmentioned: at the meeting Jim Frantti had said, “We didn’t, of course, on the annual meeting agenda put this topic or any kind of action item.” The letter calls the removal one of several “decisions” and says nothing of it. 02:03:57
- The motion to judge by Scripture, unmentioned: before the vote a Wolf Lake delegate moved “that they be judged with the Holy Word of God before committing that action.” The chair answered, “I believe we can only have one motion on the floor at a time,” and the motion was never taken up. 02:40:12
- “Overwhelmingly approved”: the vote was a show of hands with no count spoken: “let’s show hands for those that are opposed. Okay, so the motion stands.” 03:23:12
- Repentance of what: the letter says “the loving call to repentance went unheeded” but does not say what the two congregations were to repent of. letter
- The answer, August 3, 2022: Minnesota law requires at least 15 days’ written notice of an expulsion “and the reasons for it,” and an opportunity to be heard; “no prior notice of expulsion was provided,” and no reasons were given. letter
- Letters & legal
The first letter to the LLC board and its member congregations lays out the violations of Scripture, the Constitution, and Minnesota law. It received no response, ever.
Topics: Minneapolis, Wolf Lake, Letters & legalKey details
- The law: “A member may not be expelled or suspended … except pursuant to a procedure that is fair and reasonable and is carried out in good faith,” including at least 15 days’ written notice “and the reasons for it” and a chance to be heard (Minn. Stat. 317A.411). “As you know, no prior notice of expulsion was provided.” letter
- Not on the agenda: “Expulsion of the member congregations was not included on the meeting agenda or otherwise communicated to all member congregations, as Jim Frantti stated at the meeting.” letter
- No vote recorded: “The decision to expel these members was made by show of hands with no count or record … Additionally, prior to the vote on the motion to expel, another motion was made, but was rejected by … the moderator.” letter
- No difference ever stated: “Through the date that the LLC excommunicated the Wolf Lake and Minneapolis congregations, no clear statement was ever provided as to how the faith of those congregations’ members differed from the faith of any other member congregation’s members.” letter
- The spirits untested: “not one LLC board member or delegate who spoke or voted in favor of the expulsion tested the spirits to see if they were of God.” letter
- No doctrine named SRK
The LLC’s chairman, secretary, executive director and two staff meet the SRK and SFC in Oulu; the meetings are attended in part by the entire SRK board. The LLC reports that the meetings “were of one mind” and that “years of division has led to a heresy in North America,” and the SRK’s Päivämies reports the same. The published account lists topics that had been discussed in North America, but names no teaching of Minneapolis or Wolf Lake as false; the LLC’s own representatives say “in doctrinal discussions there have not always been big differences.”
Topics: Minneapolis, Wolf Lake, SRK & Finland, No doctrine named“With sorrow, the discussions spoke how years of division has led to a heresy in North America.”
Key details
- “Not always been big differences”: “Representatives of the North American central organization said that in doctrinal discussions there have not always been big differences. However, this has not removed division nor restored unity of faith.” article
- Topics, not teachings: the article lists subjects “discussed … over the years”: justification, God’s Word, the written and preached Word, the Word and the congregation, the office of the Holy Spirit, forgiveness of sins, confession, and servants of the congregation. It does not say what either side taught on any of them.
- The “strongest disagreement”: “the perspective of God’s congregation and the work of the Holy Spirit in the congregation,” again with no teaching named.
- “Of one mind”: the LLC’s cover email: “The meetings were of one mind where participants experienced unity of faith and understanding. With sorrow, the discussions spoke how years of division has led to a heresy in North America.” email
- Who attended for the LLC: Jim Jurmu, Sam Roiko, Petri Hotari, Adrian Pirness and Arvin Pirness.
- 2023
- SRK
The LLC defends the removals by quoting the Bylaws’ membership-admission clause, Article II, Section 1, rather than the expulsion clause, Section 9, and omitting the Constitution’s actual standard. Briar had already told the board, in their August 2022 letter, that Section 9 is the only provision governing expulsion; Section 1 concerns the admission of new congregations, not their removal. The same month, SRK chairman Valde Palola endorses the removals and teaches that “the congregation cannot err on any point of doctrine either.”
Topics: Minneapolis, Wolf Lake, SRK & Finland, LLC board“Thus, the congregation cannot err on any point of doctrine either.”
- Letters & legal SRK
The second letter goes to the LLC board, every member congregation, and the SRK Board of Directors (Attn: Valde Palola), documenting the misquotation of the Bylaws and asking directly whether they still believe their own Constitution. It received no response, ever.
Topics: Minneapolis, Wolf Lake, SRK & Finland, Letters & legalKey details
- The misquotation: the LLC board told congregations in the Voice of Zion that the removal was “in accord with the LLC bylaws,” quoting Article II, Section I. “You have, quite knowingly, quoted only part of the complete sentence,” and that section governs the admission of new members, not expulsion; the expulsion rule is Article II, Section 9. p. 2
- Neither condition met: Section 9 requires both a failure to act in accordance with the Constitution and Bylaws and a failure to obey the LLC’s decisions. “One or the other will not do – you must have both. At the Annual Meeting, you had neither.” p. 3
- Do you still believe your own Constitution? “This statement of faith is adhered to by the Minneapolis and Wolf Lake congregations. Do the LLC Board and other member congregations still adhere to and believe it?” p. 3
- Faulted for quoting the creeds: “What I have observed is criticism of the Minneapolis and Wolf Lake congregations … because members … believe these writings and dare to recite from them in doctrinal discussions.” p. 3
- To the SRK: “Do you disagree with what I wrote in my first letter to the LLC Board and member congregations? Is it different than how you believe? If it is, how is it different? If it is not, why have you joined in the condemnation?” p. 5
- Letters & legal SRK
Craig Kumpula, a pastor at the Minneapolis congregation, writes directly to Valde Palola, recalling Palola’s own hope in 2019 for open discussion “in the spirit of love,” and describing how the discussions turned to people “of a different mind or different spirit” and ended in a declared heresy. The letter went unanswered.
Topics: SRK & Finland, Minneapolis, Letters & legal“I do not believe that God declares heresies, although the Bible does say that there will be heresies among us (1 Corinthians 11:19).”
- Ministers removed
His last sermon of record was on August 27, 2023. He was removed from speaking or stepped down.
Topics: Other congregations, Ministers removed - Ministers removed
His last sermon of record was on September 24, 2023. He was removed from speaking or stepped down.
Topics: Other congregations, Ministers removed - Expulsion steps
Minnesota law gives an expelled member one year to ask a court whether the expulsion was lawful, and the parties may agree to pause that clock to talk. Asked to meet, the LLC board answered through a lawyer (June 20, 2023), agreed to a 90-day pause, and asked for Minneapolis’s objectives in writing; Minneapolis sent them on July 7. The meeting came only on September 26 and lasted under an hour; the board’s side asked for a written proposal by October 3 and extended the pause only to October 9. On October 6 the board “rejected the offer,” called further negotiation “fruitless,” and did not answer Minneapolis’s request for two more weeks. With the deadline three days off, Minneapolis served its complaint seeking the court’s determination on whether the LLC broke the law.
Topics: Minneapolis, Letters & legal, Expulsion steps“You should be aware that if your client successfully challenges the expulsion in court, the LLC will proceed with another expulsion which will comply with procedural requirements of Minn Stat 317A.”
- Ministers removed
His last sermon of record was on October 29, 2023. He was removed from speaking or stepped down.
Topics: Other congregations, Ministers removed - Expulsion steps
On November 13 the LLC board told its congregations that Minneapolis had served a legal complaint over its expulsion, without saying what led to it. A letter to every member congregation and its board sets out the sequence, with the lawyers’ correspondence attached: the request to meet, the brief meeting, the refusal to extend the pause, and the board’s statement that it would simply expel again. It lists eight ways the July 2, 2022 vote broke Minnesota law and the LLC’s own Constitution and Bylaws, notes that nothing had yet been filed with a court, and asks the board to pause and return to the table.
Topics: Minneapolis, Letters & legal, Expulsion steps“This letter, unsurprisingly, says not a word about what precipitated the complaint. This is not honest or right.”
- 2026
- Expulsion steps
The Southwest Area board meets in Phoenix on a recommendation to remove Coastal California “due to years of non-communication and spiritual heresy.” Instead of the agenda item, the board questions Phil Siljander, CCLLC’s chairman, who has joined online, from about 00:31 to 02:04 on the recording: is he part of God’s kingdom “or has he gone along the way of the heresy,” and does he see himself “in alignment with those who have left in heresy?” He answers that his faith has not changed, says the information about non-communication and heresy is in part incorrect, and asks for a separate meeting with the members; it is not taken up. Speaker after speaker tells him he is “in unbelief.” The committee goes on to arrange a floor motion at the Annual Meeting.
Topics: Coastal California, Meetings, No doctrine named, Expulsion steps“So are you asking how I believe? My faith has not changed. I believe the same way.”
Key details
- The opening question: A Southwest Area speaker: “So I guess one of the questions that I had was for Phil is, do you believe along with us, and do you believe that this faith that the brothers here share is the one true saving faith.” 00:32:22
- The chairman: Meeting chairman: “Is Phil part of God's kingdom or has he gone along the way of the heresy?” 00:39:03
- The test applied: Keith Kesti: “But rather, do we see, each of us, do we see ourselves in alignment with those who have left in heresy?” 00:43:18
- The verdict: A speaker, near the end: “All these speeches that have lovingly let you know, Phil, that you are in unbelief. Again, I remind you, the humility that's required is to actually repent from unbelief.” 02:00:08
- The same speaker: “I can tell you that for myself, you and I do not believe the same. I feel that you are in unbelief.” 02:02:04
- Not on the agenda this way: Meeting chairman, after the questioning: “Wasn't exactly the way I thought this meeting would go” 02:06:50
- Expulsion steps
The Southwest Area Mission Committee chairman, an LLC board member, and the executive director agree to keep the move against Coastal California off the Annual Meeting agenda, because advance notice “could raise a number of question[s] in congregations,” and to raise it from the floor instead.
Topics: Coastal California, LLC board, Letters & legal, Expulsion steps“Perhaps it would be best if this request was made from the floor so that the delegates present at the meeting would hear our summary and request collectively, and the Holy Spirit would guide the ensuing discussion.”
- Expulsion steps
The LLC had invited member congregations to submit proposed new business for the July 3 Annual Meeting. CCLLC, through its delegate, submits three items for the delegates to discuss and decide: (1) no congregation may be expelled unless the LLC first states the doctrine of the Constitution it departs from and shows the departure from the Holy Word of God; (2) before any expulsion vote, the board must give the congregation and all delegates that statement in writing, with the Scripture said to be violated, and let the congregation answer; (3) rescind the 2022 expulsions of Minneapolis and Wolf Lake. On June 26 Arvin Pirness answers for the board that the items will not be placed on the agenda, because the court dismissal of Minneapolis’s lawsuit made the LLC’s decisions “final.” The members’ meeting is not asked; the board decides for it.
Topics: Coastal California, Letters & legal, LLC board, Expulsion steps“the decisions of the LLC regarding those matters are final and we will not be adding your proposed items to the agenda.”
Key details
- Who sets the agenda: The Annual Meeting is the meeting of the member congregations, acting through their delegates, and the Bylaws (Article II, Section 8) make “New business” part of its order of business. The LLC had asked congregations to send proposed agenda items by a published deadline, and CCLLC did. Here the board decides which members’ business the delegates may see: it strikes CCLLC’s items, while the motion against CCLLC, kept off the published agenda by the April 22 decision, is announced in advance and allowed from the floor.
- What CCLLC asked: “These requests ask the delegates at the Annual Meeting to do one thing above all: to hold themselves and the LLC to the LLC's own Constitution, the highest earthly standard of which is the Holy Word of God.” p. 1
- Item 1: Affirm that “no member congregation may be expelled unless the LLC first states the specific doctrine of the Constitution from which the congregation is alleged to depart, and shows that departure from the Holy Word of God,” and acknowledge that the 2022 removals did not meet that standard. p. 2
- Item 2: Adopt as settled practice that “before any vote to expel a member congregation, the Board of Directors shall provide to that congregation and to all Delegates a written statement (a) identifying the specific doctrine of the Constitution at issue, (b) setting forth the passages of the Holy Word of God said to be violated, and (c) describing the efforts made to show the congregation its error and to restore it,” with a chance for the congregation to respond in writing and in person before any vote. p. 2
- Item 3: That “the Annual Meeting rescind the 2022 expulsions of the Minneapolis and Wolf Lake congregations and restore them to membership.” p. 3
- The board’s reason: “the claims were voluntarily dismissed with prejudice, and judgment was entered by the Court on February 27, 2024. As a result, the decisions of the LLC regarding those matters are final and we will not be adding your proposed items to the agenda.” The letter leaves out why the case ended. Under the statute, that claim could go forward only if at least three member congregations brought it; when no other congregation joined Minneapolis, Minneapolis agreed to dismiss. No court ever ruled on whether the expulsions were lawful, and the dismissal decided nothing for the delegates, who remain free to take up their own past decisions, just as the SRK did in 2011 when it acknowledged the errors of the caretaking era. p. 1
- In the same letter: The board announces that “a delegate from a congregation within the Southwest Mission Area intends to present a motion stating that Coastal California Laestadian Lutheran Church is no longer acting in accordance with the Constitution, Bylaws, and decisions of the LLC.” p. 1
- CCLLC’s answer, July 2: “CCLLC will present its three items as new business under Section 8.” p. 1
- As CCLLC later put it: “CCLLC submitted proposed new business by the published deadline; the Board refused to place the items on the agenda because it disagreed with them.” p. 4
- Ministers removed
The LLC’s public sermon catalog listed 30 sermons by Eric Lahti of Glendale on June 20, 2026. By September 14, 2026 it listed none, and the sermon files no longer open, while other ministers’ sermons remain available.
Topics: Other congregations, Ministers removed - Expulsion steps
On July 2 CCLLC requested inspection of the LLC’s books and records under Minn. Stat. § 317A.461, records bearing directly on the noticed expulsion. The LLC did not respond until July 17, and then, through counsel, declined to produce anything until after the expulsion vote. The records a member needs in order to answer its own expulsion were withheld until the expulsion is decided. Among the records requested was what the LLC pays its ministers and staff. The LLC does not disclose that to its member congregations: the budget it puts before the delegates gives one line, “Personnel Expenses,” of $1,961,575 for 2026, 57% of all expenses, with no breakdown of who is paid what. Spread across the full-time positions the LLC describes, that is roughly $123,000 to $151,000 per position each year, funded largely by the dues of member families.
Topics: Coastal California, Letters & legal, Expulsion steps“In the event the Delegates do not vote to expel CCLLC, we can then discuss a response to your request.”
Key details
- What was asked (item 6): “Records reflecting all compensation paid to or for the benefit of the corporation’s directors, officers, pastors, lay preachers, and employees, including salaries, wages, housing or parsonage allowances, other allowances, benefits, and reimbursements, and all Board of Directors actions fixing such compensation” request
- What the delegates are shown: The 2026 budget in the LLC’s 2026 Operating Plan (sent to delegates for the July 2025 Annual Meeting): income $3,457,483; expenses $3,455,043, of which “Personnel Expenses” $1,961,575. Actual personnel expenses were $1,676,334 in 2024 and $1,526,442 in 2023. No salary, position or benefit figures are given.
- Per full-time position: Divided among the 13 full-time positions the plan describes (12 employees plus the one the 2026 budget adds), $1,961,575 is about $151,000 per position; counting the three permanent camp caretakers as full-time, about $123,000.
- Who that covers: The same plan: “The LLC has 12 full-time employees and five congregations where we have shared pastor agreements. In addition, there are permanent caretaker positions at our camp centers Stony Lake, Kamp Kipa and Hasscib Lake.” The 2026 budget adds one more full-time position and raises camp and mission work wages by 50%. Compensation is set by the board’s Personnel Committee.
- Expulsion steps SRK
CCLLC’s three motions are read; not one delegate seconds any of them, including the motion to require a written, Scripture-based statement before any expulsion. Speaker after speaker judges by “spirit”: “my spirit does not agree with his spirit,” “two different spirits,” “the Holy Spirit is not a spirit of proof.” Delegates are eager to say from the floor that CCLLC’s chairman and delegate are “not a believer.” Asked “a believer in what exactly?” and “repent of what?”, no one names a doctrine, a passage of Scripture or a section of the Constitution, and the chairman closes by saying the Scripture and Luther that were read “were not the reason” the motions failed. A motion carries to take “whatever steps are necessary for the expulsion.” An SRK board member says the 2022 removals were “not of legalities or laws, but the Spirit of God.”
Topics: Coastal California, SRK & Finland, Meetings, No doctrine named, Expulsion steps“And we understood in Finland that the question was not of legalities or laws, but the Spirit of God”
Key details
- Spirit, not proof: A speaker opening the discussion: “It's a really interesting thing how those who have found a different way are so offended by such a statement that it doesn't answer. They want to yet see a proof that isn't there.” 00:40:48
- The same speaker: “And it's apparent from what he shared that my spirit does not agree with his spirit.” 00:42:24
- “Not a believer”: Jared Huhta, Prescott Valley: “He showed us clearly that he was not a believer. And I believe Briar has done us the same favor today. I would do him the favor, if he's still here, to let him know that he is not a believer.” 00:45:29
- Wyatt Kesti, Utah: “I did not feel the peace of God in your speech.” 00:51:15
- A believer in what? Briar Siljander, CCLLC’s delegate: “I think I also heard that I'm not a believer. And I guess I would like to understand a believer in what exactly? I have professed that I believe according to the constitution of this organization.” No one answers. 00:55:51
- Repent of what? Briar Siljander: “Again, there's this question, you must repent. I listened to that meeting, and there's an open question here, repent of what?” The only reply: “repent and believe the gospel.” 00:57:56
- Steve Collette, Brainerd: “Briar and that congregation is no longer believing like we do.” 01:07:56
- The nearest thing to a doctrine: William, Saskatoon, pointing to an LLC web article: “It refers specifically to things like sanctification, and other things like that” He does not say what the error is, and asks that someone “expand on those reasons”; no one does. 01:12:03
- Declining to name the error: Jared Huhta: “He seems to want to convince us of, some specific error that we participate in. But at the end of the day, I don't feel that I'm going to gain anything by getting into an argument with Briar over this issue.” 01:24:56
- The motion that carries: Restated for the secretary: “From this body of delegates, we would encourage the LLC board and staff to move forward with whatever steps are necessary for the expulsion” 01:26:28
- Joe, alternate delegate: “the Holy Spirit is not a spirit of proof.” 01:37:43
- An unidentified speaker: “But I hope you understand that we believe differently. We don't hate you. We're not pushing people out. But we believe differently.” 01:56:59
- Justin Anderson, Rockford: “i would support brothers saying that there's two different spirits” 01:59:32
- Not Scripture, not Luther: Meeting chairman, closing: “Many scripture portions, many portions of Luther's writings, these were not the reason why weren't seconds to those motions” 02:10:53
- Meeting chairman: “We believe that the Holy Spirit has revealed this to the living congregation of God.” 02:11:52
- Expulsion steps
A special virtual meeting of delegates is called for October 1, 2026 to vote CCLLC’s expulsion, effective October 10, with a response requested by September 4. The LLC sent the notice by email only, and to an address other than the one it had been using to correspond with CCLLC, where it was quarantined as suspected phishing and not found until August 31, four days before its own deadline. Its four stated “reasons” name no doctrine, cite no Scripture, and identify no specific decision.
Topics: Coastal California, Letters & legal, LLC board, No doctrine named, Expulsion steps“has publicly rejected the decisions of the LLC Annual Meetings”
- Expulsion steps
Before the LLC’s own September 4 deadline, and under protest, CCLLC answers the Notice. No lawful notice of the October 1 meeting has been given: the Notice reached CCLLC only on August 31, went to one congregation rather than to all, states no time, place or means of attending, and the Bylaws’ 30-day notice can no longer be met. The four “reasons” are conclusions: no decision, doctrine, passage of Scripture or act is named, and CCLLC asks for each in writing. CCLLC confesses the Constitution without reservation; the dues claim fails because the LLC counted CCLLC’s vote on July 3; and the records the law requires are being held back until after the vote. CCLLC demands the members’ list so it can write to the other congregations, and asks the LLC to follow the law. Exhibits A–I contain the full correspondence.
Topics: Coastal California, Letters & legal, Expulsion stepsKey details
- No lawful notice: “no lawful notice of the October 1, 2026 meeting has been given – not to CCLLC and, so far as CCLLC can determine, not to any member congregation.” p. 1
- Never delivered: Emailed only, to “undisclosed recipients,” and quarantined as suspected phishing: “It was first discovered on August 31, 2026, four days before the response date the Board arbitrarily selected.” p. 1
- The legal standard: Minn. Stat. § 317A.411 permits termination of membership only “pursuant to a procedure that is fair and reasonable and is carried out in good faith” p. 2
- Not a meeting notice at all: “The July 22 letter was addressed to one congregation’s chairman, not to all member congregations; it states no time, no place, and no means of attending the “virtual” meeting” p. 3
- Conclusions, not reasons: “Not one doctrine of the Constitution from which CCLLC is alleged to depart is stated. Not one passage of the Holy Word of God is cited. Not one act of CCLLC is described.” p. 4
- What CCLLC asked the LLC to state: Each decision CCLLC supposedly disobeyed, each act of “public rejection,” and “the specific doctrine of the Constitution (Sections V and VI) from which CCLLC is alleged to depart, together with the passages of the Holy Word of God demonstrating the departure” p. 4
- CCLLC’s confession: “CCLLC believes according to the LLC Constitution. Do the LLC’s Executive Director, Board of Directors, and members?” p. 5
- Kept from the congregations: “A process designed so that member congregations could not discuss the matter before being asked to act on it has not been “carried out in good faith” from its inception” p. 6
- Demand for the members’ list: Under Minn. Stat. § 317A.439: “CCLLC hereby makes written demand, before the meeting, to inspect and copy the alphabetical list of members entitled to notice of and to vote at the October 1, 2026 meeting” p. 6
- The dues pretext: “The LLC counted the vote of the very congregation its counsel now says could not vote.” p. 7
- Records withheld: “The records a member needs in order to respond to its proposed expulsion are to be “discuss[ed]” only if the expulsion fails.” p. 7
- What CCLLC asks: “state the doctrine, show it from the Word, identify the decision and the act – or acknowledge that there is nothing to state.” p. 8
- Letters & legal SRK
CCLLC’s delegate, Briar Siljander, writes openly to the board of the SRK after two private letters (August 2022 and June 2023) went unanswered. The letter traces eight years: ministers “spoken to or taken down” from 2018, the LLC’s refusal to put its concerns in writing before the December 2019 Wolf Lake meeting, the 2022 expulsions, and the 2026 Annual Meeting, where “spirit” was the ground of judgment twenty-six times and no doctrine was named. It sets Luther’s words on the “Enthusiasts” and on an unjust ban against what was done, and asks the SRK six direct questions, beginning: is a delegates’ majority vote the infallible decision of the Holy Spirit? It is copied to the Archbishop of Turku and Finland and the Bishop of Oulu.
Topics: Coastal California, SRK & Finland, Letters & legalKey details
- Two letters, no answer: “You have not answered – not the letter, not with correction, not with rebuke, not with a single word.” letter
- How it began: “It began not with doctrine but with men.” letter
- Counting the 2026 meeting: ““spirit” (“my spirit,” “our spirits,” “a different spirit”) was made the ground of judgment twenty-six times by sixteen different speakers. Not once was a doctrine named.” letter
- Luther on the Enthusiasts: “shouted nothing but ‘Spirit, Spirit.’ They confused everyone and strengthened and taught no one.” letter
- Luther on an unjust ban: “the one who imposes the ban is always in greater danger than the one who is under the ban.” letter
- The SRK’s representative: Tapani Kinnunen told the delegates he was “completely unaware of what has happened in California” and then spoke in support of the 2022 expulsions. letter
- Question 1: “Do you believe that a majority vote of delegates at the annual meeting of a nonprofit corporation is the decision of the Holy Spirit, incapable of error” letter
- Question 2: “Do you believe that men may pronounce from the floor of a meeting that a person or a whole congregation “is not a believer,” without stating a single doctrinal error from the Holy Word of God” letter
- Question 3: “Do you believe that the LLC or SRK (or the combination of them) is the Kingdom of God, so that removal from a corporation’s membership rolls is removal from God’s kingdom?” letter
- Question 5: Valde Palola in 2012: Scripture alone is “the norm of doctrine”; in 2023: “the congregation cannot err on any point of doctrine either.” The letter asks: “Which is the SRK’s confession: what your chairman wrote in 2012” letter
- The answer so far: “The answer has been a spirit; no doctrine, no Scripture, no name, no hearing” letter
- Expulsion steps
The LLC’s executive director, Arvin Pirness, emails the delegates and congregations, enclosing CCLLC’s September 3 letter and stating that the LLC believes it is meeting the procedural requirements, without answering any of the defects the letter sets out. The LLC also refuses to give CCLLC the list and contact information of the member congregations and their delegates, which CCLLC demanded under Minn. Stat. § 317A.439, so CCLLC cannot write to the delegates itself; only the LLC decides what they read.
Topics: Coastal California, LLC board, Letters & legal, Expulsion steps“Based on that review, we believe the LLC is satisfying the procedural requirements applicable to the process to date”
- Expulsion steps Cancelled
Three days after telling the delegates the LLC was meeting the procedural requirements, Arvin Pirness cancels the October 1 special meeting “upon advice from legal counsel” (email of September 11, 2026). The LLC says it will arrange a future meeting after addressing “meeting procedures and protocol”: the very defects CCLLC identified on September 3. The rest remain unaddressed: conclusions instead of reasons, and records and member contacts withheld.
Topics: Coastal California, LLC board, Expulsion steps“Upon advice from legal counsel, the special delegate meeting scheduled for October 1, 2026, is cancelled.”
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