Bad Theology Comes from No Education

People often ask how the Lutheran Church in the United States could be so lacking in doctrinal leadership, so intent on following the Church of Rome or the seminary in Pasadena. Oddly enough, this Rome/Reformed toxic combination is found in ELCA, Missouri, WELS, the ELS, and even the Church of the Lutheran Confession (sic).

The denominational seminaries are completely inbred. The more one can brag about degrees from that seminary, the more likely he is to teach there. This multiplies the Uncle Fritz problem. No one can disagree with any opinion from Uncle Fritz because everyone is related to Uncle Fritz. The whole extended family will be upset, so doctrinal infallibility is passed from Rome to Luther-land. WELS has published something like six volumes of its drivel (Our Great Heritage, etc.) from the recent past while slowing down the Hoenecke set to the point where the last volume may be the Seventh Seal of the Book of Revelation.

Note the following examples:
ELCA has sent its mission leadership to Fuller Seminary and tried all those goofy marketing schemes, such as their mega-church flop in Yorba Linda, California. ELCA has also crawled into the lap of the Antichrist, hoping to be acknowledged as a cuddly Shetland Sheepdog rather than a vigilant German Shepherd.

WELS has set a record in promoting Church Growth doctrines, in sending pastors to Fuller Seminary and Willow Creek Community Church for training. WELS also invited Roman Catholic Archbishop Weakland to be a featured speaker at Wisconsin Lutheran College. No one seemed to mind much, not even the ELS. The Church of Rome got so tired of Weakland's romantic problems that they fired him.

The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod may have spent more synodical money at Fuller than WELS, and Missouri even had a pastor as a faculty member at Fuller, no small achievement. Better yet, Missouri had five people on the list of Who's Who in Church Growth, (Church Growth: The State of the Art). Dual memberships (Lutheran and Reformed) are supposed to be the mark of liberal ELCA, but Missouri has many congregations that are also members of the Willow Creek Association. Wallace Schulz admitted in a recent essay that he promoted Church Growth in his early years. Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne, started a D.Min. program in Church Growth under the leadership of Robert Preus.

The ELS has protected the Church Growth Movement from criticism in its "confessional" group. They endorsed Valleskey's Spoiling the Egyptians motto, borrowed from Larry Crab. Isn't it a marvel that WELS/ELS will xerox Reformed doctrine and then xerox a defense for Reformed doctrine from a man famous for his association with Fuller? No creativity there at all.

The Church of the Lutheran Confession (sic) produced a moronic newsletter called While It Is Day. This newsletter was published under the noses of the distingushed faculty of Immanuel Lutheran College and passed out to unwary students who imagined they were Lutheran. In that newsletter their leading theologians of Church Growth, David Koenig and Paul Tiefel Junior, supported Church Growth doctrine and Romanism. Koenig is famous for devoting an entire hour of his worship service to a rant on how the Roman Catholics did mission work but the Lutherans did not. The CLC (sic) sent him out again as a world missionary to spread the Good News.

Someone said that an ecumenist is a person who loves every denomination except his own.

The lack of a thorough doctrinal education is lacking in the Lutheran church bodies today. The professorships are political appointments designed to appease the apostate wing of each group. ELCA is simply zanier because the group is a few years ahead of Missouri, WELS, and the the three-letter synods (ELS, CLCs, LCR).

The people who want to fix things are another band of rogues. They are politicians first, willing to bend and twist their own flexible opinions so they can replace the current leadership. If we go back a few years, the synodical leaders were published authors for the most part. Hoenecke influenced the Wisconsin Synod because they respected his doctrinal leadership. Lenski was a district president as well as being a parish pastor, but he is primarily known as the author of his New Testament commentaries. Walther, Pieper, and their acolytes published grave errors in doctrine, but at least they made their positions public and open to debate.

The people now longing to be district or synod president have no formal education in theology. A seminary education is only a beginning. The Reformation was led by theologians, not by men who stopped learning when ordained. A formal program leading to a Ph.D. may provide an excellent education. Others can do it, with guidance, through years of independent study. Chemnitz and Loy are two giants of self-study whose work continues to astound people today. A doctoral program may turn someone into an atheist, but a first parish can do the same thing.

The most troubling thing about today's leadership is the constant waffling about every issue. They are for and against everything. They turn to their seminary notes and rest on that education as the last word on any issue. That is why so many discussions revolve around "What did Walther mean by church?" and "What is the history of Church and Ministry in WELS?" People who have time for such synodical navel-gazing have no energy for the Book of Concord.