Kuske/Stolzenburg Fiasco - Pilgrim Community Church, Columbus

Paul Kuske, voted out of office as District VP of the Michigan District, WELS, started one of the first stealth missions of the Wisconsin Synod.

Crossroads in Detroit (Rick Miller) was not enough of a fiasco. Kuske and DP Mueller needed another, bigger one. For that they required the expertise of Floyd Stolzenburg, forced to resign from the LCMS ministry. Somehow WELS needed a disgraced Missouri pastor to be their Church Growth expert in Columbus, Ohio. Kuske was behind setting up Stolzenburg in Columbus to do that.

Floyd and Paul were great buddies. They planned Pilgrim, quotations to follow soon.
Pilgrim was designed to have no liturgy, no creeds, no signs of being Lutheran. When people were invited to attend Pilgrim, the affiliation was kept a secret. Finally Kuske had to put in the tiniest font the fact that Pilgrim came from a Lutheran parish.

According to the favorite thinkers of modern Lutheranism - Robert Schuller and Lyle Schaller - the name Lutheran would hurt the new mission.

As I recall, attendance peaked at 13 on Easter and dwindled to 3 soon after. Pilgrim, the ship designed to save many a soul, sank beneath the waves with watery groan, "unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown." Years later a WELS robot phoned me to say Pilgrim never happened. He kept yelling and hung up on me. "I was there. I have the quotations." Click.