The June newsletter of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod - The Pope Speaks - reveals no new defenestrations. The stewardship committee might have had a sit-down, or in this case, a kneel-down with Pope John the Malefactor. The tiny sect does not have enough members and pastors to keep kicking them out.
Meanwhile, WELS, the sister synod, is staggering toward its Waterloo - or Armageddon - in New Ulm. The synod continues to brag about foreign missions commitments it cannot afford. In the graduation announcements is this little surprise:
"Of the 41 new graduates, six are from the Pastoral Studies Institute, which trains students from culturally diverse and other non-traditional backgrounds. Among them are four brothers from a Hmong family who will now be serving Hmong missions in California, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Thailand."
So you never heard of the Pastoral Studies Institute? Al Sorum is the director. For WELS insiders, that would be enough by itself to condemn the program. Here is the link:
Qwik Trip, WELS' Own Fuller Seminary
I am just guessing, but I imagine the whole program is subsidized by the synod via Thrivent Insurance. The multi-cultural emphasis came from the pan-Lutheran meeting at Snowbird, where WELS President Mischke, ELCA Archbishop Chilstrom, and LCMS President Bohlmann were photographed for The Lutheran magazine in the never forgotten pose - "Chiefs Confer." Thrivent wants all the synods to work together through identical, lavishly funded projects. WELS works secretively with ELCA and Missouri on a whole range of religious projects.
Through Lawrence Otto Olson (D.Min., Fuller) and Al Sorum (Director, Qwik Trip) the sect has created its own alternative school system. Olson started the "Staff Ministry" program to Fullerize men and women, so WELS pastors nicknamed him "Our Staff Infection." That program allows a man or woman to have a little Fuller-style training before being "called," as they say it, to a "staff minister position," to use their term. The whole purpose of these expensive new efforts is to diminish any concept of the ministry as the Preaching Office (Luther's term, Book of Concord term). Why bother with the efficacy of the Word in the Means of Grace when men and women can be called ministers after a short spell at an alternative program?
The Book of Concord, reflecting the Bible, teaches that the Church depends on a learned ministry and properly called pastors who serve in the Preaching Office. When WELS officials raise these poorly trained false teachers to the level of pastors, the Preaching Office is diminished and ridiculed. The path to advancement in the Lutheran synods is through anti-Lutheran training and the advocacy of false doctrine.
Pope John the Malefactor has not objected in public to these departures from the Book of Concord and the inerrant Scriptures.
