Martin Luther Nursing Home and Live Bait Shop

Someone is sure that Martin Luther College (WELS) will continue forever, even without the preps feeding students into the school.

With both preps still in operation, MLC is already in desperate shape. The school has dropped below survival levels in its student population. Tuition = income = salaries. The synod has deliberately cut the subsidy, has no real endowment for the school, and is eliminating the feeder system for the school. Long ago, Fuller alumnus Norm Berg cut out the need for MLC by eliminating the parochial school from mission church budgets.

MLC is two colleges in one, pastoral and teacher training, but the enrollment is dropping from news of its future demise.

MLC may have trouble making it as a nursing home, so I propose selling live bait as well. Southern Minnesota is great for hunting and fishing. The lawns are a natural habitat for night-crawlers.

MLC might have survived by joining the online college revolution. My old community college asked me about my expertise in online teaching and web design. They already have large online classes, modeled after the University of Phoenix, somewhat larger with 300,000 students. UOP had enough cash to buy naming rights for the new stadium in Glendale, $7 million a year for 20 years, a small part of their budget. UOP began in 1976. MLC is older than dirt.

Couldn't the Church Growth Principles of Dr. Lawrence Otto Olson be applied to MLC? He wrote a dissertation on the topic. Sure, his own congregation never grew, but that is no problem for Church Growth fanatics.

Download Google Earth and put in the coordinates for MLC, Bethany Lutheran College, and Wisconsin Lutheran College. All three are close together. Two of them are lavishly funded by Schwan money. MLC is the exception. The college may hobble along from another fund drive and wait for a new synodical president to be their Dr. Kevorkian.