Fuller Seminary - Short Version

People write me polite questions via email. They even sign their names. I have tried to explain to my opponents, "That's why I have so many sources." If I have information that would give away the source, I keep it to myself.

One WELS member asked about Fuller Seminary. Later today I will try to muster my Fuller quotations from Megatron, my database of verbatim quotations. For now I will give a brief summary of what I know.

Fuller Seminary is not quite the home of the Church Growth Movement. Fuller was started as a fairly conservative seminary, with a compromised statement on inerrancy, around 1948. At one point they decided to hire Donald McGavran to teach the Church Growth Movement, which he invented.

McGavran was a Disciples of Christ former missionary to India, someone who labored in obscurity for many years at a tiny college. His denomination was and is on the extreme Left of Protestantism. His doctorate was in sociology, so he had little training in theology, beyond seminary. He was long on statistics, but devoid of Biblical knowledge. Besides, he was ardently pro-abortion. He advocated participating in Planned Parenthood as a congregational activity. His circle even had a production called Planned Parenthood for Churches. WELS must have bought that concept, because they murder their infant churches all the time.

Fuller got a marketing genius president who got rid of the conservative traces of Fuller. Church Growth caught on at the same time. Fuller is against inerrancy now and will punish anyone oppose to women's ordination.

McGavran and his Pentecostal-Baptist disciple Peter Wagner cleverly promoted the school by getting the executives of all the denominations at their school for CG training, starting with world missions. Once they suckered all the world mission executives, they started on the American mission bosses. That is how Norm Berg got trained at Fuller.

I listed Fuller vets in another post. Click on the Fuller label for more information. Lawrence Otto Olson (D.Min. Fuller, Church and Change leader) bragged that more LCMS pastors went to Fuller than went to their own schools for extra education. That is why Al Barry would not open his mouth against CG, why Kieschnick followed him.

ELCA leaders went to Fuller too. So did ELS pastors. One ELS pastor wrote a gushing letter about CG and sent it around the Little Sect on the Prairie. I believe he is in ELCA now. He really should be teaching at Martin Luther College, with Lawrence Otto Olson.

The email was saying that WELS professors should not be corrupted by studying at a school that teaches another doctrine. At this point all the Lutheran professors could study at Fuller, no matter which synod. The synods are united in promoting the Church Growth Movement with its manifold false doctrines. The time has come for all of them to merge and let the dissenters leave with their congregations.

***

Norman Teigen has left a new comment on your post "Fuller Seminary - Short Version":

Who was the ELS pastor, now in the ELCA, who was caught up in the Church Growth frenzy?

I had never heard that one before.

Norman Teigen
ELS Layman

***

GJ - An ELS source sent me the letter. The ELS pastor had just finished studying at Fuller Seminary. He wanted everyone to "spoil the Egyptians," as Valleskey wrote and A. D. Harstad echoed in his ELS Amen conference paper/journal article.

I no longer remember the ELS CG pastor's name. A lot of pastors move through the ELS (Al Barry, Keith Olmanson, Ossie Hoffman, Jack Preus, Robert Preus, Rolf Preus and recent defenestrations). I recall one CG pastor was in Naples, Florida. I was told ELS President George Orvick visited the congregation and acted on it.