Can WELS Be Salvaged?

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Fall, 1985 - Do You Know Where Your Doctrine Is?":

Turning WELS around seems difficult to impossible. Are we fighting the ‘Synagogue of Satan?’ In 50 words or less please, why is WELS such a mess? What can members do about it?

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Anything is possible with the Word. However, I doubt whether WELS pastors have the spine to apply the Word and the Confessions to their situation. They would have to confront or boycott all the Church Growth Leonard Sweet-hearts, address the doctrinal issues in public, and support discipline against false teachers and criminals.

Luther faced much worse, but he trusted the Word and applied it consistently, no matter what the cost. Then, when Luther died, the Lutherans came unglued. However, 34 years later, the Formula of Concord united the Lutherans again.

"Since now, in the sight of God and of all Christendom [the entire Church of Christ], we wish to testify to those now living and those who shall come after us that this declaration herewith presented concerning all the controverted articles aforementioned and explained, and no other, is our faith, doctrine, and confession, in which we are also willing, by God's grace, to appear with intrepid hearts before the judgment-seat of Jesus Christ, and give an account of it; and that we will neither privately nor publicly speak or write anything contrary to it, but, by the help of God's grace, intend to abide thereby: therefore, after mature deliberation, we have, in God's fear and with the invocation of His name, attached our signatures with our own hands."
Thorough Declaration, Of Other Factions and Sects, Formula of Concord, Concordia Triglotta, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921, p. 1103.