Bang the Doors Shut On Michigan Lutheran Seminary, Wayne!

On pages 20 and 21 is the Synod Convention discussion - Pre-Convention Coverage. One can easily infer that MLS closure is a foregone conclusion. There are two interesting paragraphs.

Under Ministerial Education concerns ---

"If Michigan Lutheran Seminary is closed, efforts will be made to replace the number of graduates that it sends to Martin Luther College. 'We need future workers in the church', says Mueller. 'Institutionally we have committed ourselves to recruitment.' This means implementing an aggressive recruitment strategy at Martin Luther College; working with area Lutheran high schools on recruitment; and encouraging current and future MLS students to attend Luther Preparatory School, the preparitory school closer to the greater concentration of WELS members and whose campus can accommodate more students."

Under Stewardship emphasis --

"A 21 percent increase (or $3.9 million) in 2008-2009 will allow WELS to maintain all of its current ministries, including MIchigan Lutheran Seminary. Once Congregational Mission Offerings reach that level, support needs to continue to grow 5 to 6 percent annually (for inflation) in order to maintain ministry. But this is no small task. Current commitments for 2007 were up only 1.4 percent over receipts for the last calendar year."

I am no CPA and Wayne did not send me the spreadsheets, but...

I wonder why so many budget items are non-negotiable. Technology seems way out of line for a small potatoes sect like WELS. Do the DPs have to enjoy assistants? The WELS DPs are just like Episcopal bishops. They have parishes but an underling does the congregation work.

I noticed from various news releases that the Chosen Ones fly all over the map for special projects. These too are dire necessities, I am sure.

New foreign missionary projects are run by Al Sorum and Company, another black hole of expense.

The WELS budget, as presented by Wayne Mueller, reminds me of the lawyer at the end of a tort lawsuit? "Only $500,000, Judge? Doesn't my client deserve something?"

I may be the first to notice that the 1.4% increase is a message to The Love Shack - new occupants wanted, at a lower occupancy rate.

WELS Different from LCMS?

The WELS AnswerMan has done it again. I suspect AnswerMan also wrote the letter being answered. The basic content is - We visited an LCMS congregation and could not wait to get back to the oasis of orthodoxy that is WELS/ELS.

I will allow that some WELS/ELS members are so brain-washed that they actually believe this nonsense. The laity I know are a bit wiser. They judge matters congregation by congregation, pastor by pastor.

The denominational label means nothing now. A significant number of LCMS congregations are Pentecostal. Others long for the embrace of ELCA. (Get your shots first, and always, always, wear your galoshes.) WELS has had a number of pastors go Pentecostal. The Love Shack bureaucrats would love to be in ELCA. Here and there pastors want to be Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.

Missouri, WELS, and ELS all practice open communion or semi-open communion. The confessional congregations practice demi-semi open communion. ELS MDiv theologians Jay Webber argued for giving communion to ELCA members because "it prevents a lot of conflict."

I would never join the ELS now. Their toleration of Pope John the Malefactor shows a studied indifference toward sound doctrine and a timidity alien to their history. No sect is in greater need of a regime change.

Missouri is infected with papalism. Much of it comes from Ft. Wayne. That is good medicine for them, so they can avoid real issues. Picking the right incense and arguing for titles will keep them from discussing Biblical doctrine. I actually heard a presentation from a future Ft. Wayne professor where he condemned the use of individual Holy Communion cups! Patristic legalists are another version of Pietistic legalists - why talk about the Gospel when the Law is so much more fun?

Here is a favorite story from Pietism. An Augustana (the real Augustana, not the new fake one) leader visited a church, where the young pastor gave a blistering sermon against tobacco. At the dinner afterwards, the visitor lit up a cigar. The young Augustana pastor said in shock, "Why are you smoking after that sermon I gave?" The old man said, "Simple. This is give young pastors something to preach about when they cannot give a Gospel sermon."

The high church people might want to consider this point:

When Lutherans pastors are falling over each other to join Rome or to get their Fuller Seminary/Willow Creek tattoos, the time has arrived to avoid, in the clearest way possible, any assocition with both errors. That is the meaning behind the article on adiaphora in the Formula of Concord. I will post more on that later.

I fear too many pastors want to please that invisible seminary professor in the pew. This was a problem at Yale Divinity. Every seminarian wanted to give a sermon on the Binding of Isaac because of one particular professor and course. They failed to give a sermon for the professor and certainly missed the congregation. The senior pastor said, "I never want to hear another sermon on the Binding of Isaac." Some young pastors try to please their Fuller-trained professors and their Fuller-trained mission board zombies. Others think they will succeed when they get their congregations to call them Father, demand incense, and ask - "Would you please chant the announcements from now on?" Why would a Lutheran use the term Mass, which carries so much Roman baggage and so many associations with Purgatory? Is not Holy Communion a perfectly clear term for all Lutherans?

In the future, honest Lutheran pastors will either join Rome or the Assemblies of God. Then the remaining ones can study the Book of Concord in relative peace and harmony.