The Betrayers Betrayed - MLS

Closing the schools in WELS is clearly a Church Growth program. Not that the Church Growth leaders cause any real growth in the Kingdom. They just yak about it all the time. Church Growth is an ideology, a set of shallow doctrines, and an agenda.

President-in-waiting Wayne Mueller has always been a Church Growth advocate, even while denying it. How delicious it must be to deny Church Growth in The Northwestern Lutheran while promoting Church Growth in the synod.

I remember John Brug covering for David Valleskey on the subject of Church Growth. Now he wants the preps to stay open.

Paul Kuske started a Church Growth operation in Columbus, Ohio, in his capacity as VP of the district. To run this destructive cause he had Floyd Luther Stolzenburg, recently forced to resign from the LCMS ministerium (and never a member of WELS, by the way).

Now Brug and Kuske want to snatch MLS from the jaws of the Church Growth gurus!

WELS is a genius at management, I must say. They have been Management-By-Objective-zombies for at least 20 years, but Drucker wanted to encourage leadership wisdom, not synodical stupidity. The Brug report listed the large sums of money recently borrowed for MLS and Luther Prep. Wayne Mueller would close both schools, making them worthless, while still owing for such things as new boilers, science rooms, and dorms. The college would close, too, so that would make all the money spent on Martin Luther College another rat-hole. They recently reworked the heating system, perhaps in conjunction with New Ulm's steam tunnel project.

Now everyone is tongue-clucking. WELS wanted to move from small potatoes to the Big Time with Church Growth. All those who studied at Fuller, who bowed their heads at Willow Creek, who agreed by being silent, who shunned pastors that knew better - all those betrayers of the Gospel are being betrayed now. WELS will not be small potatoes. WELS will be tater tots.

The Catholic Momentum

I enjoy the encouraging messages sent. I mean the positive messages from normal people, but also the insanely angry messages sent under various false names. The second group motivates me the most, because, as my Grandpappy used to say, "When the arrow hits the mark, feathers will fly."

Various people pretend to be offended that I had a Catholic education, just like Martin Luther and the faculty of Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne. Look at the faculty list at Ft. Wayne. They live close to Notre Dame so they finished their Ph.D. work there. John Johnson, once the buddy of Herman Otten while serving as president of Concordia, St. Louis, had a doctorate from the Jesuits at St. Louis University. What the complainers miss is my lack of obedience to His Holiness, the Antichrist.

Faithful Lutheran pastors owe it to their congregations to be well read in heterodoxy without falling prey to it. That requires constant study while ignoring Holy Mother Synod most of the time.

The marginally literate have trouble distinguishing between hearing someone and following someone. Thus it is easy to find out who has studied at Fuller Seminary and Willow Creek because they blab about the same things with the same vocabulary. Waldo Werning had "Church Growth Eyes" in the subtitle of one of his moronic books. Did he study at Fuller? Yes, he admitted it and also denied it. Those who defend Fuller doctrine are predictably alumni (Frosty Bivens, David Valleskey, Lawrence Otto Olson, Wally Oelhaven, Fred Adrian, Kent Hunter). Those who follow have previously heard that new gospel, preached by angels of marketing (Galatians 1:8).

How Roman Catholic are the synods today? The best measure is to look at what they are doing. ELCA and the old Synodical Conference synods (WELS-ELS-LCMS) have:
1. Adopted the three-year lectionary from Rome.
2. Killed the traditional names of Sundays wherever possible.
3. Changed the liturgical colors to be more gay-friendly.
4. Competed to see which Roman Catholic customs they can incorporate.
5. Obsessed over the title bishop and Rome's claim to apostolic succession.
6. Longed for acceptance by Rome, even while called defective and wounded.

Many pastors have followed these trends because their peers were running off the cliff ahead of them. The Gadarene swine episode was not meant to be prescriptive, I might add. One pastor asked me to make my sermons fit the Roman cycle. I said, "Why not switch back to the historic pericopes?" The publishing houses make it easy to follow the worn path.

Lutheran worship can be solemn and liturgical without genuflecting toward Rome.

WELS Seminary Professor John Brug Supports MLS

WELS Seminary Professor John Brug, who grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, has published a report in favor of Michigan Lutheran Seminary.

The PDF file can be found here:

Michigan Lutheran Seminary
along with additional material on the topic.

So far the synod's (Wayne Mueller's) answer has been that there is only one solution for the incompentence shown at the leadership levels - close the preps.

Everyone else seems to think otherwise. The district presidents and various assemblies oppose the closing of the preps, which will also close the college.

The booby-hatch pronouncements of the synod leaders have gutted the system, forcing tuition up by 30%, thus reducing the students and the tuition income. Now the whole system is tottering toward collapse while the booby-hatch leaders tell them - Have another Junk for Jesus Rummage Sale. Flogging will continue until morale improves.