On vacation I checked the WELS.net website for the Church and Change link on the jumpword list. The link was missing, as noted earlier. I have checked several more times and still find it missing. The 2007 Church and Change Conference was hosted by the WELS website via this link and the registration forms. It may be a coincidence that President-in-Waiting Wayne Mueller's son Adam is active in Church and Change.
Four things have happened since SP Gurgel left the country:
1. Church and Change was de-linked or neutered on the WELS website.
2. Income went up dramatically.
3. The schools are all closing jeremiad was stopped.
4. AnswerMan stopped being so belligerent and easy to lampoon.
I wondered about how AnswerMan was posted on the WELS site. The questions and answers were full of spelling errors exactly like those on the Church and Change official website. I figured the same student intern was keyboarding. It could have been a Fuller Seminary graduate, too!
Shortly after the Michigan Lutheran Seminary victory at the last convention, WELS dropped another stinkbomb on Michigan. Someone from the Love Shack told the local paper that MLS was still hanging by a thread. It was a repeat of the thumb-in-the-eye approach that charmed the Michigan District before the convention. SP Schroeder showed up at MLS and things calmed down again.
SP Schroeder is making some progress. The ultimate results depend on the courage of the pastors and laity to root out heresy.
Church and Change is neutered but still happy and healthy. Watch whether another conference is launched and check who is invited if that happens.
Another conference to watch is James Tiefel's pan-denominational worship conference. Everything is Outside the Framework of Fellowship when WELS is promoting unionism. That includes worship, you narrow-minded legalists. Tiefel is quite talented. He managed to produce the worst new Lutheran hymnal, with feminist creeds and hymns, schwaermer hymns, Church Growth hymns, Pietistic liturgy, all in a Lutheran Book of Worship package.
Worse than ELCA's?
Worse.
