Thursday, May 29, 2008

Ripe Baloney from the Sausage Factory



Jay Webber reported that the ELS called Mequon the Sausage Factory, because all the pastors came out the same. He told one pastor that WELS stood for "our Weaker Evangelical Lutheran Siblings."


Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Various Reports on WELS Hazing and GA":

"Could the exposure in Thy Strong Word, the Internet posting of Thy Strong Word, and the Ichabod blog have been a cause for the loss of this great tradition of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse?"

I can't believe you're taking credit for this. GA was dead and gone long before your book or your blog.

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GJ - Oh really? Thy Strong Word was printed in 2000 and pubished on the Internet at the same time. Before that I sent email bulletins out about hazing. I know they got around, because TSW included some of the badly spelled responses, from WELSians who were forwarded the email.

Supposedly GA was killed in 2002. I am not a math major, but I assume that 2002 is after the year 2000.

I never claimed to be the sole cause of GA's putative demise, but published facts do contribute to the eradication of something truly evil. The secrecy was not to protect the fun, but the abuse.

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Names Changed to Protect the Innocent has left a new comment on your post "Various Reports on WELS Hazing and GA":

I understand your doubts. Those lies you listed are in fact lies. I agree that they are lies. Especially - "there is no church growth in WELS." However, trust that I am telling the truth here.

HB stands for "Herzliche Bruederschaft," which in German means, "Sincere Brotherhood." It's a name that accurately depicts what is now going on.

Now, God willing, these truer friendships will help foster a truer attitude toward real sins and real doctrinal problems. If, as so many do, we trace a lot of WELS' problems to GA, then we can certainly hope that the "opposite" of GA will help foster the opposite results, based on God's Word, naturally.

It may also be of interest to the readers here that more and more efforts are made at teaching and encouraging proper admonition, confession, and absolution among the brothers at WLS, with a great amount of emphasis on sexual sins such as internet pornography. That is a good thing to address.

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GJ - I guess the days are gone when the Mequon divinity students went to x-rated movies as a group.