Just make sure the doctrine's debased.
I have not received one howl of protest from the WELS Church and Change people for exposing more plagiarism from Kelm/Parlow beehive. See the post immediately below. I will feature any complaints from the Church Shrinkage gurus.
I believe they copy and paste because they have no doctrine of their own, no ideas, and no faith. They certainly do not believe in the power, authority, and effectiveness of the Word. They do not trust the Word and Sacraments. How bizarre, to turn away from the clear, plain words of God's Word in order to belch or bleat the intricate, self-inflating, pompous, man-glorifying words of ordinary, foolish human beings.
Plagiarism from the Church Shrinkage experts is not new. Those LCMS pastors featured in Who's Who in Church Growth (by C. Peter Wagner) simply copied what they got from Fuller Seminary. Werning used quotation marks, even when quoting pages of Fuller material verbatim. All of Kent Hunter's insights were repeated from Fuller.
Paul Kelm has always copied Reformed doctrine, something he learned when working for David Valleskey in California. Valleskey once "produced" a boxed spiritual gifts program, identical to Fuller's boxed program in name and substance. I doubt whether it was verbatim copying, but the message was pure Enthusiasm.
Kelm and Parlow are well known for placing the sermons of other men (all non-Lutherans) on their website, claiming them as their own. The comparisons were sent around WELS and came to me. When Bailing Water and Ichabod mentioned this, the sermons were footnoted. I wonder, did they say, "I stole this from a Baptist website"? Soon after this was laughed about, the sermons disappeared altogether. Now they must be requested.
One of the favored WELS CGM pastors in Charleston gave sermons verbatim from Willow Creek, even reproducing Hybels' inflections. He was not told to stop spreading false doctrine. No, not under Mischke-Kelm-Mueller. He was told to stop being dishonest. But the dog returned to his vomit and was removed from the ministry. He is still paid by WELS, not as a minister.
I used to copy all the Church Shrinkage quotations from WELS and from Fuller, printing them next to each other. Like Werning, the WELS Shrinkers copied all the concepts but often without using quotation marks or citations. Nevertheless, the WELS guys freely admitted promoting the methods and doctrines of the Enthusiasts.
Here is one WELS Mission Counselor's Newsletter from Jim Radloff, who was hotter than Phoenix asphalt for CGM. The contributors are Paul Kelm (WELS but never Lutheran), Mark Freier (officially not Lutheran now), Randy Cutter (WELS star, now Pentecostal), and various theological leaders from the Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, Congregationalists, and Methodists. April 1992.
The Mission Counselor's Newsletter was the upgrade (bigger, slicker, worser) of TELL. When TELL was upgraded, the editor bragged that the purpose of the rag had always been to promote the CGM.
As many incompetent, false teachers in WELS will tell you, copying and pasting from Fuller and Willow Creek was a career enhancing move, even if they were canned. The Church Shrinkers always rushed in to save their hides. The Love Shack is full of them because the clergy blew off every chance to stomp the scorpion before it had babies. Now the babies have babies.
The Word alone will defeat the Church Shrinkers and their Father Below.
