Wisconsin Lutheran College
Pastor Ron Heins to become executive director of CHARIS
July 18, 2006
Pastor Ron Heins has accepted the position of executive director of CHARIS The Institute of Wisconsin Lutheran College. He will assume his new position after he returns from teaching at Asia Lutheran Seminary in Hong Kong during the fall. Heins will begin as executive director of CHARIS effective in early 2007.
Heins is currently the director of parish assistance for the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, helping congregations to evaluate their ministry - both in outreach and nurturing. Before this position, Heins served as the senior pastor for St. Johns Evangelical Lutheran Church in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, for 14 years.
Parish Assistance Mission Statement:
It is our mission to provide personal help to congregations, groups of congregations, agencies of the church, and their leaders in identifying, meeting, and addressing Christ-centered ministry needs and issues in a manner that is true to the Scriptures, focused on Christ's mission, and within the context of their congregation and community.
Parish Assistance
A recent e-mail message from a congregational president expresses a plea for help with the words, “. . . we can no longer do things the way we have always done them. . . . We have spoken many times in recent years of reaching out to the unchurched in the community around us but have never established any kind of well organized programs or goals toward that end . . .” When congregations ask, “Can you help?” we are privileged to respond, “Yes we can!” Since 1992 several hundred congregations have sought and found the help they were looking for. Currently there are 110 congregations being served.
A vacancy remains in Parish Assistance as a result of reduced funding. Several of our 25 trained, part-time lead consultants have picked up the additional workload temporarily.
A smooth transition with the role of Parish Assistance Director passed from Dr. Ron Heins to Rev. Elton Stroh at the end of 2005. Dr. Heins continues to serve as a consultant specialist. He will be taking a four-month sabbatical in fall 2006 to serve as an instructor at our World Mission’s seminary in Hong Kong. Dr. George LaGrow served faithfully as our full-time consultant with an emphasis on Lutheran school ministry from July 2002 until his unexpected death in April 2006. Because the demand for this service (Forward With Lutheran Schools) is substantial, we plan to extend a call to fill this position as soon as possible.
You can find examples of comments from those who have worked with Parish Assistance by visiting the User Comments Web page.
Wondering about the range of services offered by Parish Assistance? More information is available by visiting our Services Web page.
For more information, contact Rev. Elton Stroh at 608-837-3819 or visit our Web site.
Staff
Rev. Elton Stroh, director
Dr. Ron Heins
Mrs. Angela Faust
Rev. Elton Stroh, reporter
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A Right Strawy Epistle from Stroh
The Parish Assistance consulting ministry was authorized by the synod in convention in 1991, at which time an increasing number of congregations were seeking personalized onsite assistance with a variety of issues. Today our churches—mostly struggling ones, but some stable and even growing—continue to request the services of Parish Assistance, which focuses on “Assisting God’s people with pursuing his mission.”
We believe that, under God, as we help churches become healthier, we will also help our synod become a healthier church body. This, in turn, will position our synod to expand and support our ministry efforts at home and abroad, to train and send out more workers, and to increase our potential to be a greater blessing to God’s kingdom.
Our core four-phase consulting service involves helping congregations accurately analyze current reality, create a compelling vision for future ministry, prioritize and reorganize for action, and then pursue their preferred future with trust in the Lord to bless their efforts. Leaders are especially appreciative as we help them see with clarity
what must never change (God’s message and mission),
what may change (methodology), and
what must change (anything that gets in the way of proclaiming the gospel message and pursuing Christ’s make-disciples mission).
Staffing challenges
For the past several years, but especially more recently, vacancies within Parish Assistance have presented challenges. Both full- and part-time lead consultants, in love for their Lord and for the congregations of our synod, overextended themselves to serve additional churches. Still, service to some congregations needed to be delayed, and now congregations are being told, "We want to serve you, but we don’t know when we will be able to because of our staffing shortage." This unfortunate situation has caused some leaders, who intended to request our services, to back away or to look for help elsewhere.
A pastor serving one of our client congregations recently sent this note: "I wanted to sincerely thank you for the long hours and dedicated, cheerful service you gave the Lord and his people here . . . I am certain the Lord will work many blessings from it! I will continue to hold you in my prayers that God will . . . enable you to continue to bring more blessings to more congregations! Thanks for the fruitful and enjoyable weekend." Bringing more blessings to more congregations is also our prayer, and we are planning for this to happen.
At this time Parish Assistance has two full-time consultants in place and two full-time vacancies. One of the two vacant positions was defunded a few years ago. The other position has funding, and we are continuing to call with confidence that the Lord will lead us to the person he has chosen. Meanwhile, plans are in place to increase our number of part-time lead consultants and to begin their formal training during the 2008 Summer Quarter at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary. Our active part-time lead consultants will also participate in this week-long training event.
Additional consulting services
In addition to Parish Assistance’s core four-phase service, special consulting services have been provided over the years. Some examples of these services include team building, conflict transformation, staffing level evaluation, leadership development, mentoring, coaching, merging ministries, and change management. It is now our intention to increase the availability of these and other services. To accomplish this, we are seeking the assistance of Dr. Ronald Heins (the former Parish Assistance director) and our part-time lead consultants—who by their previous ministry experiences and training are qualified to provide specialized assistance.
Forward with Lutheran Schools
Forward with Lutheran Schools is a major ministry within Parish Assistance and is designed to assist congregations with starting new and strengthening existing daycares, preschools, Lutheran elementary schools, and high schools. Our Forward with Lutheran Schools consultant, who began his full-time service in July 2007, is Teacher Greg Schmill. He continues to serve congregations as they work through the process of analyzing the opportunities and challenges of opening new preschools and Lutheran elementary schools. In addition, he is now piloting Second Wind, a streamlined school-strengthening process. As with our entire Parish Assistance consulting ministry, Forward with Lutheran Schools emphasizes the use of programs within the church for outreach as well as nurture.
Parish Assistance had an opportunity in April to share information about its philosophy of ministry—why we do what we do the way we do it—with our Conference of Presidents. We appreciated their interest in and support of what Parish Assistance is striving to accomplish.
Turnaround churches
A future major project being undertaken by Parish Assistance, with funding from a Thrivent grant, will be a study of turnaround churches in WELS. Turnaround churches are defined as congregations between the years 1980 and 2007 that have declined at least 20 percent in worship attendance and then, by God’s grace and blessing, rebounded and rose above the original status (before the decline started) by at least 20 percent. In other words, turnaround churches experienced at least a 40 percent increase in worship attendance from the lowest point of decline.
An example of an imaginary turnaround congregation is provided in this graph.
The goal of this project is first to identify and categorize turnaround congregations—by setting, size, and age—and then study some of them in depth and discover what factor the Lord commonly blessed among them. It is hoped that these findings will help inform and better enable our WELS consulting ministry to assist additional congregations with pursuing turnaround.
Potentially, the discovered factors could be presented at our ministerial training college and seminary and at regional seminars and district conferences. At the same time, we anticipate that the findings will be helpful not only to congregations that need and desire turnaround, but also to more stable congregations that desire improved health for the sake of having greater spiritual impact among their members and in their communities.
Continuing to declare his praises
As we thank our Lord for his benevolent blessings on Parish Assistance, we also entrust our challenges to him. Confident that he is in control, we will continue to work tirelessly for the benefit of his kingdom and, with all our brothers and sisters in WELS, declare his praises!
For additional information, contact Rev. Elton Stroh, 608-837-3819 or elton.stroh@sab.wels.net.
Rev. Elton Stroh, reporter
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GJ - Wisconsin Lutheran College (nickname - Our Valpo) spawned Charis, and Charis begat Church and Change.
And lo, darkness spread across the land.
Church and Change members joined hooves to create stealth Church Growth missions across WELS.
Church and Change members divert synodical offering money for their own salaries and their wild hair projects.
And there was weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
Church and Change members study and worship with false teachers, then conspire to have Lutherans listen to their favorite theologians:
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Charis->Church and Change->Parish Services WELS":
Pastor:
Could you please not publish this, yet answer a question? I haven't seen your explanation of "babtist"? Is there an inside joke I'm missing? Why the second "b" and not a "p"?
Sorry...I'm a EE, not a M.Div. or PHD.
Thank you in advance sir.
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GJ - I did answer this before, but I don't expect people to read every single post and memorize them as well. Lately I have been using the search function to find stuff I wrote.
I was at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College when the director made a distinction between Baptists and Ba-a-a-abtists. I laughed. The Baptists and the Ba-a-abtists did not.
Southern Baptists often say they are Ba-a-a-abtists. Northern Baptists are more liberal and do not affect the Southern accent.
I have been everywhere and heard the major Protestant and Catholic speakers, many of them now passed away. That, combined with doctoral studies in comparative dogmatics has given me a good perspective on what is happening. Unlike the Church and Changers, I can spell comparative.
The WELS Church and Changers think my doctoraol work gives them permission to study at Fuller Seminary and Willow Creek. But I disagree.
I was in the LCA until 1987. WELS said, "Oh, unionism is so bad. People should not even study at those bad institutions." John Seifert (now DP) made a point of wrinkling his nose in disgust whenever Missouri was mentioned. Even now it is impossible to have a conversation with a WELS pastor without the typical We-are-so-superior-to-Missouri tale being shopped.
WELS talked a big story against unionism, but the clergy have been more unionistic than ELCA and completely dishonest about it. The Wisconsin Synod is listed at Trinity Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, as one of its corporate sponsors - in two different areas, including Parish Assistance. Connections? A Church and Changer runs PS which hires Parish Assistants like Paul Kelm.
Going back, it is easy to track where this came from. Ron Roth was the first openly Church Growther in WELS. Kelm, Valleskey, Bivens, Hartman, and Olson followed. The second wave of Growthers came with Wisconsin Lutheran College creating Charis, which created Church and Change, which sponsored even more of the above.
In the power structure it was Wayne Mueller at the center, with Parish Services (Bruce Becker) overlapping Church and Change. Love Shack employees are Church and Changers promoting Love Shack programs and eating up synodical offerings to pay for them.
So everyone should be laughing at how the Church and Change leaders (like VP Don Patterson and his circle) run off to see Babtist Ed Stetzer. Meanwhile, other key Church and Change leaders (Parlow and Ski) fawn and worship at Andy Stanley's Babtist church.
