I was working on this post when my ready-to-go database, Megatron, found a very old quotation from the WELS SP Mark Schroeder. The article was from TELL, which was WELS' first Church Growth periodical. I decided to use the quotation because the sentence was in the mode of Church Growthers who talk about planning and setting goals, something they got from Management by Objective, a business textbook.
A friend of the Synodical President thought the post took the quotation out of context and presented a harsher picture than was necessary. He actually had the original article, bound in morocco with gold trim and a silk ribbon marker. I am kidding about that.
I apologize for using the quotation out of context and giving that solitary sentence a meaning not intended by the author. Unlike most of my quotations, only one sentence was recorded from that article.
So now I have the entire article, which I wanted to reproduce, but the "save as text" command yielded a blank document. I meant to indicate in the original post that I thought Schroeder was not in that CG crowd. So I find it instructive to read the article, many years later, knowing how many WELS leaders turned their backs on the Means of Grace while chasing the bright, elusive butterflies of Enthusiasm and business marketing (to no avail, I might add).
Here is my brief review of Schroeder's article, which is now 24 years old:
The complete article is more of a critique of Church Growth than anything, subtly using some of their arguments to lead into something else. Back in the 1980s, WELS (late for every fad) was discovering planning, committees, and evangelism programs. Schroeder said, those things are done but not always with good results.
The sentence I objected to is typical CG fare, but that thought was followed by - "But in the Book of Acts evangelism is an effort by all the Christians - a natural result of their faith and joy in Christ."
The final sentence in the article is an implicit statement of the efficacy of the Word: "Let it be said of our church and all of our members - Day by day they never stopped preaching and teaching the good news that Jesus is the Christ."
Some points of explanation:
1. We should never assume something that is not in the text itself. The text is the only thing we know for sure (Nils Dahl, Yale) so we should never turn away from what we know and weave scenarios no one has described in the text. One of my friends at Notre Dame assumed Mary was assumed into heaven since her death is not recorded in the New Testament.
2. Jonah did a lot of planning. He planned a way to escape God's mission, but God sent a storm to stop him and a whale to taxi him to his post. There is something to be said for being organized (counting the cost, as Jesus said) but one should not equate planning with success. I concede that Schroeder did not fall into the Management by Objective mindset in his article, that he moved the reader in the opposite direction.
If Schroeder had been more explicit about the efficacy of the Word rather writing about "planning and consulting" then his article would have been rejected. I heard he was asked to write it. CG types like to have people seem to endorse their fad, to make their illigitimate child look legal. The final sentence of his article is a rejection of CG, but they were too dumb to see that, or they wanted the appearance of an endorsement.
I have read so many CG books and articles that I can tell when someone has studied at Fuller or Willow Creek. Tragicly, Fuller got most of the WELS, LMCS, and ELCA executives trained in their abominations. The Fuller cancer is a doctrinal problem. The cancer must be cut out with the Sword of the Word. That will not be easy for anyone in a teaching or leadership position. The responsibility does not rest with the appointed or elected leaders alone, but with the laity and the pastors.
Too many pastors took the safe route to advancement and muted themselves when they should have objected to false doctrine. Good does not automatically overcome evil, but the strong do overcome the weak, as Luther pointed out. If the confessional Lutherans finally become much stronger, they will win with God's Word.
Mark Schroeder's election, I am told, was a victory for reform in WELS. Some progress has been made, I think. The WELS people I know (pastors and laity) are pleased with his leadership. That support has to be explicit rather than implicit, overt rather than covert.
