Bruce Church has left a new comment on your post "Budget Discussed on Bailing Water":
Hi Anonymous, I'm glad you admit to being a kool-aid drinker because I was about to point out how many times in this short discussion you talked of blindly trusting WELS leaders, and denigrate anyone who would voice his own opinion and lay out the facts as he knows it. You think that using a blog to advocate for streamlining the synodical schools and trying to improve their instruction is being holier-than-thou. You are apparently unconcerned about how short-changed students with go through life with diminished opportunities because they can't speak another language fluently, spell well, or do high-level math. (Believe me, I've seen the product that synodical schools produce.) The WELS students also have strange attitudes inculcated into them by the synod (one of them you exhibit here), along with the UOJ doctrine which is not found in the Lutheran confessional documents before the 1932 Brief Statement.
It doesn't seem as though you know how the leaders are chosen or come up with their decisions. They aren't just accountants looking at spreadsheets. They talk to people to see if there is support for such and such, and hopefully they see a wide range of blogs as being a barometer of what the WELS public thinks, wants and is willing to support. At least they'll talk to people who have read the blogs.
People should voice their opinions without shame even if they get some facts wrong, because that would likely indicate the synodical leadership's failure to communicate properly more than anything else, and the synodical leaders need to see that and correct it. For instance, I read the glossy magazines that come out of synod, and instead of giving me real news and facts about the synodical schools programs, they mainly are filled with feel-good human interest stories with pictures of smiling students, all designed to recruit students and have people donate money. Don't confuse them with the facts!
If everyone had Anonymous's attitude about people voicing their opinion, the WELS leadership would surely fail since they make decisions on behalf of the people. They would know little about what the layman actually want or are willing to support, that is, until the laymen walk away or pull the plug on the synod. Not sending in money is a message, too. In fact, one could say that the root cause of a lot of the synod's past failures is there were too many WELS members like Anonymous.
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GJ - When the shoe is on the other hoof, Bruce, the Church and Chicaneries violate all the rules they impose on everyone else. Item:
Perish Services was told by the Synod President not to hire another person for budgetary reasons. When Bruce Becker (C and C board member; topdog BPS) insisted they were going to issue a call anyway, the Synod President asked them not to hire a polarizing figure. So they broke the bank with a new/old hire, and they picked Paul Kelm, the most polarizing figure of all.
How is that for doing things in a decent and orderly manner?
And, to top it off, they did not tell the elected president, but let him find out in the posting of calls.
How is that for honoring those in authority?
SP Schroeder could have appointed a First VP to replace Wayne Mueller, who quit in a huff. Schroeder did not have to refrain from appointing, to save money for the synod. He would have had an instant ally, so he had every excuse to do what was convenient for him, expensive for the synod.
In contrast, C and C thumbed its snout at the elected president to serve the carnal desires of their doctrinal buddies, and they did it in the most obnoxious way possible. Oh, the lessons learned in GA and Bonecrusher.
And here is the kicker - the C and C gang began howling that Schroeder knew about the call early, not from reading about it in the call report that everyone sees. Nothing is too base for them. They let their Rock and Roll layman do their lying for them. But when he asked about Babtist Stetzer on their listserve, they refused to answer.
So the Church and Chicaneries are always preaching the Law and distributing Kool-Aid to the troops, but they are completely lawless and scornful of authority themselves.
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Podpeople Point and Hiss When They Hear a Good Ide...":
Oh, the lessons learned in GA and Bonecrusher.
Lessons that started in prep, that is, if you were a male dorm student....
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GJ - That is why area Lutheran high school students were sneeringly called "public school students." They did not experience the joys of prep hazing, such as cross-dressing and being held out of a window and dropped. Oops. "Only the best graduate," they are told. They even think they are tough, but many impress me as masochists waiting to be ordered around by the bullies. However, there are some fine pastors who want to preserve the Word, teach the Gospel, and live the Gospel.
