Three doofus Synod Presidents in a row--Naumann, Mischke, Gurgel--promoted the Church Growth Movement in lockstep with ELCA, Missouri, and the Little Sect on the Prairie. ELCA had more than two parts then: ALC, LCA, AELC, Lavender Mafia. Thrivent was AAL and LB. Now all are one, driven by fear of the future and lack of trust in the Means of Grace.
They knew in 1978 that Lutherans were moving away from their former strongholds into the Sunbelt, that few of the children baptized in a parish would stay to be confirmed and married. I knew those statistics because I attended national LCA evangelism training time after time. The LCA taught exactly what the WELS was learning, in a manner of speaking.
For example, the LCA trained me in Management by Objective, by Peter Drucker. MBO is a business model I heard repeated within WELS, years later.
The LCA cast its covetous eyes on the Enthusiasts of the day: D. James Kennedy and others, making the LCA version far more mainline while denouncing the examples they copied so adroitly. The Wisconsin Sect sent all their leaders to be trained at Fuller, Willow Creek, and Trinity Deerfield. Wally Oelhafen could recite the party line on Reformed doctrine while gushing about Church Growth. The Sausage Factory did the same thing, teaching Church Growth in one class while criticizing Reformed doctrine in another. One sausage gave me his "Lord, Liar, Lunatic" paper from Mequon, where he repeated the Josh McDowell sales pitch. I said, "Where did you learn this nonsense?" He clammed up.
So WELS has an alien synod growing from within, highly trained in all the anti-Lutheran dogma of the Enthusiasts. Try to do your Matthew 18 due diligence with their leaders. They will--like Ski, Kelm, and Bruce Becker--brush aside all criticisms. Like thistle growing in the field, they will not be moved.
The Reformed synod-within-the-synod will continue to work at total control. Younger pastors like Glende and Ski have grown up under Fuller leaders, always rewarded for "getting it." They will not relinquish their power with grace and humility.
VP Don Patterson has lined up ex-SP Gurgel as his vicar. That gives Gurgel a podium for politicking, so maybe people will forget his stewardship as DP and SP. Gurgel got his brother a teaching position at the Sausage Factory, so Patterson can tap the signals intelligence from Zion Hill in Mequon.
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Thoroughly Disgusted has left a new comment on your post "The Synod Within the Synod":
Are you really so arrogant to believe that Pastor Ski took down his blog simply because you posted copy and pasted it to yours? You call on others to repent but you ought to repent. You are constantly plotting and causing division among the church.
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GJ - The reading comprehension skills of WELS liberals are awesomely bad. I wrote that Ski took away the link after I wrote about it. The content is still there. The blog is still there. I can ascetain the timing of the lost link but not the cause. Ski would have to sit down with me and explain why he removed the link but kept the content - and why.
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Synod Within the Synod":
Pastor Jackson is not plotting and causing divisions. He is exposing errors, something which God's Word commands. He is an unofficial spokesman for those that have been shushed by circuit pastors and district presidents.
