Uncloseted Church and Changers

From: Daniel Wagenknecht
To: church_and_change@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 8:00:24 PM
Subject: Re: [church_and_change] HEY CHURCH ARE YOU REALLY OUT THERE? Or Am I lost in ...


Bob and everyone,

I have been concerned for a while that I might be among those living in the last times who, "because of the increase of wickedness," will find my love, along with "most", growing "cold."

Please don't take my failure to respond as lukewarmness toward the cause, however. I seldom send out blanket emails on list servers, but I think we all need some encouragement. I'm mission board chairman for the hardest hit WELS district, the Arizona-California. We are struggling and striving to figure out how to continue three missions whose funding has been discontinued. Two others that were de-funded will survive, and we are hoping and praying we can save five. One mission program will not continue.

I am understating it if I say this is heart-rending. But I don't believe the solution lies in the synodical budget, convention decisions, mission funding, or synodical organization. We need to understand that telling someone about Jesus costs nothing. We have over 1200 congregations organized to do this, and 200,000 WELS members (the official count minus a possible inactive or disinterested third) who know how to be missionaries.

It does not look like synodical funding will be available to start many missions anytime soon. But each congregation, pastor, and member can do so much starting today, to extend the kingdom of Christ. I urge all of us to make the most of every opportunity. Keep your heads up and eyes focused on Christ. Remember even without WELS, the Spirit caused his church to grow for 1850 years. Pray that God will continue to use our little church body for this great Cause.

Pastor Daniel M. Wagenknecht
Arizona-California District Mission Board (WELS)
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church
6550 Fairmont Blvd.
Yorba Linda, CA 92886
office(714)779- 2384 or mobile 624-9001
"Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

--- On Thu, 5/21/09, MiscoJohn@aol. com wrote:

From: MiscoJohn@aol. com
Subject: Re: [church_and_ change] HEY CHURCH ARE YOU REALLY OUT THERE? Or Am I lost in ...
To: church_and_change@ yahoogroups. com
Date: Thursday, May 21, 2009, 12:35 PM


Thanks, Bob, for your words, your thoughts, your loss of sleep, your zeal for the Lord, and your encouragements. I'm going to use some of what you wrote for the opening part of Peace Lutheran's council meeting tonight (both they and our little mission will have Ascension service this weekend). I, too, am a bit puzzled that you are not getting more response. Maybe we're all scared about what might happen yet, if things don't turn around in the economy. Faith in our Lord's power, promise to care for us, and a desire to see him return soon should dispel the fear. If it doesn't, then something is, as you imply, happening to our faith.

Blessings on your work---get some rest!

John Huebner

---

From: Dennis Rardin
To: church_and_change@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 8:15:26 PM
Subject: Re: [church_and_change] HEY CHURCH ARE YOU REALLY OUT THERE? Or Am I lost in ...


All,

A few thoughts, random ones, from one who has been both pastor and parishioner:

1) There are very real economic issues at work, including but not limited to the banking mess/recession.
a) Taxes. They keep going up. My wife and I bought a home in 2000. We sold it in 2005 and bought a much older home in a much less desirable area. Why? Because in 5 years, the property tax on the first home nearly doubled, and was consuming nearly 10% of our pre-tax income. Not the mortgage ... the property taxes.
b) Prices. The church spends 90% of its money on 2 things: people and buildings -- the only 2 things that have consistently increased in cost faster than inflation in the last 30 years. (Health care, of course, is a "people" cost.)
c) As a result, the same percentage of income does less church work than it used to. The trend will likely continue.

2) We have not gotten through the noise of American consumerism into our people's hearts what stewardship is. In a nutshell, the simple question is: How much are we willing to lower our standard of living in order to preach the Gospel? As noted above, my wife and I found ourselves unable to give what we wanted because of a property tax problem and a (temporary) reduction of income. We fixed the problem by lowering our standard of living -- we moved.

Our people don't generally do this. They don't, as a rule, even think in those terms when budgeting. We've left training in how to take care of money to the credit card companies, real estate agents, and car salesmen. It's not working very well.

3) The result is that when we say, "Help, WELS is broke," most of our people cannot help as much as the clergy sometimes think. To help to any real degree, in many cases they'd have to go back in time and buy a different home or car, stop consuming as much and pay down debt, etc.

4) My thoughts:

a) Our pastors, especially, need to get over our cultural reluctance to speak of themselves, make sure their own giving is right, and then lead by example. Our people just do not get it. They're going to need to hear, "You paid me $X last year. The parsonage was the same as paying me another $Y. My wife makes $Z. Last year we gave $A. Let me tell you how we did that." Maybe in the pulpit, maybe in people's living rooms, maybe not quite that way. But very, very specifically.

b) Our pastors need to preach more specific law about stewardship. We are very good at talking about the Widow's Mite. We need to get better at saying, "I don't know what level of giving is right for you. I do know that 1% isn't it."

c) If you could pick a time to make this adjustment, now would not be it. It needed to happen before there was a crisis. But there you have it.

5) As long as I'm writing heresy ... we really need to take a long, hard look at ministry priorities. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but if we added up all the budgets in the WELS, don't we spend more on K-12 education than on everything else we do, combined? This, in a word, is nuts.

Climbing Off Of Soapbox,
Dennis