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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Is the FIC Editor in Bed with Church and Change?":
One would assume that the "need" for "change" in WELS is because its leaders are suggesting that the "unchanged" synod was a failure.
We are led to believe that missions are a failure because they are not meeting their self-funding deadlines. We are led to believe that missions are a failure if they do not use church growth ideals. We know our mission program is a failure, otherwise it would not need "church growth immersed" mission counselors.
We are led to believe that worker training is a failure. Why else would so many seminary and administrative leaders go to Fuller, Willow Creek, and the like?
The impression is given that if MLC and WLS were doing their job, we, especially our "best" leaders, would not need to go to school to experience worker training elsewhere.
Since our seminary and administrators are demonstrating by their practice that WELS' efforts to do mission work and train workers are by and large failures, and that they cannot "change" away from that failure from within, we can understand the collapse of the system as we hae (sic) known it.
Of course, this collapse will force "change." Obama said America needed change and we are getting it in politics. We are told WELS needs change, and we are, of necessity, going to get it. I don't think Lutheran conservatives will be any happier with coming changes in WELS than political conservatives are with changes in American politics.
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Catastrophic Failure of WELS School System Proven ...":
Who masterminded the failures so successfully?
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GJ - That is an insightful question. Clearly an organization was building in 1977, and many people knew it. When I helped with the Orthodox Lutheran Forum (WELS) in the 1980s, one person said, "We should have dealt with these issues 10 years ago."
TELL marked the open espousal of Enthusiasm, 1977. Another turning point was Ted Hartwig's Isaiah essay and the lack of discipline for his espousal of the Historical Critical Method.
In the 1980s, everyone knew the score, because they were feeding me documents from all over and I was publishing the quotations in Christian News. I would not list Valleskey, Kelm, Bivens, Huebner, and the main villains, nor would I list their enablers - Mischke, Gurgel, and the Doctrinal Pussycats. The real culprits are the parish pastors who ducked the issues for 20 years, as if the Kudzu Vine of Enthusiasm would stop growing and choking the synod.
Some of the people being fired right now are the ones who chose to silence themselves when they knew the truth. Others were glad to switch sides to get a promotion or that coveted call. If the Kingdom of France was worth a Mass, as Henry of Navarre said, then a call overseas was worth a denunciation.
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Catastrophic Failure of WELS School System Proven ...":
Thank you for your candid response and validation of things I saw and suspected back in the 70s and 80s. What I observed shocked me very deeply at the time. At a succession of conferences and confabs I saw grown men shifting their consciences and gratitude from Christ and to a few tyrannical pastor/ leaders. You know the names.
Their obeisance to a few Alpha leaders turned me off to WELS. As they competed with each other for the turn of a sanctimonious phrase, they looked like the asses they are. Emphasis on growth and expansion caused building worship to really take off. I had the suspicion then and am totally convinced now that the pastors were surrendering themselves to evil in hopes of better securing themselves within WELS.
In summary WELS is now reaping what pastors sowed with such apathy, complacency, and faith in their peers instead of in God. May God have mercy on them for the many souls they have misled throughout the years.
